 |
Me and World War II
Remembrances of one of the deadliest events in world history from
someone who lived through them.
by Ray V. Reyes
* * * * EXPLOSIONS, FIREBALLS, BLASTS, roaring sudden loud noises, billowing smoke clouds, darkening skies --
* * * * These may sound like the standard opening sequences of today's movie or television drama before opening credits roll... These are not the recommended baggage in the life of an ordinary 9-year-old.
* * * * Certainly, I was an ordinary nine-year-old growing up during a horrendous war which not everyone can agree on its memories. Such mental baggage as I carried around for most of my life consists of the above shocking, horrifying accessories. Does this mean that I was more favored or less GIFTed than any of my peers in this life? Hardly.
* * * * And yet, these explosions, fireballs, blasts, roaring and sudden loud noises and the billowing smoke that indicated that someone's whole life and memories were disappearing in flames and being wafted aloft by heavy black clouds -- all these remembrances belong not just to me but to millions of children, the children that we were during that war that began the eighth of December, 1941.
* * * * Not the December 7, 1941 that American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt labeled "a date which will live in infamy" as Pearl Harbor Day, but December 8, 1941 on our side of the International Dateline.
What did a little kid know about datelines, much less an International Dateline? All I knew was that I was growing up poor. Looking back now we would have been in the "lower middle-class socioeconomic level". Most everyone I knew or went around with were roughly in the same status. Little did anyone know that the status of almost everyone was just going to get worse, not better, in the Commonwealth of the Philippines, as it was then known. What did I know of "socioeconomic levels or status"?
My parents were just getting by, able to purchase some little presents for the coming Christmas season, the best time of the year to children everywhere. We usually went around to all the relatives on Christmas Day, with our hand out for the customary coins from uncles and aunts, more from elderly folks after we would take their hand and touch it to our forehead in a form of hand-kissing which was the courtesy of the day. What a strange Christmas season it was to become that year! Not at all like previous Christmas seasons!
All I knew was that one day there were strange formations of airplanes high up in the sky. I heard muffled "WHURRUMP"s of what I found out later were the explosions of bombs that whistled down from the sky like some half-forgotten scene in a newsreel. All along was the constant droning of airplane engines.
Bombs were whistling down from those high airplanes and exploding into the hospitals, schools, churches and office buildings of Manila, which had been declared an "OPEN CITY". To me, that meant exactly what it said at the time -- "OPEN" to bomb attacks and invasion, as opposed to what it was supposed to mean, that the city was OPEN and therefore unarmed and harmless to any invader. So, please, do not attack this city, was the plea of "Open City."
Those hospitals, schools, churches and office buildings must have represented some dire threat to those high formations of strange airplanes which just had to obliterate these hospitals, schools, churches and office buildings, as a matter of course. On the ground, I could not tell what threat those buildings held for those high V-formation planes of war. At the time, I had a vague recollection that bombs were sent down to destroy military factories and installations. Were there any in Manila, in the middle of a bustling city?
Yes, hospitals, schools, churches and office buildings blown up, resulting in the deaths of most everyone inside those structures without warning, as far as anyone knew. We never did understand the reason they meant a deadly menace to those V-flying bombers which we discovered to be Japanese.
Next page
Send E-Mail to: rayreyesr@netscape.net
Copyright © 2010 Ray V. Reyes. All Rights Reserved