Chapter XIII
Manila: The Defenders and the DefensesThe City
Manila is a city--a statement that, having been made, leaves far too much unsaid.1 It is a city of contrasts--contrasts deriving from unbroken centuries of existence and a polyglot population. It is a city of parts, capable of being all things to all men. There are sections that cannot be called modern in any sense of the word. There are sections that are ultramodern. It boasts movie houses, filling stations, night clubs, slums, dark alleys, and broad, tree-lined boulevards. There are hospitals and universities; shipping offices and department stores; private clubs and public parks; race tracks and cockpits; an Olympic Games stadium and yacht clubs; street-car tracks and bus lines; pony-drawn taxis and railroad stations. A touch of medieval Spain rubs harshly against modern port facilities; centuries-old churches and monasteries face gasworks and breweries. Nipa-thatched huts house part of the teeming population, while for others home is a modern air-conditioned apartment. Manila is a city.
Established at the site of an ancient Tagalog village, Manila, whose existence antedates that of any urban center of the United States except St. Augustine, was founded in 1571 by Spanish colonizer Miguel Lopez de Legaspi. Independent--that is, not under the administration of any province--the city, in 1945, covered an area of nearly 14.5 square miles. It stretched about 5.5 miles north to south along the eastern shore of Manila Bay and extended inland approximately 4 miles. With the surrounding suburbs and small towns of Rizal Province, the city formed a public utilities service area known as Greater Manila. An area of almost 110 square miles, Greater Manila extended from the Parañaque River north some ten miles to include Grace Park and inland, with irregular boundaries, about eight miles to the Marikina River.
The city's population had increased greatly since the outbreak of war, mainly as the result of a job-seeking influx from the provinces. In December 1941 Manila's population was about 625,000 and the total for Greater Manila was nearly 850,000. The peak of growth was reached in the early fall of 1944--people began to move out again after Allied air attacks started in September. Just before the air attacks began, the population of the city
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CENTRAL MANILA
proper was over 800,000, and that of Greater Manila was some 1,100,000.
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Map VI
The Capture of Manila: the Encirclement
3-12 February 1945The business district lay in the west-central part of Manila north of the Pasig River, which flows westward into Manila Bay through the center of the city. (Map VI) Likewise, most of the retail stores, movie houses, restaurants, and other service and amusement outlets, as well as many manufacturing plants, were north of the Pasig. Tondo District, on the bay front, was the most populous residential area, housing laborers, fishermen, and others in the lower income brackets, often in substandard dwellings. To the east of the business area lay better residential districts, which, antedating World War I for the most part, housed the older European families and many of the middle and upper class Filipinos. On the north bank of the Pasig, near the center of the city, was located the Filipino White House, Malacañan Palace, once the seat of Spanish and American governors-general.
South of the Pasig, near the river's mouth, lay the old Spanish walled city, Intramuros, bordered on three sides by a filled moat that had been converted into a public park. Originally located on the bay front--construction of the interior stone citadel, Fort Santiago, was begun in 1590--Intramuros, in 1945, was half a mile inland. Along its west wall the bay front was reclaimed for the construction of modern port facilities, including piers, warehousing, fuel storage, and machine shops. The advent of war interrupted development of a similar port area north of the Pasig's mouth.
Beyond Intramuros and the port area, much of Manila south of the Pasig was composed of modern residential districts, hospitals, government buildings, schools, apartment houses, and parks. In addition, there was considerable industrial development along the south bank in the eastern part of the city. Southern Manila was developed almost entirely after the American occupation, most of it during the period between the two World Wars. The residential suburbs of Greater Manila sprang up largely in the '20's and '30's, their mushrooming growth cut short in December 1941.
Most of Manila's streets were paved before the war, but many of them could not stand up under constant military traffic, and maintenance had fallen far behind during the Japanese occupation. North of the Pasig many streets were narrow, little better than alleys. There they radiated in all directions from central plazas, crossed each other at various angles, and ended abruptly to create streets along which fields of fire were limited to one or two blocks. Within the city limits one railroad and five vehicular bridges crossed the Pasig, but the Japanese destroyed all of them in 1945. South of the river the city streets were generally broader and, even in Intramuros, most were set at right angles.2
Types of construction within the city varied considerably. The flimsy houses of Tondo District were highly flammable, while the other residences north of the Pasig were either frame or a combination of frame and stone or brick. The buildings of the business district were of reinforced concrete; the government buildings south of the river were constructed to withstand earthquakes and, in appearance, were not unlike many of the government buildings in Washington, D.C.
