A “Monument to the American and Filipino Alliance for Freedom”: The Pacific War Memorial and Second World War Remembrance

The Pacific War Memorial on Corregidor Island in the Philippines was erected by the United States government to commemorate Filipino and American soldiers who had lost their lives during the Second World War. Inaugurated in 1968, it was the first American memorial on Philippine soil since the United States had recognized the Philippines as an independent country in 1946, following almost fifty years of colonial rule. This article interprets the monument and the wider Corregidor memoryscape. It examines how the United States, the Philippines and the Second World War are depicted both within and around the memorial and what this suggests about the creation and persistence of colonial memory. The article explores the tensions between colonial and decolonized remembrance, and the extent to which the Pacific War Memorial serves as a historical marker for the United States’ achievements in the Philippines.