In yesterday’s long post I attempted to bring together naval fleet, air and Marine Corps-Army amphibious efforts up to the end of 1944 and into early 1945. In earlier posts, we considered key engagements and their impact on the shape and prosecution of the war: Saipan (strategic importance and civil deaths) and a post, Battles that Changed War Strategy (Biak, Peliliu, and the air battles at Philippine Sea and Formosa) which pointed to the changing tactics and objectives of Japan as the war approached the home islands. The implications of all this was hinted at in the post Ketsu-Go outlining the strategic and tactical defense of the home islands. By the autumn of 1944 all roads led to the Philippines – from both MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific command and Nimitz’s Central Pacific command.

The Philippine Islands have their own unique history with the United States as friend and foe, but by 1941 it was home to a large number of Americans, American Corporations, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur who served as commander of U.S. Army Forces in the Far East. Manila had been his home since 1924.

Manila was known as the “Pearl of the Orient.” It was an international city that was the nexus of Filipino, Spanish, American and Asian cultures. In addition, the city’s population included Chinese, Japanese, Germans, British, Indians, and small groups from most European countries. The city was a center for universities and colleges, convents, monasteries and churches, and their accompanying treasures – including art, literature, and especially architecture – dated to the founding of the city. 

Several hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes began bombing key defensive positions on the island of Luzon with landings on northern Luzon beginning two days later. Manila was declared an “open city” in order to preserve the city, its heritage, and the citizens. The Japanese occupied the city on January 7, 1942 as the allied forces withdrew to Corregidor, the “Gibraltar of the East” that guarded the entrance to Manila Harbor. Corregidor surrendered on May 6, 1942. Under orders from President Roosevelt, General MacArthur had evacuated to Australia, leaving on March 12th, and vowing to return.

The 1944 – 1945 invasion, occupation, and liberation of the Philippines is among the memories of the War in the Pacific that is slowly being lost. During this series I have focused on the strategic ebb and flow of the War in the Pacific as a means to consider what was a path forward in August 1945 if atomic weapons had not been available. Yet, the war was also the crucible of heroism and tragedy whose effects carried from the battlefield to the homefront. It is a cauldron of hard choices, unclear moral choices, and choices that give shape to evil incarnated. One such cauldron was the Battle of Manila (3 February – 3 March 1945). A battle that, in the end, utterly destroyed the city. The loss of the cultural heritage was immeasurable. Yet, the loss of lives was beyond horrific.

In 1942, Gen. MacArthur had declared Manila an “open city”; he hoped that Japanese General Yamashita would do the same in 1945. Yamashita did not. When a city was declared an open city under the laws of war, the defending power agreed not to resist militarily and to leave it undefended, so that it would not be subject to bombardment or siege. This was intended to spare civilians and cultural treasures from destruction. In WWII, examples include Paris (1940) and Rome (1943), where Axis forces abandoned military defense and allowed enemy entry.

Later in Yamashita’s war crimes trial he stated that he did not declare the city open as he did not think he could feed the city’s residents which was numbered at about 1 million people. Which was at odds with the 1907 Hague Convention (of which Japan was a signatory) that was clear. Declaration of an “open city” placed the responsibility for care of the city and its people on the forces that would then occupy the city. In other words, the care and feeding would have been the responsibility of the Allies.

The Destruction of Manila. While not planning to fight over Manila itself, Yamashita ordered the destruction of all bridges and other vital installations in the area including power and water facilities. This was to slow the Allied advance so he could redeploy Japanese troops before American troops arrived in force. As the Americans converged on Manila from different directions, they discovered that most of the 260,000 Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) troops had been ordered to withdraw to northern Luzon. Yamashita had planned to engage Filipino and U.S. forces in a coordinated campaign of attrition, with the goal of buying time for Japanese home island defenses against the inevitable Allied invasion. 

The orders to withdraw were disobeyed by a subordinate, Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, commander of the Manila Naval Defense Force (12,500 sailors supplemented by an additional 5,000 IJA). His task was to destroy the Port of Manila, which he could have done and then withdrawn. He did not. The likely reason is two-fold: long-standing rivalry between IJA and Imperial Navy and Iwabuchi’s history. At this point in the war the IJN was all but non-existent, but Manila gave them a chance to confront the Americans with a concerted, unified defense for the glory of the Emperor. Iwabuchi himself had been in command of the battleship Kirishima which was sunk in the 2nd Naval Battle of Guadalcanal – but Iwabuchi chose to not go down with his ship which was perceived as a stain on his honor as an officer. Manila was his chance to regain honor that likely motivated his actions and fight to the death.

The twenty-nine-day battle to liberate Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the city. Iwabuchi’s forces entrenched themselves in key sections of the city especially the walled city of Intramuros which was home to so much of the cultural heritage and administration. At first the Allied forces were not permitted to use artillery or mortar fire but in the end MacArthur relented. The fierce resistance of Japanese troops entrenched in many of the city’s landmarks, their intentional demolition of buildings, along with the usage of massed artillery barrages by American forces to dislodge the troops, destroyed much of Manila’s architectural and cultural heritage dating back to the city’s founding. American troops had no choice but to battle the enemy, floor by floor and even room by room, through schools, hospitals, and even sports stadiums. Often referred to as “the Stalingrad of Asia”, the battle is widely considered to be one of the most destructive urban battles ever fought, as well as the single largest urban battle ever fought by American forces to that point in time.

