Kreuter's Travel Blog: November 2, 2013 -- Trip to Corregidor Island (And Tagalog Lesson No. 1)

We begin this post with today's Tagalog lesson, courtesy a double-waste-bin near Manila Bay.
You'll know these words even before you open the dictionary, just by looking at the bin:

Nabubulok: "Bio-degradable"

Di-nabubulok: "Non-bio-degradable".

I don't know what "Tirang Pagkain" is, but I know it's bio-degradable. And I don't know what "Salamin" is, but I know it's not. Now you, too, can be green in the Philippines. Then garbage dudes can salute you, too, when they spot you taking their picture:

Tour of Corregidor Island

The four of us got up early and had our trusty driver Oliver rocketed us down to Manila Bay where the night before Eric had signed us up for a day-long history tour of Corregidor island. This island has been fought over for 500 years, most recently by the Filipinos/Americans and the Japanese during World War II. The tiny island is strategically located in the approaches to Manila Harbor, and it's close to the Bataan Peninsula. This means that big guns on Corregidor can easily reach targets on land or sea.

The island is about 30 miles west of Manila, which is an hour-and-a-half ferry ride. Here's the view from the ferry terminal, at about 7 AM:

While we waited to cast off, the small fishing boats came out and took up their posts within the harbor, or else scooted out into the near-shore.

These guys worked a hand net, and would throw their catch into a plastic tub with a car-tire lid in the center of their outrigger.

More traffic -- busy little boats buzzing past the sleeping big boats.

There are many ships in Manila Harbor that don't appear to have moved for quite some time, and they don't look like they will move soon. Below, the curriculum on the Training Ship appears to be "how to fix a starboard list".

An hour and a half later, we disembarked on Corregidor Island. The tour was conducted by dividing us between six open-sided buses and driving us to the interesting sites on the island, telling us about them as we rode.

The view from inside the tour bus.

Not our tour bus -- just a picture of the welcome sign.

The tour focuses on the recent history of Corregidor, which is the World War II era, which I summarize here.
- Americans and Filipinos are on the island.
- 1942: The Japanese bomb the daylights out of the island, and then invade and capture it.
- The Japanese are on the island.
- 1945: The Americans bomb the daylights out of the island, and then invade and recapture it.
- Americans and Filipinos are on the island.

Out of that simple timeline comes the stories our tour guides tell; and the setting magnifies the stories. Many of the original buildings on the island remain in ruins, bombed-out. So the story about the American soldiers who, not appreciating the state of war with Japan, didn't take cover but instead looked out of their barracks window and up at the unusual airplanes on December 29, 1941, has a greater weight when you look at that same barracks that doesn't now look that much different than it did right after the bombing:

The custodians of Corregidor maintain the buildings just enough to prevent them being reclaimed by rust, gravity, and jungle. That's what makes this tour excellent.

* * *

Corregidor had dozens of naval canon, organized in "battery" groupings. Here is Battery Way:

All the guns on Corregidor were obsolete, circa Work War I, when the World War II began. They simply weren't fast enough to track a modern ship (it took 24 hours to rotate one of those old guns 360 degrees). So they were confined to lobbing shells about 12 miles onto the Bataan Peninsula to support the America and Filipino troops their who were besieged by Japanese, and later at the Japanese who invaded Corregidor.

Dave and Mike doing a quality check.

Battery Grubbs is another collection of behemoth guns, but much more extensive. Here, the guns could retract back into their bunkers after firing.

Spare barrel. Free to take home as souvenir,
provided you pay to ship its 60 tons.

1,000 pound, 12" naval round fired by the guns at Battery Grubbs.

A concrete bridge led away from Battery Grubbs and appeared to end at the forest. But pressing through a few feet revealed a path that led to other crumbing buildings and stairways.

Bridge into the forest.

The stairways used by the crews who operated the guns at Battery Grubbs.

Enemy shell impacts on the concrete bunker of Battery Grubbs.

Off-shore, the "Hershey Kiss" island.

Yet another gun. Included here to mention that those "pock marks" in the barrel are not from rust, but from shrapnel from a nearby bomb strike from an American B-24 when the island was in Japanese hands.

After touring the various batteries, you head to the highest part of the island, which is the location of the parade grounds, the officers' quarters (in ruins) and Corregidor Museum. The ruins of the movie theater are there as well. Allegedly the last movie shown there was "Gone with the Wind".

Cine Corregidor.

Inside the ruined theater; the concessions stand. You can see our bus outside.

The proscenium inside the theater.

Before we head into the museum though, there is Mile Long Barracks. Our tour guide made it very clear that the barracks is NOT one mile long, it was only 1/4 mile long. Just to set the record straight.

You're not allowed to get close to this place, since it could topple over at any moment.

It was hot, humid and quiet at this point on the island. We were left alone for 50 minutes to explore.

Here we saw the swallow-like birds that were flying between perches of re-bar or pillar, and noticed the grass covered with hundreds of spider webs that were thick with water droplets.

*** Post Continued ***

The Pacific War Memorial is here too. When it was constructed about 30 years ago, then-Philippine-president Ferdinand Marcos claimed he was charged $8M. Sometime after Marcos was ousted, the man who created the monument claimed he only got $1.3M.

The museum contains much of what you'd expect the Corregidor Museum to have. The history of the site isn't exploited, just presented. The "park rangers" who run the place continue to find artifacts from WW2 on the island, as well as from the fleet of pirates who attacked Manila with 6,500 (!) ships in the 1500s or so, using Corrigedor as a base. Everything's under glass, well presented, and guides walk into the smaller galleries when a few people collect there and start explaining things. One nice dimension to the museum is that it doesn't sell any war memorabilia, authentic or otherwise, which deepens the sense that this is a memorial as much as a museum.

The complete history of WWII in a mosaic.

The "Spanish Lighthouse" is next, and it offers a great view of the island. Which you expect if you're putting a lighthouse on that spot. Below, before and after climbing to the stop of it.

The ruined barracks where we'd stopped earlier.

A tanker, posing for postcard photo.

Next we visited two memorials. One dedicated to the Japanese soldiers who'd died on the island, and one dedicated to the people who died at the hands of Japanese soldiers after the fighting was over. At this point our tour guide explained that the Japanese tourists get their own tour bus and guide, and that they don't go to the site about Japanese atrocities. Apparently that part of the war is not taught in Japanese schools, and tour participants in the past weren't ready for that.

Our guide did share a story of the former Japanese solider who came to the island with no other Japanese, so he got the non-Japanese tour. He left the tour shocked and repeating that he never knew, and that he was sorry.

On to "Malinta Tunnel" (the "tunnel of many leaches"), which was the final hold out of the Americans when the Japanese took the island, and the final hold out of the Japanese when the Americans retook the island. The difference is that the Japanese blew themselves up in it, and the tunnel had to be rebuilt.