The outer walls of Intramuros, up to forty feet thick at the bottom and in places reaching a height of twenty-five feet, were constructed of great stone blocks, and the buildings within the walls were constructed all or partially of stone. Many of the homes south of the river combined wood with brick, stucco, or cinder block, while the apartment houses were of reinforced concrete.
Much of Manila remained relatively untouched by war until February 1945, although Japanese air raids in December 1941 had wrought some damage in the port area and Intramuros. As they evacuated the city, MacArthur's Fil-American troops undertook demolitions within the port area and fired fuel installations in the Paco, Pandacan, and Santa Ana industrial districts lying along both sides of the river in the east-central part of the city.3 The port area and railroad facilities were struck in late 1944 and in January 1945 by land-based planes of the Allied Air Forces and by carrier-based aircraft of Halsey's Third Fleet. But destruction caused by these air attacks was minor compared with that wrought during the fighting within Manila in February and March 1945.
The Japanese Defenses
The Background
It was not Yamashita's intention to preside over the destruction of Manila.4 Since he had decided to let the vital Central Plains--Manila Bay area go by default, the defense of Manila to him would be meaningless. He reasoned:
First the population of Manila is approximately one million; therefore, it is impossible to feed them. The second reason is that the buildings are very inflammable. The third reason is that because [Manila] is on flat land it requires tremendous . . . strength to defend it. For these reasons my policy or plan was to leave Manila outside the combat zone.5
When, in December, Yamashita decided to evacuate troops and supplies from the city, he planned to leave behind a small Army force to maintain order, protect supply movements, and, ultimately, to blow bridges over the Pasig and Marikina Rivers in order to delay Allied occupation of the entire metropolitan area and slow development of an Allied drive against the Shimbu Group, east of the city. The Japanese would hold the Pasig bridges only so long as the spans remained useful for supply movements--they had no plan for a last-ditch stand at the bridges.
Yet, as the XIV Corps and 11th Airborne Division approached the city it became obvious that Manila was strongly defended. There had been a change in Japanese plans.
The change reflected no reversal of Yamashita's policy. Rather, it mirrored a picture of disagreement and confusion existing among the lower-level headquarters
under Yamashita's nominal control, and especially between the Army and Navy echelons of his command. Contrary to Yamashita's expressed desires, these conflicts led to a decision to give battle within the city--a development that was a cancerous growth on the 14th Area Army's plan for the defense of Luzon and that stemmed from a series of compromises among Japanese Army and Navy commanders in the Manila area.
Until late December 1944 the protection of Manila had been charged to Maj. Gen. Takashi Kobayashi's Manila Defense Force, roughly equivalent to two RCT's in strength and armament. When, on 27 December, Yamashita organized the Shimbu Group for a final defensive stand in the mountain country east and northeast of Manila, he placed the city and the Manila Defense Force under General Yokoyama, Shimbu Group and 8th Division commander. Since Yamashita contemplated no defense of Manila, one of Yokoyama's principal missions was to oversee the evacuation of the city, and he directed General Kobayashi to speed the movement, which was already under way. Two Army units, responsible for carrying out the evacuation and assigned demolitions, were to remain in and around the city for the nonce. The first was the Noguchi Detachment, two provisional infantry battalions and supporting troops under Col. Katsuzo Noguchi. Stationed within the northern part of the city and in the northern suburbs, the detachment was to withdraw eastward once it had knocked out the Pasig bridges. Another reinforced provisional infantry battalion under Capt. Saburo Abe was stationed south of the city and was responsible for blocking the southern approaches along the narrow Hagonoy Isthmus, separating Manila Bay and Laguna de Bay.
