Manila American Cemetery Memorial Day

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We enjoyed the Memorial Day weekend in Manila. The Manila American Cemetery and Memorial is located in Fort Bonifacio, a subsection of Metro Manila. There were a couple of special events held there for Memorial Day. This remembrance is produced by the Embassy of the United States and the American Association of the Philippines.

The cemetery site, 152 acres of gently rising ground contains the largest number of graves for U.S. military dead of Word War II. The grave area is divided into 11 curved plots forming concentric bands around the high ground where the memorial stands. There are more than 17,000 graves. Going out in a semicircle from the memorial building there are 25 tall rectangular piers. On these huge slabs of marble are inscribed the names of 36,282 soldiers (someone told us) who are missing and who rest in unknown graves. Seventeen thousand graves and 36,000 missing.


On Saturday, we got up early and drove down there — about 10 kilometers. We had volunteered to help place flags at the cross of each grave. There is a system worked out. One person uses a jig that measures the exact position of the flags (an American flag and a Philippines flag at each grave), and when you step on it, it punches two holes in the ground. Another person (sometimes two others) place the flag stick into the holes. Then on to the next. We didn’t count the number we did, but it was easily 300 to 400.

Sister Roundy is running the machinery. (The camera case was in the way, so she soon turned the jigging over to Elder Roundy.) Sister Alexander is going to put the flags in the holes that the jig punches.

This is Sister Roundy using the hole-punching jig, Sister Alexander (in red) and Sister Dayes are waiting to plant the flags. Sister Alexander is the medical adviser's wife and Sister Dayes is the nurse at the Missionary Training Center.

Someone earlier had placed two flags on the top of the cross, so the system was easy and efficient. Some 150 acres of flag draped crosses. As he went along punching the holes, Elder Roundy would read aloud the name of each soldier and where he was from. We saw some from all over the United States, however, in our section we did not see a grave for anyone from Nevada.

This was an enjoyable experience. Probably 12 senior missionary couples came (so this picture is not of all who were there.) And there were many others — military men, other volunteers, even a troop of Boy Scouts of America (for American boys living in the Philippines). Here you see the flags in front of the crosses.

On Sunday we returned to the Memorial where they had tents set up and enjoyed a dignified and impressive memorial service. There were a lot of people there. We saw the U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines (Kristie A. Kenny) and a number of other Filipino dignitaries. The American Marine Corps and Philippine Army made a beautiful presentation of the colors with the Philippine Army Band playing the national anthems for both countries. The reverend gave a decent opening (and closing) prayer — completely within the mores of an LDS service (although the event, as you would suspect, was entirely nondenominational). Ambassador Kenny spoke, the Philippines Secretary of Defense spoke. Wreaths of flowers were presented by various organizations. It lasted almost an hour.

This shows how the whole 36,000 graves were decorated with the two flags looked when we went back Sunday morning. Row upon row. Completely around the Memorial semicircle. (The skyscrapers in the back are downtown Makati.)

This was the prettiest girl at the whole show. One of the stake president's wife gave the pearls to Sister Roundy as a gift. She gave her a necklace and bracelet to match.

We were under a tent, so we couldn't get good pictures of the ceremony. These are the American Marines and the Philippines Army Soldiers presenting the colors.

This is the Ambassador from the United States of America, Kristie A. Kenny. The speech she gave was short and elegant. She wasn't.

Then, almost on cue, when the ceremony was over and we had walked to our car, the rain came down — heavy, hard, a deluge. Literally, we climbed in dry; shut the car door, and sha-zam, it started to rain.

We drove to an LDS chapel not too far away to attend Church services. We enjoyed the services because all was in English. The chapel was right in the middle of downtown Makati. Tall skyscrapers all around, almost like downtown Manhattan. We were told the chapel was the first Mormon chapel built in the Philippines after World War II. It was a nice one-story chapel with a typical, but not too tall steeple. And when they built it back in the 50s, they had to get a variance because of the tall steeple. We laughed about that, because on all four sides are these enormous buildings scraping the clouds.

A Big Fish in a Little Pond

Just outside our door, on our way up the stairs to the Temple parking lot we pass by a water garden. It's a pretty spot. There are plants and waterfalls and several little ponds. In the one larger pond lives this goldfish (well, mostly gold, but all fish). His name is Gary Goldfish. (Or if needs be, we can change it to Gertrude Goldfish, but who knows and how could we tell? I doubt even he knows.) He spends his whole time swimming back and forth in this meager world. He sometimes slips under the rocks, sometimes rests on the bottom, mostly leisurely gliding back and forth, hardly moving. But it's his world, it's all he knows, and he seems sufficiently content.

