In the Philippines, December 8 is the Feast of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception where festival honoring the Virgin Mary are taking place in several towns. This is celebrated with evening processions, supplemented by cultural presentations, beauty pageants, and fireworks.

December 8 is also marked as the Second Pearl Harbor. Due to International Date Line, where Pearl Harbor is remembered in the United States on Dec. 7, in the Philippines it was actually Dec. 8 when ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, “another Pearl Harbor” of even more devastating consequence for American armed forces occurred in the Philippines, forty-five hundred miles to the west.

On December 8, 1941, 196 Japanese Navy bombers and fighters crippled the largest force of B-17 four-engine bombers outside the United States and also decimated their protective P-40 interceptors. The first Japanese bombs to fall on Philippine soil hit Camp John Hay in…