Throughout December and January, however, while Army units were pulling out of the city and environs, naval troops were moving in. As it had for Yamashita, the Allied move to Mindoro in December had prompted a flurry of changes in plans by Vice Adm. Denshichi Okochi, the commander of the Southwestern Area Fleet and the ranking Japanese naval officer in the Philippines.6 Okochi, apparently on his own initiative, decided to strengthen the Navy's defenses of Manila and he assigned some 4,000 men to a new organization that he designated the Manila Naval Defense Force--not to be confused with General Kobayashi's Manila Defense Force. To head the new force, Okochi called upon Admiral Iwabuchi, also the commander of the 31st Naval Special Base Force, which already had troops in and around Manila.
Okochi planned to send the remainder of the large number of naval troops in and around Manila up to the Kembu area, but supply and transportation problems forestalled completion of this movement. Thus, when he departed for Baguio with Yamashita early in January, Okochi left Admiral Iwabuchi in command of a Manila Naval Defense Force that, with subsequent minor accretions,
numbered nearly 16,000 naval troops. Iwabuchi's missions were to hold Nichols Field and the Cavite naval base area, mine Manila Bay, direct Navy suicide boat operations in the bay, arrange for the evacuation of ships and small craft of the 31st Naval Special Base Force, and, ultimately, assure the destruction of all Japanese naval installations and supplies in the Manila and Cavite areas. The program of demolitions Okochi directed Iwabuchi to undertake was far more extensive than that assigned to the Army troops.
When he left for Baguio, Admiral Okochi transferred the operational control of the Manila Naval Defense Force to General Yokoyama and the Shimbu Group. But operational control under the principles of unity of command did not mean the same thing within the Japanese armed forces that it did in the Allied services during World War II--it also did not mean the same thing to the Japanese Navy that it did to the Japanese Army. Thus, the control authority Okochi actually transferred was so limited as to contain the seeds of many disagreements between General Yokoyama and Admiral Iwabuchi. When it came down to cases, the Shimbu Group would have complete operational control of the Manila Naval Defense Force only within an area plainly of primary Army interest and even then only after Iwabuchi's command had successfully completed all the missions Okochi had assigned it.
Manifestly, some of these missions involved operations on land--theoretically, on Luzon, the exclusive responsibility of the Japanese Army. But to the Japanese Navy, the assignment of troops to the Army for operational control meant control only for ground combat operations actually conducted under Army command in an Army area. The fact that Admiral Iwabuchi could carry out his naval assignments while conducting ground combat operations as directed by the Shimbu Group did not alter the situation. He would not withdraw his forces from Manila until he felt he had executed his naval missions, and, whatever operations he might conduct under Shimbu Group directives, his prior naval orders would continue to take precedence over any directives General Yokoyama might issue.7
It was not until 6 January that the Shimbu Group commander learned that his operational control over the Manila Naval Defense Force would be limited to the degree implicit in the peculiarly naval missions assigned to Admiral Iwabuchi. And at the same time General Yokoyama was informed, to his evident surprise, that Iwabuchi had 16,000-odd naval troops in and around Manila. Yokoyama had based his plans for delaying action, bridge destruction, and supply evacuation on the assumption that there were no more than 4,000 naval troops in the area in addition to the approximately 3,750 Army troops of the Noguchi Detachment and the Abe Battalion. He considered these forces sufficient to carry out assigned missions and he could evacuate that number from the city without undue trouble once Allied forces arrived, an event he estimated would occur no earlier than 20 February.
