Travel to Philippines: Manila: South and American Cemeteries

Manila has some remarkable cemeteries.  Here are two: the Manila South Cemetery, almost a town in itself, and the American Cemetery and Memorial, from World War II.

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The South Cemetery is a perfect square, 500 meters on a side and subdivided by a neat street grid. Here we are at M and Main. 

Nice little place.

Perhaps you can't take it with you, but in this cemetery it's very clear who had it and who didn't.  The rich still have homes; the poor don't. The front room here is furnished so visitors can come and sit.  They do, too. It's a lot more peaceful than what's outside the cemetery gates.

Some of the "homeless," with Makati in the background.

Crowded in life, the poor are often crowded in death.

Severely crowded.

The American cemetery is hugely more spacious, even though it contains 17,000 headstones.  That's nearly twice the number at the Normandy American cemetery.

In the center of the cemetery, and with Bonifacio Global City in the background, there's a monument consisting chiefly of two travertine hemicycles embracing a lawn.

Reminiscent of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., each hemicycle has 24 pairs of fin walls, and they carry 36,285 names.

The names identify Americans listed as Missing.