WEBVTT 00:00:03.439 --> 00:00:05.439 This is Howard Pyle recording cut number six in the current series of 00:00:08.529 --> 00:00:11.906 broadcasts for Katie AARP. 00:00:11.939 --> 00:00:16.447 I have now spent a sufficient amount of time in the Philippines to be able 00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:19.986 to give you a fairly accurate picture of exactly what strikes the 00:00:20.019 --> 00:00:25.436 observer's eye. In this rather chaotic post occupational period, as 00:00:25.469 --> 00:00:29.116 mentioned before, Manila is about as completely wrecked as your wildest 00:00:29.149 --> 00:00:33.616 stretch of imagination could conceive as fred Mcpherson's reviews of this 00:00:33.649 --> 00:00:37.696 area have probably told you there was a time when the city of Manila fully 00:00:37.729 --> 00:00:42.436 deserved the title Pearl of the orient. It's 400,000 citizens had 00:00:42.469 --> 00:00:45.766 developed a center of trade and industry that must have been a real 00:00:45.799 --> 00:00:49.347 tribute to the patient toiling that still characterizes the attitude of 00:00:49.380 --> 00:00:53.927 the Navy. In these pre japanese days, Manila was one of the most densely 00:00:53.960 --> 00:00:57.707 built up cities in the world. There was hardly a square foot of ground 00:00:57.740 --> 00:01:01.607 that didn't accommodate some sort of a place of business or dwelling. 00:01:01.640 --> 00:01:05.947 Beautiful homes line the city's better streets for miles and miles. They 00:01:05.980 --> 00:01:09.477 were not single story in different types of dwellings, but elaborate two 00:01:09.510 --> 00:01:13.206 and three story houses with many of the most modern features known to home 00:01:13.239 --> 00:01:18.637 construction, steel, window sash, tiled baths and ropes built in features 00:01:18.670 --> 00:01:22.977 that would be a credit to even the most pretentious of our stateside home. 00:01:23.010 --> 00:01:26.417 The city's apartment houses were extensive, each of them representing a 00:01:26.450 --> 00:01:31.137 certain palatial comfort that was essential to Manila's brightest day. The 00:01:31.170 --> 00:01:35.637 hotels were positively regal in many of their appointment for the sports 00:01:35.670 --> 00:01:39.867 minded. The city had provided the great resolve stadium, unquestionably 00:01:39.900 --> 00:01:43.357 one of the largest and most completely equipped sports plants to be found 00:01:43.390 --> 00:01:47.676 anywhere in the world. The theaters must have been models in design and 00:01:47.709 --> 00:01:51.656 facility. The governmental buildings gave the center of the city something 00:01:51.689 --> 00:01:56.316 solidly beautiful in the finest kind of concrete and steel construction. 00:01:56.349 --> 00:01:59.417 The downtown business district, though perhaps a little more congested 00:01:59.450 --> 00:02:03.647 than would be our preference in the states was a bustling parade of well 00:02:03.680 --> 00:02:08.307 stocked stores of every description. Manila was indeed the most occidental 00:02:08.340 --> 00:02:14.337 metropolis in the orient today. Manila is a tragic reminder of the waste 00:02:14.370 --> 00:02:18.166 of war. Whole blocks of the city's residential district are vacant, 00:02:18.199 --> 00:02:22.497 overgrown with weeds and cluttered with debris. Wooden structures once 00:02:22.530 --> 00:02:26.897 covered these areas and the result is that they were left absolutely 00:02:26.930 --> 00:02:31.126 vacant by the fires that emptied those lots. The beautiful homes of steel 00:02:31.159 --> 00:02:35.017 and concrete are hollowed eyed hulks of glass, less windows and blistered 00:02:35.050 --> 00:02:39.267 walls. They look like skeletons as they stand out against the sky, empty 00:02:39.300 --> 00:02:42.277 of everything but the memories of having once been the pride of the 00:02:42.310 --> 00:02:46.467 streets they made famous, where a few of the better homes still stand in