The Young and the Beautiful

Chapter 11

Note: This Chapter contains visual description of the war's aftermath. 

The war is all over now and the next problem would be the restoration of Manila and the rest of the country. Manila received the most damage since the Japs burned down the city when they were losing Battle of Manila during February to March 1945. They massacred and raped Filipino civilians who lived in the city. No one was spared. They committed this atrocity aside from the hotels where they kept Filipina sex slaves that were young girls in their teens. One of which was the Bayview Hotel in Dewey Boulevard.

They left the hotel and left no evidence of this activity by burning it. One of the victims was Patricia's classmate, Rebecca, she was a daughter of a German businessman and a Filipina actress. She was kidnapped by the Japs in late 1944 when she was sixteen and was taken to this hotel. Her father was killed in Manila Hotel where the Japs made them line up and then doused them with gasoline and burned them alive as the Japs watched the men suffered to death. I don't want to hear the rest of what happened to Rebecca but Camila kept on talking about it. She was really mad on what happened.

In March 1945, Rebecca made it. She was found outside Bayview Hotel unconscious and bleeding by a Filipino soldier. Camila was her nurse when she got transferred to her hospital for better care. Camila said that Rebecca was lucky to make it compared to the other girls who were raped then murdered, most had unrecognizable  faces. They all looked like girls from comfortable backgrounds basing on the clothes that they're wearing when they were found. Bayview Hotel was just a kilometer or two away from Ermita that housed Manila's richest families, I wonder what happened to our house there.

When Rebecca was conscious and started to regain her strength she told everyone that she was abused by more than ten men in a single night. Almost every day was the same to her. She was tied down on a flat surface with both her arms and legs restrained so she couldn't resist whatever they do to her. She even told Camila that after being abused by some men she wasn't able to feel anything at all.

 One night, after they took turns on abusing Rebecca, the Japs got one of the girls and decided to cut her breasts just for their entertainment. She was left on the floor bleeding to death. Rebecca and the girls were barely fed and drank water that came from the toilet tanks. Then when the Allies were winning, the girls were all gathered in a room where they were stabbed multiple times and piled up their bodies before burning them. However, when Rebecca's about to be stabbed, the Allies reached the Japs and gunned them down, one of the Japs dragged her outside the back exit where he thought no one could see them but fortunately one Filipino saw them and immediately killed Rebecca's captor.

That was just one of the stories of the more than one hundred thousand civilians, Filipinos, mixed race people, Spaniards, Germans, Americans, Chinese, and Indian business people who saw a lot of economic opportunity before the war broke out. They were all gone and most of their bodies weren't found or laid to rest in mass graves.

I had a new mission, which was to survey Manila's damages. The boys I served with in Davao and I were assigned in this area of Manila. We were grateful because this wasn't as damaged compared to the others. I don't know how to feel if I was assigned in Escolta Street and Intramuros which used to be a huge part of my childhood.

We visited an area along Taft Avenue near the hospital where I was kept in and I couldn't believe my eyes. I took my camera from my bag and got as much photos as possible. It was a school run by Irish-French brothers called the De La Salle brothers and they built this school in 1911. The school was housing civilians and students but when the Japs reached them all of them were massacred. Stains of these people's blood were present on the wall.

"It looked like they gathered everyone here before killing them all in cold blood." Tom told me as I was taking the picture of the room.

"It seems like it." I replied as we explored the room hoping to look for living survivors too traumatized to get out.