Urban Disaster: The Battle of Manila
by Russell W. Glenn
Manila today stands as Earth’s sixth most populous urban area, this despite the Philippine capital’s often cheek-by-jowl living and traffic congestion second only to India’s Bangalore. Such magnetism proved attractive even during the dark days of Japanese occupation during World War II, if for different reasons. People were so impoverished in the countryside that the city beckoned despite the looming threat of fighting for its recapture. It was, in retrospect, an ill-fated attraction. The number of Americans killed during their recapture of the city in 1945 totaled 1,010. Some 14,000 Japanese defenders died. Terrible numbers, but nothing compared to 100,000 Filipinos perishing, one in ten from a population of approximately one million as fighting began.
The suffering of Manila’s noncombatants was unexceptional in that conflict. Innocents elsewhere often experienced death and wounding in far greater numbers than the opposing combatants when the fight was an urban one. At times the loss of civilians was incidental to a combatant’s primary objectives. In other instances, as in Ukraine today, those casualties were deliberately inflicted. If there is any benefit to be drawn from these dark clouds of history’s teachings, it is that the suffering of those past can inform recovery from war’s punishments yet to come.
Lessons from World War II’s devastation of Manila provide insights of value for Ukrainian leaders responsible for their cities’ rebuilding in the aftermath of Russian depredations. How national and local leaders—and those rendering international assistance—bring their resources to bear during and after a city suffers attacks significantly influences the extent of survivors’ suffering. Their decisions should not await the end of combat. Instead, as in Ukraine today, leaders and residents need to begin the mending not only of their physical infrastructure, but also those social and economic even as they guard against future revisitations by despoilers.
Russell W. Glenn is author of Chapter 3, “Urban Disaster Wrought by Man: The Battle for Manila, 1945.” This chapter originally appeared in Journal of Strategic Security 16, no. 3 (2023), https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol16/iss3/3/.
