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The Battle Of Luzon, Part 4: Victory And Aftermath

American General

Douglas MacArthur

History

Japan

Pacific Ocean

Philippines

U.S. Army

U.S. Military

U.S. Navy

World War II

To truly appreciate the tragedy that unfolded in Manila in 1945, one must consider that up until then the city had been nicknamed “The Pearl of the Orient.” Historian James Scott offers: “In the four decades leading up to World War II, Manila developed into a small slice of America in Asia, home not only to thousands of U.S. service members, but employees of companies like General Electric, Del Monte, and B.F. Goodrich. The city boasted a great quality of life, with department stores and social clubs, golf courses and swimming pools, all in a tropical setting, and at a fraction of the cost of living in the United States.”
Then in December 1941, the Japanese came.
Filthy, ragged, half-starved U.S. prisoners were paraded through the streets of Manila after their 1942 surrender. The sight of their more physically imposing former protectors being ignominiously herded along by diminutive Japanese soldiers was disillusioning. “Filipinos stood and watched in an agony of embarrassment,” recalled Manila journalist Nick Joaquin. “These were the God blessed Americans, supposedly invincible. Now here they were: mighty giants being herded rudely by little Jap soldiers. We would never recover from that loss of innocence.”
For the unlucky POWs, however, their three-year nightmare of criminally sadistic captivity was just beginning. 3,700 U.S. civilians were also caught up in the invasion; they would languish in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp, where they desperately ate dogs, cats, pigeons, rats, insects, anything to survive. On the eve of their liberation, the civilian prisoners starved to death at a rate of three to four per day. (MacArthur’s Philippine guerilla network informed him of this, hence his relentless drive to keep moving).
Believing their new Filipino subjects to be an inferior race, the Emperor’s troops had no qualms about looting food supplies and stores, while stealing vital farm equipment which left fields to rot. By the third year of Japanese occupation — with the exception of Japan’s puppet Filipino government officials and collaborators — starvation was rampant, killing some 500 civilians per day. Hordes of beggars roamed the streets; some went so far as to dig up graves to rob jewelry, watches, anything that could be bartered for a fistful of rice. Parents unable to feed their children might abandon or even sell them. (U.S. intelligence reported that by 1944, it cost less to buy a Filipino child than a hog).
<div id="attachment_856933" style="width: 719px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856933" class="wp-image-856933 " src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/SC-202168-710x576.jpeg" alt="General MacArthur visits the ruins of the Manila hotel that was his pre-war home on Luzon, 23 February 1945. He is accompanied by Colonel James Corbett and two infantrymen, one armed with an M1 rifle. Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="709" height="575" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/SC-202168-710x576.jpeg 710w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/SC-202168-300x243.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/SC-202168.jpeg 740w" sizes="(max-width: 709px) 100vw, 709px" />General MacArthur visits the ruins of the Manila hotel that was his pre-war home on Luzon, 23 February 1945. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
On February 3, 1945, U.S. troops entered the capital. But they did not find an open city. Instead they faced a fortified urban center they would have to take block-by-block, street-by-street, even house-by-house. This came as a rude shock to their five-star commander. Having thoroughly outmaneuvered his enemy, MacArthur expected there to be few if any Japanese left in the area. Other than its sprawling port facilities, which could be demolished before evacuation to deny them to the Americans, the city held no strategic value, as MacArthur himself concluded in 1941 when he abandoned Manila for the more defensible jungle terrain of Bataan, declaring it an open city. Therefore, the notion that Yamashita, a first-rate commander, would choose to defend Manila perplexed him — and then, as the destruction and carnage mounted, infuriate him. But MacArthur’s assumptions had been correct; the Tiger of Malaya had no intention of fighting for the Philippine capital. 
Yamashita, however, was dealing with a problem that plagued the Japanese High Command throughout the war. That was the intense rivalry, even downright disdain, between the Imperial Army and Navy top brass. In the case of Manila, while Yamashita pulled most of his army troops out of the city before it was surrounded, some 20,000 Japanese sailors under the command of Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi remained behind to destroy Manila’s harbor.
Although still technically under Yamashita’s command, Iwabuchi and his men didn’t see it that way. They vowed to make a stand, spending the weeks prior to the enemy’s arrival throwing up hasty fortifications, sowing landmines, constructing pillboxes and tank traps. When the Americans approached, the Japanese in the besieged capital opted to get drunk and fight to the death. 
And the atrocities began.
<div id="attachment_856963" style="width: 717px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856963" class="wp-image-856963 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-273406-707x576.jpeg" alt="Liberation of Manila, 1945. Stretcher party brings out a wounded U.S. soldier, following an attack by U.S. troops to liberate Filipino prisoners in the walled city, 23 February 1945. Note wrecked buildings. Catalog #: 80-G-273406. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="707" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-273406-707x576.jpeg 707w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-273406-300x244.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-273406-768x626.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-273406.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 707px) 100vw, 707px" />Stretcher party brings out a wounded U.S. soldier, following an attack by U.S. troops to liberate Filipino prisoners in the walled city, 23 February 1945. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
In a mid-February letter to his wife, Gen. Eichelberger wrote with grim understatement, “I hear the big parade has been called off.” In fact, it would have been impossible to march down any Manila street as no thoroughfare would be free of debris and corpses, mostly civilians. By the time the last shot was fired, the Pearl of the Orient would be reduced to a smoldering heap of rubble, whose gutters ran red with the blood of innocents.
It is impossible to adequately describe the horrors the Filipinos endured. Men were bound and shot, bayoneted or mutilated en masse, while patients were strapped to hospital beds before the buildings were set ablaze. Females of every age were brutally gang-raped before being systematically murdered. Babies were tossed in the air and skewered on bayonets by sadistic Japanese who smeared the children’s eyeballs on walls like jelly.
Filipina survivor Carmen Guerrero Nakpil remembered: “It was like a scene from hell. We were running like rats. I saw my classmates dragged through the streets to be raped by the Japanese in the Bayview Hotel. I saw my neighbors cut down by sniper bullets. The killing was terrible.”
<div id="attachment_856917" style="width: 708px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856917" class="size-large wp-image-856917" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3139974-698x576.jpg" alt="20th March 1945: American soldiers watching as refugees pick their way through the debris of North Manila, after safely arriving in the American held part of the city while fighting continues elsewhere. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)" width="698" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3139974-698x576.jpg 698w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3139974-300x248.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3139974-768x634.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3139974.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 698px) 100vw, 698px" />20th March 1945: American soldiers watching as refugees pick their way through the debris of North Manila, after safely arriving in the American held part of the city while fighting continues elsewhere. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)</div>
When the Japanese burst into the LaSalle chapel, Jose and Juanita Carlos were hiding in the cellar with their children. Jose was dragged off and killed. Then they came back for the rest of the family. Sixteen-year-old Dionisia was bayoneted until unconscious. When she came too she looked for her family. She found her mother and nine-year-old sister and six-year-old brother bayoneted to death, and her nineteen-year-old sister shot dead.
Although it has been claimed that it was a spontaneous eruption of violence against the Filipinos upon whom rogue Imperial troops took out their rage for siding with the Americans (and fear as death closed in), captured Japanese records show that, as with Nanking, the massacre was officially sanctioned, even encouraged. One order went so far as to give explicit instructions on how to commit mass murder: “When Filipinos are to be killed, they must be gathered into one place and disposed of with the consideration that ammunition and manpower must not be used to excess. Because the disposal of dead bodies is a troublesome task, they should be gathered into houses which are scheduled to be burned or demolished. They should also be thrown into the river.”
And yet, throughout the carnage of what has been called the “Pacific Stalingrad”, courageous Filipinos risked their lives braving sniper fire and shell bursts to fill canteens and bring ammunition and food to the Americans hunkered down in the wreckage.
<div id="attachment_856915" style="width: 736px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856915" class="size-large wp-image-856915" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3241992-726x576.jpg" alt="February 1945: A Filipino guerrilla fighting Japanese forces of occupation in Manila. Lacking a tripod for his machine-gun, he has tied the weapon to a fire hydrant. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)" width="726" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3241992-726x576.jpg 726w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3241992-300x238.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3241992-768x609.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3241992.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 726px) 100vw, 726px" />February 1945: A Filipino guerrilla fighting Japanese forces of occupation in Manila. Lacking a tripod for his machine-gun, he has tied the weapon to a fire hydrant. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)</div>
Despite MacArthur’s repeated calls for the Japanese to surrender, they resisted with suicidal desperation while the American commander anguished over the destruction of the once beautiful city. GIs accustomed to fighting in jungles and beaches had to quickly learn the ways of deadly urban warfare, in which every floor of every building, every stairwell, even closets, were bitterly contested. It was a brutal, often hand-to-hand, form of combat the likes of which had not been seen in the Pacific before, made all the more difficult by the number of civilians.
The Americans, wielding rifles, grenades, satchel charges, flamethrowers, sometimes even rocks and spades, eventually cornered the remaining Japanese in the one-quarter-square-mile fortress of Intramuros, whose walls, twenty-five feet high and forty feet thick, had withstood maritime raiders and earthquakes since the 1570s. General Kenney wanted to bomb the citadel, but MacArthur, aware that many civilians were trapped within, denied his requests, especially the use of napalm. But he did allow the big guns to fire on the holdouts. (In the end, the shelling was so destructive it didn’t really matter.) Eventually the guns breached the walls and the Japanese, including the recalcitrant Iwabuchi, were wiped out or committed ritual suicide.
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With tactics in the capable hands of his field commanders, MacArthur set out to visit the liberated Santo Tomas and Bilibid prison camps. The conditions of the internees horrified him. He was especially moved by the military captives at Bilibid, who made pathetic attempts to stand at attention. In his memoirs he wrote: “Here was all that was left of my men of Bataan and Corregidor…As I passed slowly down the scrawny, suffering column, a murmur accompanied me as each man barely speaking above a whisper, said ‘You’re back,’ or ‘You made it’…I could only reply, ‘I’m a little late, but we finally came.’”
<div id="attachment_856923" style="width: 934px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856923" class="size-large wp-image-856923" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-563522359-924x576.jpg" alt="American soldiers who were part of the liberation of the Japanese Bilibid POW camp stop to talk with two internees who had been in the prison camp for two years, Manila, Philippines, February 11, 1945. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)" width="924" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-563522359-924x576.jpg 924w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-563522359-300x187.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-563522359-768x479.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-563522359.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 924px) 100vw, 924px" />American soldiers who were part of the liberation of the Japanese Bilibid POW camp stop to talk with two internees who had been in the prison camp for two years, Manila, Philippines, February 11, 1945. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)</div>
By the time the 29-day fight for Manila was over, and every last Japanese killed, the city had been utterly annihilated with some 11,000 buildings reduced to ruins and ash. 70% of the utilities, 75% of the factories, 80% of the southern residential district and the entire business district had been razed. Of all the Allied cities, only Nanking and Warsaw saw such destruction and civilian carnage. No one will ever know for sure but it is estimated that 100,000 Filipinos died at the hands of the enraged Japanese.
On March 4, 1945, Manila was officially declared secured. The smoking Philippine capital had been liberated, but at a horrific cost to the city and its bewildered inhabitants. CBS News correspondent Bill Dunn would reflect on the tragedy, summing up the horrible effects of war: “The Manila of 1941 was a unique Manila, a Manila that had never existed before, a Manila that would never exist again.”
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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
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Manila Harbour

