As U.S. Sixth Army forces advanced across Luzon in late January 1945, they closed in on Manila in a campaign that would culminate in one of the most destructive urban battles of the Pacific War. Japanese forces under Tomoyuki Yamashita had been ordered to withdraw, but naval commander Sanji Iwabuchi chose to defend the city, leading to weeks of house-to-house fighting and a massacre of civilians.
General Douglas MacArthur, who had famously vowed 'I shall return' after being forced to flee the Philippines in 1942, pressed his forces southward across Luzon in January 1945 with the singular goal of retaking Manila, the city he considered the crown jewel of his Pacific campaign and, not incidentally, his old prewar home.
The advance across the Luzon plains moved faster than expected in some sectors, as Japanese defenders fell back toward prepared positions in the mountains, but resistance stiffened as American columns approached the capital itself. What followed in February would become the Battle of Manila, one of the war's most horrific urban battles, in which retreating Japanese naval troops massacred an estimated 100,000 Filipino civilians rather than surrender the city intact.
The fighting reduced much of Manila, once called the 'Pearl of the Orient' for its Spanish colonial architecture, to rubble comparable to Warsaw's destruction. MacArthur's drive in late January set the stage for that tragedy, a reminder that even a triumphant liberation campaign could carry a staggering human cost for the people being freed.