a 00:02:46.500 --> 00:02:50.036 reasonable state of preservation. The windowpanes show the clean round 00:02:50.069 --> 00:02:54.036 holes made by the bullets of various types of small arms. The walls had 00:02:54.069 --> 00:02:57.327 chipped and splintered with gunfire. The yards are jungles that 00:02:57.360 --> 00:03:01.946 undergrowth all about there is an arab desolation, a forsaken look that 00:03:01.979 --> 00:03:05.656 leaves you depressed as you wonder what happened to the happy families 00:03:05.689 --> 00:03:09.367 that once made these comfortable dwellings, Rhonda views of happiness and 00:03:09.400 --> 00:03:13.777 contentment. The great apartment houses are cracked ruins from one end of 00:03:13.810 --> 00:03:17.397 the city to the other. The hotels have been gutted of everything, but 00:03:17.430 --> 00:03:21.536 their steel reinforced walls inside the elaborate furnishings have been 00:03:21.569 --> 00:03:25.517 burned with crisp and now lay in grotesque piles of melted jumble of loose 00:03:25.550 --> 00:03:29.656 ends. The tremendous resolve. Stadium looks as though a pitched battle had 00:03:29.689 --> 00:03:32.916 been played as a spectacular game, with no regard whatsoever for the 00:03:32.949 --> 00:03:37.897 devastation that goes with wild uses of explosives. It's a shell of its 00:03:37.930 --> 00:03:42.967 former self capable of holding thousands of sports loving fans. Most 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:47.457 terrible wall is the remains of the costly public buildings. There, 00:03:47.490 --> 00:03:50.626 concrete and steel immensity is so battered and split apart that 00:03:50.659 --> 00:03:54.726 rebuilding will be absolutely impossible. The Japs retired to them as 00:03:54.759 --> 00:03:58.457 fortresses during the siege of Manila. The only way to route them was to 00:03:58.490 --> 00:04:01.946 tear the buildings down stone for stone, room for room with the heaviest 00:04:01.979 --> 00:04:06.186 artillery that could be brought to bear on them. The wreckage is complete. 00:04:06.219 --> 00:04:10.196 Only the city hall remains 10able. The remainder of the circle will have 00:04:10.229 --> 00:04:14.487 to be cut apart with torches broken into small chunks with dynamite and 00:04:14.520 --> 00:04:19.507 carted away as a total loss. The theaters are a tragic comedy in real life. 00:04:19.540 --> 00:04:22.746 There once elaborate marquees no longer gleam with the brilliance of a 00:04:22.779 --> 00:04:25.806 nightlife. That must have been a thrill to the thousands who throng these 00:04:25.839 --> 00:04:30.096 centers of entertainment. Instead what is left marks, the hour when men 00:04:30.129 --> 00:04:34.767 forsake pleasant diversions for the hellish insanity of self destruction. 00:04:34.800 --> 00:04:39.246 The downtown business district is a pulverized travesty. Black and walls 00:04:39.279 --> 00:04:42.577 show the marks of fires that wiped out blocks of buildings at the same 00:04:42.610 --> 00:04:45.887 time robbing them of goods that could today be the salvation of Philippine 00:04:45.920 --> 00:04:50.387 trade. Most of the stores have been left as the japanese left them. The 00:04:50.420 --> 00:04:53.397 attempt to open them for business at this stage of the game is futile, for 00:04:53.430 --> 00:04:57.377 there is nothing to put in them. Here and there merchants have walls that 00:04:57.410 --> 00:05:01.596 have so secluded little corners where they have now assembled the remnants 00:05:01.629 --> 00:05:06.187 of what little there is left slowly and the pace is agonizing. The 00:05:06.220 --> 00:05:10.056 businessmen of manila are casting about for the wherewithal to revive some 00:05:10.089 --> 00:05:13.166 semblance of the business that once made this great city the hub of 00:05:13.199 --> 00:05:17.356 Philippine trade prices have reached a point that makes buying prohibitive 00:05:17.389 --> 00:05:22.017 the rate of exchange between the