The fighting for what remained of a once beautiful and thriving Manila was over by March 1945. Cooperative efforts among U.S. soldiers and civilians to clear away the rubble were underway. On March 13, Sergeant Vincent Powers observed, “The lights are going on all over the city.”
U.S. troops fraternized with Filipinas and traffic jams, many filled with refugees from the fighting still going on, hindered military convoys. But MacArthur refused to deny the natives road access. When asked by an officer why, the General explained: “Look at these people coming towards us…Don’t you get the feeling they’re fleeing something terrible?…Before I interfere with this innocent population, so hard hit by the horrors of war, it will have to be a lot worse for us first.”
As many of those displaced civilians pouring into Manila in search of food and safety could attest, the battle for Luzon was not over. U.S. and Filipino troops pushed towards Yamashita’s main line of resistance holed up in the rugged mountains around Baguio. Supported by the vast network of Philippine guerillas (which included U.S. soldiers who’d managed to avoid captivity in 1942) they marched eastward from Lingayen to retake the summer capital 150 miles north of Manila. During the preliminary air bombardment from March 4 to 10, Kenney’s Fifth Air Force warplanes dropped an estimated 1,185 gallons of napalm and 933 tons of bombs on the city, reducing yet another Philippine town to smoldering rubble.
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