75: Manila

Battle of Manila

The bloodiest fighting of the Philippines campaign occurred in the Battle of Manila between February 3rd and March 3rd, 1945. Manila residents suffered horrifically. Street fighting there left the capital in ruins. An estimated 100,000 to 150,000 Filipino civilians, in a city of 1 million, died. Many residents were killed by U.S. shells or slaughtered by Japanese marines "in a bloodbath that rivaled the 1937 rape of Nanking in China."  By the time MacArthur marched into the city a city that had been one of the finest in Asia was a smoldering heap. The historian William Manchester wrote, "The devastation of Manila was one of the great tragedies of World War II. Of Allied cities in those war years, only Warsaw suffered more. Seventy percent of the utilities, 75 percent of the factories, 80 percent of southern residential district and 100 percent of the business district were razed."  Manila was captured by American forces through bloody street to street fighting. Fort Santiago, at the bayside end of Intramuros, gained notoriety in 1945 when Americans staged an eight-day siege. After pounding their way through dirt and concrete barriers two stories high and 40 feet thick, victorious GI's found the bodies of 600 Filipinos and Americans in the dungeons of Fort Santiago. 

Corregidor was retaken in February 1945. In an assault lead by America paratroopers dropped from cargo planes, bombers blasted the fortress so heavily that an American soldier remarked, "We had the impression of standing on jelly." When the 15-day campaign was over 210 American were killed and 790 were wounded (280 of these in landing mishaps). Of the 5,200 Japanese who guarded the fortress only 50 were believed to have survived. The 513 prisoners who remained alive in the Bataan Death March Prison were dramatically rescued by the 8th Ranger Battalion, which slipped through the jungles, with the help of Filipino guerrillas, past Japanese encampments to the prison. In a hail of gunfire the Rangers fought their way into the prison and loaded the prisoners onto water buffalo that carried them to safety. Fighting continued until Japan's formal surrender on September 2, 1945. The Philippines had suffered great loss of life and tremendous physical destruction by the time the war was over. An estimated 1 million Filipinos had been killed, a large proportion during the final months of the war. 

Atrocities at the Battle of Manila: In the Rape of Manila. men, women children were slaughtered on the streets and in private homes, churches, hospitals and school by rampaging Japanese occupation troops. One Japanese soldier later told the New York Times: "In the beginning, we could not kill even a man. But we managed to kill him. Then we hesitated to kill a woman. But we managed to kill her, too. Then we could kill children. We came to think as if we were just killing insects."  In the village of Lipa, outside of Manila, over 1,000 people were killed. More than 400 people were thrown down a well. One woman died when her head was smashed by a Japanese soldier while she combed her hair. Describing the massacre of 2,000 people at the village of Calamba, south of Manila in February 1945, one former Japanese soldier told the New York Times, "They took the old men in a truck to the church. They used a rope to strangle them. It was an easier and cheaper way to kill them than with rifles and bullets."  One Filipino woman told the Washington Post she saw Japanese soldiers kill her mother and sister in a hail of bullets. Her two-year-old sister survived, but then a Japanese soldier walked over and tossed the girl in the air and speared her with his bayonet. 

Killing of Civilians in the Battle of Manila:  According to the Presidential Museum and Library of the Republic of the Philippines: “The massacres committed by Imperial Japanese troops on the civilian population of Manila in February 1945 are among the more horrifying tragedies of World War II in the Pacific theater. Approximately 100,000 civilians in the City of Manila were killed indiscriminately and deliberately. According to the XIV Corps Inspector General's report on the Manila atrocities, the following war crimes had been committed: 1) Bayoneting, shooting, and bombing of unarmed civilians—men, women, and children—with rifles, pistols, machine guns, and grenades. 2) Herding large numbers of civilians—men, women, and children—into buildings, barring the doors and windows, and setting fire to the structures. 3) Throwing grenades into dugouts, where unarmed civilians were taking cover; burying alive those who were not killed by the grenades.  “4) Assembling men into large groups, tying their hands, and then bayoneting, beheading, or shooting them. 5) Theft from civilians of money, valuables, food, and the looting and burning of their homes. 6) Blindfolding and restraining Chinese and Filipino men, and then beheading them with a sabre on a chopping block. 7) Torturing both military prisoners of war and civilians by beating, kicking their faces, burning, and making them assume contorted positions for long periods of time until they lost consciousness, to make them reveal information. 8) General disregard of the rights of prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. 9) The taking of as many as a hundred girls at a time by force to serve as “comfort women” to Japanese troops. 10) The killing of refugees, doctors, and nurses at the Philippine Red Cross Headquarters, disregarding the rights of the Red Cross under the Geneva Convention.  With little or no reason at all, Japanese soldiers would shoot, bayonet or throw hand grenades at groups of helpless civilians. The streets were further fortified with minefields and pillboxes, leaving many civilians no choice but to stay in their homes. For those who attempted to leave or even cross the streets, the Japanese would mow them down with machine guns. Many of these atrocities were mentioned in the War Crime Trials against the commanders of the Imperial Japanese Forces.  

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