“Here was Manila”: Visualizing the 1945 Battle of Manila on YouTube

Abstract

The 1945 Battle of Manila, one of the Asia-Pacific War’s deadliest urban battles, remains marginalized in scholarly and commemorative memory even as it circulates widely online. This article examines how YouTube videos represent the battle through spatial narratives: military operations, architectural destruction, and marginalized civilian experiences. By analyzing 17 videos, the article interrogates how content creators transform urban catastrophe into abstract space, shaped by archival constraints and YouTube’s platform affordances. The article finds that readily available U.S. military footage and algorithms favoring visual engagement produce representations that sever built environments from lived experience. Thus, multifaceted human tragedy is converted into a single, consumable narrative.