The Philippine Islands were an American commonwealth in 1941, with defense and foreign relations controlled from Washington. They had been seized from Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, but most Americans were embarrassed to find themselves in possession of a colonial empire, and full independence was promised in 1946. (The promise was kept, although the U.S. retained treaty bases at Clark Field and Olongapo for many more years.)
The Philippines consist of over 7000 islands with a total land area of 115,000 square miles. The terrain is mountainous, except for the central Luzon plain, and there are numerous active volcanoes and near-jungle conditions. The region is tectonically complex, but a deep oceanic trench to the east is typical of an ill-defined island arc.
The islands were poorly developed in 1941,
except for Luzon, the
largest and northernmost, which had a fairly well-developed road and
railway
network. Manila
had one of the finest ports in
the Far East, with extensive facilities.
The islands produced sugar
(around 1.3 million tons a year) and there
were significant deposits of copper,
manganese,
chromium,
and iron,
though the iron ore deposits were of somewhat
poor quality and were not being extensively exploited.
The population
in 1944 was about 14 million, of which as many as a million died during the war, mostly in its
last months. There were about forty ethnic groups and eighty
dialect groups, of whom 90% were Catholic or Catholic offshoots. About
15% of the population belonged to the mestizo elite, the remainder of
the population being Malay peasants working as tenant farmers or
agricultural laborers. The U.S. introduced modern educational and legal
institutions but left the system of tenant farming largely unchanged.
American defenses were centered around Manila and included the large airbase at Clark Field and smaller bases at Iba, Del Carmen, and Nichols Field. A bomber airfield had just been completed at Del Monte on Mindanao. Harbor defenses were centered on Corregidor and there were naval stations at Cavite and Olongapo.
The U.S. commander in the Philippines, Douglas MacArthur, had developed an ambitious scheme of forward defense in case of Japanese attack that had to be abandoned almost at once. U.S. and Filipino retreated into the Bataan Peninsula, north of the entrance to Manila Bay, and endured a prolonged siege exacerbated by the failure to move adequate supplies, especially food, into the peninsula.
MacArthur had a force of some 75 modern fighters and 35 heavy bombers to defend the islands. Half of these were destroyed on the first day of the war, and thereafter the Japanese ruled the skies. Deprived of any air cover, the naval forces in the islands retreated south, except for submarine forces, which proved ineffective because of inexperienced commanders, poor tactical doctrine, and defective torpedoes.
MacArthur's ground forces consisted of the Philippine Division, which was a regular U.S. Army unit, plus specialist units and eleven divisions of the Philippine Army. The latter were poorly equipped, badly trained, and suffered serious language difficulties, but managed in some cases to put up significant resistance.
The
Japanese opened the ground campaign on the first day of the war with a
landing at Batan
Island, north of Luzon. Their intention was to establish an air
base and bring up short-ranged Nate
fighters to cover further landings at Aparri
and Vigan. However, the collapse of
American air power
allowed
the Japanese to move their whole timetable forward. A further
landing at Legaspi
on 12 December completed the blockade of Luzon
and paved the way for the main landings at Lingayen Gulf on 22
December and secondary landings at Lamon Bay on 24 December. The forces
landed at Lingayen Gulf included the bulk of 48 Division; 20 Regiment,
16 Division;
and 4 Tank Regiment,
while the landings at Lamon Bay were carried out by the remaining
elements of the 16
Division (7000 men.)
The Japanese began landings at Davao on Mindanao on 19 December 1941. The defenders retreated into the interior, where they would continue to resist until the fall of Corregidor.
Faced with a pincers movement, MacArthur decided to retreat to Bataan. In order to buy enough time to get the South Luzon Force through Manila before the pincers closed, MacArthur ordered the North Luzon Force to hold five successive lines across the central Luzon plain. The plan worked successfully and over 100,000 men were moved into Bataan before Homma, whose attention had been fixed on Manila, realized what was afoot. The last American and Filipino forces withdrew into the peninsula on 5 January 1942.
By 9 January Homma had redeployed his troops to attack the American positions. Although the American line on the western side of the peninsula held, the eastern line was penetrated, and by 24 January the Americans were forced back to their second defense line. This was assaulted in strength on 3 April, after two months of careful preparation, and the American lines were quickly pierced. General King, the commander of Allied forces on Bataan, was forced to surrender on 9 April 1942. 75,000 sick and starving prisoners of war were marched to camps at San Fernando, 100 miles away, in what became known as the Bataan Death March. Thousands of prisoners died of mistreatment along the way, making this the single greatest atrocity committed against American troops during the war.
The penultimate act of the first Philippines campaign came on 5 May 1942, when Japanese troops began landing on Corregidor. The defenders inflicted heavy losses on the Japanese but could not prevent them from establishing a beachhead. The island was forced to surrender the next day.
One act remained. MacArthur had chosen to retain direct command of forces in the Philippines, but radio broadcasts from Washington, D.C. suggested to the Japanese that Wainright on Corregidor had become the overall Philippines commander. Homma therefore refused to accept Wainright's surrender unless all forces in the Philippines were surrendered at the same time. Faced with the prospect of the Corregidor garrison being massacred, Wainright agreed to broadcast a plea to the other Philippines commanders to lay down their arms. All eventually chose to do so. Wainright feared he would be court-martialed after the war for this act, and was astonished to learn upon his release that he had been given the Medal of Honor and promoted to lieutenant general.
MacArthur's desire to retake the Philippines was initially opposed
by U.S. Fleet commander Ernest
King, who preferred a move against Formosa
followed by capture of a Chinese
port from which to place an airtight blockade around Japan proper.
However, the Japanese launched their Ichi-go offensive in May 1944,
forcing the U.S. air groups in China to fall back from their forward
bases and cutting off the entire China coast from the Nationalist regime. This
made the capture of a Chinese port much less attractive. Furthermore,
Formosa was a part of the Japanese Empire from before the war and could
be expected to be savagely defended. The decision to allow MacArthur to
retake the Philippines was made by Roosevelt himself during a
conference in Hawaii in July 1944. Nimitz was directed to plan
the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in place of Formosa.
The original plan was to invade Mindanao at Sarangani Bay on 25 October
1944 to secure airfields from which to cover the invasion of Leyte on 15 November. Howeever, Halsey encountered so
little air opposition during his strikes in the area in mid-September
1944 that he proposed Mindanao be bypassed and Leyte seized with naval
air cover alone. This suggestion was adopted at the OCTAGON conference on 15 September 1944,
and the invasion date for Leyte was set for 20 October 1944. This
required that Wilkinson's
amphibious force, carrying XXIV Corps, be
diverted to Leyte rather than assaulting Yap,
and there was not even time to reload the cargo or switch landing craft to types more
suitable for Leyte.
The Japanese defenses in the Philippines were build around 14 Army, which was commanded from 5 October 1944 by Yamashita Tomoyuki, the conqueror of Malaya in 1942. Leyte itself was initially defended only by 16 Division.
Meanwile, on 15 September 1944, MacArthur's forces occupied Morotai against minor opposition.
Nimitz simultaneously assaulted the Palaus
and occupied Ulithi. There was no
signicant opposition at Ulithi, but the battle for the Palaus became a
protracted and bloody ground struggle.
The campaign against the Philippines proper began with carrier raids against the islands. These climaxed in a great air battle over Formosa on 12-14 October 1944. Japanese air power in the region was practically annihilated, at the cost of about 70 American aircraft and damage to the Canberra and Houston. Halsey made the daring move of setting a trap around the two crippled cruisers (sardonically renamed BaitDiv1) that nearly succeeded. However, the Japanese admiral sent to finish off the Americans, Shima Kiyohide, sensed the trap and withdrew his forces.
Halsey then moved south to work over the Japanese air bases on Luzon. His air strikes were joined by land-based strikes from 16 October and by strikes from the 18 escort carriers under Sprague. Minesweeping operations began on 17 October.
Troops of with Krueger's 6 Army came ashore on Leyte beginning on 20 October 1944. Resistance was slight because 16 Division retreated almost at once to prepared positions in the mountainous spine of the island. The battle became protracted as Japanese reinforcements were brought in to Ormoc on the west coast of the island in destroyer runs reminiscent of the Guadalcanal campaign. The island was not secured until 31 December.
The Japanese Navy activated the Sho operation as soon as the landings on Leyte began. The resulting Battle of Leyte Gulf (23-25 October 1944) was the greatest naval battle in history and ended in another decisive American victory. As with the Battle of the Philippine Sea, however, there were recriminations and accusations of missed opportunities. Halsey was sharply, and probably justly, criticized for allowing a powerful Japanese surface force under Kurita to slip through San Bernardino Strait and attack the relatively defenseless escort carrier groups off Samar.
During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Japanese launched their first kamikaze attacks, sinking an escort carrier and damaging several other ships. This form of attack would not come to a halt until the Japanese ran out of aircraft with which to make the attacks.
The next objective was Mindoro. Heavy carrier strikes began on airfields on Luzon starting on 14 December, and troops of 24 Division and a detachment of paratroops went ashore the next day. The landing force established a perimeter and began construction of an airfield before pushing further inland. San Jose with its airstrip was taken on 17 December and the island was secured on 24 January 1945.
On 2 January 1945, the invasion forces for Luzon began assembling. The Japanese detected the preparations almost at once, and the invasion forces were subjected to heavy kamikaze attacks. The Americans responded with airfield strikes against Formosa on 3 January in an effort to cut the air bridge from Japan. The landings themselves began on 9 January at Lingayen Gulf. Yamashita, the Japanese commander, decided not to contest the landings. Instead, he ordered most of his forces (numbering some 260,000 men) move into mountainous areas of Luzon where they would hold out as long as possible.
Against weak opposition, the American rapidly moved south. On 31 January, elements of 11 Airborne Division came ashore southwest of Manila and began racing for the city. MacArthur was deeply concerned about the fate of American prisoners of war and civilian internees, who he rightly feared were in danger of being massacred by their guards. American units reach the outskirts of Manila from the north and south on 4 February. Some 20,000 naval troops fought ferociously for the Intramuros, the ancient center of the city. The battle for the city did not end until 3 March 1945.
Corregidor was assaulted by air and sea on 16 February 1945. The island was secured ten days later. Palawan fell on 10 March 1945 and landings began on Mindanao near Zamboanga the same day. Landings took place on Panay on 18 March. Cebu was invaded on 27 March 1945. MacArthur's decision to land forces on the smaller Philippine islands was controversial; there was some feeling that it would have been better to let Filipino guerrillas harass and tie down the Japanese garrisons while American forces concentrated on clearing Luzon and Mindanao.
The bulk of Yamashita's forces continue to hold out in the mountains east and northeast of Manila until the Japanese surrender.
References
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia © 2007-2009 by Kent G. Budge. Index
