Agony of Dulag

The centuries-old church of Dulag in ruins after the American saturation bombing

Present-day survivors of the shelling and bombing of Dulag that began on October 18, 1944 do not have kind words for their “liberators.” Until today, many of them still refuse to talk about the event, preferring to shut off the memory like one does a terrible nightmare. Even its mere recollection somehow resurrects the pain and horror that they felt during those terrible days.

Mrs. Gloria Saño Malinao was one such typical victim. The Masters of Public Administration graduate from the University of the Philippines was only grade two then. Only after some prodding would she pour her heart out to describe the event as “ghastly’ and the town’s destruction as “near total.”

That did not happen by accident. Already Dulag was eyed by the Americans as a prime target of its bombs from the sea and the air. It was part of the important strip of land that was to serve as landing sites for the hundreds of landing crafts of the Americans. So it had to be cleared of all opposition. Carpet bombing of target areas was standard procedure for it “softened up” their beachheads and lessened their casualties.

Moreover, Dulag had an airport strip in Barrio Rawis that was used by the fearsome Kamikaze planes and was noted to be a hive of the Japanese Imperial Army. The painting of the Japanese flag on the rooftop of its town hall also marked it for destruction by the liberating forces. Little did the Americans know that the bulk of the Japanese troops had earlier retreated inland towards the mountains of Dagami and Burauen. Only a few Japanese troops were left in strategic positions to harass the American positions, such as the Japanese 9th Infantry Regiment on Catmon Hill located at one end of the town and some others in the cemetery. But unlike in other beaches, the Americans did not  encounter strong opposition at the beach in Dulag.

The Japanese had left the town center and preferred to set up their defenses outside – a fact which the Americans knew nothing about.

“Since no specific targets could not be discerned or determined, the gunfire was directed at other areas,” declared the chronicler of the war in Leyte in his book Leyte: The Return to the Philippines.

There were three stages of the naval gunfire support: the pre-A-Day bombardment, A-Day bombardment and close supporting missions to be delivered after H Hour and to continue until October 24, 1945. Battleships Mississippi and Maryland bombarded the beaches on the pre-A-Day schedule, while Helldivers and Avengers (fighter planes) from their escort ships headed toward the shore to drop bombs and incendiaries. By 9:00 in the morning, the battleships stopped firing, but only to be replaced by the cruisers and destroyers which moved in closer to the shore to deliver their scheduled bombardment.

Delia Jurado, who used to write for The Freeman, a Cebu daily, would recount in her article that the sky was… filled with heavy bombers, dog-fighting Jap fighter and US planes. Our ears were assailed with the deafening sounds of anti-aircraft fire, diving aircraft strafing and bombing enemy installations. We could barely get out of our shelter to minister to our personal needs or prepare food.

A typhoon, which had raged a day before, had flooded underground shelters built by the residents. They thought shelters were necessary after American bombers in September that year raided the town apparently to harass Japanese troops in the area. It was the latter who taught the locals to build such air raid shelters in preparation for some future attacks. No one had any idea about how destructive these American-made bombs could be. Thus, most of their bomb shelters were shallow pits that had sandbags surrounding them. Others were mere earthen structures propped up by wooden frames. The Jurados had theirs built under their concrete porch. On the 18th of October, her family and some evacuees from the shoreline huddled inside their flooded hole.

By noontime, the eerie quiet would be pierced by whistle sounds of air-born shells fired from naval ships. My father murmured that the interval between whistle and explosions were becoming closer and before anybody could figure out what he said, one shell fell across the street.

Amid the screams of terror and tears, the blinding smoke, dust, and falling debris, the body of Consuelo Bardillon lay on the floor, blood spewing from her mouth and nostrils. She was sitting across me when a huge shrapnel hit her at the back killing her instantly. Everyone spilled out, ran in panic to the flooded shelter, huddled in the waters until the all-clear signal came.

