A Day In Corregidor - Middleside

We joined bus no. 5 with 3 couples (Filipinos, American & Spaniards) and family of 10 another family (grandma, daughter & grandchild) of with chinese ancestry which the group later dubbed as "pasaway" or irritating, a danish guy and his guide and another american that my friend and I refer to as "deadma" and the only english translation I can think of is boring.

Our guide started our tour of the middleside sector where we got to see the ruins and former sites of the YMCA, Middleside Barracks, Post Stockade, Officers Club, quarters for officers and enlisted men, warehouses, some service and utility buildings. We were allowed to go down and take pictures of the more important ruins and just listened to our guides commentaries inside the bus on the others.


We also got to see those coastal guns and mortars called batteries set up all over the island. Corregidor had 13 anti-aircraft artillery batteries with 76 guns, twenty-eight of which were 3-inch and forty-eight 50-caliber. With all the gun emplacements set up in the island, Batteries Geary and Way proved to be the best and most effective for the defense of Corregidor during the siege by the Japanese forces. Since I have a thing for guns and I used to own a competition ready pistol I had a grand time having my pictures taken. Then a crazy thought popped through my head, could I launch myself from here to Korea so I can finally be where my heart is. Too bad the tour guide burst my bubble by saying it will only reach the nearby province of Bataan, oh well.....


Next stop is the Filipino-American Friendship Park that commemorates the close friendship and camaraderie between the Philippines and the United States in times of war and in peace which is depicted by ten-foot high statues of a Filipino and American soldier. Going inside the museum and seeing all those photos of the soldiers who bravely defended our country during the war made me recall the stories told by my grandparents. My granfather was a USAFE soldier and there were a lot of instances where he was to be away from his family then hiding in the forest sorrounding our province while he joined his comrades in arms. My own father got separated from his birth family when he was thrown by the japanese imperial army in a crocodile infested river when he was just 5 years old. Lucky for him that we was found by a Filipino soldier from a province far from his birthplace. A cousin of my grandmother survived the Death March from Mariveles, Bataan but lost all his toes from severe infection. Being here makes me feel proud of my heritage and I also sent I silent prayer that our generations and the coming ones will not experience the horrors of war.