THE DRIVE TOWARD INTRAMUROS
by
Robert Ross Smith
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Iwabuchi Entrapped
Although patently
determined at the end of January to defend Manila to the last, Admiral Iwabuchi
apparently wavered in his resolution during the week or so following the arrival
of the first American troops in the city.1 On
the morning of 9 February, two days after the 37th Division began crossing the
Pasig, the admiral decided that his position in the Manila area had deteriorated
so rapidly and completely that he should devote some attention to evacuating his
remaining forces. Accordingly, he moved his headquarters to Fort McKinley,
evidently planning to direct a withdrawal from that relatively safe vantage
point. This transfer precipitated a series of incidents that vividly illustrates
the anomalies of the Japanese command structure in the metropolitan area.
About the same time that Iwabuchi
moved to Fort McKinley, the first definite information about the course of the
battle in Manila reached General Yokoyama's Shimbu
Group headquarters. The Shimbu commander
immediately began planning a counterattack, the multiple aims and complicated
preparation of which suggest that Yokoyama had so little information that he
could not make up his mind quite what he wanted to, or could, accomplish.
Estimating the strength of the
Americans in the Manila area at little more than a regiment, General Yokoyama
apparently felt that he had a good opportunity to cut off and isolate the Allied
force. Conversely, he was also interested in getting the Manila
Naval Defense Force out of the
city quickly, either by opening a line of retreat or by having Iwabuchi
co-ordinate a breakthrough effort with a Shimbu
Group counterattack, scheduled
for the night of 16-17 February. Not knowing how far the situation in Manila had
deteriorated--communications were faulty and Admiral Iwabuchi had supplied
Yokoyama with little information--Yokoyama at first directed the Manila
Naval Defense Force to hold fast.
The question of a general withdrawal, he told Iwabuchi, would be held in
abeyance pending the outcome of the counterattack.
There is no indication that the Shimbu
Group commander intended to
reinforce or retake Manila. Rather, his primary interest was to gain time for
the Shimbu Group to
strengthen its defenses north and northeast of the city and to move more
supplies out of the city to its mountain strongholds, simultaneously creating a
good opportunity for the Manila
Naval Defense Force to withdraw
intact.
Such was the state of
communications between Iwabuchi and Yokoyama that Iwabuchi had decided to return
to Manila before he received any word of the counterattack plans. When Admiral
Iwabuchi left Manila he had placed Colonel Noguchi, the Northern
Force commander, in control of
all troops remaining within the city limits. Noguchi found it impossible to
exercise effective control over the naval elements of his command and asked that
a senior naval officer return to the city. Iwabuchi, who now feared that Fort
McKinley might fall to the Americans before the defenses within the city,
himself felt compelled to return, a step he took on the morning of 11 February.
On or about 13 February, General
Yokoyama, having received more information, decided that the situation in Manila
was beyond repair, and directed Iwabuchi to return to Fort McKinley and start
withdrawing his troops immediately, without awaiting the Shimbu
Group counterattack. Two days
later General Yamashita, from his Baguio command post 125 miles to the north,
stepped into the picture. Censuring General Yokoyama, the 14th
Area Army commander first
demanded to know why Admiral Iwabuchi had been permitted to return to the city
and second directed Yokoyama to get all troops out of Manila immediately.
Not until the morning of 17
February did Iwabuchi receive Yokoyama's directive of the 13th and Yamashita's
orders of the 15th. By those dates XIV Corps had cut all Japanese routes of
withdrawal, a fact that was readily apparent to Admiral Iwabuchi. As a result,
he made no attempt to get any troops out of the city under the cover of the Shimbu
Group's counterattack, which was
just as well, since that effort was unsuccessful.
Yokoyama had planned to
counterattack with two columns. On the north, a force composed of two battalions
of the 31st Infantry, 8th
Division, and two provisional
infantry battalions from the105th Division was
to strike across the Marikina River from the center of the Shimbu
Group's defenses, aiming at
Novaliches Dam and Route 3 north of Manila. 2 The
southern prong, consisting of three provisional infantry battalions of the Kobayashi
Force--formerly the Army's Manila
Defense Force--were to drive across the Marikina toward the Balara Water
Filters and establish contact with the northern wing in the vicinity of Grace
Park.
The 112th Cavalry RCT, which had
replaced the 12th Cavalry along the 1st Cavalry Division's line of
communications, broke up the northern wing's counterattack between 15 and 18
February. In the Novaliches-Novaliches Dam area, and in a series of skirmishes
further west and northwest, the 112th Cavalry RCT dispatched some 300 Japanese,
losing only 2 men killed and 32 wounded. Un-co-ordinated from the start, the
northern counterattack turned into a shambles, and the northern attack force
withdrew in a disorganized manner before it accomplished anything.
The Kobayashi
Force's effort was turned back on
the morning of the 16th, when American artillery caught this southern wing as it
attempted to cross the Marikina River. During the next three days all Japanese
attacks were piecemeal in nature and were thrown back with little difficulty by
the 7th and 8th Cavalry Regiments, operating east and northeast of Manila. By 19
February, when the southern counterattack force also withdrew, the 2d Cavalry
Brigade and support artillery had killed about 650 Japanese in the area west of
the Marikina from Novaliches Dam south to the Pasig. The brigade lost about 15
men killed and 50 wounded.
