The Mirador Hill Peace Memorial was inaugurated on December 14, 2020, during the 75th anniversary of the explosion of the atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima on 6 August and of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.
1945 was also an eventful year for Baguio and the Philippines. On 2 September Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita was captured at Kiangan, then transported to Baguio on the following day for the signing of the instrument of surrender. By December 1945, Baguio and the rest of the Philippines were in the process of reconstruction and healing from World War II.
A reminder of that war, now put to peaceful and even spiritual use is a pair of bells, each one half of an unexploded and neutralized American bomb dropped on Mirador Hill in 1945. Since the 1950s, the two halves of the unexploded bomb, hung along the corridor of the reconstructed Mirador Jesuit Villa, rang to call the Jesuit missionaries from China to class and prayers. Refugees from the Communist take-over of China, the expelled Jesuits found refuge in the Philippines where they set up Bellarmine College in Baguio for the scholastics from 1951 to 1967. At their departure, the bells were rung as signals for Mass and for the assembly of retreatants for meetings and conferences.
The bell now hanging in Mirador’s Peace Memorial under a Japanese Torii gate inspired mount, which faces west toward the lowland and Lingayen Gulf is the detonator part of the bomb. The other half of the bell is now hanging in the Pandemic Healing Memorial located at the southern section of Mirador Heritage & Eco-Spirituality Park.
