Abstract
What good is victory in battle if it is won at a strategic penalty? What if the price of liberation is a humanitarian disaster? These questions lie at the heart of Nicholas Sarantakes' widely sourced and well-written history of the Battle of Manila (1945), which situates US operational victory in the broad context of the Second World War in the Pacific. Sarantakes argues that US forces captured Manila, but did so at the cost of (perhaps) 10 per cent of the city's pre-war population and the destruction of much of its infrastructure. That devastation, in turn, limited the city's utility as a logistical base for future operations and necessitated the diversion of combat power for civic reconstruction. The ‘victory’ (liberation of the city) was thus a ‘poisoned’ one because it worked against the ultimate Allied goal: leveraging the Philippines as a waypoint in an expeditionary war against the Japanese home islands (315).
Methodologically, Sarantakes uses a ‘trilateral’ (347) approach, blending Filipino, Japanese and US perspectives. Although primarily written from US archives, The Battle of Manila is the first English-language history of the battle to make use of Japanese sources. Sarantakes mines an impressive and multinational evidentiary base to depict the United States Army as a dynamic and political institution. The book is also an attempt at a ‘whole of army’ (19) view of the battle, from enlisted supply workers, to staff officers, to the shock troops of the invasion force, to the tangle of irregular groups active on Luzon. Attention to this complexity allows Sarantakes to excavate the United States Army's intra-service rivalries and personality-driven frictions that affected operations on many levels (49).
The Battle of Manila is temporarily focused on the battle and its immediate aftermath in the first months of 1945. It documents the amphibious landings, a campaign of adept manoeuvre to capture the city, and then a grinding process of urban warfare to root out Japanese resistance. Surprisingly, the Japanese Manila Naval Defence Force – rather than the Imperial Japanese Army – presented the most tenacious opposition to US attackers. Other impediments were environmental. The amphibious landings faced the quotidian challenges of ship-to-shore movement and sustainment. Once ashore and in command of Manila, water shortages, sanitation, and food distribution proved formidable adversaries to the United States Army as it strove to reestablish public order. These tasks were a drain on resources, sapping manpower from the drive against Tokyo.
This is mainly an ‘Army book’, written from United States Army sources. Amphibious operations and naval support are peripheral themes. Still, The Battle of Manila can be read as maritime history because it clarifies Manila's strategic value in the wider Pacific War. Sarantakes demonstrates that Allied war planners hoped the city would act as a logistical hub for future operations against the Japanese home islands. Unfortunately, Manila's liberation relied on a brutal campaign of block-by-block fighting, which destroyed much of the city. Japanese forces compounded the problem by sabotaging port infrastructure wherever possible. The US failure to capture these facilities intact ramified across Allied maritime operations. Additionally, Sarantakes’ depiction of the Manila Naval Defence Force captures a remarkable example of sailors employed ashore during the Second World War. Some 400 members of this amalgamated force surrendered to US soldiers. Sarantakes uses their prisoner-of-war debriefings to strong effect.
The writing throughout is cogent and effective. Operational histories run the risk of getting bogged down in details, but Sarantakes shows an excellent eye for the right illustrative moments. Debates over munitions act as a window onto the US attitudes about civilian casualties. The willingness of local Filipinos to douse themselves with DDT as protection against vermin speaks volumes about the breakdown of public health. That said, for some reason, the clearest explanation of how this book is new and different comes in the notes – namely, its marginalization of Dougals MacArthur and Yamashita Tomoyuki in favour of Walter Krueger and Iwabuchi Sanji; its emphasis on the strategic significance of the battle; and its use of Japanese-language sources (353).
The Battle of Manila is an excellent book that reveals much about an underexplored chapter in the Second World War. It is probably best read in conjunction with Sarantakes’ earlier research on the United States and Okinawa. 1 Taken together, his work offers a kind of comparative case study of invasion, destruction and occupation. Given twenty-first-century interest in a ‘comprehensive defence’ of Taipei, the examples of Manila and Naha in 1945 are cautionary warnings.