The Battle Of Luzon, Part 3: The Massacre Of Manila

In planning the battle for Luzon, MacArthur would have liked to surprise his waiting opponent. But Yamashita understood that Lingayen Gulf offered the only approach to the central Luzon plain, on which U.S. tanks could maneuver most effectively. It also had the best road and rail networks approaching Manila. Although he initially stationed 36,000 troops to cover the 22 miles of landing beaches, Yamashita conceded that U.S. naval firepower would just scythe his men down on the shoreline. And despite his public bravura, the Japanese commander knew that, with Halsey’s and Kinkaid’s U.S. fleets now masters of the sea, and Kenney’s planes filling the skies, the best he could really hope for was a holding action through a defense in depth to give the home islands time to prepare for the inevitable invasion. 
So, in December 1944, he withdrew his men and headquarters, along with members of Tokyo’s puppet Philippine government, headed by the controversial President José Laurel, into the more defensible terrain around the Philippine summer capital of Baguio, 30 miles east of Lingayen and 150 miles north of Manila.
<div id="attachment_856493" style="width: 750px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856493" class="size-large wp-image-856493" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-59525-740x576.jpg" alt="Battle line entering the Lingayen Gulf. The USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) leads the USS Colorado (BB-45), USS Louisville (CA-28), USS Portland (CA-33), and USS Columbia (CL-56) in a battle line entering the Lingayen Gulf preceding the landing off Luzon in the Philippines in January 1945. Catalog #: 80-G-59525. National Archives &amp; Records Administration." width="740" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-59525-740x576.jpg 740w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-59525-300x233.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-59525-768x598.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-59525.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" />National Archives &amp; Records Administration.</div>
At dawn on January 9, 1945, code-named &#8220;S-Day,&#8221; the enormous U.S. fleet — the largest of any landings in the Pacific and equal to the American contingent at Normandy — lay to in Lingayen Gulf and over 800 anchors splashed into the unusually calm waters. It was an awesome display of U.S. industrial might. At 0700, the big guns of some 70 battleships and cruisers roared, sending shells of all calibers whistling down onto what turned out to be undefended beaches. Beginning at 0930, the first of 175,000 troops of Gen. Walter Krueger’s Sixth Army waded ashore while Gen. Robert Eichelberger’s smaller Eighth Army was held in reserve. 
<div id="attachment_856503" style="width: 722px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856503" class="size-large wp-image-856503" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-507339859-712x576.jpg" alt="Coast Guard-manned landing barges bringing troops to the beaches of Lingayen Gulf during World War Two, Luzon, Philippines, circa January 7th 1945. (Photo by US Coast Guard/Getty Images)" width="712" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-507339859-712x576.jpg 712w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-507339859-300x243.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-507339859-768x621.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-507339859.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 712px) 100vw, 712px" />US Coast Guard/Getty Images</div>
By the end of the day, the GIs would push eight miles inland. Only the occasional Kamikaze air and even suicide boat attacks, with sporadic artillery rounds warbling in from distant enemy gun positions, disturbed the otherwise smooth operations.
Once four of Kruger’s divisions made it ashore and began to press inland, MacArthur left his headquarters on the light cruiser USS Boise and headed in. Filipino peasants waving U.S. and Philippine flags joyfully greeted the Americans, while others raced ahead to spread the word that after over 1,200 days of Japanese rule, MacArthur had returned as promised, and their deliverance was finally at hand.
<div id="attachment_856693" style="width: 725px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856693" class="wp-image-856693 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-304340-715x576.jpeg" alt="Lingayen Gulf Landings, 1945. General Douglas MacArthur and staff leaving USS BOISE (CL-47) on 9 January 1945 to go ashore on the Lingayen Gulf beaches, Luzon Philippine Islands. Catalog #: 80-G-304340. National Archive. Naval History and Heritage Command" width="715" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-304340-715x576.jpeg 715w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-304340-300x242.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-304340-768x619.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-304340.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 715px) 100vw, 715px" />Lingayen Gulf Landings, 1945. General Douglas MacArthur and staff leaving USS BOISE (CL-47) on 9 January 1945 to go ashore on the Lingayen Gulf beaches, Luzon Philippine Islands. National Archive. Naval History and Heritage Command</div>
The central Luzon plain, the amphitheater in which Krueger’s army would be maneuvering, was roughly 40 miles wide and ran some 110 miles due south from Lingayen to Manila Bay. It was walled in on each side by high, rugged peaks blanketed under a thick layer of jungle vegetation. It provided ideal terrain for flying columns to advance quickly down the fine roads leading to Manila.
MacArthur had earned the epithet “Dugout Dug” on this island in 1942 when he rarely ventured from his headquarters in Corregidor’s Malinta Tunnel to visit the front lines during the bitter struggle to hold Bataan. But now the General was, quite literally, often out in front leading the GIs and tankers in their advance south. No doubt invigorated by the prospect of reaching his beloved city of Manila, he raced around the battlefield in his five-star-studded Jeep like a man decades younger. At one moment he could be found perched on the turret of a tank ascertaining Japanese positions. Other times up in a B-17 watching a parachute jump. Once when confronted by an enemy roadblock and a Nambu machine gun opened up, a flummoxed lieutenant shouted to him, “We’re going after those fellows, but please, sir, get down; we’re under fire!” Another time, while inspecting the lines of the 161st Infantry regiment, they were suddenly attacked by Japanese tanks and the lines buckled. In conduct reminiscent of his days leading the Rainbow Division over the top in the First World War, the highest-ranking general in the Pacific Theater personally rallied the troops who beat back the assault, earning him his third Silver Star.
Although courageous to the point of being reckless, there most likely was a method to MacArthur’s madness. It was to goad the cautious Krueger to move faster as he suspected, correctly, that Yamashita had opted to withdraw into the rugged mountains east of Lingayen to let the Americans come to him in time. Thus, he saw no need for caution. But Krueger feared a screaming host of Japanese might come charging down from the mountains to puncture his left flank, cutting him off from the beachhead to his rear, and, in Romulo’s words, “slicing him up like a pie.” But for a frustrated MacArthur, who justifiably feared Japanese reprisals against POWs and Filipino civilians alike, speed was everything. “Get to Manila!” he exhorted his commanders. “Go around the Japs. Bounce off the Japs. Save your men, but get to Manila!”
<div id="attachment_856567" style="width: 733px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856567" class="wp-image-856567 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-258490-723x576.jpeg" alt="Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, USN, Commander Seventh Fleet, and Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, USA Commander Sixth Army, on board PT-525, off Leyte Island, the Philippines, 23 October 1944. The boat was taking General MacArthur ashore at the time. Catalog #: 80-G-258490. National Archives. Original Date: Mon, Oct 23, 1944. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="723" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-258490-723x576.jpeg 723w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-258490-300x239.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-258490-768x612.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-258490.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px" />Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, USN, Commander Seventh Fleet, and Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, USA Commander Sixth Army, on board PT-525, off Leyte Island, the Philippines, 23 October 1944. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
While Kruger was directing his Sixth Army in their fight to capture the enormous complex of runways and installations that made up Clark Field, his commander unleashed his reserves in a series of rapid thrusts elsewhere that confounded his Japanese opponent. Due to the Mindoro landing, Yamashita had to contend with the possibility of an attack from the south. So he sent part of his army to shore up defenses below Manila. As such, the landings in Lingayen caught every Japanese column in motion.
On January 31, MacArthur put a division of paratroopers from Eichelberger’s Eighth Army ashore at Nasugbu, 40 miles south of Manila. The landings were virtually unopposed as Col. Masatoshi Fujishige, upon whose shoulders the defense of the area had been entrusted, had placed his troops in defensive positions closer to Mindoro. In a scene reminiscent of the Allied advance through Holland, civilians cheered their American saviors, gifting them with food and spirits, and covering their vehicles in flowers until they resembled victorious Roman chariots.
Meanwhile, the General landed another corps at Subic Bay west of Manila above Bataan, and with minimal losses captured the valuable port of Olongapo while hitting the bewildered Yamashita with another regiment at Mariveles on the southern tip of the peninsula, trapping the Japanese troops in a double envelopment. Bataan, on which the Americans and Filipinos held out for months in 1942, fell in seven days. By the end of January, Manila was surrounded.
The most difficult Japanese nut to crack should have been the 5,000 Imperial soldiers stationed on the island bastion of Corregidor in the mouth of Manila Bay. With exquisite timing, paratroopers descended on the island’s “topside” while GIs stormed the “bottomside” beaches. After a week of fighting, the remaining defenders blew themselves up in the Malinta Tunnel. Although the Japanese lost twice their initial landing force taking the island in 1942, the Americans suffered fewer than 300 KIA (50 in the final explosion).
<div id="attachment_856583" style="width: 759px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856583" class="size-large wp-image-856583" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3225792-749x576.jpg" alt="16th February 1945: American paratroops of the 503rd Regiment (Parachute Regiment) drop on the bomb-shattered terrain of the island of Corregidor in the Philippines. The air warriors quickly seized batteries and defences, clearing the entrance to Manila Bay and opening the harbour to the Allied fleet. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="749" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3225792-749x576.jpg 749w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3225792-300x231.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3225792-768x590.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3225792.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 749px) 100vw, 749px" />Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</div>
The landings and subsequent race to Manila from all sides had been a remarkable strategic enterprise, which earned the ardent praise of no less an astute observer than Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. George Marshall, who in his report would declare: “Yamashita’s inability to cope with MacArthur’s swift moves, and his desired reaction to the deception measures, combined to place the Japanese in an impossible situation.” The enemy, he went on, “was forced into a piecemeal commitment of his troops” which left the Agno River, a potential major defensive stronghold, lightly defended. MacArthur was able to neutralize Japanese numerical parity by compelling his opponent to split his forces and then scramble to attack with whatever units were in the zone of operations. The General himself would write in his memoirs with typical MacArthur braggadocio (though in this case justified) “Never had such large numbers of troops been so outmaneuvered…and left tactically impotent to take an active part in the final battle.”
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With Clark Field finally in the methodical Krueger’s hands after heavy fighting, as well as engineers clearing out booby traps the Japanese had sewn all over the installation, the Americans from both the north and south were poised to enter the capital.
It was now early February and the 1st Cavalry, the vanguard of 100,000 Americans pouring down Luzon’s main highways while the rest guarded the beachhead, had reached the suburbs of Manila. With the bulk of Yamashita’s forces nullified in the rugged terrain around Baguio, victory was in the air. The triumphant MacArthur, now at the threshold of all he’d been pushing towards for the past three years, was preparing a grand parade through Manila ala the Allies’ triumph down the Champs Élysées. The media celebrated. Newsweek reported: “Prize Of The Pacific, Manila, Fell To MacArthur Like A Ripened Plum!” Time magazine headlined its Philippine story “Victory! Mabuhay!” (Tagalog for “Hurrah!”).
But the headlines were shatteringly premature. In fact, before the fight for Luzon was over, the city of Manila would suffer one of the most cruel and heartbreaking tragedies of the Second World War.
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<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-1-climax-of-the-southwest-pacific-war" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 1: Climax Of The Southwest Pacific War</a></h3>
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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
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Correction: And earlier version of this article contained a photo of General Douglas MacArthur returning to the Philippines, wading through the water. MacArthur&#8217;s famous return took place in 1944 not in January of 1945. The image has been removed.

