Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

For the Filipino people, the price of losing Manila was incalculable. In the old, historic city center, it was not even a question of rebuilding—they would have to cart off the rubble and begin anew, with a blank slate. Much of the nation’s cultural patrimony had been obliterated: architecture, libraries, museums, archives, the history of several centuries. Even the destruction of official government records was a problem with far-reaching consequences, because it destabilized the legal and civil foundations of the nation’s postwar recovery. Manila, the elegant and functional city, “Pearl of the Orient,” had been the single most valuable asset possessed by this emerging Asian democracy. It was the nation’s singular political, commercial, and cultural capital. Losing it was a cruel setback to the Filipino people’s hopes for economic recovery and a successful transition to independence.