"THE BATTLE OF
MANILA"
Tactical lessons relevant to current military operations
by
Dr. Thomas M. Huber
Because of a resurgence
of interest in urban operations within the U.S. military, the Commander,
Training and Doctrine Command, in 2001 tasked the Combat Studies
Institute (CSI) to research and write several in-depth case studies
aimed at providing historical perspective on the subject. The result is
an anthology of studies covering a wide range of urban operations
conducted by various countries from World War II to the present. This
analysis of the Battle of Manila forms part of that study.
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The
Battle of Manila, 3 February 1945 to 3 March 1945,
was the only struggle by the United States to capture a defended major
city in the Pacific War. Manila wasone
of few major battles waged by the United States on urban terrain in
World War II. It is arguably one of the most recent major urban battles
conducted by U.S. forces. The case of Manila offers many lessons large
and small that may be instructive for planning future urban operations.
Basically, Manila was an instance of modern combined arms warfare
practiced in restrictive urban terrain in the presence of large numbers
of civilian inhabitants. Manila provides many lessons relevant both to
the combined arms aspect of the struggle and to the civilian affairs
aspect of the struggle.
The road to
Manila was a long one. After the Japanese navy’s attack on Pearl Harbor
in December 1941, the U.S. mobilized for an extended struggle. U.S.
forces in the Philippines had resisted Japanese invasion doggedly but
unsuccessfully from December 1941 to May 1942. Late in 1942, however,
U.S. forces under General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area
theater command fought their way back through the Solomons and New
Guinea. Beginning in November 1943, forces under Admiral Chester
Nimitz’s Pacific Ocean Areas theater command seized Tarawa, the
Marshalls, and the Marianas. By October 1944, MacArthur was prepared
once again to contest the Philippines and landed major forces at Leyte
Gulf. Leyte was secured after hard fighting so that by January 1945,
MacArthur was ready to land forces on the shores of Luzon (the main
island in the northern Philippines) and drive toward the Philippine
capital city itself, Manila.
The city of Manila in 1945 was one of urban
contrasts. In some highly traditional sections, the teeming population
still lived in nipa-thatched huts. In other sections, citizens lived
in modern air-conditioned apartments. The city covered an area of
approximately 14.5 square miles, extending 5.5 miles north to south and 4
miles east to west, from the eastern edge of Manila Bay. The
metropolitan population in 1944 was 1,100,000.
[i]
Manila was bisected by the Pasig
River, which flowed roughly east to west, and was interlaced with many
smaller streams called “esteros.” Six bridges spanned the Pasig in
January 1945, all of which the Japanese severed during the battle for the
capital. North of the Pasig, along the bay, was the North Port area,
and north of that was the Tondo district, a populous working class
residential district. Just inland from the port area was a business
district that housed retail stores, manufacturing plants, and movie houses
and restaurants. East of that lay older middle and upper class
residential areas.
South of the
Pasig along the bay were more modern port facilities, and just inland from
that was Intramuros, the old Spanish walled city. Intramuros was an
arrowhead-bastioned sixteenth century fort with walls 40 feet thick at the
base. The north wall faced the Pasig, and the other walls were fronted
by park land formed by filling in the fortress’s moat. East and south
of Intramuros were major government buildings, hospitals and schools.
These were constructed of reinforced concrete and many were built to be
earthquake proof. Large apartment buildings also of reinforced
concrete could be found in this area. Eastward from the civic
buildings and parks surrounding Intramuros were prosperous modern
residential districts, more recently built than the prosperous eastward
suburbs north of the Pasig. In February 1945, American forces found
themselves fighting their way through all these areas and conducting their
final siege operations against the old walled city of Intramuros.
By the time U.S. forces reached
Manila on 3 February 1945, much of the city was already fortified by the
Japanese defenders, especially south of the Pasig. The overall
commander of the Japanese army forces in the Philippines was General
Tomoyuki Yamashita. Yamashita’s command was subdivided into several
“groups,” with the Shimbu Group under Lieutenant General Shizuo Yokoyama
responsible for Manila. Yamashita wished to pull all his forces into a
mountainous stronghold in Northern Luzon, so he ordered Yokoyama to conduct
an orderly evacuation from Manila and not defend it. This order
included Japanese naval forces in the Manila area, which were under
Yokoyama’s command. However, Vice Admiral Denshichi Okochi, commander
of the Southwestern Area Fleet based in the Philippines, who reported to
Combined Fleet, not to Yamashita’s 14th Area Army, had ordered
naval personnel to defend naval facilities in Manila regardless of
Yamashita’s withdrawal strategy. So as Americans approached Manila in
January 1945, Japanese army troops moved out of the city while Japanese
naval troops moved in. Okochi organized the Manila Naval Defense Force
[MNDF] and placed in command Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, already the
commander of the 31st Naval Special Base Force in the Manila
area. Okochi himself relocated to Baguio, Yamashita’s headquarters,
early in January, but ordered Iwabuchi to hold Manila and Nichols Field
south of the city as long as possible, and then to destroy all Japanese
naval facilities and supplies in the Manila Area.
[ii] |