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Tag Archives: Battle of Manila

Feb 7, 2026

Commemorating the Battle for the Liberation of Manila

Eighty one years ago, on February 3, 1945, the Battle for the Liberation of Manila began. It was the only urban battle of the Pacific War and it raged for one month, ending on March 3, 1945… The battle remains controversial due to the excessive loss of civilian life as well as the destruction it caused. It made Manila the second most devastated Allied capital city after Warsaw in Poland during the Second World War.Some of the specific controversial issues surrounding the battle are: Was it a necessary battle? Could the city have been bypassed to save the residents from the horrors of urban fighting and massacres? Was the use of artillery by the Americans done in an indiscriminate manner?

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Commemorating the Battle for the Liberation of Manila
Mar 12, 2015

MSO to reprise 1945 concert amid war ruins

  Text and photos by ELIZABETH LOLARGA Archive photos courtesy of the MANILA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA The musicians who heeded the call of conductor Herbert Zipper to join the Manila Symphony Orchestra’s first concert after the Liberation of Manila in 1945 came from different parts of the country that had seen four years of hell. Some

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MSO to reprise 1945 concert amid war ruins
Feb 13, 2015

70 years later, pain from Battle of Manila lingers

    By NORMAN SISON “GO to Manila, go around the Nips, bounce off the Nips — but go to Manila.” It was January 1945. General Douglas MacArthur had landed his forces at Lingayen Gulf early that month to begin his campaign to liberate the main Philippine island of Luzon. With his eye fixed on

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70 years later, pain from Battle of Manila lingers
Feb 12, 2015

(War) Stories my father told me

  By Jose Bayani D. Baylon As the country remains gripped over the incident that cost the lives of 44 members of the PNP Special Action Force, I could only remind myself that war is never pretty. Now, someone might say, the 44 were not in a state of war as they were simply carrying

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(War) Stories my father told me