Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [160]
Most of the Japanese staff barricaded themselves into the education building, with 275 Americans as hostages. After a parley, in exchange for the prisoners’ freedom the guards were allowed to leave. Santo Tomas was in American hands, but the compound was soon beset by enemy gunfire, which killed some internees who had survived almost three years of hunger, disease and confinement. One woman, Mrs. Foley, lost an arm at the shoulder when a shell exploded in her room. She was taken to the emergency hospital with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Mary Frances. “Mrs. Foley kept asking about437 her husband, and Mary Frances told her he was fine,” said American nurse Denny Williams. “She knew he was dead, but she did not want to tell her mother when she was facing surgery for her amputated arm. Kids grew up fast in Santo Tomas.”
Then, inevitably, MacArthur came, to take his bow in the midst of a frenzied throng of his fellow countrymen. “They seemed to be using their last strength438 to fight their way close enough to grasp my hand,” he wrote mawkishly. “They wept and laughed hysterically, and all of them at once tried to tell me ‘thank you.’ I was grabbed by the jacket. I was kissed. I was hugged. It was a wonderful and never to be forgotten moment—to be a life-saver, not a life-taker.” Next day, 4 February, MacArthur sought to enter Manila. Griswold of XIV Corps wrote sourly: “He is insane on this subject! With just a handful of scouts we passed along a road where our dead and enemy dead could often be seen…Finally prevented from getting in by enemy action. Why we didn’t all get killed I don’t know! This, in my opinion, was a most foolhardy thing for a C-in-C to attempt.” South of Manila, Eichelberger of Eighth Army wrote warily: “We met more resistance around Nichols Field439 than we expected. We had hoped to get in without resistance, and I do not recall any G-2 reports that predicted the Japanese would try to hold in the city.” MacArthur’s headquarters announced the imminent fall of the capital. The enemy disagreed.
American intelligence was correct in supposing that Yamashita did not wish to defend Manila. He knew that his forces could neither hold a long perimeter around the city, nor feed its 800,000 people. He had thus ordered the local commander, Gen. Shizuo Yokoyama, to destroy the harbour installations and bridges over the Pasig River, then pull out. Humanitarian sentiment about Manila’s civilians also seems to have played a part in Yamashita’s thinking. Such scruples were not, however, shared by Rear-Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, who commanded 16,000 naval personnel in the city. The army had no authority over Iwabuchi, and he was determined to fight. Though his sailors possessed no infantry training—most, indeed, were survivors of lost vessels including the battleship Musashi—they were plentifully supplied with automatic weapons and munitions salvaged from ships and planes.
In the weeks before Sixth Army arrived, they fortified key areas of Manila to formidable effect. General Yokoyama persuaded himself that since the navy intended to fight, honour demanded that the three army battalions left in the city should do likewise. As MacArthur’s troops approached, the Japanese withdrew across the Pasig River, blowing bridges and making demolitions which started huge fires in residential