How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

by Daniel Immerwahr

The 37th handled most of the combat in Manila. On February 9, six days into the battle, it saw nineteen of its men killed and more than two hundred wounded. That was nothing compared with the thousands of Filipinos who were being daily slaughtered, but to Beightler it was “alarming.” The division reverted to its tried-and-true tactic. Rather than engage Iwabuchi’s men in direct combat, it would simply destroy any buildings in which they might be hiding. “Putting it crudely, we really went to town,” Beightler reported. “To me, the loss of a single American life to save a building was unthinkable.” That’s a sentence worth reading twice. In Beightler’s mind, he was facing a trade-off—and not a particularly difficult one—between lives and architecture. But, as he well knew, those buildings were inhabited. Some by enemy soldiers, of course, but many by civilians. Those civilians were “Americans,” too, even if no one treated them that way.