General Yokoyama called a series of Manila Naval Defense Force-Shimbu
Group staff conferences to discuss the obvious complications arising from Iwabuchi's divided responsibilities and the size of the naval commitment. In the course of the discussions, which took place between 8 and 13 January, naval officers made it clear that, no matter what Shimbu Group's plans, it was the consensus of the naval staff that Manila should be defended to the bitter end. Any withdrawal from the city, naval representatives pointed out, would prevent the Manila Naval Defense Force from executing the missions Admiral Okochi had assigned it. Moreover, most of the naval staff officers felt that Manila was a natural fortress that could easily be defended at great cost to Allied forces. Therefore, the naval staff was not anxious to abandon the city meekly without a struggle. In addition, many members of Iwabuchi's staff were dissatisfied with the positions in the mountains east of Manila that Yokoyama had assigned to the Manila Naval Defense Force for a last stand. Admiral Iwabuchi just about settled all arguments when he pointed out that his force had "no alternative but to carry out its primary duty of defending naval facilities."8
Faced with the fait accompli of prior naval orders that he could not countermand, Yokoyama had little choice but to assent to Iwabuchi's general concept for the defense of Manila, however unwise he might feel that concept to be. And, in accordance with the practice in the Japanese and Allied services, he provided for unified command within the city, placing the Army troops still stationed there under Admiral Iwabuchi as the senior officer on the spot--thereby making the best out of a bad situation. Extracting such concessions from the Manila Naval Defense Force as his limited operational control powers permitted, the Shimbu Group commander persuaded Iwabuchi to organize a special naval force to defend the San Juan del Monte area, lying between the city and the Shimbu Group's main positions to the east. He further convinced Iwabuchi of the necessity for strengthening the defenses at Fort McKinley, southeast of Manila, and of the wisdom of setting up an alternate headquarters there, presumably in anticipation of ultimate withdrawal from the city. Expecting existing communications between Manila and the Shimbu Group command post in the mountains to be severed once the Allies reached the city, Yokoyama also saw to it that a secondary wire communications net was established between his mountain headquarters and Fort McKinley.
Not losing sight of his principal mission--protracted defensive operations in the mountainous terrain east and northeast of Manila--General Yokoyama, late in January, issued somewhat ambiguous orders concerning the defense of the city and its immediate environs. The Shimbu Group, while concentrating its main force in its mountain strongholds, was to "firmly defend Manila and Fort McKinley and check their use by the enemy, at the same time destroying the enemy's fighting strength and preparing to counterattack the enemy rear from the main positions when a favorable situation arises." The Manila Naval Defense Force, in turn, was directed to "defend
its already-established positions and crush the enemy's fighting strength."9
Despite the seemingly definitive wording of these orders, an ambiguity arises from the fact that Yokoyama used the term koshu, usually rendered as "firm defense," in regard to the plans for holding Manila. Quite weak as the wording of Japanese orders go, koshu by no means implied a fight to the death. Moreover, since Japanese Army orders did not lean toward understatement in such matters, the term seems indicative of a desire to conduct a rather limited holding action followed by an early withdrawal. Even Admiral Iwabuchi's operations officer interpreted the use of koshu as meaning that Yokoyama would order a general withdrawal once battle had been joined within the city.10 Apparently the fact that no specific mention of withdrawal was contained in the Shimbu Group orders merely reflected a reluctance on the part of Yokoyama to impair the morale of the troops in Manila--a regard for the sensibilities to which the Japanese forces were singularly addicted.
Defensive Dispositions and Plans
Iwabuchi's mainland area of responsibility extended inland from a point on Manila Bay about two and a half miles north of the city northeast to Novaliches, east to the Marikina River, south to Laguna de Bay's western shores, and then west across the Hagonoy Isthmus to the base of Cavite Peninsula.11 The whole area covered an area of approximately 250 square miles. To defend this zone Iwabuchi had under his command nearly 17,000 troops--about 12,500 Navy personnel and 4,500 Army troops. The remaining 3,500 naval troops included in Iwabuchi's total of 16,000-odd naval personnel the admiral had either left on islands in Manila Bay or had sent into the mountains east of Manila to join the main body of the Shimbu Group. Iwabuchi assigned some 14,000 of the troops he controlled in and around Manila to three combat organizations for defensive operations. A fourth command contained forces nominally afloat but actually based either on the city's waterfront or on the bay islands; a fifth command was composed of engineers, supply troops, medical units, and so forth. Iwabuchi gave this fifth group the blanket title "attached units."12
Iwabuchi retained approximately 10,000 troops within the Manila city limits, 8,000 of them members of the three combat commands. The northernmost combat command, labeled Northern Force, was commanded by Colonel Noguchi, whom Iwabuchi made responsible for the defense of the entire city north of the Pasig, Intramuros south of the river, and the suburbs north, northeast, and east of Manila to the boundaries of the Manila Naval Defense Force. In addition to the 2d and 3d Provisional Infantry Battalions and supporting Army troops of his own Noguchi Detachment,
Noguchi had under his command the 1st Independent Naval Battalion. His force totaled about 4,500 men in all.
