February 1945

Why was the battle fought? One of the reasons given was “General MacArthur’s personal obsession with Manila as a symbol of his promised return. Until he could hold the victory parade in the city and publicly hand power back to a Filipino Commonwealth government, his self-appointed task was incomplete… he viewed the capture of Manila as the key to victory, deciding to surround the enemy leaving them no avenue of escape. When this decision was carried out, Manila was doomed. As the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu pointed out more than 2,400 years ago, it is an integral aspect of the art of war to ‘leave a way of escape to a surrounded enemy’.”

Even before the city had been secured, there were detailed “Plans for Entry of the Commander-in-Chief and Official Party into the City of Manila,” issued by General Headquarters, Southwest Pacific Area, dated Feb. 2, 1945.

It was only on March 3 that Manila was completely in American hands and the organized resistance ended. A few days earlier, General MacArthur, speaking at Malacañang Palace, formally announced the reestablishment of of the Commonwealth government.

The tally of fatalities involved in Manila’s recapture was: 1,010 Americans, 16,665 Japanese (counted dead), and approximately 100,000 civilian inhabitants. In the fire raid on Tokyo in March 1945, 84,000 were killed. In the Hiroshima atomic bombing, casualties came up to 78,150. The destruction of Manila was on the same scale as the destruction of Warsaw, Poland, and slightly less than that of Berlin or Stalingrad.

The authors point out that “the manner in which hospitals and residential areas were systematically bombarded by US artillery is really indefensible. The desire of any commander to protect his men’s lives is understandable; it is what is expected of him. Where the line is drawn is when the guns of war are loosed upon inhabited areas where the enemy is either not present at all or present in such small numbers as not to justify carpet bombardment. There comes a time when the civilian population, even when it is not of one’s own nationality [they were friendly civilians—Filipinos], has to be a key consideration in deciding on the means employed.”