‘Rampage’ is relentless

WHEN James M. Scott sub­mitted the first draft of his book about the Battle of Manila that was fought between the world’s two most powerful gen­erals, his editor was appalled at the witness accounts of the wounds, decapitation and muti­lation of body parts, rape, tor­ture, the beastly slaughter of thousands and other unspeak­able acts.

Some toning down had to be done; subsequently, James pro­duced his 630-page book, “Ram­page,” after several drafts. Still, reading the book late at night and into the next day – a total of 10 hours, with a bit of cheating and speed reading – I could not stomach those gory passages and found myself skipping sen­tences and paragraphs.

War is horror, it’s inhuman, it’s savage, and nobody suffered more than the people of Manila and in the provinces where Mac­Arthur pursued Yamashita and Yamashita pursued his goal to destroy MacArthur by destroying Manila. As James said during a private dinner hosted last Mon­day by Lin Ilusorio Bildner for a small group of descendants of WWII heroes and survivors, the ratio was “100 Filipinos killed for every Japanese.” He also agreed with the late Carmen G. Nakpil that the Philippines endured a greater toll on human lives and damage than Europe.

Comparing the two theaters of war was part of his motivation to write “Rampage,” for which he prepared for three years that included a visit to Manila in Sep­tember 2015, during which he stayed at the Manila Hotel. As most anyone over 50 knows, the hotel was home to Gen. Doug­las MacArthur, his wife Jean and their son Arthur.

Without giving away how the “Rampage” comes to an end, I thank its author for shining a light on a facet of history that has languished in the dark these many years: In 1953, eight years after the war, President Elpidio Quirino pardoned the Japanese criminals who had killed his wife Alicia and their three children, one of them a baby. “I am doing this,” the author quotes Quirino on page 509, “because I do not want my children and my people to inherit from me hate for people who might yet be our friends.”