Who won the Battle of Manila in 1945?
The United States and the Philippine Commonwealth won. Between 3 February and 3 March 1945 XIV Corps, helped by Filipino guerrillas, destroyed Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi's garrison of nearly 17,000 men. The cost was terrible: much of the city lay in ruins and an estimated 100,000 civilians had died.2
From 3 February to 3 March 1945 American troops, helped by Filipino guerrillas, fought a Japanese naval and army garrison for Manila, capital of the Philippine Commonwealth. The battle ended almost three years of Japanese occupation, but a month of street fighting, shelling, fire and mass killing left much of the city destroyed and an estimated 100,000 Filipino civilians dead.3
Background: the road back to Manila
In December 1941 Douglas MacArthur declared Manila an open city and withdrew to Bataan and Corregidor, so Japanese troops entered without a fight on 2 January 1942. After the American victory at Leyte Gulf, American forces landed at Lingayen Gulf on Luzon on 9 January 1945.4
Yamashita's plan and Iwabuchi's decision
General Tomoyuki Yamashita, commanding the Japanese 14th Area Army, meant to fight a long campaign in the mountains of Luzon, not in Manila's streets. Robert Ross Smith, author of the US Army official history, writes that he contemplated no defense of the city and ordered its evacuation; the historian Gregory Kupsky also says he ordered a withdrawal. The navy disagreed. Vice Admiral Denshichi Okochi set up a Manila Naval Defense Force under Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, ordered to destroy the port and bridges, and naval officers, the historian Hitoshi Nagai notes, insisted on defending Manila to the end.5
Who decided to fight is still debated. Smith blames divided command and vague orders: General Yokoyama of the Shimbu Group asked only for a "firm defense", which even Iwabuchi's operations officer read as implying a later withdrawal. Dan Olmsted of the National WWII Museum, reviewing James M. Scott's Rampage, writes that Iwabuchi fought against orders; Nagai describes commanders who resolved, after long argument, to hold the city.6
The two forces
Iwabuchi commanded nearly 17,000 men, about 12,500 sailors and 4,500 soldiers, some 10,000 of them inside the city limits by Smith's count. Few were trained for ground combat: they were airfield and service personnel, crews of ships sunk in the bay and even Japanese civilians put into uniform. They relied on fortified concrete buildings, barricades, mines and automatic weapons stripped from wrecked ships and aircraft.7
Against them came XIV Corps under Oscar Griswold, part of General Krueger's Sixth Army: the 37th Infantry and 1st Cavalry Divisions from the north, later joined by the 11th Airborne Division from the south, with Filipino guerrillas guiding the columns. MacArthur was theater commander.8
The race to Santo Tomas and Bilibid
The first priority was the prisoners. On the evening of 3 February advance troops of the 1st Cavalry Division reached the University of Santo Tomas, where about 4,000 Allied civilians had been interned for almost three years; the official history counts some 3,500 freed that night and 275 more held as hostages until the guards were granted safe conduct; its guerrilla guide, Captain Manuel Colayco, was mortally wounded, Rappler notes. On 4 February American troops reached Old Bilibid Prison, which held American prisoners of war.9
Street fighting and the artillery decision
According to the official history, by 10 February the two divisions had cleared Manila north of the Pasig, and the 37th Division had begun crossing to the south bank on 7 February. There the troops met fortified buildings. To protect the city, MacArthur's headquarters and Sixth Army at first allowed only observed artillery fire on pinpointed targets, and MacArthur forbade air attacks inside the city.10
The restrictions did not last. Faced with heavy losses and few replacements, the commanders decided to pound every building that held up the advance, sparing only churches and hospitals known to shelter civilians, a rule that often failed. Kupsky calls the shelling indiscriminate, an open attempt to reduce American casualties; Olmsted writes that the decision did not come easily. By 12 February, the official history records, the Japanese naval force was surrounded.11
Intramuros
The Japanese core position was Intramuros, the old walled Spanish city, ringed by fortified government buildings. MacArthur refused air strikes on it, writing that bombing a city "occupied by a friendly and allied population is unthinkable". Instead, Smith records, Griswold and General Beightler of the 37th Division fired a massive artillery preparation from 17 to 23 February, some of it point blank, and the infantry assaulted on 23 February. Smith concedes that the Walled City was almost razed, judging that "American lives were understandably far more valuable than historic landmarks". Only San Agustin survived among its old churches, Kupsky notes.12
Iwabuchi died around 26 February in the Agriculture Building, one of the last Japanese strongholds, by his own hand according to Nagai and Olmsted. The last organized resistance, in the Finance Building, ended on 3 March.13
How many people died in the Battle of Manila?
