Our first adventure after arriving in Manila was to Corregidor, a tadpole shaped island about an hour from Manila by boat. The island is placed at the mouth of Manila Bay, making it a strategic military strong hold that’s been conquered and controlled by the Filipinos, Spanish, US and Japanese over the years. The island had all sorts of old bombed out WWII buildings as well as some abandoned WWII guns. The most impressive building was this “Mile Long Barracks” which is actually only 1/3 miles long, but 3 stories high. It was crazy thinking about how it might have looked before it had been bombed out. We also saw an old movie theater that had been used by the soldiers and their families when they weren’t being attacked. Outside of the theater was a monument built to commemorate all of the fallen soldiers. At the front was a statue of an American soldier helping an injured Filipino. In Georgia there is a sister statue that has a Filipino soldier helping an injured American. The island also had a memorial garden for all the Japanese soldiers who had died on the island. The tour wrapped up with a walk through Malinta Tunnel where many of the soldiers stayed to protect from the bomb raids. The tunnels were damp and hot, I can’t imagine all of those soldiers and nurses forced to hunker down there for months with no end in sight.
These murals depicted all the wars that have happened on Filipino soil, unfortunately most of them were due to foreign invasion
The bottom of the light house was easy going, just normal steps, but the higher you got the harder it go. The top few levels were only accessible by steep ladders like this one. As if that wasn’t hard enough, getting outside on the viewing deck was an act of bravery. The deck was only a few feet wide and the railing didn’t look too study. Not to mention there was only one entrance/exit meaning everyone was crowded in a major people jam, very scary to be jostled and pushed when standing on a thin viewing deck with a shady railing!
This was a rebuilt light house styled after a Spanish light house that was orginally on the island, but destroyed in WWII. It doesn’t look that tall, but going up to the top was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. My legs were shaking for 15 minutes after coming down.
This is a statue of the Lady of Mercy, also the goddess of life and fertility.
See that small island near the center of the picture that looks like a battleship? The US forces carved this island to look like a battleship to act as a decoy. If you get up close it actually has ladders and other details to make the decoy more realistic.
This door led to an old ammo storage room
These guns were hidden from view so that enemies wouldn’t know where the fire was coming from and therefore would have a hard time destroying them. Unfortunately this led to poor aim too and a lot of civilian towns were destroyed accidently.
The dents on this gun come from super heated shrapnel
Hello!
This is where the officers stayed, back in its day the barracks had an indoor pool and bowling alley!
The island has no power even to this day, so all of the lights for this peace memorial are solar powered.
How’d you like to roll down that!
These ramps were so steep I can’t imagine anyone using them. I can’t imagine what they’re like when wet from the rain.
The last movie to show here was “Gone with the Wind”
The Americans had separate barracks from the Filipino soldiers because the units all slept separately.
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