The Bombing of Bangued Phillippines March 10th, 1945

 

View of Bangued, Abra Province in the far northern mountains of the island of Luzon, Philippines. The Abra River runs along the far hills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've spent several months in and around Bangued where my wife's family lives. It is upstream along the great Abra River from the famous town of Vigan on the coast facing China. Vigan is famous for the amazing garlicky, Vigan style longanissa sausage and the Ilocano style empanada, two of my favorite foods.

Like Vigan, Bangued has a number of old Spanish style buildings, but not as many, since most were destroyed in the major World War Two bombing that left the city in ruins.

 Many of the buildings in Bangued that are in the Spanish style have partial walls of old brick that has been filled in with a variety of materials. During visits, my question was: were these buildings the rebuilt victims of the infamous assault by American bombers on March 10th 1945? They have the look, like many things in the poverty stricken Philippines, of being rebuilt with whatever materials were available to put them back into use. As an interesting aside, the most massive fire bombing of Tokyo took place on the same day.

 

One of the historic Spanish buildings in Bangued. One of the few that seems to be undamaged. The beauty salon belongs to a friend of my wife's

 I've searched books, journals and the internet and have found very little written on the subject.  There are a few short pieces, but nothing in depth that details what it was like for both the bombers and the bombed. The next step will be to dig into military records when I can find out what unit did the bombing. 

Photos I took of a ruin along Santiago Street that seems to be under renovation. On previous trips it seemed like it was used as an animal pen. The question is whether the initial creation of this ruin was the devastating 1945 bombing or other causes. As with other parts of town, it looks like they may be splicing in modern materials to make use of the what is left of the old structure.

  There is a book titled The Pain of Bliss, Bangued: the Lost Town by Vesta Borbon Banez that was published in 2008. It may shed light on the history and lead to other sources. Unfortunately, because of the bizarre world of global publishing, it is not available in the U.S., and only a few libraries on Worldcat have it. I am going to try to follow up with some Filipino bookstores that stock books from the Philippines. I have run into this problem before with other books published in foreign countries. In the 21st century, we need global publishing, copyright and access standards to allow every book to be available everywhere just like things online. It is crazy that I can't purchase a recently published English language book just because it was published in the Philippines. 

 

A ruined Spanish era building in Bangued that still seems to be used on the bottom floor.

A few years ago, I visited a former coworker from Sitting Bull College. Dr. Crispin Maslog is retired and lives on the campus of the University of the Philippines, Los Baños. He is the author of several books published in the Philippines and I have helped him distribute them in the U.S. a number of times. 

Bangued can be a hard place with regular political assassinations and sometimes rebel activity. Soldiers with automatic weapons are a common sight on the streets. The Philippines is run by the old elite from Spanish times and a few upstarts like the Marcos family. Our own American oligarchy joined hands with the existing powers in the country because America was never fully in control. The Philippines continues as an extremely. unequal society and sham democracy held in place by fear and populism. It is not exactly an easy place to just walk around. People rush about mostly in trike sidecars and don't dawdle on the street. While, I was there a few years ago, a lawyer was assassinated in the street. Still, most people are friendly and it is a fascinating place. The friendliness of the average Filipino makes up for the oppressive politics. It is a very friendly place.

There are places in the Philippines, where ruins from the war still remain because crushing poverty has prevented their repair. Like the ruin below found on Wikimedia Commons that claims to be a destroyed structure in Baguio City not rebuilt as of 2018 when the photo was taken.

Ruins along the main street called Session Road in Baguio City, supposedly destroyed during the assault in 1945 and still not rebuilt.

It seems in Bangued, people may have just taken what they had, rebuilt what they could, and kept living. Next time I visit, I want to stop and take more photos of the rebuilt buildings and remaining ruins that I believe are the evidence of that long ago bombing.  

American money rebuilt Europe and Japan. It reconstructed the totally destroyed cities of Japan and Germany, so why have Philippines cities, which at the time of their destruction were technically American cities, not received the same attention? Would the U.S. Military have hit New York or San Francisco as hard if they had to be liberated by force? Probably not. Mainland Americans, who had real political representation, would never have stood for a Manila or Stalingrad level of urban destruction. Politicians, those plastic people who shift with the wind, would never go for that. Still, to this day, we employ the military equivalent of a hammer to things.

I found this excerpt from The Pain of Bliss on Facebook. I need to find that book to explore the story further.

"The whole town was taken totally unaware. What with everybody thinking that our town was too small, too insignificant for the US forces to waste a bomb on!!!
We Miscalculated, if not our insignificance, their extreme wealth, or perhaps the USAF pilots just made a mistake.
The town was closed from the outside.
We were cut off from food supplies.
Neither could we escape.
The Japanese were guarding us from the inside.
The Filipino guerillas were waiting for us with pointed guns as we sought the exit.
The bombs came, falling incessantly for two hours.
There were hardly any Japanese to kill, save the little number of sick and disabled that lay helpless in the hospital.
In a mad frenzy our ill-fated town was finished.
It is all a very sad scene, and to think that it all came about by mistake - by a false report of some irresponsible fellow who thought but did not verify, that there were lots of Japanese in town."
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Excerpt from The Pain of Bliss, Bangued: Our Lost Town by Vesta Borbon Banez.