Word: manila
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Except for scattered sniper pockets and a hard core of Japs holed up in three government buildings (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS), Manila was finally free to face the future. General Douglas MacArthur lost no time in turning over the civil administration of the charred city-and of all liberated areas in the Philippines-to the Government of President Sergio Osmeña. In Malacanan Palace this week, MacArthur proclaimed: "You are now a liberated people. . . . On behalf of my Government, I now solemnly declare . . . the full powers under the Constitution are restored to the Commonwealth...
...people who had escaped the starvation of Jap prison camps were undernourished, struggling for a subsistence level of living. Only the Army's Philippines Civil Affairs Unit (nicknamed Pee-Cow) kept the city alive-it served hundreds of thousands of meals, set up water points to slake Manila's thirst...
Stores, theaters, banks were still closed. Such business as existed was conducted in dusty bazaars or hole-in-the-wall shops. Boys offered fifths of rum and bad Philippine whiskey. A pretty girl named Carmelita Gloria hawked 1941 Liberty, magazines and Horatio Alger novels. But most of Manila was engaged in the elementary tasks of finding something to eat, and, now that sleep was possible...
Another Day. Things would slowly improve, the wreckage would be cleared, the mains repaired. But this week, as Manila straightened to contemplate its destiny, the future still looked little brighter than the sad, smoke-stained vistas...
...Philippines are to become an independent nation by July 4, 1946. But U.S. soldiers in Manila found that, to many a Filipino, the prospect of independence was almost fearful. In assuming independency, the Philippines will lose the privilege of duty-free trade with the U.S.-a trade which claimed 76% of their exports in peacetime years...