World War II veteran Arthur Grabiner, 99, of New York City, plans to be in the Philippines this month to help commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Manila. (Bob Dea)
Two American veterans of World War II who fought to free the Philippines in 1945 are headed back to help mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Manila.
Navy veteran Arthur Grabiner, 99, of New York City, and Army veteran John Hodges, 101, of Staunton, Va., plan to be in Manila on Tuesday to commemorate its liberation.
They expect to attend a memorial ceremony Feb. 22 at Manila American Cemetery alongside U.S. Army Pacific deputy commander Lt. Gen. Joel Vowell, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. Samuel Paparo and U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines MaryKay Carlson, according to a news release on the American Battle Monuments Commission website.
The pair “will meet and speak to younger generations of Filipinos to promote the understanding of history and awareness of commitment to a cause greater than oneself,” Arthur Grabiner’s son, Douglas Grabiner, wrote Thursday in an email to Stars and Stripes.
Neither veteran has been to the islands since the war, he said by phone the same day.
The Battle of Manila raged from Feb. 3 to March 3, 1945, as Allied Forces, led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, wrested the city from Japanese occupiers.
The recapture of the Philippine capital fulfilled MacArthur’s “I shall return” promise made when he retreated to Australia in spring 1942.
Arthur Grabiner served on the USS Laurens, an attack transport ship that landed troops on the Philippines’ main island of Luzon during the battle.
Arthur Grabiner, of New York City, was 18 years old when he was drafted into the U.S. Navy during World War II. (Douglas Grabiner)
The young yeoman went ashore near a small village and swapped a Coke for a beer with another sailor, he recalled by phone Thursday.
Before he was drafted at age 18, he had never left his neighborhood in Queens, he said.
“I lived in an area where I went 20 blocks north or 20 blocks south,” he said. “That was my world.”
During his trip to Manila Grabiner plans to tell people about the wartime trials he experienced to reach the city and to see how far the Filipinos have come since then, he said.
The son of Polish immigrant parents, he participated in the Battle of Okinawa and landed in Yokosuka, Japan, at the end of the war, he said.
When he came home, Grabiner went to college on the GI Bill, and worked as an accountant for 50 years.
These days he volunteers on the on the Intrepid, a former World War II aircraft carrier transformed into a maritime museum permanently anchored in the Hudson River in New York City.
World War II veteran John Hodges, 101, of Staunton, Va., plans to be in the Philippines this month to help commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Manila. (American Battle Monuments Commis)
Hodges, travelling to Manila with grandson Lane Harner, was a 19-year-old farmhand from Franklin County, Va., when he enlisted in February 1943, according to a biography provided by the monuments commission.
In January 1945 he joined the fighting in the Philippines as a member of the 950th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, the biography states.
The unit helped seize airfields and naval facilities at Subic Bay, near Manila, and engaged in heavy combat along the Bataan Peninsula.
Following the Luzon Campaign, Hodges remained in the Philippines to assist with the care of Japanese prisoners at an internment camp.
Hodges was in Normandy, France, last June to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
He was one of four veterans flown to France by United Airlines on a trip organized through United 4 Vets, a Georgia-based organization dedicated to uplifting service members, according to an Aug. 3 report by Virginia-based ABC affiliate WHSV-TV.
“It gives you pride that you come from a country [that] all these people look up to, you know, that your country has saved them from the enemy,” Hodges said at the time, according to the station.
