Angelus-Novus by Paul Klee
At year’s end, as 1945 dawned, American forces neared Manila. The conflagration that engulfed the city, by some scholars’ estimates, was roughly equivalent to “an early nuclear weapon detonation”. Manila was turned into a funeral pyre. In the wake of the Japanese withdrawal, 100,000 civilians were slaughtered. Countless more were brutalized. Liberation finally came, and those who survived still have joyous memories of American soldiers arriving in jeeps giving out canned milk, bread, eggs, candies and chocolate. The devastation, however, had been absolute. Agriculture, power resources, transportation, manufacturing facilities, had all been destroyed and disease epidemics gripped the country.