Once the aircraft had departed, Manila’s citizens were shocked to discover the damage the bombs had inflicted. San Juan de Letran College, President Manuel Quezon’s alma mater, had burned to the ground, as did a newspaper building, which housed The Philippines Herald and all its press machines. Several bombs had landed inside the old Spanish walled city, the Intramuros, one of which hit Fort Santiago, in the northwest corner of the old city. Two bombs hit the ancient Intendencia, which served as the Treasury, Budget and Mint Building, although it also had been the Spanish governor’s official residence, then home to the first Philippine Senate. The bombs so shook the building that silver coins and broken money boxes buried watchmen.

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Smoke billowed from the twin towers of the Church of Santo Domingo, a landmark dating from 1590. The church, built by Dominicans, was filled with relics worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Church documents dated back to the first Spanish landings, as did priceless old robes and dazzling jewels. Firemen rushed in and controlled the flames–until they lost water pressure. Twenty-thousand religious and historical volumes burned. The roof collapsed, bringing down the dome. The upper part of a tower crashed into the Santa Catarina girls’ school, which was also on fire. By the time the fires were extinguished, little of the Church of Santo Domingo remained except its walls.

Bomb blasts blew children’s textbooks and drawings from the Intramuros into the streets. The Santo Thomas Medical College and St. Paul’s Hospital were damaged, and half of Santa Rosa College was destroyed. Bomb fragments penetrated the new Chamber of Commerce building, which Tsunero Yamamoto, the newly inaugurated president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, had hailed as a shelter of international amity only two months earlier.

Broken glass and debris covered the river area. Blasts had torn tin roofs from buildings and iron railings from their mounts. The smells of burned wood, broken sewers and freshly turned earth filled the area. Severed telephone wires dangled from leaning poles, and water mains gushed into cratered streets. Cars had been overturned, and their burning tires choked streets with smoke. Amazingly, the Japanese had failed to hit a single ship in the Pasig River.

MacArthur notified Washington: “The enemy’s present actions can only be deemed completely violative of all the civilized processes of international law. At the proper time I bespeak due retaliatory measures.” A member of MacArthur’s staff believed that the Japanese had deliberately attacked civilian targets after the city had been proclaimed open and American anti-aircraft artillery had been removed.

The relatively small number of casualties (40 civilians killed and another 150 wounded) and the small number of buildings hit argue against any specific Japanese attempt to target civilian areas, however. The overwhelming majority of Manila’s churches, roads, business districts, factories and residential areas stood untouched. Japanese bombing accuracy had deteriorated significantly since their first days of war. Their bombardiers were becoming well-known for missing targets. The bombs that had hit civilian areas were “overs” from the raids aimed at the ships in the Pasig River that had been actively unloading into cargo bulkheads and warehouses along both banks of the river. A strong wind from the north added to the mild inaccuracy of the Japanese aim; all the areas hit were directly south of legitimate military targets.

Manila’s military and civil authorities belatedly took firm measures to clear out the ships that were drawing the bombers. Tugs towed out the last eight interisland ships on December 29. The military began to ship everything they could out of the port area to Bataan and Corregidor. Demolition crews scuttled four immobile ships that lacked crews or mooring or towing lines. They blew up another ship when they could not find the crew. After the ships had been moved or sunk, Japanese bombings decreased.

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