Posting small Army detachments along the northern approaches to Manila, Noguchi stationed the 1st Independent Naval Battalion in the San Juan del Monte suburb, east of the city. One of his Army battalions held the Pasig River bridges; the other, with miscellaneous service units attached, set up defenses in Intramuros. General Yokoyama transferred various Army shipping units, previously forming part of the 3d Maritime Transport Command, to Noguchi's control; the colonel left these troops in the port areas north and south of the Pasig's mouth.
The Central Force, commanded directly by Admiral Iwabuchi and comprising about 5,000 naval troops, held the remainder of Manila. Central Force's 1st and 2d Naval Battalions were in defensive positions throughout the southern part of the city. Headquarters Sector Unit13 and the 5th Naval Battalion (the latter withdrew from Cavite on 2 February after completing demolitions there) concentrated in the government building, park, and private club area of Ermita District, east and south of Intramuros. Here Iwabuchi had his headquarters, protected by a Headquarters Battalion of 750 men. The Central Force was also responsible for holding Nielson Field and Makati, a suburb just southeast of the city, but had few troops stationed at those places.
The Southern Force, over 5,000 men under Capt. Takusue Furuse, IJN, defended Nichols Field, Fort McKinley to the northeast of the airfield, and the Hagonoy Isthmus. Furuse stationed the 3d and 4th Naval Battalions at Nichols Field and Fort McKinley and made the Army's Abe Battalion responsible for holding the Hagonoy Isthmus. Captain Abe's mission was to defend along Route 1 and Route 59, the latter lying along the western shore of Laguna de Bay. With minor detachments to the south and a company at Parañaque, the bulk of the Abe Battalion was dug in at and near Mabato Point, on the Laguna de Bay shore across the isthmus from Parañaque. So disposed, the unit was hardly in position to execute all of its missions.
Generally, the defenses on the south were stronger than those on the north, for two reasons. When General Kobayashi's Manila Defense Force withdrew from the northern area it had left behind only the Noguchi Detachment to fill the void created by the evacuation. True, Kobayashi, his command now redesignated the Kobayashi Force, retained control of the 3d Surface Raiding Base Force--another group of boat squadrons and base battalions like those stationed in the 11th Airborne Division's area--but the 3,000-odd men of this unit were disposed about five miles northwest of Manila and had been cut off by the 37th Division.
Second, Japanese naval headquarters on Luzon had believed that the principal Allied invasions would come from the south and had therefore long devoted its energies to preparing defenses on that side of Manila. It was, indeed, not until the last week in January that Iwabuchi seems to have learned of XIV Corps'
progress, or at least until he attached any significance to that corps' drive down the Central Plains. By then, of course, it was too late for him to redeploy his forces.
For the rest, Iwabuchi's plan for the defense of Manila was rather vague, promising only a suicidal fight to the death in place. By such a static defense he hoped to inflict heavy casualties upon Sixth Army and deny to the Allies for some time the facilities of Manila and Manila Bay. To help realize the latter objective, he planned extensive demolitions that ostensibly called for the destruction of purely military installations and whatever supplies were left in the city. "Military installations" or "military facilities" are loose terms at best, and for Iwabuchi they included the port area, bridges, transportation facilities, the water supply system, and electric power installations.
While the admiral apparently did not plan wholesale, wanton demolitions, even the destruction of the purely military installations would have its effect upon the civil population. Once started by a body of half-trained troops hastily organized into provisional units and whose only future is death in combat, demolitions are impossible to control. Leaving aside this problem, it is obvious that a fire resulting from demolitions set off in a supply dump will not necessarily obey "orders" to confine itself to the dump. Intent is one thing--the results of the performance another.
The Means of Defense
Tactically, Iwabuchi's defensive preparations left much to be desired. One line of defensive positions, while usually (but not always) containing mutually supporting strongpoints, did not necessarily give way to a second line of prepared positions; seldom were any two lines mutually supporting. Little provision seems to have been made for routes of withdrawal from one line to another. The core of the defenses, if any existed, was Intramuros, the approaches to which were protected by a semicircle of fortified government buildings and schools extending from the General Post Office, on the south bank of the Pasig about three blocks off the northeast corner of Intramuros, around to the Army-Navy Club, on the bay front a few hundred yards south of the walled city,
A prime characteristic of the defenses within the city was improvisation based upon the ready, man-made defenses of heavily reinforced concrete buildings. The Japanese fortified building entrances with sandbags; they set up barricades along corridors and stairways; they chopped firing slits for rifles and machine guns through outside walls; they dug tunnels that connected the basements of various buildings or led to outside pillboxes and bunkers. While the defenders constructed many bunkers and pillboxes throughout the city, they depended principally on the buildings, and most of the standard military defensive installations were located in the Southern Force's area of responsibility.