The men waited for darkness to bring Consuelo, wrapped in a sheet and mat, on a pushcart to be buried in the cemetery. Adelaida Lagunzad Filamor, now a retired English teacher, would relate that their shelter was L-shaped and large enough for one to stand up, change clothes and store food and water. Capt. Isao Yamasoye, a Catholic Japanese who had made friends in Dulag, had advised her family to construct their shelter in the manner described. The structure would save her but her father, Dulag Mayor Marcial Lagunzad and sister Sonia, did not survive the bombing onslaughts.

The stories of Jurado and Filamor had several parallels on that fateful day. Jurado’s family was probably one of the luckiest. In many cases, the bombs simply smothered families out of existence. A shelter built by the two families of Miguel and Pedro Tupaz took a direct hit. None of the 19 occupants survived. Some 4,000 other civilians perished in like manner. The Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam in the ‘70s, which extracted a toll of 502 dead, pales in comparison to the Dulag slaughter.

Another Lagunzad family hidden in another shelter was wiped out because a clean shaven houseboy wearing khaki shorts was spotted by an American pilot, who mistook the boy for a Japanese. Without hesitation, the plane dove and dropped a bomb at the mouth of the shelter right where the boy stood, a surviving witness would say. The witness is the daughter of Avelina Remandaban, the Lagunzad family property caretaker.

Camilo Bigael, a member of the underground resistance movement under Alejandro Balderian, recalls that when he entered the town, he was shocked to find it in complete shambles. Bigael, who was one of the first to enter the town after the shelling, could no longer find his family or relatives. Houses and other public buildings, many of them of 19th century vintage and handovers from Spanish colonial days, were shattered into shouldering debris. No one was spared as the targets were not selective. Only the house of Andres Marchado’s family was left standing but it was severely damaged. The trees around it were scarred by shrapnel’s and bullet holes.

Even the centuries-old Catholic Church, whose walls were made of stone, was reduced to rubble like its old wooden convent. Along with it were burned precious old documents that recorded the births and deaths of its residents since Spanish days.

Survivors of he bombing in Dulag evacuating to the beach where the Americans had pitched tents.

When the gunfire finally stopped, the survivors, doubtless still in shock, had to be herded into makeshift lean-tos near the beach and hand-fed by their American liberators. Here large numbers of civilians were treated for minor wounds and injuries, tropical ulcers and other ailments. Some 100 of the more serious cases were referred to an Army field  hospital nearby. Fifteen unclaimed and unidentified civilian dead were buried in the Filipino cemetery. In two days, the number of refugees had grown from 10,000 on October 22 to 30,000 the next day.

On the 24th, they were sent back to their homes. Said Filamor: “The most pitiful sites were those of hordes of homeless and often wounded survivors who were bomb-shocked and incoherent. “ Their battlefront shocks after that incident were very much evident, Malinao recalls.

Many had bouts of depression, crying spells, paranoia, fear of crowds, symptoms of withdrawal, nervous breakdowns and similar social dysfunctions. The whole place was pocked by bomb craters, said Bigael. Dead people or their dismembered body parts were everywhere rotting, attracting flies and scavenging animals. Genaro Songalia would describe Dulag as “dead and grey, its fields and residential areas scorched by napalm.” The air was heavy with the stench of unburied dead, animals and human.

The Americans could not distinguish the Filipinos from the Japanese because they looked the same, he said. The stench of death was the reason why the Allied forces resorted to another wholesale if destructive project of leveling off Dulag with bulldozers. The dead had to be covered and the ground leveled. But apparently no warnings were issued to the trembling civilians still huddled inside their crudely-built shelters. Thus, a number of families who did not leave their shelters would be buried alive by these operations.

Jovito Bautista, a retired public school principal, recalls what happened to the family of Leonora Petines, a former president of the Association of Barangay Captains during the heyday of President Ferdinand Marcos. Her father Angel Zeta and mother Perpetua, Adonis and Carreon and sister Lourdes who took shelter with the family of Bautista remained in the shelter where they were buried alive by the bulldozer. According to Bautista, many other families suffered similar fate. If they survived the bombs, they would not survive the bulldozers.