The fact that the counterattack was
completely unsuccessful in either cutting the XIV Corps lines of communications
or opening a route of withdrawal for the Manila
Naval Defense Force does not seem
to have greatly concerned or surprised General Yokoyama. He did not have much
hope of success from the beginning, and, indeed, his ardor for the venture was
undoubtedly dampened by Admiral Iwabuchi's adamant attitude about making any
further attempt to withdraw from the city, an attitude the admiral made amply
clear on the morning of the 17th, the very day that the counterattack was to
have reached its peak of penetration.
That morning Iwabuchi, truthfully
enough, informed Yokoyama that withdrawal of the bulk of his forces from Manila
was no longer possible. He went on to say that he still considered the defense
of Manila to be of utmost importance and that he could not continue organized
operations in the city should he attempt to move his headquarters or any other
portion of his forces out. Again on 19 and 21 February Yokoyama directed
Iwabuchi to withdraw. Iwabuchi was unmoved, replying that withdrawal would
result in quick annihilation of the forces making the attempt, whereas continued
resistance within the city would result in heavy losses to the attacking
American forces. General Yokoyama suggested that Iwabuchi undertake night
withdrawals by infiltrating small groups of men through the American lines. Past
experience throughout the Pacific war, the Shimbu
Group commander went on, had
proven the feasibility of such undertakings. There was no recorded answer to
this message, and on 23 February all communication between the Shimbu
Group and the Manila
Naval Defense Force ceased.
Admiral Iwabuchi had made his bed, and he was to die in it.
Meanwhile, the fighting within
Manila had raged unabated as XIV Corps compressed the Japanese into an ever
decreasing area. Outside, the 11th Airborne Division had cut off the Southern
Force's Abe Battalion on high
ground at Mabato Point, on the northwest shore of Laguna de Bay. There, between
14 and 18 February, a battalion-sized guerrilla force under Maj. John D.
Vanderpool, a special agent sent to Luzon by GHQ SWPA in October 1944, contained
the Japanese unit. 3 From
18 through 23 February an 11th Airborne Division task force, composed of three
infantry battalions closely supported by artillery, tank destroyers, and Marine
Corps SBD's, besieged the Abe
Battalion. In this final action
the Japanese unit lost about 750 men killed; the 11th Airborne Division lost
less than 10 men killed and 50 wounded--the burden of the attack had been borne
principally by the artillery and air support elements. The Abe
Battalion's final stand made no
tactical sense, and at least until 14 February the unit could have escaped
northeastward practically unmolested.4
The 4th
Naval Battalion, cut off at Fort
McKinley when the 5th and 12th Cavalry Regiments pushed to Manila Bay, played
the game a bit more shrewdly. From 13 through 19 February elements of the 11th
Airborne Division, coming northeast from the Nichols Field area, and troops of
the 1st Cavalry Brigade, moving east along the south bank of the Pasig River,
cleared all the approaches to Fort McKinley in a series of patrol actions. When,
on the 19th, troops of the 11th Airborne and elements of the 1st Cavalry
Division completed the occupation of the Fort McKinley area, they found that the
bulk of the Japanese had fled. Whether by Iwabuchi's authority or not, the 4th
Naval Battalion, together with
remnants of the 3d Naval Battalion from
Nichols Field, had withdrawn eastward toward the Shimbu
Group's main defenses during the
night of 17-18 February. Some 300 survivors of the 3d
Naval Battalion thus escaped,
while the4th probably managed
to evacuate about 1,000 men of its original strength of nearly 1,400. 5
Inside the city, as of 12 February,
Admiral Iwabuchi still had under his control his Central
Force (1st and 2d
Naval Battalions), the Headquarters
Sector Unit, the 5th
Naval Battalion, theNorthern
Force's 3d Provisional Infantry Battalion and
service units, remnants of Colonel Noguchi's 2d
Provisional Infantry Battalion, and,
finally, the many miscellaneous naval "attached units." The 37th Division had
decimated the 1st Naval Battalion at
Provisor Island and during the fighting through Paco and Pandacan Districts; the 2d
Provisional Infantry Battalion had
lost heavily in action against the 1st Cavalry and 37th Divisions north of the
Pasig; the 2d Naval Battalion, originally
holding the extreme southern section of the city, had lost considerable strength
to the 1st Cavalry Brigade and the 11th Airborne Division; all the rest of the
Japanese units had suffered losses from American artillery and mortar fire. The
total strength now available to Iwabuchi within Manila probably numbered no more
than 6,000 troops.
Perhaps more serious, from
Iwabuchi's point of view, were the Japanese heavy weapons losses. By 12 February
XIV Corps had destroyed almost all his artillery. Carefully laid American
artillery and mortar fire was rapidly knocking out his remaining mortars as well
as all machine guns except for those emplaced well within fortified buildings.
Soon Iwabuchi's men would be reduced to fighting principally with light machine
guns, rifles, and hand grenades. Even so, they were to demonstrate that they
were capable of conducting a most tenacious and fanatic defense.
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