The Japanese folk song “Sakura” celebrates the transient beauty of the cherry blossom, popularly regarded as the country’s national flower.
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But to Filipinos like Fernando Vasquez-Prada – who were forced to learn the tune as children by the Japanese occupation forces in the second world war – the song triggers memories of terror.
“When you see your mother and father being killed in front of your eyes, this is something they don’t tell you about,” Vasquez-Prada, now 86, narrates in the documentary Children of the War, which premiered on February 23 at the restored pre-war Manila Metropolitan Theatre.
The film opens with one of the seven child survivors singing “Sakura” off-key and forgetting the lyrics, before the melody weaves into actual scenes from the Battle of Manila, with smoke billowing from burning buildings and covering the sky, like the mist enveloping Tokyo’s sakura blossoms in early springtime.
Vasquez-Prada is among those who have come out to speak at length about their horrific experiences in the closing days of the war, when Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi of the Imperial Japanese Navy defied orders to leave Manila and instead allegedly told his men to engage in an orgy of rape and mayhem, killing at least 100,000 civilians during the 28 days of their siege from February 3 to March 3, 1945.
This first locally produced documentary, told through the eyes of the survivors, comes as Manila gears up for the return of Japanese soldiers to Philippine soil under the Japan-Philippines Reciprocal Access Agreement, but this time as military allies.