Japanese troops entered Manila days after MacArthur, recognizing his forces could not hold the Philippine capital, declared it undefended to prevent a bloody urban battle. The move saved the city temporarily, though it would be devastated in 1945 during its liberation. American and Filipino forces withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula to continue resistance.
When Japanese bombers struck the Philippines within hours of Pearl Harbor, General Douglas MacArthur's air force was crippled on the ground, and his ground troops proved unable to stop the invasion. Rather than let Manila become a battlefield, MacArthur declared it an open city on December 26, 1941, withdrawing all military assets and hoping the Japanese would spare it as Paris had been spared by German occupiers.
The gesture worked, briefly. Japanese troops marched into Manila on January 2, 1942, encountering no resistance and imposing occupation rather than destruction. Civilians watched tanks roll past churches and colonial buildings that had stood since Spanish rule.
The reprieve was temporary. Three years later, when American forces returned to retake the city, Japanese troops fought street by street and massacred tens of thousands of civilians, reducing much of Manila to rubble—the very fate MacArthur had tried to avoid in 1942.