The Burning of Manila, 1945: The Liberation That Killed 100,000 Filipinos
Before the war, Manila was called the Pearl of the Orient — a city of centuries-old churches, universities, plazas and neighborhoods where cultures from across Asia and the world met. By March 1945, much of it was rubble.
Three years of occupation
Japan occupied Manila from January 1942. By late 1944, the city's residents were starving, and the occupation had been marked by arrests, torture and killings. When American forces returned, Filipinos welcomed them as liberators.
28 days of fire
U.S. forces entered Manila on February 3, 1945. Japanese forces — mostly naval troops who refused orders to withdraw — dug into the city and fought block by block. General Douglas MacArthur initially restricted air strikes to protect civilians, but as fighting hardened, American commanders turned to heavy artillery. Districts burned. The walled city of Intramuros, where Japanese troops made their last stand, was pounded to ruins.
The battle ended on March 3, 1945.
Who killed the civilians
About 100,000 Filipino civilians died. Two forces were responsible:
Japanese troops carried out deliberate massacres of civilians — men, women and children — in what is now known as the Manila massacre, one of the worst atrocities of the war.
American artillery caused much of the destruction of the city and many civilian deaths, as U.S. forces chose massive firepower to limit their own casualties.
Retired Philippine general and historian Ricardo Morales has argued that the U.S. casualty-avoidance strategy, and the overwhelming firepower that came with it, was a major cause of Manila's devastation. Both truths can stand together: Filipinos were killed by the occupier and destroyed by the liberator.
The most devastated Allied capital in the Pacific
Manila is often described as one of the most destroyed Allied cities of the war, alongside Warsaw. Churches, government buildings, libraries and archives — centuries of Filipino history — were lost. The death toll rivaled the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet the battle is barely remembered outside the Philippines.
Why remember it
"Liberation" is the story most of us were taught. Remembering the burning of Manila doesn't erase the cruelty of the occupation. It insists that Filipino lives — and Filipino losses — belong at the center of our own history.
Sources
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