About 100,000 Filipino civilians died, according to the US Army official history, historians in Japan and the United States and the Memorare Manila monument. The Japanese garrison lost about 16,000 dead in and around the city; American units lost over 1,000 killed and about 5,500 wounded. Every figure is an estimate.
The civilians of Manila
Civilians died in the crossfire, under American shelling and at the hands of Japanese troops. Nagai shows how Japanese units, ordered to treat guerrillas as the enemy and unable to tell them from civilians, killed large numbers of people sheltering at places such as St. Paul's College, the German Club and De La Salle College between 9 and 12 February. At Fort Santiago, Rappler notes, the remains of about 600 people were found. Japanese troops also set whole neighborhoods alight to slow the attackers, Kupsky writes. How the toll divides between Japanese killings and American fire is argued: an Inquirer report and Rappler say most victims died at Japanese hands, while Nagai lists crossfire, American bombardment and Japanese atrocities together.14
Manila emerged in ruins: its government center wiped out, the port areas wrecked, public transport, water and power broken. Rappler calls it the second most devastated Allied capital of the war after Warsaw, and Kupsky attributes that judgment to an unnamed postwar investigation. Neither names the measure behind that ranking; the Polish capital's own fate is told in our page on the Warsaw Uprising.15
The American and Filipino side
For the American army Manila was a costly street battle in which commanders chose firepower to spare their soldiers, a choice the official history defends openly. For Filipinos gratitude for the end of the occupation mixes with grief and anger: Kupsky notes that survivors such as the writer Carmen Guerrero Nakpil resented the American tactics, and that ceremonies often prefer "The Battle for Manila" to the word liberation.16
The Japanese side
Iwabuchi's sailors had little chance. Japanese records quoted by Nagai describe men who felt like targets on a shooting range, and when ordered to break out in mid February Iwabuchi replied that escape was impossible. Early Japanese accounts, the Filipino historian Ricardo Trota Jose writes, framed the defense as gyokusai, an honorable death in battle, a term that passes over the killing of civilians. Japanese newspapers reported the atrocities in September 1945 on Allied orders, Nagai shows, yet the battle has since faded from memory in Japan; Jose adds that a 2007 NHK documentary showed many Japanese the events for the first time.17
Aftermath: Yamashita's trial
According to the International Crimes Database, Yamashita surrendered on 3 September 1945, was tried by an American military commission for failing to control his troops and permitting atrocities, and was sentenced to death on 7 December 1945. He was hanged on 23 February 1946. The idea that a commander may answer for crimes he should have known about became known as the Yamashita standard; critics argue that the evidence of his knowledge was thin.18
Memory and Manila today
In February 1995 the Memorare Manila 1945 monument was unveiled at the Plazuela de Santa Isabel in Intramuros, a sculpture by Peter de Guzman whose inscription, written according to the Inquirer by the National Artist Nick Joaquin, includes the lines "We have never forgotten them. Nor shall we ever forget." The Memorare Manila 1945 Foundation holds commemorations there. Scott, in Olmsted's summary, argues that Manila never recovered. See also the greatest battles of the Pacific War.19
