Fifty years ago, the campus and buildings near the chapel of what is now known as De La Salle University (DLSU) in Manila was the stage of a cruel blood-letting in the waning days of World War II.
De Le Salle Brothers and civilians who sought refuge with them were slaughtered in the fighting that raged through Manila Feb. 3 to March 3, 1945.
More than 100,000 non-combatant Filipinos and other nationalities perished both from carpet bombing and strafing by the advancing U.S. forces and torture and massacres by the retreating Japanese forces.
This Feb. 12, the De La Salle Brothers´ community in Singapore commemorated with a solemn Mass the 50th anniversary of the deaths of 16 De La Salle brothers and 25 laypeople killed at the Christian brothers´ school in Manila.
In his introductory speech at the Mass, Brother Paul Rogers, principal of Singapore´s St. Joseph Institution, narrated the story of the massacre.
On Feb. 12, 1945, as U.S. soldiers advanced toward Manila to drive out the occupying Japanese forces, senior Japanese officers asked the brothers to leave the DLSU for their own safety.
But the brothers refused when the Japanese would not allow civilians there to leave as well. The brothers reasoned that by staying put, they could ensure protection for those people who had lived with them for some years.
As it turned out, only a five-year-old boy was spared. The 41 massacre victims were discovered three days later by American troops.
Only two people survived, a De La Salle brother who died in an auto accident in 1960 and a Redemptorist priest who died in 1962.
Brother Rogers said that many of the martyred brothers had served Christian Brothers schools in Singapore and other East Asian nations. Twelve were Germans, two Irish, one Hungarian and one Czechoslovakian.
Some had been posted to work in Manila, then part of the Province of Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, but the others -- ironically -- had been transferred there for their own safety, Brother Rogers related at the commemorative Mass.
The story of these De La Salle Brother martyrs has been written up in "Our Martyrs," a book former students of St. Joseph´s Institution compiled and released at the Feb. 12 Mass.
Among the guests at the solemn event were Philippine Ambassador to Singapore Alicia Ramos, German Ambassador Karl Spalcke and U.S. embassy public relations officer Michael Anderson.
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