On November 15, 1941, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall gave a secret briefing to a small group of reporters to discuss the rising tensions between Washington D.C. and Tokyo. He was asked how the U.S. might prosecute a war against Japan if it should come to that. Marshall went off the record, and stated we would be merciless. American aircraft would be “dispatched to set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There won’t be any hesitation about bombing civilians — it will be all out.”
Just three weeks later, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the U.S. found itself at war with the Japanese empire. With the exception of Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s celebrated, if mostly symbolic, April 1942 raid the enemy’s homeland remained safely out of range.
As the Americans began to press ever closer to Japan in a series of island hopping operations through the Central Pacific, however, it became clear that once the Marianas were captured this situation would change.
In 1943, out in the Utah desert on the Dugway Proving Ground, the Army Air Force constructed a 24-building replica of a Japanese city. There they ran a series of tests to determine how best to bomb a metropolitan area with wooden structures containing paper walls. Inside the imitation homes were pieces of imported Japanese furniture, tatami mats, and even clothes hung in the closets for authenticity. With forensic dispassion, they dropped various ordinances on the miniature city dubbed “Little Tokyo” to determine which was most effective.
<div id="attachment_887413" style="width: 810px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887413" class="size-full wp-image-887413" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway.jpg" alt="View of the German and Japanese Village at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, 1943. US ARMY, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons." width="800" height="215" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway.jpg 800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway-300x81.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway-768x206.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" />View of the German and Japanese Village at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, 1943. US ARMY, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.</div>
The weapon chosen was the new M69 napalm bomb. It was a simple design. Weighing under seven pounds, it didn’t look like a typical bomb. Instead it was a hexagonal pipe just three inches in diameter and only 20 inches long and packed with cheesecloth bags loaded with napalm. The bomb trailed a three-foot streamer to slow its descent so it wouldn’t crash through a structure to the basement before igniting. Once the M69 pipe landed it lay inert for several seconds before shooting out the cheesecloth bags with a bang. Unimpeded, the bags could fly as far as a football field’s distance in any direction. If one should hit something in its path, like a wall, a ceiling, a car, a person even, the bag would burst like a water balloon, splattering a glob of flaming gel up to 50 feet, starting hundreds of intense mini fires. And they kept burning until the small fires eventually coalesced into an inferno, ravenously feasting on the ready fuel supply of Japanese wood and paper.
The destructive implications were disquieting. Potential civilian casualties would be on an order of magnitude never before seen. This at a time when firebombing Axis cities, like the RAF raid on Hamburg in July 1943 that killed 45,000 civilians, had already come into its own. By this stage in the war, however, with casualties mounting and Japan showing no inkling towards surrender, American hatred for the Japanese was so intense that personal scruples hardly entered into the calculation.
Meanwhile, the engineers at Boeing Aircraft had created an awesome delivery system to bring the war to Japan: The B-29 long range bomber. With a fuselage length of 99 feet and wingspan of 140 feet, the aptly named “Superfortress” was the largest, most technologically advanced mass-produced weapon of the Second World War. Driven by four 2,200 horsepower Wright R-3350 engines mounted on wing nacelles spinning four 16-foot 7-inch four-bladed propellers, and protected by remote-control gun turrets, the 60-ton wonder plane sped through the air at up to 350 mph at 30,000 feet. Pressurized compartments liberated the crews from the bulky flight suits and oxygen masks at altitude that were a necessity for the aviators on the B-29’s less advanced stablemates, the USAAF B-17 and B-24 and RAF Lancaster. Despite its size and weight, the Superfortress could hit targets 1,600 miles away with a 12,000 pound payload at altitude. The B-29 was to the other bombers in the Allied arsenal what the Cadillac DeVille was to the Model-T.
<div id="attachment_887453" style="width: 763px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887453" class="size-large wp-image-887453" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-753x576.jpg" alt="Bell-Marietta Georgia, B-29 Assembly Line - 1944. Serial numbers on the planes suggest these are Wichita-built Boeing B-29-5-BWs. United States Army Air Forces, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons." width="753" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-753x576.jpg 753w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-300x230.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-768x588.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-1536x1175.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-2048x1567.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 753px) 100vw, 753px" />Bell-Marietta Georgia, B-29 Assembly Line &#8211; 1944. Serial numbers on the planes suggest these are Wichita-built Boeing B-29-5-BWs. U.S. Army Air Forces, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.</div>
But having spent an unprecedented $3 billion in 1940s dollars designing, constructing ,and deploying the new leviathan bomber, U.S. planners feared they may have created the costliest flop in military history.
For all its promise and technological wonder, however, the B-29 was proving to be a disappointment. 
Flying first off of bases on mainland China and then, once captured, the Marianas, the B-29, would climb to its prescribed bombing altitude of 30,000 feet. Once there, the aircraft encountered the heretofore unheard of jet stream — a current of air that raced over Japan like an angry “kaze”, or wind, at 250 mph. When flying perpendicular to it, the bombers skidded wildly off course. If flying directly into it, real ground speed was reduced to a crawl, making the bombers easy targets for anti-aircraft. And if the kaze was in their six, the bombers raced headlong over their targets at speeds in excess of 450mph which was far too fast for accurate bombing. The results were negligible, and each time a B-29 was shot down, $600,000 worth of aircraft (in a time when a typical new house cost $3,100) and anywhere from ten to fourteen highly trained crewmen were lost. And, though greatly diminished by mid-1944, Japanese fighters still rose up to challenge the intruders over their cities.
In its first raid against Japan on June 15, 1944, for example, 60 China-based B-29s flying at 30,000 feet attempted to bomb a steel mill in Kyushu. Seven bombers were lost, while only one bomb hit the target. Something had to be done to salvage the B-29.
