| Original caption: “Jap[anese] atrocity. Women and children killed in the Walled City, Manila, by the Japanese.” This photo was the 20th of 34 photos submitted in the “Philippine Atrocity Report,” released on April 28, 1945. Technician 5th Class Ira Rosenberg (November 13, 1996 – April 10, 2016), Signal Corps, photographed the dead in Intramuros before they were removed and loaded into trucks for burial. United States Army General Douglas MacArthur (January 26, 1880 – April 5, 1964) angered his subordinates when he prevented air support, citing the hundreds of thousands of Manileños held hostage by Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi’s (March 2, 1895 – February 26, 1945) 31st Tokubetsu Konkyochitai (“Special Base Force”). Iwabuchi’s 17,000 soldiers consisted of Special Naval Landing Forces, the Japanese equivalent of Marines; 146 survivors of the sinking of the super battleship Musashi; hip and aviation crews stationed in the Manila area, Korean and Formosan construction troops, and some civilian employees. Few had ground combat training; even fewer were trained in urban warfare. They had almost a 1,000 guns stripped from aircraft. Some carried rifles captured from the Filipinos and the Americans in 1942. Without air support, the Americans built up a huge array of tanks, 105 millimeter (4.1 inch), 155 millimeter (6.1 inch), and 8-inch (203 millimeter) field artillery, anti-tank guns, and bazookas to bombard Fort Santiago. Over the course of the battle, American forces would fire more than 42,000 mortar and artillery rounds, including 27,680 shells from 105 millimeter and 155 millimeter big guns. Errant projectiles at times crashed through the roofs of homes, churches, and bomb shelters. “Some districts of the city,” United States 6th Army Commanding Officer Major General Walter Krueger (January 26, 1881 – August 20, 1967) later wrote, “were completely destroyed.” 40 percent of the 100,000 Filipinos killed during the Battle of Manila died from artillery rounds. After the battle concluded, Filipinos continued to die from unexploded ordnance. American soldiers entered Fort Santiago in Intramuros, the old walled section of Manila, on February 23, 1945, after a prolonged battle. The United States Army 129th Infantry Regiment found 50 people shot, hands tied, in a 12-by-15-foot (3.5 by 4.5 meter) room. All had been starved before their executions. Another 8 bodies were in an adjacent room. 30 bodies were found in a 15-foot-square (4.5 meter square) room. The next day, 250 to 300 bodies were found in the basement, which the 129th report called a “dungeon.” Those people had starved to death. The bodies were in piles 2 to 3 high. The smell was described as “the stench struck them in the face as if it had physical force.” 49 mutilated bodies were found at the corner of Juan Luna and Moriones Street by the United States Army 37th Division on February 7. Approximately 1/3 were babies or young children; another 3rd were women. Most of the victims had their hands tied. United States Army Major Frank J. Middelberg (February 25, 1919 – August 23, 1993), 129th Infantry Regiment, testified on February 18, 1945, that he investigated 2 groups of dead civilians. The 1st group of 11 Filipino and Chinese men and 1 toddler had been bayoneted to death. A few yards away, 4 women, 1 young teen, and 6 babies had been bayoneted to death. 1 of the children had been stabbed in the face. Some of the women had been stabbed in the breasts. Father Belarmino de Celis (1908 – February 24, 2002), an Augustinian Catholic priest and Spanish national, was 1 of the survivors of the massacre in the Palacio del Gobernador (“Governor’s Palace”) air raid shelter in Intramuros. De Celis testified in 1946 that the Japanese troops separated the Spanish from the Filipinos on February 8, after forcing the men into Fort Santiago. He estimated that a 1,000 Filipino men were killed and burned; he never saw them alive again. Held for 3 days, Filipinos working for the Japanese openly admitted their collaboration, and the Spanish felt the need to censor their speech around them. The Japanese withheld food and water. On February 19, the Spaniards were marched to General Luna Street and forced into the basement of the Palacio del Gobernador, and then machine-gunned and grenaded to death. The Japanese then packed the entrances with stones and earth. He was buried alive, 1 of only a few out of 145 people packed into the cellar shelters. De Celis was trapped underground for 3 days; he kept trying to dig himself out, but the Japanese would fire rifles into the hole he made, and then cover up the entrance again. Finally, the Japanese withdrew, and he and 1 other man were left alive. De Celis crawled over the corpses, now beginning to decompose in the heat and covered in worms and flies. The 2 men left the basement shelter and moved to the Ministry of Justice. He drank out of a toilet basin because there was no water. Both were seriously wounded, but de Celis could move around better than his companion. At 0900 Hours on February 23, he heard American voices and was overjoyed to find he was liberated. Photographed after his recovery by American soldiers, he was still covered in the dirt from digging out of the Palacio del Gobernador 3 days earlier. He brought United States Army medics to treat his companion. Rosenberg’s photography career spanned 70 years. In 1932, he started as a copy boy for the New York Herald Tribune. He taught himself photography while running stories from the reporters to the printers. Enlisting in the United States Army on December 20, 1941, he served in the South Pacific. After World War II, he returned to the Herald Tribune as a photographer, snapping John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, and the mob. He became the story during the Cuban Missile Crisis, renting a plane to fly to Cuba. Joining the Detroit Free Press in the mid-1960s, he was also famous for photographing the 1967 riots from an armored personnel carrier. He moved to the Dallas Morning News in the mid-1980s. He retired in 1998, because his mother was ill. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1462.jpg |
| Image Size | 650.25 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2923 x 1913 |
| Photographer | Ira Rosenberg |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | February 23, 1945 |
| Location | Intramuros |
| City | Manila |
| State or Province | Luzon |
| Country | Philippines |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NRE-338-FTL(EF)-3134(6) |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database