library's Filipiniana collection, having been overlooked by moving staff and due to time constraints, was left behind at the Philippine Normal School. The Battle of Manila would prove to be disastrous to the cultural patrimony of the Philippines and the collections of the National Library in particular. Most of the library's collections were either destroyed by fires as a result of the ensuing battle between American, Filipino and Japanese forces, lost or stolen by looters afterward. Pieces lost from the library's collections included an urn where Andrés Bonifacio's remains were stored, as well as valuable Filipiniana pieces such as some of the manuscripts of José Rizal. Of the 733,000 volumes the library had in its collections prior to World War II, only 36,600 remained. However, luckily for library officials, a locked box containing the "crown jewels" of the National Library: the original copies of Rizal's Noli Me Tangere, El Filibusterismo and Mi último adiós, was left intact. Tiburcio Tumaneng, then the chief of the Filipiniana Division, described the event as a happy occasion. Word of the books' discovery by Tumaneng was relayed to Professor H. Otley Beyer, then chairman of the Committee on Salvage of Government Libraries, through officer-in-charge Luis Montilla. Having found a new sense of optimism after the books' discovery, Beyer and a group of volunteers began scouring the ruins of the Legislative Building and the Philippine Normal School for any and all books they could find. However, much to their surprise, the entire collection stored under Manila City Hall disappeared, lost to looters who ransacked the ruins of public buildings. All salvaged materials were brought back to Beyer's residence on Aviles Street, near Malacañan Palace. With the return of Commonwealth rule, the National Library reopened and relocated to the site of the Old Bilibid Prison (today the Manila City Jail) on Oroquieta Street in Santa Cruz while the Legislative Building was being restored. It also sought the assistance of friendly countries to rebuild its collections. According to Concordia Sanchez in her book The Libraries of the Philippines, many countries, mainly the United States, donated many thousands of books, although some were outdated and others were too foreign for Filipino readers to understand. Although rebuilding the General Reference and Circulation Divisions was easy, rebuilding the Filipiniana Division was the hardest of all. Reconstruction (1946–1964) In 1947, one year after the independence of the Philippines from the United States,