Manila Must Remember

Every June 24, Manila celebrates its founding.

But perhaps the more important question is this:

What exactly are we celebrating?

For many Filipinos today, Manila is a congested city of traffic, pollution, informal settlements, aging buildings, and neglected heritage. Yet beneath the noise and concrete lies the memory of a city that was once among the most beautiful in Asia, a city admired by travelers, merchants, diplomats, artists, and dreamers from around the world.

Long before the Spaniards arrived, Manila already existed.

At the mouth of the Pasig River stood a fortified settlement surrounded by bamboo palisades and earthworks. It was governed by local rulers linked through kinship, trade, and alliances with neighboring communities across Luzon and the wider Malay world. Rajahs and datus presided over thriving river settlements connected to Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Arab, and Southeast Asian merchants.

The Manila of old was not an isolated village waiting to be discovered. It was already part of a vibrant maritime trading network that stretched across Asia.

Then came Spain.

The arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi in 1571 transformed Manila into the capital of Spain’s Asian empire. New systems of government, religion, commerce, and social order were introduced. Christianity spread throughout the archipelago. Churches, schools, hospitals, orphanages, roads, bridges, and public institutions emerged across the colony.

Within Manila, distinct districts developed. Intramuros became the seat of political and religious power. Across the Pasig River rose Binondo, one of the world’s oldest Chinatowns, while the Parián served as a commercial center for Chinese merchants known during the period as Sangleys. Society was organized into categories that reflected both the realities and inequalities of colonial rule.

Yet despite its divisions, Manila flourished.

It became the center of the Galleon Trade, connecting Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Wealth flowed through its ports. Universities were established. Religious orders built churches whose towers dominated the skyline. Generations of Filipinos learned, traded, worshipped, and dreamed within its walls.

But Manila was never merely a colonial city.

It also became the birthplace of resistance.

Its streets witnessed the rise of reformists and revolutionaries. Andrés Bonifacio was born in Tondo. José Rizal studied, wrote, and lived within Manila. Antonio Luna walked its avenues. Manuel Quezon spent formative years in the capital before helping shape the future of the nation. The Katipunan organized in secrecy across its districts and suburbs. Manila became a stage upon which Filipinos debated nationhood, liberty, reform, and ultimately revolution.

 

As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, Manila entered what many historians consider its golden age.

Elegant mansions lined Dewey Boulevard, now Roxas Boulevard. Art Deco and Beaux-Arts buildings rose across the city. Escolta became the country’s financial and commercial district. The Metropolitan Theater dazzled audiences. Luneta welcomed families for evening promenades. Visitors from around the world admired Manila as the “Pearl of the Orient,” while many described it as the “Paris of Asia.”

Sugar barons from Negros, hacenderos from Pampanga, traders from Iloilo, and ambitious young Filipinos from every province came to Manila seeking opportunity. To many, reaching Manila meant reaching the center of the Filipino world.

Then came another empire.

The Americans introduced public education, democratic institutions, sanitation programs, and modern urban planning. At the same time, they sought to reshape Filipino society according to their own vision. English replaced Spanish as the language of government and education. Hollywood films, American popular culture, Protestant influences, and new social norms gradually transformed the cultural landscape.

The city changed again.

Then came war.

The Japanese occupation brought suffering on a scale Manila had never experienced. New authorities attempted to impose their own language, ideology, and political order. Thousands endured fear, hunger, imprisonment, and violence.

Then came the Battle of Manila.

What followed was not only a battle between armies, but a killing spree against ordinary Manileños. As defeat became inevitable, large numbers of Japanese troops unleashed a campaign of terror upon the civilian population. Entire families were executed. Infants and children were not spared. Women were raped and murdered. Hospitals, churches, convents, schools, and homes became scenes of unimaginable brutality.

In what is now remembered as the Manila Massacre, countless civilians lost their lives simply because they happened to be in the city.

My grandfather often spoke of those years.

As a student of Ateneo de Manila in Padre Faura, he would walk home through Malate and see a city living under the shadow of war. He recalled returning one day to find neighboring homes flattened because occupying forces wanted a clearer aerial view of the surrounding area.

