Battle of Luzon

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Battle of Luzon was the largest land battle of the Pacific Theater in World War II, pitting Allied forces from the United States, the Philippines, Mexico, and their allies against the Empire of Japan on the biggest island in the Philippine archipelago. When it was over, more than 200,000 people were dead. American combatants accounted for around 8,000 of that total. Filipino civilians, murdered overwhelmingly by Japanese forces, numbered over 150,000. And Japanese combatants, most of whom died not from enemy fire but from starvation and disease, numbered somewhere between 192,000 and 217,000.

  Luzon had already fallen once. Imperial Japanese forces seized it in 1942, sending General Douglas MacArthur and the remaining American troops into retreat toward the Bataan Peninsula. MacArthur was then ordered to Australia. What followed was a two-year wait before the campaign to take back the Philippines could even begin. When American forces finally landed at Lingayen Gulf on the 9th of January 1945, they came ashore in extraordinary numbers. And what awaited them would last not weeks but months, pressing deep into the mountains and costing lives on a scale that still staggers the imagination.

  How did a battle of this size unfold? What decisions shaped it? And what happened to the people caught inside Manila when the fighting arrived at their doorstep?

• 2. The Long Road Back

  ›

  By October 1941, the Philippines held 135,000 troops and 227 aircraft, a sign of how seriously American planners viewed the islands' strategic value. Japan's seizure of Luzon in 1942 upended that calculus entirely. MacArthur, the general responsible for the islands' defense, was ordered to leave rather than be captured, and what remained of American forces fell back to Bataan.

  Within months of the defeat, MacArthur was arguing for a return campaign. The case was not immediately accepted. U.S. Pacific Commander Admiral Chester Nimitz and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest King both pushed back, insisting the attempt should wait until victory was certain. MacArthur's vision had to sit on the shelf for two full years.

  The campaign finally launched in 1944, beginning not with Luzon but with Leyte. That island fell by the end of December 1944. Mindoro came next, its capture led by troops under Brigadier General William C. Dunckel with assistance from the 7th Fleet. By the 28th of December, U.S. forces had secured two airbases on Mindoro, placing them south of Luzon and ready for the next step. MacArthur's plan was not to strike from the south, however. He intended to land at Lingayen Gulf, further north, where roads and railways ran straight through the central plains toward Manila.

• 3. Deception and Yamashita

  ›

  American planners went to considerable lengths to mislead the Japanese about where the blow would land. U.S. aircraft flew constant reconnaissance and bombing runs over southern Luzon. Transport planes dropped dummy paratroopers. Minesweepers worked through the bays of Balayan, Batangas, and Tayabas in the south. Filipino resistance fighters carried out sabotage in the same region.

  None of it worked. General Tomoyuki Yamashita, commanding the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippines, saw through the deception and concentrated his defensive positions in the hills and mountains surrounding Lingayen Gulf in the north. Yamashita divided his forces into three groups: the Shobu Group under his personal command in northern Luzon, numbering approximately 152,000; the Kembu Group under Lieutenant General Rikichi Tsukada in central Luzon, numbering around 30,000; and the Shimbu Group under Lieutenant General Shizuo Yokoyama in southern Luzon, numbering approximately 80,000.

  Yamashita's strategic instinct to hold the mountains rather than fight for every inch of beach would shape the campaign's duration. Allied forces would control the strategically important ground by early March 1945, but Japanese soldiers would continue to resist in the highlands for months beyond that, most holding out until Japan's unconditional surrender.

• 4. S-Day at Lingayen Gulf

  ›

  On the 9th of January 1945, the day planners had codenamed S-day, close to 800 Allied ships were involved in the invasion force that converged on Luzon. Japanese observers reported more than 70 warships entering Lingayen Gulf. Pre-assault bombardment from roughly 70 battleships and cruisers began at 7:00 in the morning. The actual landings commenced an hour later.

  Japanese defenders responded with kamikaze aircraft. One escort carrier was destroyed in the attacks. Between the 3rd and the 13th of January, roughly 47 ships were damaged and four were sunk, primarily by kamikaze strikes. Aircraft from the U.S. 3rd Fleet flew close air support, including Mexico's 201st Squadron, which strafed and bombed Japanese gun positions to protect the landing forces.