He has no friends. He's alone. But he doesn't know that. There are neighbors in the otherponds, small, frisky guys. Poor Gary is alone. He doesn't know about them. Probably he doesn't know about anywhere beyond his small, mossy pond. He seems to know when you approach, so sometimes he comes up and sticks his nose out of the water. Could be he's smelling, or it may be he actually can see you.

Gary's probably 15 inches long. Seems pretty big for the size of his pond. Who knows what he eats? Maybe the gardner feeds him, but there are plenty of insects and worms around, and it doesn't look like he's missed too many lunches.

Wonder how old Gary is. How long has he been there? What does he think about? Everybody likes him, but he has no concept of affection, I suppose. Jesus loves him.

Multi-Stake Youth Conferences -- Everywhere

The schools in the Philippines let out for summer in April and May. During the summer breaks the stakes and districts hold youth conferences. Usually two or three stakes or districts combine. (A district is essentially the equivalent of a stake but is in a mission. There are six or ten of them in in one mission and are overseen by the mission president.) The conferences are typically three days (two sleeps), and on the last day they hold a devotional. Speakers are assigned by the Area Presidency to go to each of these devotionals. This year there were 78 youth conferences planned, so they ran out of speakers and had to dip deep into the well. That's why Elder and Sister Roundy were assigned to speak at three of these conferences.

The first one was on April 3 near a city called Sariaya, Quezon. We left on Thursday morning early and were taken by our driver a couple of hours south of Manila. This location was a beach resort, the Dalampasigan Resort (although we never actually saw the beach). We arrived, listened to a dozen or so youth bear their testimonies (all in Tagalog), gave our speeches, and then were driven back to Manila. It took about four hours to come home because of the late-in-the-day traffic through Manila. We didn’t even have time (nor, most likely, the sense) to take any pictures of this event.

The second conference (April 11 and 12) we went to was on an island—Samar in the Eastern Visayas, at Calbayog. Two districts had joined. This was an interesting trip. We caught a plane out of Manila at about 7:00 a.m. (and it was only an hour late). Because there was no morning flight to Calbayog, we went to Catarman on the north side of the island. The district president, President Palmaso, met us there (after waiting for us at the little airport the extra hour) and had a driver shuttle us across the island from Catarman to Calbayog. A long drive in a Ford SUV -- 1980 model. The map looked like it would be just more or less a straight course across the top corner of the island, but it turned out to be a windy, hilly road. We got there about 11:00. We stayed at the “best” hotel in town, I’s Plant (actually a converted ice plant). We thought we were the only guests that day.

This was the view from our hotel window out onto the street. There is always some sort of construction going on, and they only do a small job at a time, just what they can get done that day. Then perhaps they'll be hired back for another day. We walked down this street and went downtown. Sister Roundy wanted to do some shopping and needed to buy some tape to fix up her visual aide for her talk.

We crossed a bridge over a river that flowed into the ocean. There was a lot going on there. The bridge was being fixed (one day at a time). There were a number of ferry boats (as you see here) which people would us to come and go from island to island. It actually was a busy street for being in a "quiet, cozy" town.

These were some fisherman (we thought) on the river on the other side of the bridge.

The hotel we stayed in was a remodeled ice plant. Sister Roundy looked out one of the back doors on the ground floor and this is what she discovered.

We watch these older boys teaching several young guys how to play table tennis. They worked with them for an hour or so, but then when the youngsters left, the big boys really went at it, smacking that little ball back and forth. The guy in black was a pretty fancy player. They played for an hour or so. We sat and watched some of it, and then when we came back down the stairs, they were still at it.

In the evening President Palmaso had his son pick us up and take us to the venue (a word they frequently use). We rode in/on a tricycle. This was a motor bike with a side car with a cabin-like cart attached to that in the back. We sat facing one another. We ate with them there (cautiously) and attended their talent show. Each branch had been assigned to present a talent. It turned out that almost all of the acts were dancing groups. The first few were okay (loud but tolerable). The last 45 or 50 were not. Some were cultural, most were mimics of what’s shown on TV. And one by one each group did their thing. We were in that show from 7:30 to 10:30. They all seemed to enjoy the whole thing. At the end President Palmaso played his guitar and sang a song (mostly because someone told us he was a good singer and we unwittingly mentioned that to him, so he “accommodated” us).