With schools frequently disrupted during the occupation, young people found their own ways to spend their days. My grandfather became an enterprising teenager. He would buy Japanese cigarettes and sell them to American soldiers, then buy American cigarettes and sell them to Japanese soldiers. The small profits funded his leisure, allowing him to watch zarzuelas, comedies, and performances at the Manila Metropolitan Theater, one of the city’s cultural jewels.

When he spoke of prewar Manila, his eyes would brighten.

He remembered a city shaded by trees. Tropical, yet cool. Modern, yet elegant. He admired the architecture, the public spaces, and the pride people took in their surroundings. He often said that Filipinos had taste. That Manileños carried themselves with dignity. That neighbors knew one another. That honesty was ordinary.

Then the liberation of Manila came.

My grandfather recalled it with painful clarity. Around De La Salle College and St. Scholastica’s College, he remembered streets so filled with bodies that one could scarcely walk without stepping over the dead. Surrounding neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. The city he loved vanished before his eyes.

These were also the years witnessed by many of the young Manileños who would later become among the founding members of JCI Manila. They belonged to a generation that experienced the horrors of war firsthand and would dedicate the postwar years to rebuilding not only businesses and institutions, but also civic life itself.

When Manila was finally liberated, victory came at a terrible cost. The month-long battle devastated what remained of one of Asia’s finest cities. Intramuros was shattered. Historic districts disappeared. Centuries of architecture, art, libraries, churches, and cultural memory were lost in a matter of weeks.

By the end of the war, Manila had become one of the most devastated capital cities of the Second World War.

The Manila that emerged after the war was no longer the Manila the world once admired.

The old Manila was never truly rebuilt.

Its churches survived, but many of its neighborhoods vanished. Its civic buildings disappeared. Its mansions were abandoned or demolished. Its cultural center shifted. Its elites moved elsewhere. The city that once inspired admiration throughout Asia gradually became associated with congestion, decay, and neglect.

What was lost was not merely architecture.

It was memory.

Manila was not destroyed solely by war.

It was also diminished by forgetting.

The postwar city chose practicality over restoration. Historic buildings gave way to anonymous concrete structures. Heritage districts were neglected. Generations grew up unaware of the grandeur that once existed where parking lots, warehouses, and commercial blocks now stand.

Today, Intramuros survives as only a fragment of what it once was. Escolta struggles to reclaim relevance. Historic structures continue to disappear. Many Filipinos know more about foreign cities than they do about the city that shaped our nation.

And yet Manila remains important.

It is still the capital. Still the symbolic heart of the Republic. Still the place where countless Filipinos arrive in search of opportunity.

But Manila cannot move forward if it forgets who it was.

Heritage conservation is not nostalgia. It is nation-building. Preserving old buildings is not about saving stones and walls. It is about protecting stories, identities, and lessons that belong to future generations.

The Manila of today is not the Manila that stood along the Pasig River before Spain. It is not the Manila enclosed by Intramuros. It is not the Manila of Bonifacio and Rizal. It is not the Manila my grandfather remembered before the war.

It is the story of countless Filipino grandparents who grew up in a city of grand boulevards, magnificent churches, elegant architecture, bustling theaters, and thriving neighborhoods, only to watch much of it disappear in the fires of war. They spent the rest of their lives carrying memories of a Manila that younger generations would never truly know.

Perhaps your own grandparents told similar stories. Those memories are no longer theirs alone. They now belong to us. Greatness is not inherited. It is rebuilt.

We cannot undo the destruction of war. We cannot recover every church, mansion, theater, or boulevard that was lost. But we can recover something just as valuable: our respect for history, our pride in our heritage, and our ambition for what Manila can become.

The first Golden Age of Manila was built over centuries by generations who believed that this city could become the finest in Asia.

The second will not be built by remembering the past alone.

It will be built by citizens who choose to restore what can still be restored, protect what still remains, and once again dream boldly for their capital.

Perhaps one day, our grandchildren will walk the streets of Manila with the same sense of pride our grandparents once did.

And perhaps they will say:

This was the generation that remembered.

This was the generation that rebuilt.

This was the generation that gave Manila its golden age once more.