World War II in the Philippines

I am just back from a long weekend in paradise; I'll be writing it up, but in the meantime, I was working on this last week...

On the same day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (December 8 on this side of the International Date Line), they also bombed Clark Field, catching Douglas MacArthur napping, despite many hours’ warning. Within two days, Japanese troops landed in North Luzon, driving the allied American and Filipino troops to the Bataan Peninsula, opposite newly-occupied Manila.

MacArthur (who, Sir Tony told me, had his headquarters at the Manila Hotel), holed up on nearby Corregidor Island, made his promise to return and fled to Australia. Ordered to maintain a holding action, his abandoned troops on Bataan soon fell to the Japanese, with the unconditional surrender of 76,000 people (66,000 of them Filipinos). Those able to walk began the 120 km Bataan Death March on to prison camps – 20,000 people died along the way and another 25,000 died in the camps.

From 1942 to 1945 the Philippines endured a brutal Japanese military regime (the American teacher who led the group of students on the Habitat build said that throughout Southeast Asia he sees resentment against the Japanese, though it is fading with the younger generations). In 1944, MacArthur landed at Leyte (which I could also visit – it’s in the Visayas, and I do want to get to destinations there; air fares are inexpensive, and there are not only WWII sites but other things to do – but we’ll have to see). The main battleground in his onslaught was Manila, where defenseless residents suffered horrifically in the crossfire. By the time MacArthur marched in, 150,000 civilians had been killed and a city that had been one of the finest in Asia was destroyed. Lonely Planet places it with Warsaw, Hiroshima and Hamburg as cities that suffered the most damage in the war.

That was all from Lonely Planet, but there’s more to it than that – the panels at the American Cemetery also described the many naval battles that took place in and around the area. I guess Lonely Planet doesn’t discuss them because one can’t visit battle sites in the middle of the sea! So I went to wikipedia, where there’s a good overview of the war in the Pacific (I’m still far from a buff, but I used to know a lot more about the European Theater than the Pacific one, and now I have a much better sense of what went on on this side of the globe).

The Battle of Leyte Gulf, in 1944, was arguably the largest naval battle in history. It featured the largest battleships ever built, was the last time that battleships engaged each other, and was the first time that kamikaze aircraft were used. Admiral Nimitz, who commanded the naval forces, favored a blockade of the Philippines to block off Japanese sea routes and a landing on Formosa. MacArthur favored an invasion of the Philippines, and Roosevelt went with that. It should be noted that in one of the engagements, the USS Princeton sank.

This naval battle supported and cleared the way for the land invasion; there were several major landings on several islands throughout the Philippines. In all, ten divisions and give independent regiments (over 175,000 men) battled on Luzon, making it the largest campaign of the Pacific War, involving more troops than the United States had used in North Africa, Italy, or southern France.