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A forgotten world war ii horror in the philippines is revealed in
1. A forgotten World War II horror in the
Philippines is revealed in ‘Rampage’
It’s hard to imaginethat a major monthlong
battle from World War II — one that devastated
a large city, caused more than 100,000 civilian
deaths and led to both a historicwar crimes trial
and a Supreme Court decision— should have
escapedscrutiny until now.
But history has somehowoverlookedthe
catastrophicbattle for Manila,capital of the
Philippines,in the waning months of the war.
Like the Rape of Nanking,or the siege of
Stalingrad,the tragedy of Manila deserves far
greater understandingand reflection today.
James M. Scott remedies that gap with
“Rampage:MacArthur,Yamashita,and the
Battle of Manila,”the first comprehensive
account of one of the darkestchapters of the
Pacific War. It is powerful narrative history,one
almost too painful to read in places but
impossibleto put down.
2. It begins as Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the
egotistical militarycommanderof the U.S.
colony in the Philippines,was caught woefully
unpreparedwhen the war began. Japanese
bombers destroyedhis planes on the ground and
American and Philippineforces were soon
overwhelmed.MacArthur famously vowed to
return as he was evacuatedto Australia.
Three years later, the U.S. Navy had steadily
clawed its way back across the Pacific and
bombers were already strikingJapanese
industrialcenters. Most commanders saw “no
need to risk American lives on a costly invasion
of the Philippines”when the fall of Japan
appearedimminent,Scott writes.
But MacArthur insisted,and by early 1945 his
troops were closing on Manila. Americans knew
it then as the “Pearl of the Orient” for its
neoclassicalbuildings,grand boulevards and cafe
society. Convincedthe Japanesewould abandon
Manila, just as he had, MacArthur ordered up a
massivevictory paradeto welcome himself
home.
3.
4. General Douglas MacArthur and Philippine
president Sergio Osmena in 1945
(Gamma-Keystone France via Getty Images)
On Feb. 6, 1945, MacArthur preemptively
announced the city’s liberation,claimingcredit
in grandioseterms.Congratulationspouredin
from Washington,London and elsewhere. But
the 29-day battle had only just begun.
MacArthur’s public relations stunt meant
reporters traveling with his forces struggledto
get the truth out about the unfolding horror.
The Japanesecommander,Gen. Tomoyuki
Yamashita,had stunned allies early in the war by
seizingMalaya and Singapore,capturinga much
larger Britishforce. His orders now were to bog
MacArthur’s forces down in the Philippines and
give Japan time to preparefor the expected U.S.
invasion.He ordered subordinatesto destroy
Manila’s bridges and port, and then to follow
him to the mountains.
Once Yamashitawithdrew, however, Rear Adm.
Sanji Iwabuchi insteadorderedhis marines to
5. “fight to the last man.” They methodically
dynamitedManila’s business,government and
religious landmarks,obliteratingthe city’s
cultural heritage, and torched thousands of
wooden homes, sparkinga deadly firestorm.
Worse, they cruelly tortured and killed
thousandsof men, women and children.
Scott, who was a 2016 PulitzerPrize finalistfor
“Target Tokyo,” focuses in part on the 7,500 or
so Americans and others held as prisonersof war
or civilian internees in squalid conditions,and
their dramaticrescue by U.S. troops.Although
some of those stories are familiar,he adds a
heart-rendingportrayal of the brutal life they
endured.
But Scott breaks new ground by miningwar
crimes records,after-actionmilitary reports and
other primarysources for the agonizing
testimonyof Philippinesurvivors and witnesses
of more than two dozen major Japanese
atrocities duringthe battle — and the ferocious
American response.
6. The frenzy of Japanesemassacres defies
imagination.Countless women were raped and
tortured,their babies tossedin the air and
bayoneted. Patients and doctors were stabbed at
hospitals,nuns and priests hanged at churches,
children tossed into pits with grenades.
MaraudingJapanesetroops burned people alive
in convents, schools and prisons.They simply
buried others alive.
"Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the
Battle of Manila" by James M. Scott
(W. W. Norton & Company)
In one charnel house, they cut a hole in the
second floor and then led scores of blindfolded
civilians upstairs,made them kneel by the edge
and decapitatedthem with swords.Elsewhere,
they crammedhundreds of men into a sweltering
stone dungeon, locked the iron door and let them
starve to death.
A Japanesesoldier’s diary relayed the horrors at
Fort Santiago,an ancient citadel. “Burned 1,000
7. guerrillas to death tonight,”the diaristwrote on
Feb. 9, one of several such entries. The mass
murder was not random.Militaryorders later
found by investigatorsstated that “all people on
the battlefield … will be put to death.” The
battlefield was the entire city.
Against them was a U.S. force unpreparedfor
urban warfare. They fired 155-millimeter
howitzers at point-blankrange to dislodgethe
enemy and used tanks, flamethrowers and
bazookasto kill the rest. They fought block by
block, house by house,room by room, leveling
hundreds of city blocks.
U.S. troops rescued, treated and fed tens of
thousandsof traumatizedand wounded
survivors.But amidthe smolderingruins, Scott
writes, “it was hard to tell who had done more
damage— the Japanesedefenders or the
American liberators.”
Estimatesof the civilian dead range from
100,000 to 240,000. MacArthur was mostly
absent, writing in his diary that he was engaged
8. in “routine conferences” at a lush hacienda north
of the city. Iwabuchi, who had presidedover one
of the most barbaric massacres of the war,
apparentlycommittedsuiciderather than
surrender,althoughhis body was never found.
The terrible battle had a curious afterlife.
Yamashitafinally surrenderedseveral weeks
after the war had formally ended. U.S.
prosecutors soon charged him with failing to
control his troops in the deaths of 62,278
civilians,144 slain American officers and enlisted
men, and 488 raped women and children.
Yet the first war crimes trial in the Pacific proved
a rushed, makeshiftaffair. Yamashitawas not
charged with participatingin the atrocities,or
orderingthem, or even knowing about them.
“The rule of evidence,” a New York Times
reporter wrote at the time, “can be boiled down
to two words: anything goes.”
Not surprisingly,he was found guilty and
sentenced to hang. His American lawyers filed an
emergency appeal to the U.S. SupremeCourt. It
9. ultimately ruled 6-2 againstYamashita,dooming
him to the gallows, but is rememberedmostly for
the two impassioneddissents.
“Never before have we tried and convicted an
enemy general for action taken duringhostilities.
… Much less have we condemnedone for failing
to take action,”Justice Wiley Rutledge wrote.
Justice Frank Murphy was even more blunt. The
“enemy has lost the battle but has destroyedour
ideals,”he warned.
Those still fascinatedby World War II will find
much new to ponderin “Rampage.”
Bob Drogin, authorof “Curveball: Spies,Lies
and the Con Man Who Causeda War,” was the
Los Angeles Times bureau chief in Manila from
1989 to 1993.
::
“Rampage:MacArthur,Yamashita,and the
Battle of Manila”