So the overall USAAF commander, Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold, reached over to the European Theater and summoned his most aggressive airman, Gen. Curtis LeMay, to take over the Pacific strategic bombing campaign from Gen. H.S. Hansell, who remained a stubborn disciple of high altitude precision bombing with high explosives. Arnold’s orders to LeMay were direct: get results or be fired too.
<div id="attachment_887389" style="width: 457px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887389" class="size-large wp-image-887389" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-447x576.jpg" alt="circa 1955: Studio portrait of United States Air Force Major General Curtis Emerson Le May wearing a military uniform, with medals over his left breast pocket. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="447" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-447x576.jpg 447w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-233x300.jpg 233w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-768x989.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623.jpg 795w" sizes="(max-width: 447px) 100vw, 447px" />circa 1955: Studio portrait of United States Air Force Major General Curtis Emerson Le May wearing a military uniform, with medals over his left breast pocket. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)</div>
The cigar-chomping LeMay was known as a no-nonsense bomber ace who’d flown his share of combat missions over Germany, often piloting the lead plane into the flak and Luftwaffe-filled skies. He brought that same gritty determination to the Pacific.
At first, LeMay stayed true to daylight precision bombing dicta. But dropping high explosives on Tokyo from six miles up was proving ineffective. So on February 28, 1945, LeMay did something unorthodox. He sent his bombers high over Tokyo again, but this time they carried 450 tons of incendiaries. The results were encouraging; one square mile of Tokyo was burned out and 28,000 buildings destroyed or damaged. The general wondered what a mass raid coming in low could do.
LeMay summoned his wing commanders to his Quonset hut on Guam to inform them he’d made a stunning, and some thought insane, decision. He would bring the B-29s down under the jet stream to an altitude of between 5,000 and 8,000 feet. To impede anti-aircraft they would go in under the cover of night and the bombers would be loaded to the gills with M69 napalm bombs. And as if this wasn’t radical enough, LeMay informed his flabbergasted crews “I’m going to send you in at 5,000 feet without any guns, gunners or ammunition.” Though stripping away the heavy .50 caliber machine guns and extra crewmen would enable each bomber to haul an additional 2,700 pounds of ordinance, each aircraft would now be defenseless.
LeMay’s fliers were horrified. In fact, they saw the mission briefing as tantamount to a madman reading out their collective death sentences. There was safety in altitude. Said one aviator, “A sort of cold fear gripped the crew. Many frankly did not expect to return from a raid over that city at an altitude of less than 10,000 feet.” This wasn’t hyperbole. LeMay’s own flak experts feared that as many as seven out of ten bombers could be lost.
But the calculating airman thought he’d spotted a hole in Japan’s air defenses between low-level small caliber and high-altitude larger caliber anti-aircraft fire in that five to ten thousand corridor. He also knew there were only two dedicated night fighter squadrons on Tokyo’s Honshu island.
Dangers aside, there was a moral aspect to the new mission code-named “Operation Meetinghouse.” The specific target selected was a three-by-four-mile area that housed an estimated 750,000 people, many of them working as home-based shop laborers for the local war factories, which the planners figured made the zone a legitimate military target. Still, LeMay had no delusions as to what he was asking of his young fliers, and he was coldly candid in his briefing. “No matter how you slice it, you’re going to kill an awful lot of civilians. Thousands and thousands. But if you don’t destroy Japanese industry we’ll have to invade Japan.” Every man knew the horrific casualties such a final Götterdämmerung on the home islands implied.
At 5:35 p.m. on Friday, March 9, 1945, the first of 324 B-29s, carrying a combined payload of three and a third million pounds of napalm, roared down the runways on three Marianas islands; first Guam, which was farthest from Japan, then forty minutes later lifting off from Saipan and Tinian. Once in the air, the bombers headed for Japan in three parallel streams stretching 400 miles across the darkening Pacific sky.
<div id="attachment_887371" style="width: 730px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887371" class="size-large wp-image-887371" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-720x576.jpg" alt="Two U.S. soldiers watching the takeoff of a B-29 bomber from the air base at Saipan, destination Tokyo. Saipan, 23rd November 1944 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)" width="720" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-720x576.jpg 720w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-300x240.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-768x614.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" />Two U.S. soldiers watching the takeoff of a B-29 bomber from the air base at Saipan, destination Tokyo. Saipan, 23rd November 1944 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)</div>
LeMay, being LeMay, had wanted to lead the mission himself as he was going all in, betting hundreds of expensive bombers, and the young lives of their crews, on an untested theory. But his knowledge of the atomic bomb made his capture too high a security risk, so he was compelled to stay behind on Guam and pace his control room while furiously chomping his cigar. For the first time in the war, Curtis LeMay could not sleep. “I’m sweating this one out,” he confessed. “A lot could go wrong.”
<div id="attachment_887463" style="width: 996px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887463" class="size-full wp-image-887463" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945.jpg" alt="" width="986" height="515" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945.jpg 986w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945-300x157.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945-768x401.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 986px) 100vw, 986px" />501st Bombardment Group B-29 takeoff Northwest Field Guam. U.S. Army Air Forces, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</div>
1,500 miles farther north, Tokyo’s teeming inhabitants had no clue as to the holocaust heading their way. All they knew from Radio Tokyo was that tomorrow, March 10, was Army Day. There would be a big parade through the streets. After reading the latest news, Radio Tokyo offered final words of encouragement to stay strong in the face of mounting adversity. “It is always darkest before dawn,” said the announcer. Then he wished them a good night and signed off.
Shortly after the radio went silent, six-year-old Suzuki Kensuke heard the blare of air-raid sirens erupting across the city, mingling with the ominous hum of thousands of approaching radial engines echoing through the night sky. “They sounded like an advanced notice telling us death was on the way,” he recalled. Death was, in fact, already overhead.
* * *
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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World War II. American Air

Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 1

American History

Bombings

Japan

Pacific Ocean

Tokyo

U.S. Army

U.S. Military

U.S. Navy

World War II

Iwo Jima Photo

‘Uncommon Valor Was A Common Virtue’: The Battle Of Iwo Jima

'Uncommon Valor Was A Common Virtue': The Battle Of Iwo Jima

Iwo Jima

Marines

My Old Home

The Battle Of Luzon, Part 4: Victory And Aftermath

American General

Douglas MacArthur

History

Philippines

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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<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>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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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* * *
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>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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.

80-G-59525

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>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-2-race-to-manila" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 2: Race To Manila</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-3-the-massacre-of-manila" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 3: The Massacre Of Manila</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-4-victory-and-aftermath" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 4: Victory And Aftermath</a></h3>
* * *
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.
* * *
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>

NH 44317

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

President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/joe-biden" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joe Biden</a> announced Monday that he would ban offshore drilling for more than 625 million acres of U.S. waters before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated. 
Biden&#8217;s prohibition through two presidential memoranda on new oil and natural gas leases will cover the entire East Coast and West Coast of the continental U.S., the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and parts of the Alaska coastline. The White House said the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act gave Biden the authority to make such a sweeping ban on energy production.
“In protecting more than 625 million acres of the U.S. ocean from offshore drilling, President Biden has determined that the environmental and economic risks and harms that would result from drilling in these areas outweigh their limited fossil fuel resource potential,” the White House said in a statement. “With these withdrawals, President Biden is protecting coastal communities, marine ecosystems, and local economies – including fishing, recreation, and tourism – from oil spills and other impacts of offshore drilling.”
He previously used the same 1953 law to ban drilling for portions of the North Bering Sea and 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea. 
“The withdrawals have no expiration date, and prohibit all future oil and natural gas leasing in the areas withdrawn,” the White House said. 
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The move from Biden comes just two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has promised to increase American oil production and make it easier for oil and gas companies to drill in U.S. waters.
Trump told Hugh Hewitt on Monday that he would take immediate action to reverse Biden&#8217;s executive actions.
&#8220;I see it just came over that Biden has banned all oil and gas drilling across 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory. It&#8217;s ridiculous. I&#8217;ll unban it immediately,&#8221; he said.
&nbsp;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
PRESIDENT TRUMP: &#8220;I see it just came over that Biden has banned all oil and gas drilling across 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory. It&#8217;s ridiculous. I&#8217;ll unban it immediately.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/mGijm5N6v7">pic.twitter.com/mGijm5N6v7</a>
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) <a href="https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1876272349542252936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt <a href="https://x.com/karolineleavitt/status/1876228351028858932" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Monday that the ban was motivated by revenge. 
“This is a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices,” she said. “Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill.”
While campaigning for president, Trump vowed to make the U.S. “energy dominant&#8221; and dramatically increase energy production. 
“We’re going to supply it all over Europe, all over the world,” he <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-vows-to-unleash-u-s-energy-production-we-have-more-liquid-gold-than-saudi-arabia-russia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. “We’re going to be double and triple what they’re doing. We’re going to have tremendous energy, and we’re going to lower our prices of energy.”
During his first term in office, Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/disgraceful-decision-trump-press-secretary-blasts-bidens-move-to-block-more-offshore-drilling" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signed</a> an executive order to rescind former President Barack Obama’s orders to withdraw hundreds of millions of acres of submerged land on the outer continental shelf, leading to a court battle. Obama also pointed to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act for his actions.

