Damon Runyon
Fort Worth Star-Telegram/August 13, 1942
AUG. 13 was the anniversary of an event in the history of the United States that was once an occasion for some satisfaction among our citizens but that now can arouse only poignant memories.
On that date in 1898 the American Eighth Army Corps captured the city of Manila, hauling down the red and yellow flag of old Spain over Fort Malate and the Walled Town and running up the Stars and Stripes.
For 43 years and a few months the symbol of freedom fluttered in the breezes of the Pacific, and beneath its folds spread progress and enlightenment among a people who had known only great tyranny and oppression. The promise of complete independence lay before them, the final gift of the nation that had lifted them from the slough of despond.
Now the flag bearing the rising sun of Japan has displaced Old Glory, and the streets of the city on the Pasig River which Americans made modern and proud echo to the tramp of the Japanese, and our American men and women and children are herded in compounds with far less consideration than our soldiers gave the defeated warriors of Spain in the long ago.
The vast material possessions of our citizens who lived in Manila and other cities of the Philippines, their homes and their household goods, are in the hands of the little brown fellows as the spoils of war. The dead from the battlefield of Aug. 13, 1898, who are buried in the cemeteries of Manila, would rest uneasily if they could realize the mockery of their sacrifice of 43 years ago.
Only the never-fading brilliance of their contribution to the glory of our arms remains on this anniversary of that great day, when they began in letters of blood the epic tale of American fortitude and valor in the Philippines that was continued on Bataan. And there is much more to be written—much more, make no error there.
As long as one Japanese soldier is on the soil of the Philippines, it is a reproach to the United States that must be effaced. As long as one of our citizens or soldiers is held prisoner there, it is a disgrace. Perhaps history will disclose that it is both a reproach and a disgrace that any Japanese soldier ever set foot on the Philippines, or that any of our citizens or soldiers were ever made prisoners.
History will no doubt properly evaluate the full American military tale of the Philippines and tell us whether or not we blundered in not trying to reinforce Bataan when Douglas MacArthur and his men stood with their backs to the sea. It will tell us whether or not mistakes that might have been avoided cost us the empire won by that same MacArthur’s father and his regulars and Western volunteers in 1898.
But in the meantime, the American people should not be permitted to forget for a moment that in Manila and elsewhere throughout the Philippines thousands of Americans are prisoners of war; their plight should be a prod to unrelenting warfare against the Japanese until another day as glorious as Aug. 13, 1898.
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