I have stated from the outset, when I was first invited to present a paper here, that I am not an historian. I worked 35 years in California as a newspaper person and printer. I have retired from that to a life of reading and writing. My first writing was fiction--short stories and novels—still my preference if I were not so addicted to history. Some would like to suggest I am still writing fiction.

But the demands of history are very interesting. I do not feel that the restraints of truth are a terrible burden to labor under. . But I have also discovered that truth is as elusive as water in your hand, it wiggles like an eel. My former partner in videos, Morgan Cavett remarked once, after we had two totally contradictory interviews, one with guerrilla Edwin Ramsey, and one with Luis Taruc. Each ended up calling the other a liar (Ramsey added "sonofabitch")( and Taruc added a “disrespectful womanizer”)—Morgan, who was running the camera, said, “Well, that seems to be how history is constructed; our job is just to record what the participants say.”

Trying to find out the truth about my father’s life and work here in the Philippines, for instance, was a wonderful training ground. So many things written about him, and even by him, were untrue: his US Navy biography gives his birth year as 1902. Wrong. No one knew until the late 80’s, just before he died, that he was born in 1900. The only document where he stated his correct birth date was his marriage certificate; this was also the only document wherein my mom’s age was entered incorrectly (probably to make it seem like she was eighteen instead of her real age: 16).

He included in his resume that he had two years of college at the University of Tennessee. And two more years at the University of the Philippines. Wrong again.

 A search of records in Tennessee did not reveal him as a student at any of their campuses.

 And as for UP, I found a letter from the bursar at UP indicating a partial refund of my father’s tuition – at his request – as he was dropping his classes there.[1]

The trail my father left behind was an intellectual boot camp, and led me to the National Archives in both Manila and in the United States, as well as to many military repositories of war documents. And, of course, to many people whom we interviewed because they either knew or had worked with Commander Chick Parsons, or had good stories to tell about him. While we did this, we inadvertently picked up hundreds of hours of wonderful – and now-invaluable oral history – as about 90% of these interviewees have died. I know there are several of you in here tonight and I can only thank God that he has spared you![2]

Now, more to the point of our documentary, Manila 1945, The Forgotten Atrocities.  I will say that I stumbled across these atrocious findings while searching for my father. I acquired nearly all the still pictures as well as the military footage (both American and Japanese) at College Park, Maryland, as well as from local historians such as Ricardo (Rico) Jose and Edgar Krohn and,  Ernie de Pedro at Santo Tomas, and the material to be found at the Lopez, Ayala and Intramuros locations. Videographer Lucky Guillermo, my partner in this film, has a surprising collection of WWII footage.  

            I found that the state of the war crimes papers in Manila was very poor with bundles of papers being tied together with a twine that was cutting into the deteriorating bundles. The photos seem to have disappeared long ago, and the woman whom I asked about them got very surly and uncooperative. This was probably an appropriate reaction to my natural charm.

 In Maryland I learned to use white cotton gloves to handle any archival photographic material.  All pictures copied were imprinted with the National Archives permiso and logo – [“Reproduced at the National Archives”]; all textual material was similarly marked as OK. You could stay there from 9:00 a.m. to about 9:00 p.m. And we did. We were carefully inspected as we left. I wanted to live there, I mean inside there.

Filipinos learned to move fast – an art that saved many lives during the unpredictable events of the battle.

There are two very basic books on the Battle of Manila, Bibles sort of. One is Alfonso Aluit’s By Sword and Fire published in 1994; the other is a US Army publication of 1963 by Robert Ross Smith called Triumph in the Philippines. There are a lot more, including one I refer to herein published to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the catastrophe. More on this one later. But there is little that can be added to what is written in the first two. The many memoirs and personal stories lend depth and color and horror, and it is recommended to any student or researcher to read them all. There was also an early equivalent of Aluit’s book in Spanish called El Terror Amarillo en Filipinas, by Antonio Perez de Olaguer which was published in Spain in 1947 while the wounds were still open. An abridged version of this--in English--with a new title, a bit more politically acceptable these days, Terror in Manila, February 1945. This was undertaken by the Memorare Manila 1945 Foundation in 2005.  These three books form a deeply and broadly researched platform from which to dive into the subject. I did not know of any of these in the mid-90s. The memories of those times were so dire that many memoirists, like Lourdes Montinola and Elena Lizarraga only dared face their pain after the passage of 50 and more years. [I am batting 500 here; Elena died shortly after our interview, but I am happy to say that Lourdes marches on strongly—though she is not here tonight because she is seeing a doctor.]