Did the Americans fail to warn the residents of the bombing and its consequences? A week before the bombing, Lt. Col. Frank Rawolle, G-2 from the US 6th Army, and Lt. Comdr. Charles “Chick” Parsons from the Seventh Fleet was flown in to direct Col Ruperto Kangleon, head of the guerrilla forces in Leyte, to evacuate the civilian population from the area. Parsons’ instructions to Kangleon were very precise. He was to tell the people in the villages and towns to hide in the hills and to remain there until the bombings were over.

Moreover, Kangleon and his guerrillas were to be mobilized to block the exits of the Japanese and kill them as they retreated. Asked if he could do these in three days when the bombing would start, Kangleon replied in the affirmative – a promise he failed to fulfill.  Kangleon and his guerrillas were nowhere to be seen when the fighting started. That failure in communication was never assessed.

Likewise a small plane which was supposed to drop propaganda leaflets days before the bombing failed to hit its target as strong winds drifted the leaflets to nearby Burauen, a town, some 15 kilometers inland. Thousands of Dulag residents had to die because of these twin debacles.

The Dulag tragedy remains one of the bitterest ironies of the war in Leyte. Kangleon who was with Sixth Army Commander Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger and MacArthur on board the cruiser Nashville, could have averted the debacle had he chosen to. But he did not. In contrast, Valeriano Abello, a mere boy scout master of Tolosa, the town next to Dulag and one of the targeted landing sites, had averted the shelling of his town and saved thousands of civilian lives.

The story of Abello has been told and retold several times  these past few years. A 26-year-old then, he was watching the ships getting closer, feeling apprehensive that the shelling began targeting populated towns. At that moment, unknown to him, the next town of Dulag was already razed to the ground and hundreds of civilians were killed. Then, Valeriano had a brilliant idea.

According to Jurado, Abello ran to the shoreline with two flags. Using Boy Scout semaphore, he indicated over and over “Let me help you” until he got a blinking signal to come over. Exploding Japanese cannons around the waters capsized their banca and they furiously swam towards a naval boat sent out to rescue them. Taken to the skipper, Valeriano identified himself and reported:

“I worked as a capataz (foreman) of laborers hired to construct bunkers for heavy artillery of the Japanese Command. I can pinpoint where these fortifications are. It will be useless to attack Tacloban. There are no more Japanese there.”

Valeriano Abella’s report went up the Naval Command and shortened the timetable of Leyte landing and Tacloban, Tolosa and other coastal towns were spared from further carpet bombing. Abello’s heroism would earn him a Legion of Honor medal in 1956.

But what MacArthur saw in Dulag clearly disappointed him because he was prompted to ask news correspondent William Dunn., ”Are we winning this war?” In his disgust, he immediately turned back to his ship to contemplate the fortunes of the war. Nothing would be said of the massacre after that. The news blackout was official.

Still that brief cursory inspection of the Dulag operations stirred up MacArthur’s theatrics. Here was an opportunity to highlight the beachhead in the minds of most Filipinos who had pinned their hopes on his promise to return. That beach landing would dramatize to the world that much-awaited return. His grounded landing craft stalled him and his staff. So he ordered it to reverse and sail it farther down the beach so he and his group could get their feet wet, for a more impressive arrival. Life Magazine photographer Carl Mydans went ahead of the group and positioned himself to capture the defining Leyte Landing portrait. Mydans possessed the knack for taking pictures that told the story by itself, wrote another war correspondent Andy Gruenberg.

Geoffrey C. Ward, writing for National Geographic in March 1992, commented that: “MacArthur recognized the impact of the image, conducted future landings in like manner, making them a kind of military sacrament…Short of really walking on water, the great liberator could scarcely have picked a better way to electrify the world than his turn landing. Thereafter, he made sure he waded ashore for the cameras when landing on other islands.”

Indeed, MacArthur ordered a complete repeat of the first landing in Dulag, with Mydans carefully choosing his angles, like a true Life photographer. This time, the Palo landing on October 20 had an instant audience, a complete stage, and communication equipment to broadcast to a ship offshore and the world over that liberation had come.

The Dulag massacre would be forgotten. So would the circumstances behind them. For 60 years, their perpetrators would be paraded as heroes and icons commemorated in their honor.

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