The Manila Naval Defense Force barricaded streets and intersections throughout the city with all types of obstacles: barbed-wire entanglements; oil drums filled with dirt or cement; rails set into the pavement; hastily dug ditches; trolley cars, trucks, and automobiles; even heavy factory machinery wrenched from interior mountings. The defenders employed
mines of every conceivable type and improvisation, including Japanese Navy beach mines and depth charges, artillery shells, aerial bombs, mortar shells, and standard Japanese Army antipersonnel and antitank mines. Most mine fields were poorly camouflaged and although the Japanese covered some with fire from prepared positions, they had established no pattern that tied one mine field into another or related a field to major defenses.
Another outstanding characteristic of the Japanese defense preparations was the great number of automatic weapons, a number all out of proportion to the troop strength. The basic infantry weapon, the rifle, played a very secondary role, being used mainly for the protection of the automatic weapons and for last-ditch personnel defense. The much publicized--but seldom encountered--Japanese sniper played no significant part. Indeed, after the battle XIV Corps reported:
Despite frequent mention by our troops of "snipers," the sniper as a carefully placed individual rifleman specializing in long-range selective firing seldom made an appearance (hardly any telescopic rifle sights were found in Manila).14
On the other hand, the Japanese used various types of grenades with great abandon, especially in the defense of buildings.
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JAPANESE BARRICADE on Padre BurgosIn preparing for extensive employment of automatic weapons, the Manila Naval Defense Force had removed many such arms from ships sunk in the bay and from aircraft lying destroyed or damaged on the numerous outlying airfields.15 Ordnance troops adapted these for ground use, and also set up for employment against ground targets many of the antiaircraft weapons with which Manila and environs bristled before the Allies entered the city. The principal automatic weapons upon which the defenders set great store were the aircraft and antiaircraft 20-mm. and 25-mm. machine cannon. They had also a few 40-mm. antiaircraft weapons, as well as innumerable infantry and antiaircraft machine guns of lesser caliber. Mortars
played a large part in the defense; literally hundreds of these weapons, varying from 50-mm. to 150-mm in caliber, were available to Iwabuchi's men.
The basic heavy artillery weapon was the Japanese Navy's dual-purpose 120-mm. gun. The Manila Naval Defense Force emplaced over fifty of these weapons in and around the city, most of them in the Nichols Field-Fort McKinley area. In addition, the Japanese had some 76.2-mm. dual-purpose guns, a few Army 75-mm. antiaircraft weapons adapted for ground fire, a scattering of 75-mm. Army field artillery pieces, and some Army 47-mm. antitank guns. Finally, for the first time during the war in the Pacific, the Japanese employed rockets to an appreciable extent. Most of those available to the Manila Naval Defensive Force were 200-mm. Navy rockets, but the force also possessed some 200-mm. Army rockets and a few Navy 450-mm. giants.
Practically none of Iwabuchi's troops had any unit training in ground combat operations and many had very little individual infantry training. The proficiency of men assigned to crew-served weapons usually left much to be desired. Perhaps the best units were the Army provisional infantry battalions, many members of which were infantry or other ground force replacements stranded in Manila. But few of these men were first line, and the vast majority of even the Army personnel were members of the service branches.
Naval units were in even worse state. The only troops among them having any semblance of ground combat training were the few members of the ground defense sections of the 31st Naval Special Base Force. For the rest, the naval troops were aircraft maintenance men, airfield engineers, crews from ships sunk in the bay, casuals, other service personnel of all types, and even some Japanese civilians pressed into uniform.
Admiral Iwabuchi had time neither to train his troops nor to complete defensive preparations. Even so, his defenses were strong and, although held by inferior troops, could prove formidable when manned by men with little thought of escape. He defended Manila with what he had, and what he had was sufficient to cause XIV Corps great trouble.