This is not the same tricycle that we rode in, but it is one pretty much like it. Ours was not so ritzy lookin'.

Then we rode home in the dark in his son’s tricycle, Literally with no lights. No street lights, no moonlight, no headlights, no lights except President Palmaso’s flashlight, which he turned on once in a while, perhaps three times the whole way back. We made it, how we do not know, but we did. But when we got to our room, the lights did not work because they were having a “brown out.” Barely a single dim light in our hotel room. Life is full of experiences, and this was one of them. We never did learn how to run the shower properly. Just got the entire bathroom wet—no shower curtain.

The "venue" for the conference was a college (a technical school of some sort). There was a big assembly hall with a stage and lots of rooms for the kids to sleep in. This shows the grounds where they had a lot of their outdoor activities.

The next day we were picked up by the shuttle driver and we went back to the conference. We skipped the breakfast of rice and fish. They had a testimony meeting for the youth (which lasted an hour and a half). With the previous night’s show and the long testimony meeting, Elder Roundy said he didn’t know when he'd listened so long to so much that he did not understand. After we gave our talks, we were driven to the airport several kilometers out of town. We waited there at the tiny Calbayog Airport until the plane came from Manila. After three hours it showed up and back we flew, picked up at the curb by an assigned driver from the PAO and home again by about 7:00 p.m.

We watched the kids go through the dishwashing line (but we didn't take a picture of them). These sisters demonstrated for us the routine. Each kid had to do their own. First he'd scrap the dish off in the red bucket. Then he'd wash (more like dip) it in the blue bucket and again in the black pan. Then he'd take to to the brown tub to rinse it. Probably the first 20 got a sufficient wash, but who would want to be number 99?

This big banner was on the back wall of the stage. We spent quite a while in the morning before the meetings talking to the kids. They liked to speak in English, and most of them could. They understand English fairly well. One boy, small, dressed in his white shirt, walked up to Elder Roundy and without a word handed him his necktie and the just stood there. So Elder Roundy wrapped it around his neck and tied it up nicely for him. The boy patted it a couple of times and walked away.

This is the district president, President Palmaso (pal-MAW-so). He is a school teacher (music) and was pleased to learn Elder Roundy had a career in education.

We were sent to Palawan for our third and last assignment. Palawan is a long narrow island south (sort of westerly, too) of Manila. We flew into Puerto Princesa on Friday, April 17 and stayed in a hotel there. Early on Saturday a driver picked us up and drove us down the coast to Narra where the conference was held. This was another two-hour trip. The road was paved, well . . . almost all the way. After sitting through a long youth Tagalog testimony meeting and then giving our half-hour speeches, we shuttled back to the hotel in Puerto Princesa. Sister Roundy convinced our driver to stop at a crocodile farm along the way. Then after another three-hour wait at the airport, we ended back in Manila around 7:30 and home to our apartment at 8:30 via a PAO driver.

You just have to be here to appreciate the interesting things you see being transported in a Jeepney. This one was loaded to the hilt inside, so most of the passengers were mostly on the outside.

The crocodile farm was a conservation center where they are trying to ensure all the indiginous crocodiles are preserved. We saw lots of them . . . little ones, big ones, moving ones, sleeping ones, stinky ones, smelly ones. We saw a skeleton of a crocodile that was at least 20 feet long. Big guy. And his hide was tacked to the wall. They also had a number of animals native to the Philippines. We spent about 45 minutes walking around.

Pretty much, if you've seen one, you seen them all.

A Walk Around the Temple Grounds

One Sunday evening, about the time the sun was going down, we took a walk around the temple grounds. We took a few pictures and these are some of them.

This is the scene (above) we see each morning when we leave our apartment and climb a few steps to the temple grounds. This is the entrance to the temple on the south side. There is another entrance on the north, but it is through an annex, so you don't see the dramatic entrance way.

The Manila Temple has six towers, one on each corner and then at the center of each end. The towers are not attached to the temple; they are free-standing. This was a nice picture showing one of the steeples against the pink and blue sky.

Our camera reached the top of the center steeple and found Moroni with his trumpet. (The spike in the top of his head is a lightening rod, so just ignore it.)

This view of the temple is out Elder Roundy's office window. Everyone comments about the nice view from his office. The next picture shows the PAO (Philippines Area Office).
This shot is taken from the temple grounds looking west at the PAO. Elder Edwards, the Area President, has the section of windows on the top floor on the left corner of the building. Elder Roundy's is next to his, and then the other two general authorities (Elder Teh and Elder Ko) have offices on the top floor. Those four windows on the left are the area presidency's office suite. There is a tunnel under this street from the temple to the PAO so passers-through do not have to fight the traffic zipping up and down Temple Drive.

