Intramuros was primarily a fortress.
It was planned by Jesuit priest Antonio Sedeno following the Royal Instruction of King Philip II “to enclose the city in stone and erect a suitable fort at the junction of the sea and river.”
Leonardo Ituriano, a Spanish military engineer specializing in fortifications, designed it as a stronghold.
Chinese and Filipino workers built the wall. Construction started in 1590 until 1872. It took 282 years to finish. Builders worldwide considered it the very first stone fort of Spain in Asia.
The prelude to the final battle for Intramuros was a lull with sporadic rifles firing and heavy guns heard from distant areas between Manila city hall and the old legislative building.
When hostilities commenced, the battle was characterized as the fiercest urban fighting that few battles in the world would exceed in destruction, brutality and savagery.
When the Japanese were cornered to the last few, Rear Admiral Iwabuchi and his men committed “seppuku,” a ritual suicide, which in the Japanese belief, is the most honorable, the ultimate in human courage, and the surest way to immortality.
The battle of Intramuros would be a blockbuster movie, this time for a change, with Rear Admiral Iwabuchi playing the starring role and featuring the fortress of stone as the impregnable citadel of the once mighty Catholic Spanish Empire in Asia and the world.
The use by General Douglas McArthur, mainly of tanks and hundreds of heavy guns, to assault and capture the stronghold was a fitting tribute to the genius of Leonardo Ituriano. The fort withstood the assault by the tanks and the hundreds of large, heavy guns.
But the Filipinos lost an irreparable and irreplaceable cultural and historical treasure in Intramuros, resulting in carnage and devastation that is remembered forever as a national tragedy. Countless government buildings, universities, colleges, convents, monasteries, and churches and their treasures dating back to the founding of the Walled City in 1571 were destroyed.
The cultural patrimony, including art, literature, and especially architecture of the Orient’s first truly international melting pot, the confluence of Spanish, American, and Asian cultures was destroyed.
The Pearl of the Orient, famed for the meeting of Asian and European cultures, was wiped out.
The preceding narration was the story behind the two sonnets expressing the sadness of the Filipino nation over the carnage.
Sonnet to the Fallen Wall
Thank you, Lord, for letting me touch the rain,
as I walk the grass beneath the dawning sun.
despite the light, the drizzling, why this fun,
God must be pleased brave souls are bringing,
back for once the mighty walls with ravelins,
and moats built around for added defense
to hinder the passage of wild ugly men,
with swords and muskets to maim and overrun,
the indomitable gentries from the Spanish main,
For centuries the walls proved fiercely unyielding,
colleges, monasteries, churches, and convents,
schools and universities were kept safe within,
with ever-eager youth yearning to learn,
the flowering of the arts and culture prevailing.
Sonnet to the Lost Pearl of the Orient Seas
The sunny morning beside the massive wall,
birds flapping their wings over the bowing tree,
sea winds blowing incessantly from the shoal,
breezing the grassy ruins and desolated serenity,
once flourishing Intramuros Hispanic walled city,
now are but remains of unrestrained belligerency,
the sad aftermath, the weariness, and the eyes teary,
lost irreplaceable relics and treasures of history,
ecclesiastical, scientific, engineering, and literary,
priceless research on oceanic and sea lanes survey,
medical, fisheries, aquatic, mining, and archaeology,
we have lost to the war the “Pearl of the Orient Seas”,
the confluence of Spanish, American, and Asian artistry,
the pride of Filipinos, their forebears, and their ancestry.