THE 50th anniversary of the Leyte liberation landing in the Philippines by General Douglas MacArthur has, like the man it glorifies, developed a split personality.
The four-day commemoration programme has been divided into seemingly conflicting areas of solemn remembrance and unabashed partying, one remembering the Allied invasion, the other celebrating the spin-off invasion it has fostered today.
The solemn remembrance side of the occasion is epitomised by Simone Kempis, who was 15 and living in Dulag the day the liberation broke on his front doorstep.
'We woke up in the morning to find a line of battleships stretching across the horizon,' he said.
'Then the shelling started. The beach, the sky, the water, everything was boiling red.
'There were no individual sounds, just one enormous roar,' Mr Kempis recalled.