Corregidor

When you come to the Philippines, particularly to Metro-Manila, you have to go to Corregidor. Corregidor is an island on the west entrance to the Bay of Manila facing the China Sea. It’s small, actually tiny. It looks like a tadpole with a wagging tail. Back in the 1600s when the Spanish ruled the Philippines the island was used as a checkpoint for all ships entering the Manila Bay, hence its name – Corregidor, from the Spanish word corregir that means “to correct.” All ships had to stop there to be inspected so the Spanish could make certain all things were in order, that the ship had the correct papers, cargo, etc. (No pirates invited.)

When the US received the Philippines in the Spanish-American Ward (1898), the Americans used the island for much the same purpose, making it a large military bastion. In World Ward II the big guns of Corregidor were used in support of Filipino and American defenders of Bataan (on the nearby mainland) until Corregidor Island itself was invaded by Japanese forces. The Japanese guns pounded the soup out of the island, and with intermittent bombings they reduced its defenses and compelled the US forces there to surrender. (These men were the main portion of the soldiers who were shipped across the bay to Manila and then marched to Bataan – the infamous “Death March.”) That’s why McArthur left, shortly before it fell. The Japanese set up their stronghold using the American-built installations. But in the end Corregidor was again caught in the fury of war when after a bloody battle the Americans retook the island.

In the Philippines there are holidays rather often -- usually two or three each month. (And, as we understand it, the president can call a holiday almost at will.) A couple of weeks ago we discovered there was a two day holiday (Thursday-Friday, plus the Easter weekend). We made reservations and took one day (Thursday) to go to Corregidor. We’ll share some of what we learned.




Another couple came with us. These are the Milletts. He is the DTA (Director of Temporal Affairs -- or the presiding bishop in the Philippines). They have a hired driver, and he took us to the marina and picked us up when we returned). We left Manila in the morning about 7:30 or so and rode a large ferryboat across the bay to Corregidor. It took about 45 minutes. The ferryboat we took was large and the ride was smooth – almost no dips nor dives. The ocean was calm.

When we reached Corregidor we got on an open-sided bus which we rode around in for the rest of the tour. Our guide was named Armon. He was on the ferry boat and asked our group (us four -- obviously Americans) to ride his bus. He was well informed so we learned a lot. Most of the buildings there have been left the way they ended up after the bombings. Things were rugged looking. We saw the big guns used to fire across the bay, clear to the mainland. There were a lot of gun emplacements, some still intact and others destroyed.

One of the buildings we saw was called the Mile-Long Barracks. It wasn’t actually a full mile long, but it was a long building, now demolished. In the Philippines most buildings are made of concrete because there are few adequate trees for lumber.

There are a lot of memorials on the island. All kinds of memorials for the Americans, and the Americans put up a memorial for the Japanese soldiers who were killed there. The island is essentially divided into four sectors: “Topside,” “Middleside,” “Bottomside,” and “Trail End.” Thre are different memorials commemorating the various kinds of military activities associated with each of the sections.

One of the main locations is the Malinta Tunnel. This is a series of tunnels into the highest part of the island – one main tunnel through the hill with a lot of lateral branches going off from the main one. The tunnel was used for various reasons. MacArthur stayed there when the Japanese were starting to bomb the island. During the bombing it was used as a hospital. In the end, just before the Americans surrendered, all the US forces on the island were hid up in the tunnel, perhaps 8,000. Some of these were the men who eventually were taken on the death march to Bataan. Then when the Americans came back to recapture the island, the Japanese holed up in the tunnel, hundreds of them blowing themselves up rather than to surrender. For them it was more honorable to die than to give up to an enemy. (That, incidentally, is one of the reasons the Japanese so badly mistreated the Americans who surrendered; the Americans were considered by them to be worthless for their giving in to their enemy, not worthy of any respect.)






We returned in the afternoon and got home at 4:30 or so. It was a worthwhile day.

American Cemetery

On Saturday (March 22) we drove to the American Cemetery in Metro-Manila. These are graves of approximately 17,000 American soldiers killed during WWII in the Philippines, and on the walls are the lists of 36,000 names whose remains have not been found. Row upon row upon row -- young men, dead. Sobering.






Sister Roundy lookin' good.