Celebrated Filipino artists highlight Manila Liberation Day with WW2 images

People visit the Manila American Cemetery for lots of reasons. Located in Taguig on McKinley Hill, the site is the final resting place for some 17,000 soldiers that fought in the Battle for Manila, as well as battlefronts all over Asia in WWII, so in addition to the few surviving veterans, family members and curious passersby often find their way here. You pass 11 burial plots—row upon row of concentric white crosses on the lawns surrounding the memorial shrine—a monument to shared sacrifice in fighting the long Pacific battle that ended with Japan’s surrender on Sept. 2, 1945 and the liberation of Manila on Feb. 22 that year.

Now, for a brief time, it’s also a showcase for four celebrated Filipino artists who lived through those scenes of Manila’s destruction, and painted them on canvas.

Located at the American Battle Monuments Commission Visitor Center, “The Liberation of Manila: 80 Years of Remembrance through Art” showcases four paintings by National Artist Fernando Amorsolo, Diosdado Lorenzo, Nena Saguil and Galo Ocampo, loaned by the National Museum of the Philippines’ Fine Arts Collection and on view until Feb. 25.

There’s Amorsolo, whose oil “Burning of Santo Domingo Church” (1942) captures that conflagration seemingly as it occurred, with hoses trying to stop the flames; it sits alongside Diosdado Lorenzo’s “Ruins of Sales Street, Quiapo” (1946), Nena Saquil’s “Ruined Gate Fort Santiago” (1949), and Galo Ocampo’s destroyed “Legislative Building” (1945). All are vivid, artful impressions of the onslaught.

This month marks the 80th anniversary of that liberation, and US Ambassador to the Philippines MaryKay Carlson fittingly opened the exhibit: “Art has the power to transcend time, to give voice to the voiceless, to capture history not as cold facts but as lived experience. The four powerful works in this exhibit, created by some of the Philippines’ most celebrated national artists, serve as a visual testament to the past.”

National Museum of the Philippines director-general Jeremy Barns added: “The works you see here now are historical visual accounts—some of them firsthand—of the battle that was… It is our honor to share them here at the Manila American Cemetery.”

Indeed, the cemetery is one of the most vivid reminders in the Philippines of that shared sacrifice and struggle. As Visitor Center superintendent Ryan Blum notes, “About 20 percent of our visitors are Filipino. It’s not just an American story.” Filipino soldiers are interred side by side with Americans; Christian crosses stand next to Star of David crosses in these fields. A wall of 25 Maps shows how widespread the battles were leading up to Manila: New Guinea, Marianas; the Marshall, Solomon and Palau islands. Those whose remains were recovered from seas and fields are interred here. “There’s a democracy in death that you see only here, without regard to race, creed, color, nationality, sex, or rank,” says Visitor Center director Vicente Lim IV as he tours our group through the Wall of Missing memorial just before the flag-lowering ceremony. We also witnessed a solemn ceremony: inserting a rosette next to the name of one of thousands of soldiers whose remains have been finally identified, 80 years later. His name: Marine Private Charmning W. Rowe. We notice that not many names carry a rosette stone.

Inside the Visitor Center, with its permanent exhibit telling stories of sacrifice and survival (thousands of US soldiers were imprisoned at Santo Tomas University, nearing starvation before they were liberated), the four Filipino paintings add another layer to the story.

Ambassador Carlson says the Manila American Cemetery has special resonance for her: “When we have houseguests visiting, one of our first stops is here, because it shows the shared history and sacrifice of Americans and Filipinos who fought for our freedoms.” And it’s not just a story of the past: “As maritime democracies, what we experience here still resonates in a very meaningful way—what we see played out in newspaper headlines today—so it’s very important for younger generations to understand the enduring value of this partnership, the shared sacrifice we have endured together.”

The Visitor Center opened five years ago, for the 75th anniversary. Despite COVID, since its reopening some 74,000 visit its extensive historical exhibit each year. Just getting people to know it’s here and open to the public is a win. The folks at Manila American Cemetery want people to know the grounds and Visitor Center are open 363 days a year—closed only on Christmas and New Year’s Day—from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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Free and open to the public, “The Liberation of Manila: 80 Years of Remembrance through Art” is part of a series of events marking the 80th anniversary on Feb. 22. It runs until Feb. 25 at the Visitor Center of the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, the largest overseas American military cemetery in the world, located in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig.