The Japanese Defenses
The Background
It was not Yamashita's intention to preside over the
destruction of Manila.4 Since
he had decided to let the vital Central Plains--Manila Bay area go by
default, the defense of Manila to him would be meaningless. He reasoned:
First the population of Manila is approximately one
million; therefore, it is impossible to feed them. The second reason is
that the buildings are very inflammable. The third reason is that
because [Manila] is on flat land it requires tremendous . . . strength
to defend it. For these reasons my policy or plan was to leave Manila
outside the combat zone. 5
When, in December, Yamashita decided to evacuate troops
and supplies from the city, he planned to leave behind a small Army force to
maintain order, protect supply movements, and, ultimately, to blow bridges
over the Pasig and Marikina Rivers in order to delay Allied occupation of
the entire metropolitan area and slow development of an Allied drive against
the Shimbu Group, east
of the city. The Japanese would hold the Pasig bridges only so long as the
spans remained useful for supply movements--they had no plan for a
last-ditch stand at the bridges.
Yet, as the XIV Corps and 11th Airborne Division
approached the city it became obvious that Manila was strongly defended.
There had been a change in Japanese plans.
The change reflected no reversal of Yamashita's policy.
Rather, it mirrored a picture of disagreement and confusion existing among
the lower-level headquarters under Yamashita's nominal control, and
especially between the Army and Navy echelons of his command. Contrary to
Yamashita's expressed desires, these conflicts led to a decision to give
battle within the city--a development that was a cancerous growth on the 14th
Area Army's plan for the
defense of Luzon and that stemmed from a series of compromises among
Japanese Army and Navy commanders in the Manila area.
Until late December 1944 the protection of Manila had
been charged to Maj. Gen. Takashi Kobayashi's Manila
Defense Force, roughly
equivalent to two RCT's in strength and armament. When, on 27 December,
Yamashita organized the Shimbu
Group for a final defensive
stand in the mountain country east and northeast of Manila, he placed the
city and the Manila Defense
Force under General Yokoyama, Shimbu
Group and 8th
Division commander. Since
Yamashita contemplated no defense of Manila, one of Yokoyama's principal
missions was to oversee the evacuation of the city, and he directed General
Kobayashi to speed the movement, which was already under way. Two Army
units, responsible for carrying out the evacuation and assigned demolitions,
were to remain in and around the city for the nonce. The first was the Noguchi
Detachment, two provisional
infantry battalions and supporting troops under Col. Katsuzo Noguchi.
Stationed within the northern part of the city and in the northern suburbs,
the detachment was to withdraw eastward once it had knocked out the Pasig
bridges. Another reinforced provisional infantry battalion under Capt.
Saburo Abe was stationed south of the city and was responsible for blocking
the southern approaches along the narrow Hagonoy Isthmus, separating Manila
Bay and Laguna de Bay.
Throughout December and January, however, while Army
units were pulling out of the city and environs, naval troops were moving
in. As it had for Yamashita, the Allied move to Mindoro in December had
prompted a flurry of changes in plans by Vice Adm. Denshichi Okochi, the
commander of the Southwestern
Area Fleet and the ranking
Japanese naval officer in the Philippines. 6Okochi,
apparently on his own initiative, decided to strengthen the Navy's defenses
of Manila and he assigned some 4,000 men to a new organization that he
designated the Manila Naval
Defense Force--not to be confused with General Kobayashi's Manila
Defense Force. To head the
new force, Okochi called upon Admiral Iwabuchi, also the commander of the 31st
Naval Special Base Force, which
already had troops in and around Manila.
Okochi planned to send the remainder of the large number
of naval troops in and around Manila up to the Kembu area,
but supply and transportation problems forestalled completion of this
movement. Thus, when he departed for Baguio with Yamashita early in January,
Okochi left Admiral Iwabuchi in command of a Manila
Naval Defense Force that,
with subsequent minor accretions, numbered nearly 16,000 naval troops.
Iwabuchi's missions were to hold Nichols Field and the Cavite naval base
area, mine Manila Bay, direct Navy suicide boat operations in the bay,
arrange for the evacuation of ships and small craft of the 31st
Naval Special Base Force, and,
ultimately, assure the destruction of all Japanese naval installations and
supplies in the Manila and Cavite areas. The program of demolitions Okochi
directed Iwabuchi to undertake was far more extensive than that assigned to
the Army troops.
When he left for Baguio, Admiral Okochi transferred the
operational control of the Manila
Naval Defense Force to
General Yokoyama and the Shimbu
Group. But operational
control under the principles of unity of command did not mean the same thing
within the Japanese armed forces that it did in the Allied services during
World War II--it also did not mean the same thing to the Japanese Navy that
it did to the Japanese Army. Thus, the control authority Okochi actually
transferred was so limited as to contain the seeds of many disagreements
between General Yokoyama and Admiral Iwabuchi. When it came down to cases,
the Shimbu Group would
have complete operational control of the Manila
Naval Defense Force only
within an area plainly of primary Army interest and even then only after
Iwabuchi's command had successfully completed all the missions Okochi had
assigned it.
Manifestly, some of these missions involved operations on
land--theoretically, on Luzon, the exclusive responsibility of the Japanese
Army. But to the Japanese Navy, the assignment of troops to the Army for
operational control meant control only for ground combat operations actually
conducted under Army command in an Army area. The fact that Admiral Iwabuchi
could carry out his naval assignments while conducting ground combat
operations as directed by the Shimbu
Group did not alter the
situation. He would not withdraw his forces from Manila until he felt he had
executed his naval missions, and, whatever operations he might conduct under Shimbu
Group directives, his prior
naval orders would continue to take precedence over any directives General
Yokoyama might issue. 7
It was not until 6 January that the Shimbu
Group commander learned that
his operational control over the Manila
Naval Defense Force would be
limited to the degree implicit in the peculiarly naval missions assigned to
Admiral Iwabuchi. And at the same time General Yokoyama was informed, to his
evident surprise, that Iwabuchi had 16,000-odd naval troops in and around
Manila. Yokoyama had based his plans for delaying action, bridge
destruction, and supply evacuation on the assumption that there were no more
than 4,000 naval troops in the area in addition to the approximately 3,750
Army troops of the Noguchi
Detachment and the Abe
Battalion. He considered
these forces sufficient to carry out assigned missions and he could evacuate
that number from the city without undue trouble once Allied forces arrived,
an event he estimated would occur no earlier than 20 February.
General Yokoyama called a series of Manila
Naval Defense Force-Shimbu Group staff
conferences to discuss the obvious complications arising from Iwabuchi's
divided responsibilities and the size of the naval commitment. In the course
of the discussions, which took place between 8 and 13 January, naval
officers made it clear that, no matter what Shimbu
Group's plans, it was the
consensus of the naval staff that Manila should be defended to the bitter
end. Any withdrawal from the city, naval representatives pointed out, would
prevent the Manila Naval
Defense Force from executing
the missions Admiral Okochi had assigned it. Moreover, most of the naval
staff officers felt that Manila was a natural fortress that could easily be
defended at great cost to Allied forces. Therefore, the naval staff was not
anxious to abandon the city meekly without a struggle. In addition, many
members of Iwabuchi's staff were dissatisfied with the positions in the
mountains east of Manila that Yokoyama had assigned to the Manila
Naval Defense Force for a
last stand. Admiral Iwabuchi just about settled all arguments when he
pointed out that his force had "no alternative but to carry out its primary
duty of defending naval facilities." 8
Faced with the fait
accompli of prior naval
orders that he could not countermand, Yokoyama had little choice but to
assent to Iwabuchi's general concept for the defense of Manila, however
unwise he might feel that concept to be. And, in accordance with the
practice in the Japanese and Allied services, he provided for unified
command within the city, placing the Army troops still stationed there under
Admiral Iwabuchi as the senior officer on the spot--thereby making the best
out of a bad situation. Extracting such concessions from the Manila
Naval Defense Force as his
limited operational control powers permitted, the Shimbu
Group commander persuaded
Iwabuchi to organize a special naval force to defend the San Juan del Monte
area, lying between the city and the Shimbu
Group's main positions to the
east. He further convinced Iwabuchi of the necessity for strengthening the
defenses at Fort McKinley, southeast of Manila, and of the wisdom of setting
up an alternate headquarters there, presumably in anticipation of ultimate
withdrawal from the city. Expecting existing communications between Manila
and the Shimbu Group command
post in the mountains to be severed once the Allies reached the city,
Yokoyama also saw to it that a secondary wire communications net was
established between his mountain headquarters and Fort McKinley.
Not losing sight of his principal mission--protracted
defensive operations in the mountainous terrain east and northeast of
Manila--General Yokoyama, late in January, issued somewhat ambiguous orders
concerning the defense of the city and its immediate environs. The Shimbu
Group, while concentrating
its main force in its mountain strongholds, was to "firmly defend Manila and
Fort McKinley and check their use by the enemy, at the same time destroying
the enemy's fighting strength and preparing to counterattack the enemy rear
from the main positions when a favorable situation arises." The Manila
Naval Defense Force, in turn,
was directed to "defend its already-established positions and crush the
enemy's fighting strength." 9
Despite the seemingly definitive wording of these orders,
an ambiguity arises from the fact that Yokoyama used the term koshu, usually
rendered as "firm defense," in regard to the plans for holding Manila. Quite
weak as the wording of Japanese orders go, koshu by
no means implied a fight to the death. Moreover, since Japanese Army orders
did not lean toward understatement in such matters, the term seems
indicative of a desire to conduct a rather limited holding action followed
by an early withdrawal. Even Admiral Iwabuchi's operations officer
interpreted the use ofkoshu as
meaning that Yokoyama would order a general withdrawal once battle had been
joined within the city. 10 Apparently
the fact that no specific mention of withdrawal was contained in theShimbu
Group orders merely reflected
a reluctance on the part of Yokoyama to impair the morale of the troops in
Manila--a regard for the sensibilities to which the Japanese forces were
singularly addicted.
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