Triumph in the Philippines (United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific)

(Includes maps) From the moment of his departure from the Philippines in 1942, General MacArthur was determined to return to the islands and restore the freedom of the Philippine people. Capture of the main island of Luzon in 1945 substantially realized this goal. How his armies accomplished it forms the body of the story unfolded in this volume. In some respects the Luzon Campaign repeated the pattern of Japanese conquest three years earlier, although with action on a much larger scale and for a much longer period. Unlike the Japanese conquest, the operations of 1945 involved a fierce month-long battle for Manila, the only such protracted action by U.S. forces in a big city during World War II. It also involved a complicated and costly reduction of three mountain positions into which the Japanese withdrew, in one of which there was still a substantial core of resistance when Japan surrendered. Within the broad scope of this work, covering the intensive operations of two armies for seven months, the author has necessarily concentrated on what is most instructive and significant to the outcome. The clarity, thorough scholarship, and careful mapping of this volume should make it especially useful for the military student, and all who read it will benefit by the author's forthright presentation of this dramatic and climactic story of U.S. Army operations in the Pacific war.