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The Battle Of Luzon, Part 2: Race To Manila

Inside the imperial palace in Tokyo, Prime Minister Koiso Kuniaki stood uneasily before his Emperor Hirohito and apologized for the catastrophe that had just befallen his majesty’s army and navy at the hands of the Americans on and around the Philippine island of Leyte. In the fierce land and sea combat that lasted from October 17 to December 24, 1944, the backbone of the Japanese fleet, as well as some 65,000 troops and hundreds of aircraft, were erased from the order of battle. When the Emperor reminded Koiso that he’d promised Leyte would be a repeat of Japan’s 1582 victory at Tennozan, the prime minister sheepishly mumbled that Luzon, not Leyte, would be the Kentai Kessen, “decisive battle,” that would once and for all destroy the Americans and their allies advancing ever closer to the home islands.
Luzon was the main island in the Philippines archipelago, and site of the nation’s capital city Manila. Slightly larger than Cuba, it stretches some 460 miles running north-to-south, and sits roughly equidistant between Japan and Australia. If Japan could not fight off the Americans here and regain the initiative then the sea lanes between the home islands and her vital raw materials in the Dutch East Indies, which had been severed when Leyte was lost, would be forever cut off. And should Luzon fall, only the island bastions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa stood between the Allies and Japan.
<div id="attachment_855787" style="width: 726px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855787" class="size-large wp-image-855787" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-289537-716x576.jpeg" alt="Leyte Invasion, October 1944. General Douglas Macarthur and Philippine president Sergio Osmena in a landing craft on their way to ceremonies proclaiming the liberation of Leyte, 23 October 1944. On the right is Brigadier General Carlos P. Romulo. Catalog #: 80-G-289537. National Archives. Mon, Oct 23, 1944. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="716" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-289537-716x576.jpeg 716w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-289537-300x241.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-289537-768x618.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-289537.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 716px) 100vw, 716px" />General Douglas MacArthur and Philippine president Sergio Osmena in a landing craft on their way to ceremonies proclaiming the liberation of Leyte, 23 October 1944. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
Bearing down on Luzon was an immense U.S. invasion force of over 800 ships, 3,000 landing craft — many just arrived from Normandy — and some 280,000 troops. This formidable army, fielding more men than Eisenhower landed at Sicily, was led by America’s most brilliant strategist, Five-Star General Douglas MacArthur. For two years this American Caesar had dazzled the Japanese with one victory upon the next in a relentless drive up New Guinea and the Bismarck Sea with the aim of recapturing the Philippines.
<div id="attachment_855769" style="width: 727px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855769" class="wp-image-855769 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-281338-717x576.jpeg" alt="Carrier Raids on Formosa, October 1944. Crewmen on USS Hancock (CV-19) move 3.5-inch rockets (with 5-inch diameter warheads) to planes, while preparing for strikes on Formosa, 12 October 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.Catalog #: 80-G-281338. Naval History and Heritage Command. " width="717" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-281338-717x576.jpeg 717w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-281338-300x241.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-281338-768x617.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-281338.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 717px) 100vw, 717px" />Carrier Raids on Formosa, October 1944. Crewmen on USS Hancock (CV-19). National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
Beginning in November 1942 with a grinding, bloody fight for Buna on New Guinea’s northern coast, MacArthur’s advances steadily accelerated. Utilizing amphibious thrusts by coordinating land, sea, and air power — what Churchill described as “triphibious warfare” — the general leapfrogged from beachhead to beachhead in ever more audacious envelopments up the world’s second largest island. Indeed, by the time his landing force steamed towards Leyte in October 1944, the first of the Philippine islands targeted for assault, MacArthur had captured more territory while suffering fewer casualties than any commander in modern warfare — while inflicting ten times as many losses on the enemy.
MacArthur now set his determined sights on the ultimate prize, Luzon, 300 miles north of Leyte. Waiting for him, however, was a Japanese garrison numbering some 270,000 determined troops, the largest enemy contingent the Americans would confront in the Pacific War. Moreover, the Emperor’s forces would be under the overall command of a formidable general in his own right, Tomoyuki Yamashita, the “Tiger of Malaya.” On this most vital Philippine island, two gifted generals, each at the height of his power, would face off in the climactic battle of the Southwest Pacific campaign.
<div id="attachment_855827" style="width: 463px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855827" class="wp-image-855827 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3201763-453x576.jpg" alt="circa 1945: Japanese army general Tomoyuki Yamashita uses a cane while walking along a dirt road ahead of several soldiers. Yamashita was known as the 'Tiger of Malaya' for his leadership of the Japanese forces against the British troops in the Philippines. (Photo by US Army/Getty Images)" width="453" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3201763-453x576.jpg 453w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3201763-236x300.jpg 236w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3201763-768x977.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3201763.jpg 805w" sizes="(max-width: 453px) 100vw, 453px" />Japanese army general Tomoyuki Yamashita. US Army/Getty Images.</div>
Although the primary aim of seizing Leyte in the fall of 1944 was to provide MacArthur an aerodrome from which Allied planes could cover his Luzon campaign, as well as stage raids on Formosa and the Chinese mainland, the soil proved to be unstable during the rainy season, which had just begun (24 inches of rain fell in November alone). Although some air bases were eventually operational, due to the soggy runways as well as washed out roads in need of constant repair, MacArthur’s air chief, General George Kenney, was unable to utilize the bulk of the island’s airstrips for the upcoming operations. Still, even with this unexpected setback, the imaginative MacArthur saw an opportunity.
The island of Mindoro, a mere hour-and-a-half ferry ride from Luzon and just 200 miles from Manila, offered ideal ground for Kenney’s aircraft. Adm. Chester Nimitz, MacArthur’s naval counterpart, agreed to support an operation to seize the island, with Adm. William “Bull” Halsey’s carrier task force providing vital top cover until Mindoro could be seized and converted into a land-based aerodrome. But the approach was dangerous. So perilous, in fact, that MacArthur’s reliable naval head, Adm. Thomas Kinkaid, vehemently opposed the landings as he feared his transports would be exposed to attacks from land-based enemy aircraft — especially the deadly Kamikaze suicide planes that made their debut at Leyte and whose attacks were growing in number and lethality — as the vulnerable convoy wiggled its way through the narrow waters of the Surigao Strait and Sulu Sea. Furthermore, should there be a significant number of Japanese on Mindoro, the operation could be costly, even repulsed. The Joint Chiefs in Washington, DC were also alarmed; the Pentagon declared MacArthur’s plan “too daring in scope, too risky in execution.”
But MacArthur’s sixth sense told him Yamashita had no stomach for another Leyte, but was instead husbanding his strength for the defense of Luzon. He also might have assumed that, just as his subordinates had been frightened by the hazards facing any convoy on the narrow approach to Mindoro, Yamashita would figure no enemy would risk such a passage. MacArthur’s contrarian instincts proved correct.
<div id="attachment_855783" style="width: 712px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855783" class="size-large wp-image-855783" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-301022-702x576.jpeg" alt="Mindoro Operation, December 1944. Caption: Escort carriers of task group 77.12.7 getting under way from the Palau Islands, en route for the invasion of Mindoro, 10 December 1944. Photographed from USS KADASHAN BAY (CVE-76). Catalog #: 80-G-301022. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="702" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-301022-702x576.jpeg 702w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-301022-300x246.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-301022-768x630.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-301022.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 702px) 100vw, 702px" />Mindoro Operation, December 1944. Photographed from USS KADASHAN BAY (CVE-76). National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
On December 16, 1944, 10,000 American troops raced from their Higgins boats and overwhelmed the barely 1,000 Japanese stationed on Mindoro; the GIs soon captured four abandoned airstrips. The U.S. suffered just 240 KIA (a mere 18 on the ground, the rest Naval losses from air attacks). And unlike Leyte, the ground here was solid. U.S. engineers went to work refurbishing the captured airfields and constructing two more. Overhead, Halsey’s pilots fended off waves of marauding Japanese fighters and suicide planes swooping down from Luzon. By New Years Day 1945, an ebullient Kenney declared Mindoro his main aerodrome, allowing MacArthur to once again operate under the protection of his land-based air force.
The capture of Mindoro, the last stepping stone to Luzon, also confronted Yamashita with the possibility that MacArthur could hit him from the south as well as the obvious landing spot in Lingayen Gulf 140 miles north of Manila. And he was now cut off from his garrisons in the southern Philippines.
<div id="attachment_855845" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855845" class="size-large wp-image-855845" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-864x576.jpg" alt="acprints. Getty Images." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />acprints. Getty Images.</div>
Yamashita’s motivations for defending the island were purely military. But for MacArthur, his return to the Philippines was a deeply personal crusade. He’d lived in the archipelago for many years and felt the U.S. had a solemn obligation to free a people over whom we’d assumed responsibility after wresting the islands from the Spanish in 1898. He had been in command of the joint US-Philippine army in December 1941 when the Japanese invaded. Abandoning the capital, he consolidated his forces on the Bataan Peninsula due west across Manila Bay, and the Island fortress of Corregidor covering the mouth of the inlet. The General had hoped to fight a holding action, anticipating a U.S. relief force would come to the rescue and save his command. 
In early 1942, however, Japan was at the zenith of its power while the U.S. was just getting on a war footing, and thus in no position to relieve the beleaguered defenders. In May 1942 a combined 75,000 ragged and malnourished American and Filipino troops surrendered. Although it had been a heroic if forlorn stand that upset the Japanese timetable, it was the largest capitulation of U.S. forces in history.
<div id="attachment_855835" style="width: 801px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855835" class="size-large wp-image-855835" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3272158-791x576.jpg" alt="May 1943: Premier Tojo arriving in Manila. He responds to the salute from General Waui Ehk of the Japanese Administration and the Commander of the Imperial Japanese Fleet (in the white uniform). (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="791" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3272158-791x576.jpg 791w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3272158-300x219.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3272158-768x560.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3272158.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 791px) 100vw, 791px" />May 1943: Premier Tojo arriving in Manila. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.</div>
MacArthur believed his government had abandoned not just the brave garrison, but also the 18 million inhabitants of his beloved islands to a cruel occupier in the dark days of the war’s opening rampage of Japanese conquest following Pearl Harbor. He also felt an individual obligation to return as he’d been ordered by FDR to leave his doomed garrison and escape to Australia before the inevitable defeat, where he would organize the island continent’s defenses and then lead the eventual Allied counter-offensive in the Southwest Pacific. For almost three years, while American and Filipino captives languished in brutal captivity* and civilians endured privations and repressions, the Japanese military ruled the American protectorate.
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But now, to the jubilation of the Filipinos, who’d feared their islands would be bypassed in favor of a U.S. landing on Formosa farther to the north, and thus abandoned a second time, the Americans were back.
Carlos Romulo, the Philippine writer and diplomat who had been with MacArthur on Corregidor, was one of the General’s confidants. When in October he descended from the transport John Land to join the landing party of brass, politicians and war correspondents onto the barge headed for the beaches of Leyte, MacArthur embraced his friend. “Carlos, my boy, how does it feel to be home?” Two months later, the elated Romulo found himself in Lingayen Gulf amidst a vast Allied armada whose ships stretched out to the horizon. Thirty-seven agonizing months before, it had been a Japanese landing force in these waters. He recalled his “cold horror” when Manila Radio announced the news of Japanese transports in Lingayen. But now, he wrote with satisfaction, “it is their turn to quake.”
Meanwhile, following an interview with Yamashita who promised, “I shall write a brilliant history of The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere on the Philippine Islands”, Radio Tokyo confidently announced: “The battle for Luzon, in which 300,000 American officers and men are doomed to die, is about to begin.”
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<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-1-climax-of-the-southwest-pacific-war" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 1: Climax Of The Southwest Pacific War</a></h3>
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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.
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NOTES:
<ol>
<li>In World War II some 40% of U.S. POWs died at the hands of the Japanese, as opposed to only 1% of those captured by the Germans.</li>
</ol>

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The Battle Of Luzon, Part 1: Climax Of The Southwest Pacific War

American History

Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel sued the Biden administration on Monday for blocking a proposed acquisition.
The companies filed two lawsuits in district courts in Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, accusing the federal government of denying the companies due process. The legal filings say President Joe Biden decided against the companies in favor of union interests without full consideration of national security, according to a <a href="https://investors.ussteel.com/news-events/news-releases/detail/709/nippon-steel-and-u-s-steel-file-multiple-lawsuits-in" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> by the companies.
“From the outset of the process, both Nippon Steel and U. S. Steel have engaged in good faith with all parties to underscore how the Transaction will enhance, not threaten, United States national security, including by revitalizing communities that rely on American steel, bolstering the American steel supply chain, and strengthening America’s domestic steel industry against the threat from China,” Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel said.
As part of the agreement, Nippon Steel committed to investing $2.7 billion in the U.S. “to protect and grow U. S. Steel for the benefit of employees, the communities in which it operates, and the entire American steel industry.” Biden’s decision kills that investment and a $55-per-share payout due to U.S. Steel shareholders upon completion of the deal.
The lawsuits allege that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States did not investigate the national security interests at stake in the potential deal before Biden delivered his judgment.
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Last week, the White House announced that it blocked the potential acquisition due to concerns about U.S. national security and supply chains.
“It is my solemn responsibility as President to ensure that, now and long into the future, America has a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry that can continue to power our national sources of strength at home and abroad; and it is a fulfillment of that responsibility to block foreign ownership of this vital American company,” Biden <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-blocks-sale-of-u-s-steel-to-japanese-company" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement. “U.S. Steel will remain a proud American company – one that’s American-owned, American-operated, by American union steelworkers – the best in the world.”
President-elect Donald Trump has also opposed the deal, saying in a statement last month that he was “totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company.”
The steelmakers say that, in addition to Biden’s political calculations, the acquisition’s failure is due to collusion between the Workers International Union (USW) and Cleveland-Cliffs, an Ohio-based steelmaker that previously attempted to buy U.S. Steel. That offer was rejected.

Joe Biden

Steelmakers Sue Biden Admin Over Blocked Acquisition Of U.S. Steel

Steelmakers Sue Biden Administration Over Blocked Acquisition Of U.S. Steel

Courts

Executive

U.S.

United States

U.S. Steel slammed President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/joe-biden" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joe Biden</a> in a statement on Friday for blocking the sale of the company to Japanese manufacturing giant Nippon Steel.
&#8220;President Biden&#8217;s action today is shameful and corrupt,&#8221; said U.S. Steel President and CEO David Burritt. &#8220;He gave a political payback to a union boss out of touch with his members while harming our company&#8217;s future, our workers, and our national security.&#8221;
Burritt said that Biden &#8220;insulted Japan, a vital economic and national security ally, and put American competitiveness at risk.&#8221;
Burritt said that Biden refused to meet with the company to &#8220;learn the facts.&#8221;
&#8220;The Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing are dancing in the streets,&#8221; Burritt said. &#8220;We needed a President who knows how to get the best deal for America and work hard to make it happen. Make no mistake: this investment is what guarantees a great future for U.S. Steel, our employees, our communities, and our country. We intend to fight President Biden&#8217;s political corruption.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Statement from David B. Burritt, President and CEO, on Today’s Order by President Biden.<a href="https://t.co/85iuRNiCAM">https://t.co/85iuRNiCAM</a> <a href="https://t.co/h6rbOgiitW">pic.twitter.com/h6rbOgiitW</a>
— U. S. Steel (@U_S_Steel) <a href="https://twitter.com/U_S_Steel/status/1875297386588746071?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 3, 2025</a></blockquote>
The statement came just hours after Biden <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-blocks-sale-of-u-s-steel-to-japanese-company">announced</a> that he was blocking the sale of the company over concerns about national security and supply chains. Nippon had offered to buy U.S. Steel for $15 billion and said it would invest billions in the U.S. if the sale went through.
“It is my solemn responsibility as President to ensure that, now and long into the future, America has a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry that can continue to power our national sources of strength at home and abroad; and it is a fulfillment of that responsibility to block foreign ownership of this vital American company,” Biden said in a statement. “U.S. Steel will remain a proud American company – one that’s American-owned, American-operated, by American union steelworkers – the best in the world.”
He said that the decision was made after a committee of national security and trade experts determined that the “acquisition would place one of America’s largest steel producers under foreign control and create risk for our national security and our critical supply chains.”
While the United Steelworkers union opposed the proposed sale, U.S. Steel said last week that it hoped Biden would approve the deal.
Biden first came out against the proposed sale in March 2024, three months after it was first announced.
Leif Le Mahieu contributed to this report.

U.S. Steel Rips ‘Shameful And Corrupt’ Biden For Blocking Sale Of Company

Economy

National Security

World

President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/joe-biden" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joe Biden</a> announced Friday that he would block the sale of U.S. Steel to Japanese manufacturing giant Nippon Steel. 
Biden said that he was making the move over concerns about national security and supply chains. Nippon had offered to buy U.S. Steel for $15 billion and said it would invest billions in the U.S. if the sale went through. 
“It is my solemn responsibility as President to ensure that, now and long into the future, America has a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry that can continue to power our national sources of strength at home and abroad; and it is a fulfillment of that responsibility to block foreign ownership of this vital American company,” Biden said in a statement. “U.S. Steel will remain a proud American company – one that’s American-owned, American-operated, by American union steelworkers – the best in the world.”
He said that the decision was made after a committee of national security and trade experts determined that the “acquisition would place one of America’s largest steel producers under foreign control and create risk for our national security and our critical supply chains.”
While the United Steelworkers union opposed the proposed sale, U.S. Steel said last week that it hoped Biden would approve the deal.
&#8220;It is the best way, by far, to ensure that U. S. Steel, including its employees, communities, and customers, will thrive well into the future,&#8221; the company <a href="https://investors.ussteel.com/news-events/news-releases/detail/706/u-s-steel-statement-on-cfius-referring-decision-on" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;It is our hope that President Biden will do the right thing and adhere to the law by approving a transaction that so clearly enhances U.S. national and economic security.&#8221;
Biden <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/buyer-beware-trump-promises-to-block-sale-of-u-s-steel-to-japanese-company" target="_blank" rel="noopener">first</a> came out against the proposed sale in March 2024, three months after it was first announced. His opposition also came months after President-elect Donald Trump publicly opposed the deal in January 2024, saying he would block the deal if elected president. 
Trump again reiterated last month that he would not allow Nippon to buy U.S. Steel. 
“I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan,” Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113586503722263487" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> on Truth Social. “Through a series of Tax Incentives and Tariffs, we will make U.S. Steel Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST! As President, I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”
U.S. Steel was once the largest company in the world and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/biden-blocks-japans-nippon-steel-acquiring-us-steel-rcna186073" target="_blank" rel="noopener">employed</a> as many as 340,000 workers, but now ranks as just the 24th largest steel producer globally as of 2023,  <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-trump-us-steel-pittsburgh-nippon-japan-67042a39de838f4cccd45d7a77ec0a40" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to the World Steel Association. Nippon was the fourth largest producer as of 2023.

US Steel Assets Face Chopping Block Without Japan Deal

Biden Blocks Sale Of U.S. Steel To Japanese Company

Donald Trump

Politics

Steel workers

President-elect <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> said Monday that he would block the sale of U.S. Steel to Japanese manufacturing giant Nippon Steel. 
Trump frequently spoke about his opposition to the sale while campaigning, saying he would prevent the deal from happening through tax incentives and tariffs. Nippon has proposed acquiring the American company for $15 billion. 
“I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan,” Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113586503722263487" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> on Truth Social. “Through a series of Tax Incentives and Tariffs, we will make U.S. Steel Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST! As President, I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”
Shortly after the sale of U.S. Steel was announced in December 2023, Trump said he would block the deal if elected president again. 
“I would block it instantaneously. Absolutely,” Trump said. “We saved the steel industry. Now, US Steel is being bought by Japan. So terrible.”
The Japanese company said in an email that it would invest billions in the United States as part of the deal. 
“Nippon Steel is determined to protect and grow U. S. Steel in a manner that reinforces American industry, domestic supply chain resiliency, and U.S. national security,” the company said. “We will invest no less than $2.7 billion into its unionized facilities, introduce our world-class technological innovation, and secure union jobs so that American steelworkers at U. S. Steel can manufacture the most advanced steel products for American customers.&#8221;
The United Steelworkers union has lobbied against the measure, saying that it would be harmful to domestic production and a national security risk. 
“Altogether, the proposed sale is bad for workers, our communities and the domestic industry – as well as our national security, critical infrastructure and domestic supply chains. We must continue to resist it – together,” the union said Monday. 
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift-guide/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://get.dailywire.com/gift-guide/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1732727087136000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3Ao27zcTCGutKhTz_xpaKC">CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE</a>
After Trump came out against the deal in January, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kamala-swipes-yet-another-trump-policy-this-time-about-steel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">followed</a> his lead. Biden said he didn’t support the agreement in March, while Harris announced her opposition in September, a few months into her presidential campaign. 
The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment is <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/03/trump-repeats-vow-to-block-nippon-steels-bid-for-us-steel.html">currently</a> evaluating the deal.
U.S. Steel was once the largest steel producer in the world, but <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-trump-us-steel-pittsburgh-nippon-japan-67042a39de838f4cccd45d7a77ec0a40">according</a> to the World Steel Association, it was the 27th-largest steelmaker in 2023. Nippon Steel was the fourth-largest steelmaker last year in an industry that has become dominated by China.

Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump Campaigns In Pennsylvania

‘Buyer Beware’: Trump Promises To Block Sale Of U.S. Steel To Japanese Company

Kamala Harris

Tariffs

A 500-pound bomb dropped by American forces on Japan during World War II exploded unexpectedly beneath an airport runway on Tuesday after being buried for around 80 years.
The explosion damaged a taxiway at the Miyazaki Airport in southwestern Japan, causing more than 80 flights to be canceled, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-bomb-world-war-ii-103352124.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9jaXRpemVuZnJlZXByZXNzLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIOLuZv8vckSEmdek_j8V6HyKiRbVyp55y44h2iLKa_Av78vKCPmpX89dIDp_GQvuyC4y2y7mE3acqwcHQJrI0EUKc1HO8CAXVdqD5eikgYTdn1EtydvCx7MsIcAVLyRInXfDsfeNMZdTUi55XWVDZLsnRWDV7w5A05Jj7OdT73o" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. No injuries were reported after the explosion, which was caught on video and posted to social media. The video shows that the bomb exploded far away from any aircraft, but according to a local broadcaster, an airplane had been taxiing near the area just two minutes before the bomb exploded.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🌐 Breaking News: Explosion at Miyazaki Airport? ✈️💥
This morning, an explosion was reportedly captured on the information camera at Miyazaki Airport at 7:58 AM, sending plumes of dust into the air.
The airport office has confirmed that a sinkhole was found on the taxiway… <a href="https://t.co/LPwA0VKsPp">pic.twitter.com/LPwA0VKsPp</a>
&mdash; Currently JAPAN (@Currently_JAPAN) <a href="https://twitter.com/Currently_JAPAN/status/1841313365563740351?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 2, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said, &#8220;There is no threat of a second explosion, and police and firefighters are currently examining the scene,&#8221; CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-wwii-bomb-explodes-japan-airport-runway-flights-canceled/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. Authorities are still trying to determine what caused the bomb to detonate.
An investigation by Japanese authorities confirmed that the explosion was caused by a 500-pound U.S. bomb that was dropped on the airfield, which was built in 1943 to train Imperial Japan&#8217;s kamikaze pilots during World War II. Japan&#8217;s Defense Ministry said that numerous unexploded bombs dropped from U.S. warplanes have been discovered near the airport.
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The crater caused by the explosion on Tuesday was 7 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep, according to the AP. Throughout Japan, hundreds of tons of unexploded bombs from World War II have been dug up, often at construction sites. In fiscal year 2023 alone, Japanese officials <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/japan/japan-airport-shut-after-likely-ww2-era-bomb-explodes-near-runway-87-flights-2024-10-02/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that 2,348 bombs were disposed of in the country.
After the war, the U.S. helped remove thousands of unexploded bombs in Japan, but experts predict that it could take another 100 years for all of the bombs from World War II to be disposed of just in the Okinawa Prefecture. Near the end of the war, Okinawa was pounded with around 200,000 tons of bombs, according to <a href="https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240929_09/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NHK World Japan</a>. An estimated 10,000 tons of those bombs were unexploded.

USA/JApan: A USAAF B-29 bomber over Osaka, 1 June 1945

Bomb From WWII Explodes At Airport, Cancels More Than 80 Flights

Bomb From WWII Explodes At Airport, Cancels Over 80 Flights

Air and Space

Bombings

The Japanese television executives behind “The Boyfriend,” Netflix&#8217;s first-ever same-sex reality dating <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/television">show</a>, said the project aimed to &#8220;deepen the understanding&#8221; of the LGBTQ community in the socially conservative country. 
Like many other r<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/reality-tv">eality dating shows</a>, the series features nine single men living in a beach house looking for love. But unlike so many American shows with the same premise, “The Boyfriend” is completely devoid of sexual content. Even the kissing scenes are tame by comparison, per <a href="https://variety.com/2024/global/news/japanese-same-sex-reality-show-boyfriend-netfix-normalize-lgbtq-1236151678/">Variety</a>. 
“It’s no different from the familiar reality shows we’ve seen before. The only thing that felt odd or questionable was that, while there have been plenty of heterosexual reality shows, there have been so few featuring same-sex couples, and none in Japan,” casting director Taiki told the outlet. “We didn’t aim to create a special genre.”
The group behind the show says that was the point. Even if they weren’t explicitly talking about having sex, contestants did share their coming out stories on camera. Participants were encouraged to have deep discussions about life. 
“I don’t think this show has caused a 90-degree shift in public opinion, but it might have provided a moment for those who felt distant from LGBTQ+ people to realize that everyone struggles, enjoys life, makes friends and falls in love just like anyone else,” said Durian Lollobrigida, a drag queen who appeared as a commentator on the show. “It could lead them to think, ‘Hey, they’re just like us.’”
The drag queen said his presence on the show was &#8220;crucial.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1726313279401000&amp;usg=AOvVaw115_qPFFEePDP86-Fvo-Vd">Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!</a>
&#8220;As this was Japan’s first romance reality show featuring male same-sex relationships, it was crucial to have someone from that community in the studio,” said Durian Lollobrigida, a drag queen who appeared as a commentator on the show. “Although my influence might be limited, by being a studio commentator who is a member of that community, I wanted to act as an interpreter … to help lower the barriers and deepen the understanding that viewers may have towards LGBTQ+.”
Variety also noted how producers intentionally made diversity a priority, casting men of Korean and Taiwanese descent despite a “social stigma” about other ethnicities in Japan. 
Even if they weren’t explicitly talking about having sex, contestants did share their coming out stories on camera. Participants were encouraged to have deep discussions about life. 
 “I discussed with the cast how growth and valuable experiences stem from shared friendships, youth and struggles, not just romance. This led to many unexpected miracles on set,” Hishida Keisuke, the director, said. 
&nbsp;

LGBT TV

Japan’s First Same-Sex Reality Show Aimed To Send Message: ‘Hey, They’re Just Like Us’

TV Execs Discuss Japan's First Ever Same-Sex Reality Show, 'The Boyfriend'

Entertainment

LGBTQ

Reality TV

Television

Those marginally familiar with World War II will no doubt recognize names like Normandy, Iwo Jima, or Guadalcanal. But like many of the other battles into which American boys have been thrown over the centuries, only the most ardent history buffs can relay much, if anything, about the agony that was the struggle for the island of Peleliu.
This month, we mark the 80th anniversary of the September 1944 landings on Peleliu in the Palau Island chain by the First U.S. Marine Division during the Pacific War. Peleliu is one of those battles that often gets passed over in our national memory.
In the fall of 1944, the island’s airfield was considered vital to protect MacArthur’s southern flank in his advance towards the Philippines 600 miles farther west. And so the First Marine Division was sent to this 14 square-mile dot in the Pacific to seize and clear the island of its estimated 14,000 Japanese defenders.
The operation, prophetically code-named Stalemate II, was expected to last a mere three days.
It didn’t.
<div id="attachment_798471" style="width: 774px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-798471" class="wp-image-798471 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-486561439-764x576.jpg" alt="US ships and landing craft heading towards Peleliu Island during the Pacific Campaign of World War Two, Palau, September 5th 1944. (Photo by US Navy/Getty Images)" width="764" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-486561439-764x576.jpg 764w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-486561439-300x226.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-486561439-768x579.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-486561439.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 764px) 100vw, 764px" />US ships and landing craft heading towards Peleliu Island during the Pacific Campaign of World War Two, Palau, September 5th 1944. (Photo by US Navy/Getty Images)</div>
The Japanese, mimicking a new and bloody strategy first utilized on Biak several months before, did not meet the Marines on the beaches with anything but a skirmish line of machine guns, mortars, and well-sighted artillery. (Although for the men who landed ashore that day, the carnage and mayhem of this initial action would haunt them forever.) Nor would they waste themselves on mass Banzai charges that were methodically mowed down by the entrenched Americans as occurred on Saipan. Rather, the real battle for Peleliu would be fought against a tenacious enemy burrowed deep into the island’s rock-hard coral ridges, hidden within a network of caves, bunkers, pillboxes, and interconnected tunnels whose often steel doors were impervious to even the heaviest caliber naval gunfire. The U.S. military had never fought such a tenacious defender before. Said one Marine veteran, &#8220;Peleliu was, I think, the biggest surprise the Marine Corps received during World War Two.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_798475" style="width: 880px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-798475" class="size-large wp-image-798475" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-1500211936-870x576.jpg" alt="American military officers move across the sands during the Battle of Peleliu (Operation Stalemate II), during the Second World War, on the beach at Peleliu, Palau, 15th September 1944. The troops, supporting the 7th Marines, are either the 16th Marine Field Depot or the 17th Naval Construction Battalion Special. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)" width="870" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-1500211936-870x576.jpg 870w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-1500211936-300x199.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-1500211936-768x509.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-1500211936.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 870px) 100vw, 870px" />Archive Photos/Getty Images</div>
The Americans found themselves shelled and fired down on without rest from Japanese gun emplacements dug into the sides of the forbidding Umurbrogol Ridge, a limestone outcropping some 550 feet above sea level which ran down the middle of the island like the vertebrae of a malevolent beast. As such, Japanese defenders had to be methodically rooted out, one position at a time, with small arms, grenades, demolition charges and, most terrible, flamethrowers while Marine and Navy fighter-bombers dropped canisters of napalm on Japanese positions. It was a brutal affair that went on for 73 tortuous days. In the process, the Marines and their Army replacements suffered crippling casualties.
<div id="attachment_798483" style="width: 716px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-798483" class="wp-image-798483 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/PELELIU-96764-706x576.jpg" alt="A column of Marines marches toward the front line through a defile at the southwestern end of Peleliu's Bloody Nose Ridge. (U.S. Marine Corps). U.S. Naval Institute." width="706" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/PELELIU-96764-706x576.jpg 706w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/PELELIU-96764-300x245.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/PELELIU-96764-768x627.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/PELELIU-96764-1536x1253.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/PELELIU-96764-2048x1671.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 706px) 100vw, 706px" />A column of Marines marches toward the front line through a defile at the southwestern end of Peleliu&#8217;s Bloody Nose Ridge. (U.S. Marine Corps). U.S. Naval Institute.</div>
When a journalist caught up with an exhausted file of Marines rotating off the sheer coral escarpments that dominated the island, he asked them if this was the 1st Marine Regiment. “Mac, there ain’t no more 1st Marines,” a grim veteran replied.
Along with the agony of battle itself, the Americans also found themselves in a struggle with Peleliu’s forbidding topography and climate. The coral base of the island was too hard to dig adequate foxholes, or bury the dead, so many a combatant had to share what little shelter he could find with the bloating, maggot, and fly-infested corpses of enemy and friend alike strewn across the open ground. Adding to the misery, the temperature at times rose to 115 degrees in the shade, and the omnipresent vile stench of rotting flesh and swamp was thick in the oppressively humid air. Some veterans even wondered if they’d ever be able to get the odor out of their nostrils.
For the first few days of the battle, fresh water, a life-and-death matter in such tropical heat, was scarce; as if just to twist the screws, what water the Marines did receive was fouled by traces of fuel oil and rust residue from the reused oil drum containers that had been inadequately cleaned before being repurposed, adding vomiting and aggravated innards to the experience.
Through September, into October, then November the fighting dragged on, and casualties on both sides mounted. Part of the reason for the protracted and bloody nature of the battle was that arguably the two ablest fighting units of each country, the American First Marine Division and the Japanese 14th Infantry Division, faced off in this ghastly arena.
The Japanese were especially driven by a fanaticism to die for their god-emperor and a military code that viewed surrender as the worst of disgraces. Trapped on an island with no escape, the Japanese commander, Col. Kunio Nakagawa, steeled his men to sell their lives dearly, vowing to fight to the last man and take as many Americans as possible with them along the way. For the Marines and soldiers, any pretense of quarter was quickly abandoned in the see-saw fighting as they came across the bodies of captured comrades who’d been sadistically tortured and mutilated or tied to trees and used for bayonet practice. And given the Japanese penchant for trickery by feigning injury or death only to then detonate hidden grenades, blowing apart both themselves and the unsuspecting corpsmen or medics ostensibly coming to their aid, no one was in a mood to take prisoners.
<div id="attachment_798497" style="width: 478px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-798497" class="size-large wp-image-798497" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-514678544-468x576.jpg" alt="(Original Caption) 9/26/1944-Peleliu Island: Weary and exhausted after the tough battle for Hill 200 Near Peleliu Airpoet, this leathr neck sits down amidst the battle rubble and weeps. According to latest reports, the marines are making steady progress on the Island, although heavy fighting continues." width="468" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-514678544-468x576.jpg 468w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-514678544-244x300.jpg 244w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-514678544-768x945.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-514678544.jpg 832w" sizes="(max-width: 468px) 100vw, 468px" />(Original Caption) 9/26/1944-Peleliu Island: Weary and exhausted after the tough battle for Hill 200 Near Peleliu Airport, this leather neck sits down amidst the battle rubble and weeps. According to latest reports, the marines are making steady progress on the Island, although heavy fighting continues.</div>
Indeed, by 1944, both side&#8217;s combatants had for years been marinated in the notion that the enemy belonged to an inferior species. A Japanese newspaper <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/406393.Jim_Proser" target="_blank" rel="noopener">once described</a> the U.S. Marines as &#8220;a special force recruited from prisons and insane asylums for bloodlust&#8221;. As such, Peleliu was a place where courage was paramount and devotion to the man sharing your foxhole sacrosanct, but where chivalry was replaced with visceral, and understandable, loathing. A reductive atavism fueled by both dehumanizing propaganda and the realities of a medieval brand of warfare experienced day in and day out in an endless battle of attrition.
As with so many of these Pacific Island battles, the rules of warfare as dictated in the Geneva Conventions were ignored.
“The hatred was so intense,” remembered Marine Pvt. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Pelelui-Okinawa/dp/0091937531" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Eugene Sledge</a>, that to him Peleliu was like “two scorpions in a bottle. One was annihilated, the other nearly so.”
Finally, on 27 November, 1944, D+72, after more than two months of non-stop fighting from one end of the superheated rocky island to the other, Peleliu was declared secure. Operation Stalemate II had taken an agonizing 70 days longer than confident planners had predicted. And both sides paid a horrific price for their efforts.
Of the 28,000 combined Marines and Army infantry involved, they incurred the highest American casualty rate of any amphibious landing of the war. The fine First Marine Division was shattered. It suffered 1,252 KIA and 5,274 wounded. The Army’s 81st Infantry Division lost another 542 KIA and 2,736 wounded.
The Japanese garrison was effectively wiped out. Only 202 of the 14,000 defenders were taken alive and of them, only 19 were Japanese military; the rest were Korean and Okinawan laborers.
<div id="attachment_798495" style="width: 744px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-798495" class="wp-image-798495 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-486559307-734x576.jpg" alt="A wounded US Marine lifted aboard a Coast Guard-manned transport, during the Pacific Campaign of World War Two, Peleliu, Palau, 1944. (Photo by US Coast Guard/Getty Images)" width="734" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-486559307-734x576.jpg 734w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-486559307-300x236.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-486559307-768x603.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-486559307.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 734px) 100vw, 734px" />A wounded US Marine lifted aboard a Coast Guard-manned transport, during the Pacific Campaign of World War Two, Peleliu, Palau, 1944. (Photo by US Coast Guard/Getty Images)</div>
Tragically, it is debatable whether Peleliu ever needed to be captured at all. The main purpose of the operation, to secure an aerodrome from which to cover the landings on Mindanao in the southern Philippines, was rendered of dubious value when MacArthur opted to bypass Mindanao and strike first at Leyte in the central part of the archipelago. Admiral William Halsey, in fact, had recommended the cancellation of the Palau landings in favor of using the Marines on Leyte. But, as author William Manchester, a wounded Pacific War Marine veteran himself, would <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Goodbye-Darkness-Memoir-Pacific-War/dp/0316501115" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bitterly write</a>: “[Admiral] Nimitz decided it was too late to recall the Palau force and 9,171 [sic] Americans fell there, tragically and pointlessly.”
Since it was expected to be a quick, easy fight, few journalists bothered to cover the landings. Those who did found their stories overshadowed by events in the Philippines and Europe. In fact, the fighting on Peleliu was still raging when MacArthur’s invasion force hit the beaches of Leyte in October.
So Peleliu, perhaps the most brutal battle of our most brutal theater of war, remains in relative obscurity. The men who fought and especially those who died there deserve better. For many veterans who fought throughout the Pacific–the First Marine Division also saw action at Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, and Okinawa–Peleliu remained the battle that stayed with them in the sheer savagery of the action, hostility of the terrain, and abject misery of the conditions.
“Something in me died at Peleliu,” lamented Sledge, who’d somehow made it through 45 days of combat before his decimated 5th Marine Regiment was pulled off the line.
Whether or not the Marines and soldiers of Peleliu suffered and died needlessly, there is no debating whether they successfully carried out their mission with extraordinary bravery, skill, and perseverance. They did so on one of the most inhospitable battlefields into which men-at-arms have ever been placed, against an enemy whose homicidal fanaticism was matched only by their tenacity and skill as warriors.
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We owe this moment, then, to the men of Peleliu, most of whom have now died from causes far removed from that terrible battlefield, to remember their sacrifice, to honor their courage, and give them one final salute as they move into their twilight.
Indeed, they should know they are not forgotten. They should know that the seminal moment of their young lives, one they carried to the end of their days, has not slipped away into the collective amnesia of a peaceful society. We will never fully comprehend what happened there and what they overcame to move the country one step closer to a just victory and the world to an enduring peace.
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and author of two acclaimed novels. Along with Daily Wire, his articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, New York Post, National Review, The Federalist, The Hill and other media outlets. His newest book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Life-Pits-Rough-Tumble-Exchange/dp/B0CKPNCMQW/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=1331509151681009&amp;hvadid=83219665089301&amp;hvbmt=bp&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocphy=97755&amp;hvnetw=o&amp;hvqmt=p&amp;hvtargid=kwd-83219680392082%3Aloc-190&amp;hydadcr=18892_13467888&amp;keywords=brad+schaeffer&amp;qid=1698162015&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Life-Pits-Rough-Tumble-Exchange/dp/B0CKPNCMQW/ref%3Dsr_1_1?adgrpid%3D1331509151681009%26hvadid%3D83219665089301%26hvbmt%3Dbp%26hvdev%3Dc%26hvlocphy%3D97755%26hvnetw%3Do%26hvqmt%3Dp%26hvtargid%3Dkwd-83219680392082%253Aloc-190%26hydadcr%3D18892_13467888%26keywords%3Dbrad%2Bschaeffer%26qid%3D1698162015%26sr%3D8-1&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1722366620272000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0vhiW3SrKDrsWDil8BZYgg">LIFE IN THE PITS: My Time as a Trader on the Rough-and-Tumble Exchange Floors</a>, is a fun and informative memoir of his time as a floor trader in Chicago and New York. You can also find more of Brad’s articles on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1722366620272000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3J2TVu4lEyxt1MB9TGXQzF">Substack</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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