  Within days, approximately 175,000 troops from the U.S. 6th Army under General Walter Krueger had come ashore along a 20-mile beachhead. The I Corps protected the flanks while XIV Corps, under Major General Oscar Griswold, pushed south toward Manila. Krueger worried about his exposed eastern flank, but the anticipated Japanese counterattack never materialized. American forces encountered serious resistance only when they reached Clark Air Base on the 23rd of January. The battle there lasted through the end of January before XIV Corps was free to press on.

• 5. The Largest Tank Battle in the Pacific

  ›

  From the middle of January through early February 1945, the largest tank engagement ever fought between American and Japanese forces played out across the plains of central Luzon. The Japanese 2nd Tank Division committed 220 tanks: 175 Type 97 ShinHoto Chi-Ha medium tanks, 25 Type 97 Chi-Ha medium tanks, and 20 Type 95 Ha-Go light tanks. Facing them, the Americans had only 76 tanks, 59 M4 Sherman medium tanks and 17 M5A1 Stuart light tanks, supported by infantry with bazookas and dozens of 105mm M7 Priest self-propelled howitzers.

  Krueger held more armor in reserve to the north, anticipating a mass Japanese ambush in the open plains. The 76 American vehicles were sent forward to find and destroy the Japanese armor using their superior guns and protection. The Japanese drew out the fighting for more than three weeks by hiding their tanks in camouflaged fortifications, digging vehicles into the ground or building semi-enclosed structures that allowed them to reposition during engagements. Some of those tanks patrolled and attacked at night.

  The fighting stretched from San Manuel to Munoz and cost hundreds of American soldiers their lives, along with thousands of Japanese soldiers. Around 200 Japanese tanks were destroyed. The confrontation stood as evidence that the Pacific campaign was not purely a naval and island-hopping war; it included armored combat on a scale the Pacific theater rarely witnessed.

• 6. The Battle for Manila

  ›

  A second amphibious landing, 45 miles southwest of Manila, took place on the 15th of January. On the 31st of January, two regiments of the 11th Airborne Division made an airborne assault and captured a bridge before driving toward the city. On the 3rd of February, the 1st Cavalry Division seized the bridge across the Tullahan River and entered Manila that evening.

  The next day, General MacArthur announced the imminent recapture of the city. That same day, the 11th Airborne's paratroopers approaching from the south ran into the main Japanese defensive line and were halted. Yamashita had already ordered his troops to destroy all bridges and vital infrastructure the moment American forces entered Manila. Japanese soldiers entrenched throughout the city continued to resist.

  By the 11th of February, the 11th Airborne Division had captured the last outer Japanese defenses and encircled the entire city. The weeks of urban clearing that followed were catastrophic for civilians. More than 150,000 Filipino civilians died during the battle, murdered overwhelmingly by Japanese forces, particularly during the Manila massacre of February 1945. When the military accounting was complete, the battle for Manila had cost 1,010 Americans killed, 3,079 Filipinos killed in combat, and around 16,000 Japanese dead.

  American aircraft dropped more than one million gallons of napalm in support of ground forces across the Luzon campaign. The weapon drew little notice at the time, partly because the name "napalm" itself was classified.

• 7. The Mountains and the Reckoning

  ›

  Even after the strategically important ground across Luzon was in Allied hands by early March 1945, the fighting did not stop. Surviving Japanese troops retreated into the mountainous north and southeast of the island, where they were besieged for months. Most ceased resistance when Japan surrendered unconditionally, though a scattered few held out for years afterward.

  The final accounting was grim. Total Japanese losses came to 217,000 dead and 9,050 taken prisoner. American losses totaled 8,310 killed and 29,560 wounded. Filipino civilian deaths were estimated at between 120,000 and 140,000. Of the approximately 30,000 Japanese soldiers in the Kembu Group in central Luzon, only 2,000 survived the war. Of the 80,000 in the Shimbu Group, only 8,300 made it through.

  After the Japanese surrender, it emerged that Yamashita's Shobu Group in northern Luzon had enough food to sustain itself for only one more month. Yamashita had been planning to take his own life if the war had continued. Almost all of his remaining men had already died of starvation and were no longer capable of combat. The battle that took more than two years to restart had, in the end, consumed nearly everything Japan had sent to defend the island.