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I've had some interesting experiences with dumps throughout my long life. In fact, while in college, I had the choice of a job at the local fast food joint for $2 an hour, or working for the city sanitation department for $5.75 an hour. And since my trash pick-up job began at 2:30 am and ended at 10:30 am at the dump, I could keep a full college schedule each day. Of course, before showing up in class, I had to change clothes and take a quick shower.

However, my most unique experience with city dumps happened more than 63 years ago in the Philippines. With Manila not yet secured by the GIs in April 1945, I was part of a Navy team assigned to set up a fleet landing station. The SeaBees came in, built us a Quonset hut and set up four tents right on the pier of the Pasig River.

With scattered groups of enemy soldiers still roaming the city, we needed to carry our carbines at all times and stand watches every night. Several times a day, we drove in Jeep teams into the city, where we chowed down with GIs or Philippine Army units.

It was heartbreaking to see how the Japanese soldiers had devastated the once-beautiful city during the fighting and their retreat from advancing Allied troops. Most of the widespread destruction was random, including the burning of homes and wanton murder of thousands of people in the city.

The saddest scenes as we rode through the streets were the many orphaned and homeless kids who wandered through the rubble looking for food and shelter. Whenever we stopped, hordes of them surrounded our Jeeps, their thin faces turned up to us and their hands outstretched, begging for food.

Soon we were taking (sometimes swiping) food supplies from the Army, and began handing them out to the kids every day. However, as much as we could give, it was never nearly enough to feed more than a small percentage of the starving kids in what was once downtown Manila.

We felt no guilt in giving out GI food, and in at least one situation, we operated a sort-of reverse black market. The Army allowed us to buy one carton of cigarettes a week at a cost of 50 cents. As we rode our jeeps through the city, we tossed them to the most ragged-looking kids. We knew they could get $25 to $50 for each carton by selling individual cigarettes on the street.

Maybe the most tragic scenes we witnessed were when we were frequently assigned to guard convoys of Navy and Army trucks to the city dump. There they deposited loads of trash and garbage. When we approached the area, we could see hundreds of civilians, including many of the street kids, waiting for us. Then, as the backs of the trucks started to tilt, the kids jumped on top and rode the contents down into the heaping piles of refuse.

There were frantic gatherings in the trash piles as people loaded up sacks to take to their families. Many of them picked through to find edible bits of food to eat while continuing to root for more of anything useful.

WWII ended a few months later, and of all the heartbreaking wartime sights I had seen, one I most remember today is what I witnessed at the Manila city dump.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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