Footnotes
1. This section is based principally upon: AGS SWPA Terrain Study No. 94, Central Luzon, vol. I, Text and Maps, 18 Oct 44; AGS SWPA Terrain Handbook No. 41, Manila, 21 Nov 44; AGS SWPA Terrain Handbook No. 41-A, Manila City, 6 Dec 44; Encyclopædia Britannica, 1952, XIV, 806-08. Throughout this and subsequent chapters on Manila, descriptive material has been supplemented by the author's own observations, since he was stationed in Manila for almost nine months in 1945 and revisited it in April 1957.
2. Like the rivers throughout Luzon, the streets in Manila are subject to sudden name changes, apparently on the basis of long usage.
3. See Morton, Fall of the Philippines, pp. 234-35.
4. The general sources for the remainder of this chapter are: SWPA Hist Series, II, 452-63, and the sources cited therein, copies available in OCMH files; USA vs. Yamashita, Yamashita testimony, pp. 3522-23, 3527-28, 3532-33; ibid., Lt Gen Shizuo Yokoyama (CG Shimbu Gp) testimony, pp. 2672-73, 2681-86, 2693; ibid., Muto testimony, pp. 3015-18, 3062; ibid., Col Hiroshi Hashimoto (CofS Manila Defense Force) testimony, pp. 3113-17; 14th Area Army Opns Orders and Plans contained in Trans, III, Items 1 and 3; Japanese Studies in WW II, No. 125, Philippine Area Naval Opns, pt. IV, pp. 5-8; Asano Statement, States, I, 87-95; Hashimoto Statement, States I, 278-81.
5. USA vs. Yamashita, Yamashita testimony, p. 3527.
6. Additional material on Japanese naval plans and depositions is from: USA vs. Yamashita, Okochi testimony, pp. 2546-47; Statement of Capt Masayoshi Koma, IJN (Staff Southwest Area Fleet), States, II, 293; Statement of Comdr Shigeichi Yamamoto (Staff Southwest Area Fleet), States, IV, 488; Statement of Lt Comdr Koichi Kayashima (Staff Manila Naval Defense Force and 31st Naval Special Base Force), States, II, 157-70; Statement of Col Shujiro Kobayashi (Staff Shimbu Group, not to be confused with General Kobayashi), States, II, 241.
7. For further analysis of this peculiar command situation, see A. Frank Reel, The Case of General Yamashita (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949).
8. The words are Colonel Asano's, repeating Iwabuchi, and appear in Asano Statement, Statements, I, 93. Yokoyama, in his testimony cited previously, makes essentially the same point.
9. The quotations are from SWPA Hist Series, II, 458.
10. Kayashima Statement, States, II, 170.
11. Additional information on Japanese strengths and dispositions presented in this subsection is from: ATIS SWPA, Enemy Publication No. 389, Organization Chart of Manila Naval Defense Force, 19 Sep 45, copy in OCMH files; XIV Corps. Japanese Defense of Cities as Exemplified by The Battle for Manila, p. 3; ibid., an. 2, Disposition Chart, and an. 4, Org Chart Kobayashi Gp; Entry 2, 0100 10 Feb 44, G-2 Jnl 1st Cav Div, giving information from a Japanese POW; 11th A/B Div Rpt Luzon, pp. 13-14, 16, 29; ibid., Maps 1, 2, and C.
13. By the time he had completed his organization Iwabuchi was wearing four hats: 31st Naval Special Base Force, Manila Naval Defense Force, Central Force, and Headquarters Sector Unit. Apparently the staffs for all except the last were virtually identical.
14. XIV Corps, Japanese Defense of Cities, p. 10.
15. Subsequent description of Japanese weapons is based largely upon: XIV Corps, Japanese Defense of Cities, pp. 10-13; 11th A/B Div Luzon Rpt, p. 29; WD Tech Manual, TM-E-30-480, Handbook on Japanese Military Forces, 15 Sep 44, and changes thereto dated 1 Jan and 1 Jun 45. The XIV Corps and manual descriptions of calibers and model numbers of the arms encountered are not always in agreement.