Battle of Manila (1945)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Manila began on the 3rd of February 1945, and within a month it had killed at least 100,000 civilians and reduced one of Asia's most celebrated cities to rubble. Historians would later compare it to Warsaw and Berlin as one of the most devastated capital cities of the entire Second World War. Fighters called it "the Stalingrad of Asia." How did a city known as the "Pearl of the Orient" become a killing ground? Why did a Japanese naval officer defy his own army's commander to fight a suicidal last stand? And what does the death toll of 100,000 civilians tell us about the nature of urban warfare? The answers lie in a collision of conflicting orders, desperate tactics, and the unstoppable firepower of an army that had decided winning mattered more than what was left standing.

• 2. The Race to Manila

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  On the 9th of January 1945, the Sixth U.S. Army under Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger came ashore at Lingayen Gulf and pushed south at speed. Three days later, General Douglas MacArthur issued a direct order to Krueger: advance swiftly to Manila. The 37th Infantry Division, led by Major Gen. Robert S. Beightler, was at the tip of that push.

  A second force arrived from the west. After landing at San Fabian on the 27th of January, the 1st Cavalry Division under Major Gen. Verne D. Mudge received one of the war's most unambiguous battlefield directives from MacArthur: "Get to Manila. Free the internees at Santo Tomas. Take Malacanang Palace and the Legislative Building."

  A third prong came from the south. On the 31st of January, the Eighth United States Army under Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger landed unopposed at Nasugbu in southern Luzon and began moving north. Col. Orin D. "Hard Rock" Haugen's 511th Regimental Combat Team parachuted onto Tagaytay Ridge on the 3rd of February. Filipino guerrillas from the Hunters ROTC, commanded by Lt. Col. Emmanuel V. de Ocampo, joined the advance, and by the 5th of February those forces were on the outskirts of the city.

  Three separate American columns were converging on Manila from different directions, and the city's fate was now a question of who would get there first and what they would find when they did.

• 3. Yamashita's Gamble, Iwabuchi's Defiance

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  General Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of Japanese Army forces in the Philippines, had already concluded that Manila could not be defended. He had ordered the Imperial Japanese Army troops defending the city to withdraw north to Baguio. His strategy was deliberate attrition: tie down Allied forces in northern Luzon and buy time for Japan's home-island defenses to be prepared. His three force groupings numbered 152,000 men in the "Shobu Group" in northeastern Luzon, 80,000 in the "Shimbu Group" east of Manila, and 30,000 in the "Kembu Group" to the north.

  Yamashita chose not to declare Manila an open city, as MacArthur himself had done before the Japanese captured it in 1941. His reasoning was partly about morale and partly practical: he doubted his forces could feed the city's one million residents, and he knew vast tracts of flammable wooden buildings would make any conventional defense catastrophic. He ordered Gen. Shizuo Yokoyama of the Shimbu Group to destroy bridges and vital installations, then pull out.

  Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi had other plans. Commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy's 31st Naval Special Base Force, Iwabuchi was determined to fight to the last. Though nominally subordinate to Yamashita through the Shimbu Group, he repeatedly refused withdrawal orders. The naval staff in Japan endorsed Iwabuchi's stand, effectively undermining Yamashita's unified command structure.

  Iwabuchi had 12,500 men of the Manila Naval Defense Force, augmented by 4,500 Imperial Japanese Army personnel under Col. Katsuzo Noguchi and Capt. Saburo Abe. They built fortified positions inside the 16th-century fortress of Intramuros, cut down the palm trees on Dewey Boulevard to form a runway, and barricaded major streets. Iwabuchi split his command into a Northern Force under Noguchi and a Southern Force under Capt. Takusue Furuse.

  One detail from Iwabuchi's past colored everything that followed. He had commanded a battleship that was sunk by American forces off Guadalcanal in 1942. In the Japanese naval code of honor, surviving a sunken ship was a stain. Before the battle, he addressed his men with a final declaration: "We are very glad and grateful for the opportunity of being able to serve our country in this epic battle. Now, with what strength remains, we will daringly engage the enemy. Banzai to the Emperor. We are determined to fight to the last man."

• 4. The Internees and the First Days

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  On the 3rd of February, elements of the 1st Cavalry Division pushed into Manila's northern outskirts, seized a vital bridge across the Tullahan River, and quickly took Malacanang Palace. Brig. Gen. William C. Chase's 8th Cavalry, the first unit to enter the city, drove toward the sprawling campus of the University of Santo Tomas. The Japanese had converted it into the Santo Tomas Internment Camp, holding civilians and U.S. Army and Navy nurses known as the "Angels of Bataan."

  For 37 months the university's main building had been a prison, mainly for Filipinos and Americans. Of 4,255 prisoners, 466 died in captivity. Three were killed attempting to escape on the 15th of February 1942; one made a successful breakout in early January 1945.

  Capt. Manuel Colayco, a USAFFE guerrilla officer, helped guide American cavalry to Santo Tomas's front gate. He was hit by Japanese small arms fire and died seven days later in Legarda Elementary School, which had been converted into a field hospital. At 9 PM on the 3rd of February, five tanks of the 44th Tank Battalion, led by a vehicle called "Battlin' Basic," breached the camp compound.