US President Joe Biden signs the Social Security Fairness Act

Biden Bans Offshore Drilling For Most Of U.S. Coastline Before Trump Takes Over

Alaska

Atlantic Ocean

Donald Trump

Executive

Gulf of Mexico

Joe Biden

Karoline Leavitt

Oil and Gas

Politics

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.
<h4><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!</a></h4>
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.

World War II – Navy Seabees

‘Like Two Scorpions In A Bottle’: The 80th Anniversary Of The Invasion Of Peleliu

'Like Two Scorpions In A Bottle': The 80th Anniversary Of The Invasion Of Peleliu

Battle of Saipan

The Battle Of Saipan, Part Four: Conquest And Aftermath

Readers Pass

“The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” on June 19, 1944, was the most <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-saipan-part-two-the-great-marianas-turkey-shoot" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lopsided aerial victory</a> of the Pacific War. In one day Japan’s 1st Mobile Fleet and land-based contingent lost over 300 aircraft and crew, rendering Japanese naval air power a shell of the fighting force that had so confidently sallied forth to meet the Americans and end the Saipan invasion. 
Admiral Ozawa, however, still commanded a formidable array of surface ships. And although U.S. submarines had sent two of his three prized fleet carriers to the bottom, he was still eager for a fight with the seven carriers and roughly 150 planes he had remaining, plus aircraft he mistakenly believed were still in some force on Guam, which was not the case. He’d planned on rendezvousing with his tankers, refueling, and hitting the Americans again in the morning.
But his opposing tactical commander, Admiral Mitscher, refused to just sit back and wait to be attacked again. He wanted to pursue and destroy the Japanese fleet. There was, however, a problem. The Americans weren’t sure where Ozawa’s ships even were. Throughout the day, U.S. scout planes scoured the vast emptiness of the Philippine Sea in a desperate search to locate the Japanese fleet.
It wasn’t until 3:15 in the afternoon, and after flying some 300 miles, that a scouting party from Enterprise flying Grumman Avenger torpedo planes spotted the unmistakable pagoda-like masts of the Japanese fleet and radioed their find to Task Force 58. 
<div id="attachment_773185" style="width: 435px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-773185" class="size-large wp-image-773185" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/NH-43430-KN-425x576.jpeg" alt="Grumman TBM &quot;Avenger&quot; Torpedo Planes fly in formation, circa 1942-1944. Halftoned photo, color-tinted. Copied from &quot;U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings,&quot; July 1945. Catalog #: NH 43430-KN. Naval History and Heritage Command" width="425" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/NH-43430-KN-425x576.jpeg 425w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/NH-43430-KN-221x300.jpeg 221w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/NH-43430-KN-768x1041.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/NH-43430-KN.jpeg 944w" sizes="(max-width: 425px) 100vw, 425px" />Grumman &#8220;Avenger&#8221; Torpedo Planes fly in formation, circa 1942-1944. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
Listeners aboard the cruiser Atago intercepted the Americans’ transmission and informed Ozawa. Realizing 1st Mobile Fleet had been spotted, the Japanese commander ceased the refueling operation and ordered the fleet to sail northwest at 24 knots, away from the Americans.
Due to delays in deciphering, the sighting didn’t reach Mitscher on board his flagship Lexington until 4:05 p.m. Now the physically frail but aggressive admiral faced an agonizing decision. The scouts’ report showed the Japanese fleet to be some 275 miles away. This was the very limit of his attack aircraft’s range. And to make matters worse, he had only four hours of daylight left to work with. This meant that he’d have to recover any potential strike in darkness, and few of his aircrew were trained in night operations. What should he do?
<div id="attachment_773193" style="width: 480px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-773193" class="size-large wp-image-773193" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-236857-470x576.jpeg" alt="Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher. CTF 58.3 aboard USS LEXINGTON (CV-16) during The Battle of The Philippine Sea, 19 June 1944. Catalog #: 80-G-236857. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="470" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-236857-470x576.jpeg 470w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-236857-245x300.jpeg 245w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-236857-768x942.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-236857.jpeg 1044w" sizes="(max-width: 470px) 100vw, 470px" />Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher aboard USS LEXINGTON (CV-16) during The Battle of The Philippine Sea, 19 June 1944. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
After a few minutes of reflection, Mitscher concluded the Japanese carriers were just too tempting a target to let slip away. He ordered his staff to “Launch the first deckload as soon as possible. Get the carriers!”
When the aircrews who’d been anxiously waiting below decks all day received their orders, they knew what this meant for them; they resigned themselves to flying a dangerous mission at the maximum range, followed by possibly having to ditch in the pitch blackness of the Philippine Sea’s shark-infested waters when their tanks ran dry. Even if they did make it back, how would they find their carriers observing blackout protocol in what was a moonless night on the open ocean? Without hesitation they scrambled to their waiting aircraft across eleven carriers and sped down the flight decks, heading west, unsure what the enemy warships, and a setting sun, had in store for them.
<div id="attachment_773173" style="width: 721px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-773173" class="size-large wp-image-773173" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/unnamed-711x576.jpg" alt="Battle of the Philippine Sea, June 1944. Lieutenant Ronald P. Rip Gift relaxes with other pilots in a ready room on board USS Monterey (CVL-26), after landing on her at night following strikes on the Japanese fleet, 20 June 1944. Note admonition Get the Carriers on chalk board in the background. Photographed by Lieutenant Victor Jorgensen, USNR. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-474791" width="711" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/unnamed-711x576.jpg 711w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/unnamed-300x243.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/unnamed-768x622.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/unnamed.jpg 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 711px) 100vw, 711px" />Photographed by Lieutenant Victor Jorgensen, USNR. Official U.S. Navy Photo. National Archives.</div>
Navy Cross recipient, Lt. Harold Buell, piloting a Curtiss Helldiver bomber, recalled:
<blockquote>I have always thought that the most amazing thing about this mission was that it ever took place at all. Almost all the pilots leaving the carriers…knew they were going beyond normal gas range to hit the enemy. If the Japanese had launched such a strike against our fleet we would dub it a suicide mission. Yet, almost to a man, we went on the mission as ordered.</blockquote>
Suicidal or not, a strike package of 240 planes headed for the enemy flotilla.
<div id="attachment_773183" style="width: 475px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-773183" class="size-large wp-image-773183" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-238021-465x576.jpeg" alt="Battle of The Philippine Sea, June 1944. TBFs and SB2Cs enroute to attack the enemy. Photograph released 30 June with other Philippine Sea views. Catalog #: 80-G-238021. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="465" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-238021-465x576.jpeg 465w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-238021-242x300.jpeg 242w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-238021-768x952.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-238021.jpeg 1033w" sizes="(max-width: 465px) 100vw, 465px" />Battle of The Philippine Sea, June 1944. TBFs and SB2Cs enroute to attack the enemy. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
After a two-hour flight, the cloud of American aircraft caught up with Ozawa’s fleet. 95 Hellcats ripped through the Japanese combat air patrol to clear the way for the dive bombers and torpedo planes. In the ensuing dogfight, 65 more of Osawa’s aircraft were sent flaming into the sea. With the skies cleared of enemy fighters, the attack aircraft dispersed to hit as many of the seven aircraft carriers at the center of the Japanese strike force as they could. 
The anti-aircraft was ferocious, however, and several U.S. planes were blown out of the sky. Buell likened it to “diving into an Iowa plains hailstorm.” While dive bombers pitched over from 10,000 feet and screamed down to drop their payloads, torpedo planes skimmed the waves, frothing with enemy shells and bullets, to release their fish and send them towards their intended targets.
In the ensuing attack, the Americans mortally wounded two oilers and the fleet carrier Hiyō, while rocking three other light carriers with non-fatal bomb and torpedo hits. It had not been the knock-out blow that Mitscher had envisioned. Still, the losses inflicted by the determined U.S. air strike along with the mauling his own air wing had suffered over the last two days convinced Ozawa to abandon any further operations to disrupt the landings on Saipan.
But for the American fliers winging away to the east and darkness, and many planes battle damaged, their struggle was just beginning. They had some 300 miles between them and their own carriers, and not a drop of fuel to spare. Many planes were also battle damaged, making their journey home even more perilous. Not to mention several men were painfully wounded. Would they make it back to their carriers? Or would hundreds of Task Force 58’s aircraft and, more important, their highly trained and brave crews, run out of gas and be compelled to ditch and be swallowed up in the unforgiving vastness of the Pacific?
<div id="attachment_773217" style="width: 722px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-773217" class="wp-image-773217 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-236876-712x576.jpeg" alt="Battle of The Philippine Sea, June 1944. Japanese plane crashes during a night attack on TG 58.3, 19 June 1944. Seen from USS LEXINGTON (CV-16). Catalog #: 80-G-236876. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="712" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-236876-712x576.jpeg 712w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-236876-300x243.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-236876-768x622.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-236876.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 712px) 100vw, 712px" />Battle of The Philippine Sea, June 1944. Japanese plane crashes during a night attack on TG 58.3, 19 June 1944. Seen from USS LEXINGTON (CV-16). National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
They headed east into what was soon pitch darkness, without even moonlight to guide pilots relying on navigation alone to get them home. It wasn’t long before scores of U.S. planes with empty tanks began belly-landing into the sea. In the eerie night time the airwaves filled with panicked voices breaking radio silence to announce they were out of fuel and ditching into the forbidding black waters of the Pacific.
Another Navy Cross recipient, LCDR Ralph Weymouth, while flying an SBD Dauntless dive-bomber off the Lexington, remembered:
<blockquote>At one time so many people were talking on the radio I finally turned it off. I just couldn’t stand hearing these guys saying ‘How much gas have you got left?’ ‘I’m going in shortly.’ ‘I’ve got two minutes left.’ That sort of thing.</blockquote>
After two hours of dead reckoning towards their task force, the desperate Americans weren’t sure where their ships were. They gazed down through their canopies into an eerie dark emptiness. All seemed lost.
And then Mitscher, a flier himself who loved his airmen like a father, made one of the bravest decisions of the war: He ordered all the lights of the fleet illuminated, fired brightly burning star shells, and sent spotlights crisscrossing the dark tropical sky. Considering this would announced their location to any Japanese submarine in the vicinity, it was a remarkable decision. The surviving planes began to land as best they could or belly into the water next to their ships if too heavily battle-damaged or when their tanks finally ran dry.
Over the subsequent days, Mitscher’s ships searched far and wide to try and recover as many floating airmen as they could. Although the battle cost the lives of 49 aviators, amazingly, over the course of the week, 160 water-logged fliers were fished out of the water. Mitscher would be revered for risking his ships to rescue his airmen rather than abandoning them to die a lonely, torturously slow death bobbing in the open ocean.
<div id="attachment_772651" style="width: 720px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-772651" class="size-large wp-image-772651" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/USS_Lexington_CV-16_Philippine_Sea-710x576.jpg" alt="Grumman F6F-3 fighter landing aboard the Essex Class carrier USS Lexington (CV-16) - flagship of Task Force 58 - during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, June 1944. Official US Navy Photograph. (Enhancement by DLJ - Wild Surmise). Wikimedia Commons." width="710" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/USS_Lexington_CV-16_Philippine_Sea-710x576.jpg 710w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/USS_Lexington_CV-16_Philippine_Sea-300x243.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/USS_Lexington_CV-16_Philippine_Sea.jpg 725w" sizes="(max-width: 710px) 100vw, 710px" />USS Lexington during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, June 1944. US Navy. Wikimedia Commons.</div>
The raid on June 20, 1944, and subsequent perilous return trip, would be remembered as the “Mission Beyond Darkness.”
The two-day Battle of the Philippine Sea cost the Americans relatively little compared to the Japanese who lost three fleet carriers, three oilers, and over 3,000 sailors and airmen killed in action or lost at sea, including over 600 pilots.
In two days, the U.S. Navy rendered Japanese naval air power impotent. Still, many on Task Force 58 fumed that the hesitant Spruance, by not immediately attacking the Japanese ships when first sighted, had denied them an even greater victory. For his part, however, Spruance saw his primary mission as protecting the landings, not chasing after enemy carriers. Especially when they could have been a decoy — a tactic the Japanese would actually use to lure the aggressive “Bull” Halsey into abandoning the landings at Leyte four months later, nearly dooming MacArthur’s Philippines reconquest.
Regardless, the battle at sea was over, but the bloody fighting on Saipan raged on.
* * *
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-saipan-part-one-invasion" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Saipan, Part One: Invasion</a></h4>
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-saipan-part-two-the-great-marianas-turkey-shoot" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Saipan, Part Two: The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot</a></h4>
* * *
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.

