Blackened Pearl

Except for scattered sniper pockets and a hard core of Japs holed up in three government buildings (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS), Manila was finally free to face the future. General Douglas MacArthur lost no time in turning over the civil administration of the charred city--and of all liberated areas in the Philippines--to the Government of President Sergio Osmena. In Malacanan Palace this week, MacArthur proclaimed: "You are now a liberated people. . . . On behalf of my Government, I now solemnly declare . . . the full powers under the Constitution are restored to the Commonwealth."

But the city had no time for dreams; like a battered prize fighter, it could only lie panting, waiting for some small return of strength. Endless blocks of homes lay in charred ruins. Most buildings were damaged; everywhere piles of glass-spangled rubble spilled into the streets. It was robbed as well as wrecked: the Japanese had stripped the Pearl of the Orient systematically of automobiles, refrigerators, furniture--everything that had been deemed worthwhile to ship to Japan.

All day lines of men & women filed into the city with baskets and bamboo cylinders of rice, found ready sales. But food was short. Even the people who had escaped the starvation of Jap prison camps were undernourished, struggling for a subsistence level of living. Only the Army's Philippines Civil Affairs Unit (nicknamed Pee-Cow) kept the city alive--it served hundreds of thousands of meals, set up water points to slake Manila's thirst.

Stores, theaters, banks were still closed. Such business as existed was conducted in dusty bazaars or hole-in-the-wall shops. Boys offered fifths of rum and bad Philippine whiskey. A pretty girl named Carmelita Gloria hawked 1941 Liberty, magazines and Horatio Alger novels. But most of Manila was engaged in the elementary tasks of finding something to eat, and, now that sleep was possible, a bed.

Another Day. Things would slowly improve, the wreckage would be cleared, the mains repaired. But this week, as Manila straightened to contemplate its destiny, the future still looked little brighter than the sad, smoke-stained vistas.

The Philippines are to become an independent nation by July 4, 1946. But U.S. soldiers in Manila found that, to many a Filipino, the prospect of independence was almost fearful. In assuming independency, the Philippines will lose the privilege of duty-free trade with the U.S.--a trade which claimed 76% of their exports in peacetime years.

Although the Philippine Government has $220,000,000 on deposit in the U.S., the Islands have suffered staggering financial losses. Last week not one of the banks in the no important Islands of the Philippines was solvent. Filipinos hoped that the U.S. would grant them a 20-year preferential trade arrangement to help along the labor of reconstruction, hoped U.S. private capital and U.S. Government money would be available.

For all the dimness of the future, there was no air of hopelessness in Manila. Its people knew that, no matter how hard the future, it would not be as bad as the years of war.

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