65th Leyte Landing Anniversary

65 years ago, Gen. MacArthur landed in Leyte as he promised and drove away the Japanese troops. A battle ensued until the official surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945. Every year the Leyte Landing is commemmorated by officials with many Filipino, Japanese, American and Australian war veterans attending. It's one of the big events in Leyte's cultural activities. It always make me wonder why we love to celebrate wars. We have war festivals and war museums. The peace treaty signed between the US and the Japanese aboard the USS Missouri that ended World War II is not even remembered.

But anyway, this year, the Leyte Landing will be celebrated again at the scorchingly hot McArthur Park in Palo, with the President of the Philippines attending. But it will also be celebrated at the new a/c Robinson's Mall, so I wasn't surprised to see a replica of the McArthur monument at their entrance. It was nicely made too, better sculpture even than the original bronze at the park. When I touched it, I was surprised that it was sculpted from styrofoam. It is amazing, don't you think? I didn't get the name of the artist who did this tho.

McArthur Park

Talking of Gen. McArthur, he has this monument in Palo Leyte, where he first landed with his troops in the Philippines on October 20, 1944. McArthur Park (where this monument is located) is just a few minutes drive from Tacloban, where many American and Japanese visitors come to have their pictures taken. The imposing monument used to be made of concrete but was destroyed during the Marcos regime. This was replaced by bronze statues commissioned by Imelda Marcos and renamed Imelda Park. Don't know who the artist was. After Marcos was deposed from power, every street and parks in Leyte that were named after them were named back to their original names. Thus Imelda Park became McArthur Park again. Anniversaries of the Leyte Landing are held yearly, so I will probably post another photo of the park in October.

Capitol building of Leyte

Kapitolyo, the capitol building of Tacloban. The flag pole in front of the building is Leyte's 0 km, that's why I thought I should make this my first photo of Tacloban. Prior to the construction of the building in 1907, this was the spot where Gen McArthur made Tacloban a temporary seat of the Commonwealth Government of the Philippines after his liberation of Leyte from the Japanese forces in 1944. 'Temporary' because he had the other provinces to liberate still.

There are two murals on each side of the building, one depicting the first Christian mass in the country and the other, Gen. McArthur's Leyte Landing. The building is where Leyte's provincial governor holds his office. Leyte is the province, and Tacloban City is the provincial capital.

(Sorry for the old photo, I will change it soon as I get the chance to shoot a new one, I seem to have misplaced my latest photos of it.)