• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 826 0

was intense debate about whether MacArthur should have bypassed Manila, rather than storm it. What is certain is that he was mistaken in his belief that he could serve the best interests of the Philippine people by committing an army to liberate them. Whatever Filipinos might have suffered at the hands of the Japanese if the Americans had contented themselves with seizing air bases for their advance on Tokyo, and held back from reoccupying the entire Philippines archipelago, would have been less grievous than the catastrophe they suffered when MacArthur made their country a battlefield. And in March 1945, the struggle for the islands was far from ended.

2. Yamashita’s Defiance

EVEN AS the battle for Manila was being fought, senior U.S. officers speculated about the looming end of the war in Europe, and its implications for the defeat of Japan. Lt.-Gen. Robert Eichelberger of Eighth Army wrote on 16 February: “I believe the BC [Big Chief] would fight against469 any attempt to bring the European crowd over here, even if they should desire to do so. I personally hope that the Japanese will quit if and when Stalin begins to push down along the Manchuria railway. They will realize they cannot hope to stand against that pressure…If we ever get Russia on our side out here the Japanese will be in a horrific position and therefore I think they will quit before having their towns bombed out.” Eichelberger added on 5 March: “I never expect the BC to change. He will never want anybody on the stage but himself.”

While three American divisions were fighting for Manila through February, others recaptured the great symbolic place-names of Bataan and Corregidor. Zig-Zag Pass, on the approaches to the Bataan Peninsula, became the scene of some of the most painful fighting of the campaign. Before the area was secured several senior officers, including a divisional commander, were sacked for alleged inadequacy. An American parachute assault on the fortress island of Corregidor surprised the Japanese defenders in advance of an amphibious landing, but cost heavy jump casualties, and days of bloody mopping-up. A tank fired into the Malinta Tunnel, hitting munitions which exploded, blasting the vehicle bodily fifty yards backwards and overturning it. On the islands of Corregidor and nearby Caballo, the Americans disposed of the most stubborn underground defenders by pumping oil into their bunkers, then setting this ablaze. “Results,” said the divisional report, “were most gratifying.” Some Japanese chose to end their ordeal by detonating underground ammunition stores, killing Americans unlucky enough to be standing above. It was a messy, horrible business. Even MacArthur felt unable to display much triumphalism about the recapture of these famous symbols, though he led a flotilla of PT-boats to a ceremony on Corregidor.

Sixth Army’s drive north and eastwards meanwhile continued, in the face of dogged resistance. Through the months that followed, Yamashita conducted a highly effective defence of the mountain areas in which he had fortified himself. Japanese units fought; inflicted American casualties; caused days of delay, fear and pain; then withdrew to their next line. Krueger’s engineers toiled under fire to improve steep tracks sufficiently to carry tanks and vehicles. Disease took its toll of attackers and defenders alike. Japanese soldiers endured hunger always, starvation latterly. “Of the forty-nine men who are left470, only seventeen are fit for duty,” wrote Lt. Inoue Suteo of the Japanese 77th Infantry on 19 March. “The other two-thirds are sick. Out of fourteen men of the grenade discharger section, only three are fit…43rd Force [to which his unit belonged] is called ‘the malaria unit’…The quality of Japanese soldiers has fallen dramatically. I doubt if they could carry on the fight. Few units in the Japanese army are as lacking in military discipline as this one.”

Private Shigeki Hara of the 19th Special Machine-Gun Unit described the misery of retreating in a column of sick men. They abandoned all personal possessions, though