It is sometimes asked why the Allies did not simply surround the city and “wait out” the Japanese forces. It is because Filipino guerillas had already reported what was happening in the city.

The Murder of Civilians. The reports were of the rampage by Japanese forces that was murdering the civilian population. Iwabuchi had issued the following orders:

“The Americans who have penetrated into Manila have about 1000 troops, and there are several thousand Filipino soldiers under the Commonwealth Army and the organized guerrillas. Even women and children have become guerrillas. All people on the battlefield with the exception of Japanese military personnel, Japanese civilians, and special construction units will be put to death.”

There were more than 27 different instances of major massacres of civilians in Manila during February 3-19: Dy-Pac Lumberyard, Masonic Temple, La Concordia College, Colegio de Sta. Rosa, St. Paul College in Malate, Fort Santiago in Intramuros, Palacio del Gobernador, and San Agustin Church in Intramuros to name a few.  No one was spared, not even children, infants or children in the womb. “Rampage” by James M. Scott is a horrific accounting of this event as heinous as the Rape of Nanking. It is not a read for the faint of heart. Approximately 100,000 civilians died in the Battle of Manila. Historians such as Alfred W. McCoy, Teodoro Agoncillo and Richard Connaughton estimate that 75,000 – 80,000 of the deaths were due to Japanese atrocities in the battle for Manila. 

When the battle ended there were people to identify and intern, and stories to record. MacArthur immediately began detailed investigations and recorded testimonies of survivors. These testimonies and the record of more that 250 other massacres that had happened throughout the Philippine islands became part of the War Crimes Trials in Manila – including the trial of General Yamashita.

Lessons for Operation Downfall.  The Battle of Manila shocked U.S. planners, who realized that in Japanese cities, with even denser populations, civilian deaths could dwarf Manila’s losses. It reinforced the fear that invading the Home Islands would trigger catastrophic urban destruction and mass civilian casualties. 

Aware that Iwabuchi’s force fought to near extinction inside Manila. Operation Downfall planner wondered if every major Japanese city could become “another Manila” — with garrisons refusing surrender and deliberately fighting from civilian areas. This meant that American troops could not expect rapid occupation of cities but house-to-house, block-to-block combat with massive losses. Analysts noted that if some 20,000 Japanese in Manila could inflict weeks of heavy fighting, then hundreds of thousands defending major Japanese cities would lead to immense Allied losses.

In reviewing casualty estimates presented by US planners to President Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the estimates only present scenarios of non-urban hostilities as experienced in all of the island campaigns. Urban warfare was not included. On the other hand, given the Allied bombing raids on the home islands that began in November 1944 and continued until the end of the war, there would be very little major urban areas. At the end of the war 55% of Tokyo had been leveled by bombing.

The War Ongoing.  As the Battle of Manila was underway, so too was the invasion of Iwo Jima. The Battle of Okinawa would begin within 30 days. Okinawa in 1945 was mostly rural farmland, villages, and small towns.  Manila would not be the only experience of urban warfare.

Manila – after the Battle. Once the Battle of Manila ended on 3 March 1945, the Allies faced a city that was physically shattered and socially traumatized. The aftermath required both immediate relief (health care, disease control, shelter, burial, cleanup) and long-term reconstruction.

With the Port of Manila destroyed, the Army’s Air Transport Command’s played the initial role in humanitarian aid to Manila flying in urgent medical and relief supplies, transporting aid workers, and evacuating the wounded and vulnerable, until seaborne logistics could take over. Without its flights in the spring of 1945, Manila’s civilian suffering in the immediate post-battle period would have been even worse.

Humanitarian relief and care for survivors was organized by Filipino organizations and U.S. Army’s civil affairs units. They set up emergency food and medical aid including  refugee centers, soup kitchens, and field hospitals for the hundreds of thousands of displaced and wounded civilians. These same people suffered from typhus, dysentery, and malaria. Allied medical teams and the Philippine Red Cross worked to contain outbreaks. There was also a massive effort to build temporary housing camps, while still-standing schools, churches, and government buildings served as makeshift shelters.

At the same time, there was the grim work of recovering and identifying tens of thousands of corpses in the streets and rubble. Burial details — U.S. soldiers, Filipino volunteers, and labor units — worked for weeks to recover and inter the dead. Clearing rubble was slow and dangerous, with unexploded ordnance and booby-trap explosives/landmines scattered throughout the city.

While the Philippine civil government was re-established with its civil institutions, the rebuilding of major infrastructure began. Though heavily damaged, the Allies worked urgently to reopen the Port of Manila in support of humanitarian relief to Manila. The port resumed limited operations in May 1945. Work also continued on transportation infrastructure. The Japanese had destroyed virtually every major bridge over the Pasig River. U.S. Army engineers built temporary spans to restore traffic. Water, electricity, and communications were gradually restored, but services remained limited well into 1946.

The Scale of Destruction

The images above are not to draw moral equivalencies, prepare justifications for later actions, but to simply point out the destructive nature of war. Manila took 30 days; Hiroshima took a moment. The destruction was near total, the number of civilian deaths similar, the lingering scars and memories lasting, and the rebuilding took years.

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Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. Photographs of Manila and Hiroshima are from the Office of the Surgeon General of the US Army and   Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum,