This Saturday I was on my own. I took a driver and a car from the company and did a little local touring around the city of Manila. Our first stop was the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial. This was a most impressive and inspiring visit. The cemetery is on a small hill overlooking the city and the bay. The guidebook says it is 152 acres in size and is the largest of the overseas cemeteries. Most of those buried here were killed in the battles for New Guinea, the Philippines, and other islands of the southwest Pacific area. The cemetery and memorial was started in 1948 and was completed and dedicated near the end of 1960.

There are 17,100 headstones representing 16,636 U.S. Military and 570 Philippine Nationals. It is most impressive and humbling to see thousands upon thousands of markers marching into the distance. Further, in the center is a large memorial which consists of a small devotional chapel and two massive hemicycles which surround the central Memorial Court. Engraved on 24 granite slabs in these hemicycles are the names of an additional 36,282 missing. These also gave their lives but their remains have not been identified or were lost or buried at sea. At the ends of each of the hemicycles are large map rooms with mosaic maps detailing the battles and strategies of the Pacific war.

The entire area had the sense of being hallowed ground. I couldn’t help but be somewhat overwhelmed at seeing the symbols of so many men and women who had made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. In the memorial I looked for names from Idaho. One of the names that struck me was a Captain Kyle Ballantyne from Twin Falls. I looked up his genealogy. He was born in Ogden, Utah, in 1915. His family moved to Twin Falls shortly after he was born. He had an older brother who died in 1953. There was no information available about whether or not Kyle was married. He is listed as having died in September, 1944. His remains were never recovered. He was about 29 years old when he died. Somehow I felt a small kinship on this hot, humid Saturday morning with Brother Ballantyne. He was baptized when he was eight years old. His mother’s name was Christmas (what a lovely name!) and she died a couple of years after Kyle was born. I know nothing more about him. Godspeed, Captain Ballantyne! Your name does indeed live on.

I did other sightseeing besides this cemetery. It made such an impression on me however, that I’ll devote a segment of pictures to the cemetery as well as this blog entry. I stood amongst heroes this morning.