The Philippine Campaign

While Manila was waiting for the American liberation forces, my grandfather died. It was January 4, 1945, a little over two months after General Douglas MacArthur landed at Leyte, and three weeks after American troops landed at Mindoro which was to serve as a jump off point for planes for the invasion of Luzon. A few days grandfather’s burial, the Americans stormed ashore Lingayen with 68,000 troops and drove on towards Manila.

A month after Lolo died, the U.S. Sixth Army attacked the Japanese in Manila. My mother is sad to think that Lolo Ciano never saw the liberation of Manila. To many Filipinos, liberation was associated with corned neef, Milky Way chocolates, Chesterfield cigarettes and other goodies that the G.I.s brought with them. Lolo did not get to enjoy these.

So many lives were lost during the war. Military war dead, anti-Japanese guerillas killed in action, POWs that died in captivity, victims of Japanese war crimes, civilians due to war related factors. The anxiety of the war and news of atrocities being committed by the retreating Japanese was too much for an old man. He suffered from a nervous breakdown which was the cause of his death.

I have no recollection of Marciano Noble as I was only a year old when he passed away. His parents, my great grandparents, were Petronilo Noble and Barbara de Jesus; he had a sister named Isidra whom my mother called Kakang Sidra. Lolo worked for Don Mauro Prieto at the Herminal at Marquez de Comillas Street which I suspect was really Tabacalera. The war deprived me of the joys a young boy gets from a grandfather.