180-G-474791 copy

The Battle Of Saipan, Part Three: Mission Beyond Darkness

80-G-236841

The Battle Of Saipan, Part Two: The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot

It was the most powerful amphibious armada of the Pacific War thus far. The task force consisted of 535 ships of the U.S. Fifth Fleet ferrying 127,000 personnel, which included some 70,000 landing troops of the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions ready to storm the beaches, along with the Army’s 27th Infantry Division in reserve; these formations combined made up the Fifth Amphibious Corps. 
For two days prior, an ever-growing number of U.S. Navy battleships, cruisers, and destroyers mercilessly shelled the island of Saipan in the Central Pacific, second largest in the 500-mile long Marianas Islands chain. At dawn on June 15, 1944, D-Day, the shore bombardment resumed as the warships leveled their guns and opened up on the beaches and lush green hills beyond, into the presumed Japanese positions, to clear the way for the landing force.
<div id="attachment_772087" style="width: 736px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-772087" class="size-large wp-image-772087" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-253678-726x576.jpeg" alt="National Archives. Saipan Operation, June 1944. Caption: Ship of task force 52 prepare to depart Roi for Saipan, 12 June 1944. Seen from NEW MEXICO These ships are (left to right): USS McNAIR (DD-679); USS MONTPELIER (CL-57); USS HONOLULU (CL-48); USS TENNESSEE (BB-43). Catalog #: 80-G-253678. National Archives. Courtesy: Naval History and Heritage Command." width="726" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-253678-726x576.jpeg 726w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-253678-300x238.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-253678-768x610.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/80-G-253678.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 726px) 100vw, 726px" />Ship of task force 52 prepare to depart Roi for Saipan, 12 June 1944. Seen from NEW MEXICO These ships are (left to right): USS McNAIR (DD-679); USS MONTPELIER (CL-57); USS HONOLULU (CL-48); USS TENNESSEE (BB-43). Catalog #: 80-G-253678. National Archives. Courtesy: Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
Saipan is roughly twelve miles long and five miles wide; from the air it looks somewhat like a long-necked dinosaur. In reality, it is a beautiful island with a landscape that varies from sandy beaches and a coral-reefed lagoon to sugar cane fields and forbidding limestone escarpments rising to the peak of the 1,560-foot high Mount Tapochau. It was not the enticing blue waters and colorful flora of the Marianas that attracted the Americans; rather it was its strategic location.
With the Marianas in the central Pacific just 1,200 miles southeast of Japan, both sides understood the significance of the upcoming battle for Saipan, the first of three islands in the chain slated for capture (the other two being Guam and Tinian.) For the Americans, taking the Marianas would pierce the inner ring of the enemy’s island bastions in the central Pacific that currently barred the maritime approaches to Japan’s home islands. Not only could they establish a base of operations for further penetration of Japan’s defenses, but from Saipan’s three airfields Dai Nippon would suddenly be in range of the newly developed B-29 Superfortress bombers — a grim prospect for Tokyo.
<div id="attachment_771923" style="width: 540px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-771923" class="size-large wp-image-771923" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Battle_of_Saipan_Map1-copy-530x576.jpeg" alt="English: Map of the Battle of Saipan, June 15-July 9, 1944. . Geological features based on Battle of Saipan Map.jpg. Front lines, division movements and additional roads derived from maps in Hoffman, Carl W. (1950) Saipan: The Beginning of the End, Historical Branch, United States Marine Corps OCLC: 564000243. USMA Military Atlas served as inspiration for some of the design elements." width="530" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Battle_of_Saipan_Map1-copy-530x576.jpeg 530w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Battle_of_Saipan_Map1-copy-276x300.jpeg 276w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Battle_of_Saipan_Map1-copy-768x835.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Battle_of_Saipan_Map1-copy-1412x1536.jpeg 1412w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Battle_of_Saipan_Map1-copy-1883x2048.jpeg 1883w" sizes="(max-width: 530px) 100vw, 530px" />Map of the Battle of Saipan, June 15-July 9, 1944. Wikimedia Commons.</div>
This would also be the first time in the war wherein a battlefield would be on Japanese soil, inhabited by Japanese civilians. Should Saipan fall, it was clear that Tojo Hideki’s militarist government would fall with it. For the Japanese High Command, the Marianas had to be held at all costs. With both sides coveting this immensely strategic island chain, the stage was set for one of the most brutal battles of the war so far, as well as trigger the largest carrier-versus-carrier naval engagement in history. 
As would be the case with so many island landings, the pre-invasion bombardment did not obliterate the Japanese defenses as hoped. After hurtling some 15,000 16-inch and 5-inch shells, as well as over 165,000 smaller caliber ordnance during the three-day barrage, a formidable remnant of the emperor’s 31,000 troops managed to survive.
<div id="attachment_772055" style="width: 748px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-772055" class="size-large wp-image-772055" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-486556077-738x576.jpg" alt="US Marines write a message on the side of a bomb; 'To the warlords of Japan, we have not forgotten - the B-29's will remind you again and again and again', during the Pacific Campaign of World War Two, Saipan, circa 1939-1945. (Photo by European/FPG/Getty Images)" width="738" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-486556077-738x576.jpg 738w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-486556077-300x234.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-486556077-768x599.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-486556077.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 738px) 100vw, 738px" />US Marines write a message on the side of a bomb &#8230; during the Pacific Campaign of World War Two, Saipan, circa 1939-1945. (Photo by European/FPG/Getty Images)</div>
 As the first wave of landing craft carrying 8,000 Marines chugged up onto two separate beaches, they were compelled to charge through a deadly torrent of shells and bullets, from pre-sited artillery and mortars to small arms fire coming at them from the Japanese first line of defense in the trees lining the shoreline as well as hills behind. The reason for the landing’s deadly reception despite the intense shelling was the topography of the island. As the overall invasion force commander Marine Lt. Gen. Holland M. Smith warned before the operation commenced, “We learned how to pulverize atolls. But now we’re up against mountains and caves where the Japs can dig in. A week from today there will be a lot of dead Marines.”