  The Japanese garrison inside, under Lt. Col. Toshio Hayashi, herded the remaining internees into the Education Building as hostages. On the 5th of February they negotiated a truce allowing them to leave with individual small arms. The Japanese soldiers did not know that the area they requested to evacuate to was already in American hands. They were fired upon shortly after leaving; several were killed, including Hayashi.

  On the 4th of February, the 37th Infantry Division freed more than 1,000 prisoners of war at Bilibid Prison, mostly former defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, after Japanese troops abandoned the facility.

• 5. The Manila Massacre

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  On the 6th of February, General MacArthur announced that "Manila had fallen." Both the 1st Cavalry Division in the north and the 11th Airborne Division in the south were at that same moment reporting stiffer Japanese resistance deeper in the city.

  General Oscar Griswold pushed XIV Corps south from Santo Tomas toward the Pasig River. On the 4th of February, Griswold ordered the 2nd Squadron, 5th Cavalry Regiment to seize Quezon Bridge, the only Pasig crossing the Japanese had not yet blown. Japanese heavy machine guns opened fire from positions on Quezon Boulevard, halting the advance. As the Americans and Filipinos pulled back, the Japanese destroyed the bridge behind them.

  By the 6th of February the Americans had secured the northern bank of the Pasig and captured the city's water supply at the Novaliches Dam, the Balara Water Filters, and the San Juan Reservoir. The 148th Regiment crossed the Pasig on the 7th of February and pushed into Paco and Pandacan. The fiercest fighting fell to the 129th Regiment at a steam-driven power plant on Provisor Island, where Japanese troops held out until the 11th of February. On the 8th of February, Filipino forces under Col. Marcos V. Agustin cleared San Nicolas and arrested former Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo at his residence for collaboration with the Japanese.

  Faced with mounting artillery fire and no viable escape, Japanese troops turned on the civilian population with systematic violence. Massacres took place in schools, hospitals, and convents. Named sites included San Juan de Dios Hospital, Santa Rosa College, Santo Domingo Church, Manila Cathedral, Paco Church, St. Paul's Convent, and St. Vincent de Paul Church. Survivor Dr. Antonio Gisbert described what happened at the Palacio del Gobernador: "I am one of those few survivors, not more than 50 in all out of more than 3,000 men herded into Fort Santiago and, two days later, massacred."

  Japanese soldiers forced Filipino women and children to the front lines as human shields. Those who survived were often then killed. By the 12th of February, Iwabuchi's artillery and heavy mortars had been silenced. His remaining 6,000 men faced a tightening perimeter with no plan to break out.

• 6. The Destruction of Intramuros

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  The American assault on Intramuros opened at 07:30 on the 23rd of February with a 140-gun artillery barrage. Infantry from the 148th Regiment followed through breaches blown in the walls between the Quezon and Parian Gates. Elements of the 129th crossed the Pasig River and engaged Japanese troops near the site of the Government Mint.

  On the 23rd of February, the Japanese released roughly 3,000 civilian hostages, but Colonel Noguchi's forces had already killed 1,000 men and women before the release. Intense fighting inside Intramuros continued until the 26th of February. At dawn that day, Iwabuchi and his officers committed suicide.

  Army historian Robert R. Smith described how the assault had been prepared in the preceding days: American commanders had planned a massive artillery preparation running from the 17th to the 23rd of February, using guns ranging from 240mm howitzers down to direct-fire weapons at ranges as short as 250 yards. Smith wrote plainly: "Just how civilian lives could be saved by this type of preparation, as opposed to aerial bombardment, is unknown. The net result would be the same: Intramuros would be practically razed."

  One estimate from the battle puts American artillery operations as the source of approximately 40 percent of all non-combatant Filipino deaths. The 5th Cavalry Regiment cleared the Agricultural Building by the 1st of March. The 148th Regiment took the Legislative Building on the 28th of February and the Finance Building by the 3rd of March.

  With Intramuros secured on the 4th of March, Manila was officially liberated. American forces had suffered 1,010 dead and 5,565 wounded. Japanese military dead inside Intramuros alone numbered 16,665. The total civilian toll stood at a minimum of 100,000.

• 7. A City Erased

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  In Manila's business district after the battle, only two buildings remained undamaged, and both had been looted of their plumbing. Hundreds of government buildings, universities, convents, monasteries, and churches, many dating to the city's founding, were ruined or lost entirely. The city that had been called the "Pearl of the Orient" and famed as a living confluence of Spanish, American, and Asian cultures had been effectively erased.

  Most of what survived the fighting was demolished afterward, as part of the reconstruction. European-style architecture from the Spanish and early American eras was replaced with modern American-style construction. A steel flagpole at the entrance of the old U.S. Embassy building in Ermita, still pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel, remains today as a physical record of how intense the fighting had been.

  In 1946, General Yamashita was executed for war crimes committed by Japanese forces under his command during the battle. The man who had ordered his troops out of the city was held responsible for what happened after Iwabuchi refused to follow those orders.

  On the 18th of February 1995, the Memorare-Manila 1945 Foundation dedicated the Shrine of Freedom at Plazuela de Santa Isabel in Intramuros. National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin wrote the inscription: "Let this monument be the gravestone for each and every one of the over 100,000 men, women, children and infants killed in Manila during its battle of liberation, the 3rd of February to the 3rd of March 1945. We have not forgotten them, nor shall we ever forget."