Burning City

BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC Burning City

The Japanese "fadeback" from Manila proved to be illusory. The enemy, it appeared, had not flatly lied when he boasted that the city was being fortified for resistance block by block, building by building; he had merely told a half-truth. It was not true in the northern sector of Manila, on the right bank of the Pasig River; it was all too true of the southern sector, on the left bank.

The enemy's whole behavior in Manila followed a planned dog-in-the-manger pattern. Early in December, a month before the landings at Lingayen Gulf, the Japs had installed demolition charges in large buildings. Flimsy warehouses had been stocked with drums of gasoline. Forty-eight hours after U.S. forces entered northern Manila. Jap demolition engineers pressed the buttons. Electrically connected charges went off in series. The main business district--eight blocks of the Calle Escolta--began to burn. There was no water pressure to fight the fires. Many Filipinos looked on apathetically, made no move to help U.S. soldiers tackling the hopeless job.

Fanned by a stiff wind from the Bay, the flames drove the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 148th Infantry (part of Ohio's 37th Division ) back from the Pasig River. The flames licked around Bilibid Prison, forcing evacuation of hundreds of civilian internees. All night the city was wreathed in fire. Next morning, as the sun burned coppery red through the pall of smoke, the two battalions of the 148th picked their way through debris and embers to the Pasig again.

At the Bridge. The Japs had blown the upstream bridges, and were all set to blow the Jones Bridge, nearest the Bay. Lieut. James P. Sutton. a Navy demolition expert, went out on the bridge and removed the detonators from sixty 110-lb. bombs. A few troops got across, but before additional units could be rushed to their support the enemy succeeded in blowing the bridge, anyway. It took days to get the next elements of the 37th across in small boats and "alligators."

At first the battle for southern Manila was against snipers, sporadic artillery fire and the blazes set by Jap demolitionists. Progress was fairly rapid. The 1st Cavalry Division swung around to the east, secured the water supply, and turned into the city to help the 37th.

At the approaches to the dock area, the Japs really showed what they could do. Their minefields were reported as dense as any the Germans laid in North Africa. Any position with heavy stone walls was turned into a strong point. Churches suited the Japs perfectly. One churchyard fortress had to be burned out with artillery, mortar fire and flamethrowers. The centuries-old walled city, the Intramuros, was a natural fortress. Colonel Lawrence K. ("Red") White, of the 148th, saw no hope of saving most of Manila's famous buildings. Where the Japs had artillery, he would use artillery, refusing to send unsupported infantry against guns. In one church, two machine guns were found beneath the altar. The 148th took heavy casualties: ambulances clanged monotonously in & out of the area.

The harder they were pressed, the harder the Japs fought. They had 5-in. naval guns on the second and third floors of the Philippine General Hospital. But this week, the U.S. cavalry and infantry had joined and the enemy was being "compressed into extinction."

The Squeeze. Across Manila Bay, on the west coast of Bataan, the 38th Division (Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia National Guardsmen), pushed southward ten miles from Olongapo and took Moron. Lieut. General Robert L. Eichelberger's Eighth Army was in contact with Lieut. General Walter Krueger's Sixth, and Bataan was sealed off. But there was yet no indication whether the Japs would defend Bataan, as U.S. and Philippine troops had defended it in 1942.

Far to the north. Major General Innis P. ("Bull") Swift's I Corps was corralling the Japs in their mountain strongholds. Here the fighting had been bitter since the first days of the campaign. Major General Edwin D. Patrick's 6th Division (Regular Army) pushed armored units east from Bongabon to the Pacific. That move cut the Japs off. The 32nd ("Red Arrow") Division, composed originally of Michigan and Wisconsin National Guardsmen, hacked its way along the Villa Verde Trail toward the upper Cagayan River. That move put the squeeze on the cutoff Japs.

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