american dollar and the Filipino peso is 00:05:22.050 --> 00:05:26.627 2 - one. It would be unfair to offer a snap appraisal. The exact ratio of 00:05:26.660 --> 00:05:30.806 inflation, but it's sufficient to make normal trade almost unthinkable 00:05:30.839 --> 00:05:34.647 scarcity is the answer. The scarcity made many times more severe, but the 00:05:34.680 --> 00:05:38.007 vastly increased needs of the destitute thousands who have returned to 00:05:38.040 --> 00:05:41.447 manila in the vague hope of resurrecting some sort of a future out of the 00:05:41.480 --> 00:05:46.027 heart breaking ruins that show the crushed state of things. Heavy traffic 00:05:46.060 --> 00:05:49.567 , no maintenance, and a variety of other difficulties have left the roads 00:05:49.600 --> 00:05:53.496 and streets of the city in a terrible state. The bridges across the Pasig 00:05:53.529 --> 00:05:57.306 River originally equal to all the traffic the streets could carry our 00:05:57.339 --> 00:06:00.806 Today the best the army can provide in the emergency, but still far from 00:06:00.839 --> 00:06:04.666 equal to the burden that makes them a perpetual bottleneck in the flow of 00:06:04.699 --> 00:06:10.077 activity from one side of the city to the other through this vast tumble 00:06:10.110 --> 00:06:15.267 of ravaged rubble, the people of Manila are threading their uncertain way. 00:06:15.300 --> 00:06:20.156 The poor are everywhere, because today everyone in Manila is poor, bare 00:06:20.189 --> 00:06:23.947 feet are common, virtually the only shoes available of the awkward wooden 00:06:23.980 --> 00:06:29.147 clogs that only the most practiced can use to advantage like so many ants. 00:06:29.180 --> 00:06:32.176 The men, women, and Children are wandering the city in search of anything 00:06:32.209 --> 00:06:35.697 and everything that can be salvaged, either for sale to the dealers in 00:06:35.730 --> 00:06:38.856 odds and ends, or as a means of assisting in the rebuilding of the most 00:06:38.889 --> 00:06:43.166 humble kind of shelter. Corrugated iron litters almost every block the 00:06:43.199 --> 00:06:47.277 rusted and misshapen. The natives are beating into usable length and winds 00:06:47.310 --> 00:06:50.577 as much of it as possible, and carrying it from one part of the city to 00:06:50.610 --> 00:06:55.447 another, considering the small stature of the native, his light bone and 00:06:55.480 --> 00:06:59.447 muscle. You wonder where he finds the physical strength to handle the 00:06:59.480 --> 00:07:03.777 great loads that he carries on the top of his head, his shoulders, and on 00:07:03.810 --> 00:07:08.596 the ends of poles balanced across the back they go in a trot. The gate 00:07:08.629 --> 00:07:13.296 apparently being helpful in holding their burdens on a fairly even balance. 00:07:13.329 --> 00:07:16.726 They pay no attention to anything. Along the way. Eyes straight ahead 00:07:16.759 --> 00:07:21.707 they amble onto goodness knows where rain or shine. Their labors continue 00:07:21.740 --> 00:07:24.837 how their frail bodies stand up under the beating they received as a 00:07:24.870 --> 00:07:29.246 constant mystery. If this is the heart of the Philippines, then no amount 00:07:29.279 --> 00:07:33.236 of privation will long confined these islands under the most trying 00:07:33.269 --> 00:07:36.947 conditions, they are doing their best to clean up the wreckage, watching 00:07:36.980 --> 00:07:41.106 them pick at the endless pile at his manila. Today leaves you amazed at 00:07:41.139 --> 00:07:44.986 their courage. They have no machinery, except that to the army engineers, 00:07:45.019 --> 00:07:48.176 and most of that equipment is largely essential to the actual needs of the 00:07:48.209 --> 00:07:52.207 armed services in this vicinity. A few little carts, some horse drawn, but 00:07:52.240 --> 00:07:55.976 most of them pushed by hand represent the limit of the mechanical means 00:07:56.009 --> 00:08:00.007 