US Secretary of State John Kerry looks at a map of the World War II Battle for Leyte Gulf, which took place from Oct. 23-26, 1944 at the Manila American Cemetery in Manila on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2013. Kerry laid a wreath Tuesday at the cemetery for American and Filipino war dead, and said it symbolized the countries’ close ties. AP
MANILA, Philippines—US Secretary of State John Kerry laid a wreath Tuesday at a cemetery for US and Filipino war dead, and said it symbolized the countries’ close ties.
Kerry, a Vietnam war veteran, said he was “honored” to lay the wreath at the American Cemetery in Makati City, which contains the remains of over 16,600 Americans and 570 Filipinos who died fighting the Japanese during World War II.
“That is the largest cemetery in which Americans are buried from World War II. It is a remarkable place and it is a humbling tribute to the links between us in our struggle for freedom,” he said during a two-day visit to the Philippines.
Kerry also cited a newly signed agreement under which the two countries will cooperate to upgrade and maintain a run-down veterans’ cemetery at the former US Clark airbase north of the capital.
Under the agreement, the United States will provide $5 million to rehabilitate the Clark Veterans’ Cemetery, which holds the remains of about 8,600 Filipinos and Americans who died fighting under the US flag from the turn of the century to the 1990s.
The seven-hectare (17-acre) cemetery had largely remained untended after US military bases in the Philippines were closed in 1992. US veterans’ groups in the Philippines had decried its abandonment and were raising funds for its rehabilitation.
Kerry said the new agreement upholds “the sacred promise to honor those who served and sacrificed on our behalf.”
The United States won the Philippines as a colony in the Spanish-American war in 1898. Although Filipino nationalists resisted the US control, many Filipinos served in the US military.
Fighters from both sides battled Japanese forces who invaded the country during World War II.
The Philippines was granted independence in 1946 but the US remains its closest ally and main trading partner.
Kerry said more than 300,000 Americans now live in the Philippines while more than four million Americans have Filipino origins.
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