<div id="attachment_771939" style="width: 742px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-771939" class="size-large wp-image-771939" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-1162574341-732x576.jpg" alt="American Marines on a Saipan beach, June 1944 The first wave of Marines from the 2nd Division of the U.S. Marine Corps reached a beach of the island of Saipan (Marianas, central Pacific), June 15, 1944. At left: a Buffalo caterpillar amphibious vehicle. (Photo by: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" width="732" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-1162574341-732x576.jpg 732w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-1162574341-300x236.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-1162574341-768x605.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-1162574341.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 732px) 100vw, 732px" />The first wave of Marines from the 2nd Division of the U.S. Marine Corps reached a beach of the island of Saipan (Marianas, central Pacific), June 15, 1944. Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.</div>
Smith was right. Veteran John C. Chapin described the chaotic and bloody scene that morning as U.S. Marines hit the beaches under murderous fire. He would never forget “Bodies lying in mangled and grotesque positions; blasted and burned out pillboxes; the burning wrecks of LTVs [landing vehicles]…the acrid smell of high explosives; the shattered trees; and the churned up sand littered with discarded equipment.” By the end of the first day, Smith put 20,000 Marines ashore, but at a cost of 2,000 dead and wounded. 
During the first night, the Japanese Army commander, Lt. Gen. Yoshitsugu Saitō, launched a series of sporadic attacks that failed to dislodge the Marines from their tenuous foothold on the island. The following day, having learned from the Navy that a potential sea battle was in the offing, Smith ordered his reserve Army battalions off the ships and into action to shore up the Marines’ perimeter.
<div id="attachment_771873" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-771873" class="wp-image-771873 size-medium" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Saito_Yoshitsugu-200x300.jpg" alt="JAPAN - JANUARY 01: In this undated photograph, Imperial Japanese Army Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito is seen in Japan. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images)" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Saito_Yoshitsugu-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Saito_Yoshitsugu-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Saito_Yoshitsugu.jpg 408w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Imperial Japanese Army Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito. The Asahi Shimbun. Wikimedia Commons.</div>
As night fell on June 16, D+1, the determined Saitō vowed again to drive the Americans off his country’s sacred soil and back into the sea. Just before 4:00 AM, alert Marines heard the rumbling of engines and metallic clanking of tank treads. To their shock, the largest Japanese armored attack of the war — some 44 tanks with 1,000 elite assault troops — came crashing into their line. The disciplined Marines at whom the attack was aimed methodically deployed anti-tank guns, bazookas, machine guns and rifles to wipe out the Japanese assault. At daybreak the exhausted defenders beheld a ghastly landscape littered with the burned out hulks of at least 24 tanks and hundreds of Japanese bodies. Once again, Saitō had failed to drive the hated enemy off the island.
On D+2 the landing force began to push inland towards the Japanese holed up on the central and southern parts of the island. As the U.S. troops made their way south to Aslito Airfield, they had to move through head-high sugar cane that offered an enemy already expert at concealment a target-rich environment. Unable to make out anyone on either side in the thick vegetation, U.S. troops were being shot down, sometimes at point blank range by hidden Japanese just yards away. Flamethrowers were brought in to spray the cane fields with terrifying liquid fire. The flushed out Japanese were then picked off in, as one Marine described it, “a real rabbit shoot.” Americans were finding Saipan to be not so much an island paradise as a suffocating nightmare as casualties mounted. 
The fighting for Saipan quickly degenerated into a type of cruel, medieval contest fueled by the abject hatred between the Americans and their Japanese tormentors. No quarter was given, nor expected. The Marines and Army had already learned from previous fighting on New Guinea, the Solomons and Gilberts that the Japanese, for whom being taken captive was a disgrace, often feigned surrender, only to kill the lulled Americans with concealed pistols or knives or by blowing their would-be captors, and themselves, to bits with hidden grenades.
<div id="attachment_771871" style="width: 932px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-771871" class="wp-image-771871 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Charan_Kanoa_Saipan_1944-922x576.jpg" alt="Charan Kanoa, Saipan after the battle of Saipan in June-July 1944. Image shows the effects of bombardment on town. Taken from Crowl's (1993, originally 1960) Campaign to the Marianas published by the Center for Military History, U. S. Army. Originally in Department of Defense files" width="922" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Charan_Kanoa_Saipan_1944-922x576.jpg 922w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Charan_Kanoa_Saipan_1944-300x188.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Charan_Kanoa_Saipan_1944-768x480.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/Charan_Kanoa_Saipan_1944.jpg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 922px) 100vw, 922px" />Charan Kanoa, Saipan after the battle of Saipan in June-July 1944. Image shows the effects of bombardment on town. Taken from Philip Crowl&#8217;s &#8220;Campaign to the Marianas,&#8221; published by the Center for Military History, U. S. Army. Originally in Department of Defense files.</div>
As such, the Americans moving off the beach were understandably wary of entering narrow caves, barns, huts, and rubble within the destroyed town of Charan Kanoa in which there might be nothing or an enemy soldier waiting to take one more American with him before his death. They were taking no chances, sometimes with tragic results. Marine William Rogal remembered after losing a man shot by a Japanese hidden in a hole, they opted to just toss a grenade in first from then on. “Unfortunately, the next one was occupied by a bunch of school girls. Little Chamorro girls in there. That was really a sad, sad thing. But I guess that’s the kind of thing that happens in war.” 
Despite fierce Japanese resistance, Aslito was soon in U.S. hands. Once secured, the Seabees (Construction Battalion) went to work to smooth out the runway and establish a bona fide airbase. By D+8 a squadron of powerful, heavily-armed USAAF P-47 Thunderbolt fighters of the 19th Fighter Squadron would be flying from the airfield to add lethal firepower to Naval close air support as the battle spread out across the island. 
As the Marines and soldiers continued the fight, their stress was heightened even more when at dawn on June 19, D+4, they looked out to sea and saw nothing but an empty horizon where the night before a mighty flotilla had been at anchor. The ships had all gone. No doubt many troops on the island anxiously harkened back to August 1942, when the U.S. Navy had for a time abandoned the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal to fend for themselves after the mauling it received at the hands of the IJN in the naval battle of Savo Island. Had something similar taken place during the night out there? Were they alone, marooned on this island of death? Said Marine Herbert Newman, “It was pretty leery when you look out there in the ocean and there’s no ships. There wasn’t a ship in sight.” 
But where had they all gone?
* * *
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>.
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The Battle Of Saipan, Part One: Invasion