Requiem for Vincentian Fathers

In mid-1942 the Japanese soldiers took over the main building of the Ateneo at Padre Faura Street in Ermita, and we who were then studying theology – Jesuit scholastics and secular seminarians from San Jose Seminary – were given hospitality by the Vincentian Fathers (at that time known as Padres Paules) in their large building on San Marcelino Street (later to become Adamson University). They allowed us to occupy the third floor while they themselves lived on the second. We shared with them the lobby and the parlors on the ground floor. And we shared the use of their beautiful Church of the Medalla Milagrosa.

There we lived for a year until the Japanese took over that building also, and we were given hospitality by the Augustinian Fathers in Intramuros.

There was a cultural difference between our kind hosts and ourselves. The Vincentians were almost all elderly Spaniards, and they were strict in their religious observance. We, under American tutelage, tended to be freewheeling. There was also a political difference. We – scholastics as well as seminarians – were strongly pro-American and anti-Japanese. Apart from the anti-American bias that Spaniards tended to have, the Vincentian Fathers, believed sincerely that the Japanese were here to stay and that the only way to protect the Church was for the people to collaborate with the Japanese.

Those cultural and political differences, however, did not in any way mar our relationships. The Vincentian Fathers looked upon us young upstarts with benevolence and amused tolerance.

During the terrible battle of Manila in February 1945 the Japanese soldiers massacred the kind and saintly Vincentian Fathers, as they killed many others in the area. They were made to line up at the edge of the nearby estero. They were bayoneted and their bodies thrown into the dirty stagnant waters. There the rotting corpses floated for several days.

It was terribly ironic that the very Fathers who had urged collaboration with the Japanese were massacred by those same soldiers. But those soldiers knew no difference between friend and foe. The destruction of the entire population had long been planned. More than one soldier had been heard to say, "The Americans might return, but you will not see them." It was genocide pure and simple in intention and in execution.

It was the Jesuit scholastics from Santa Ana and some lay volunteers who eventually buried the Vincentian Fathers. It was not an easy thing to do because they did not have the proper tools. But they managed somehow to fish the bodies from the dirty waters and to bury them in shallow graves on the lawn in front of the building.

Afterwards, when the war was over, the Vincentian Visitor (as their regional superior was called) wrote to the Jesuit Superior, thanking the Jesuits for the charity of burying the Vincentian Fathers at San Marcelino Street. But we were only making a small return for the great kindness of the Fathers in giving us a home.

On February 10 this year, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of our Jesuit community at Santa Ana, I offered Mass, first in thanksgiving for our safety and liberation. And second for the souls of all those who died in those terrible months of 1945, especially our benefactors, among whom were the Vincentian and the Augustinian Fathers who gave us a home when we were homeless.