available to them. Transportation here makes the situation at home seem 00:08:00.040 --> 00:08:05.147 almost perfect. I have seen as high as 15 persons riding on the converted 00:08:05.180 --> 00:08:09.137 delivery type body with which many of the bantam cars of the area have 00:08:09.170 --> 00:08:12.957 been equipped. These bantam cars are not one ounce bigger than the 00:08:12.990 --> 00:08:17.007 Austin's that briefly held the public's fancy in the States. Most of the 00:08:17.040 --> 00:08:21.176 cars once owned by the natives may now be seen scattered along the streets 00:08:21.209 --> 00:08:25.116 and the roadways burned beyond recognition and so full of bullet holes 00:08:25.149 --> 00:08:28.377 that there's hardly a square foot of their bodies that isn't perforated 00:08:28.410 --> 00:08:32.307 tires and gasoline for the few native motor vehicles are so scarce that 00:08:32.340 --> 00:08:36.606 their operation has become virtually impossible. The little Children have 00:08:36.639 --> 00:08:40.317 suffered probably more than anyone else. The alleyways are full of them, 00:08:40.350 --> 00:08:43.726 and always they are grubbing through the ruins for anything they can find. 00:08:43.759 --> 00:08:48.106 It might relieve their hunger or bring them the spare scientology or two. 00:08:48.139 --> 00:08:51.437 Their clothes are in tatters, their bodies show all the effects of 00:08:51.470 --> 00:08:55.146 undernourishment, their eyes at the dull eyes of boys and girls whose 00:08:55.179 --> 00:08:58.986 senses have been so numbed by the absence of even the bare necessities of 00:08:59.019 --> 00:09:04.366 life as to be almost beyond revival. How happy they would be with just the 00:09:04.399 --> 00:09:08.407 cast off from the wardrobes of America's Children, the scraps from even 00:09:08.440 --> 00:09:12.537 the most modest tables, the things they improvising to play things would 00:09:12.570 --> 00:09:15.697 be scorned as junk by many a boy and girl. I know. In fact, all of them 00:09:15.730 --> 00:09:19.157 whom I know still these native Children are glad to have the least of 00:09:19.190 --> 00:09:22.817 their possessions. They smile to even laugh at times in spite of the 00:09:22.850 --> 00:09:26.947 misery of their circumstances. Imagine the distress of the mothers and 00:09:26.980 --> 00:09:30.106 fathers who are powerless to give their little ones anything but the worst 00:09:30.139 --> 00:09:34.736 of it. Fortunately the most of the suffering and want is in the cities 00:09:34.769 --> 00:09:38.657 such as Manila. The country hereabouts is richly productive, and those 00:09:38.690 --> 00:09:41.976 natives who have been wise enough to make the most of this fact are at 00:09:42.009 --> 00:09:45.687 least getting enough to eat. Their lives are hard to, but hardship is 00:09:45.720 --> 00:09:50.606 robbed of much of its sharper pang when there is food and shelter. After 00:09:50.639 --> 00:09:54.297 visiting this war torn area, Senator Millard Tydings returned to 00:09:54.330 --> 00:09:57.667 Washington with the intention of asking the United States Government for 00:09:57.700 --> 00:10:02.187 an outright gift of $100 million. Told the rebuilding of the Philippine 00:10:02.220 --> 00:10:06.856 commonwealth. This gives you some idea of what Japanese aggression has 00:10:06.889 --> 00:10:12.967 left behind, what militarism leaves in its quaking Wait, as time permits, 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:16.687 I hope to give you other sketches of things as I see them in these distant 00:10:16.720 --> 00:10:20.886 places. My first mission, of course, is to locate as many of our boys as 00:10:20.919 --> 00:10:25.077 possible. But as this diminishes in possibility, we'll devote more and 00:10:25.110 --> 00:10:29.866 more time to conditions, prospects and situations out here in the pacific 00:10:29.899 --> 00:10:35.320 and now back to fred for a roundup of the spot news from this theater.