Corregidor
— — a small island the war never quite let go.
Not only on a wall.
“A tadpole-shaped rock guarding the entrance to Manila Bay, twenty-six square kilometres of fortified hill that took the first long siege of the Pacific War. Topside, Middleside, and Bottomside still wear their American-era plan, and the Malinta Tunnel runs through the saddle of the island like a long held breath. A ferry leaves Manila most mornings and runs the channel back at dusk.
Corregidor, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Corregidor sits at the mouth of Manila Bay, about 48 kilometres west of the Philippine capital, off the coast of Cavite province. The island is shaped like a tadpole, rising to 192 metres at Topside and tapering east through Middleside, Bottomside, and the long flat tail at Kindley Field. American forces fortified it as part of the harbour defence ring beginning in 1907, ringing the hilltops with coastal-artillery batteries. It became the centre of the Subic-Manila defence system before the Second World War.
The island still carries its concrete-and-steel American plan. Battery Way mounts four twelve-inch mortars; Battery Hearn carries a single twelve-inch gun on a disappearing carriage. The bombed shell of the Mile-Long Barracks runs along the spine at Topside. The Pacific War Memorial, completed in 1968, opens a circular altar to the sky over a marble dome that admits the noon sun straight down each year on May 6, the anniversary of the 1942 surrender.
Corregidor fell on May 6, 1942 after a five-month siege; American and Filipino forces returned in February 1945 in a combined parachute and amphibious assault on the heights. Roughly 800 American defenders, alongside the larger Filipino garrison, are remembered on the marble tablets at the memorial. The island is now administered by the Corregidor Foundation as a national shrine. On most days only the morning ferry party walks the ruins, and the wind off the South China Sea moves through the empty batteries.