The Japanese occupation of the Philippines occurred between 1942 and 1945, when the Empire
of Japan occupied the Commonwealth of the Philippines during World War II.
The invasion of the Philippines started on December 8, 1941, ten hours after the attack
on Pearl Harbor. As at Pearl Harbor, American aircraft were severely damaged in the initial
Japanese attack. Lacking air cover, the American Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines withdrew
to Java on December 12, 1941. General Douglas MacArthur escaped Corregidor on the night
of March 11, 1942 for Australia, 4,000 km away. The 76,000 starving and sick American
and Filipino defenders on Bataan surrendered on April 9, 1942, and were forced to endure
the infamous Bataan Death March on which 7,000–10,000 died or were murdered. The 13,000 survivors
on Corregidor surrendered on May 6. Japan occupied the Philippines for over three
years, until the surrender of Japan. A highly effective guerilla campaign by Philippine
resistance forces controlled sixty percent of the islands, mostly jungle and mountain
areas. MacArthur supplied them by submarine, and sent reinforcements and officers. Filipinos
remained loyal to the United States, partly because of the American guarantee of independence,
and also because the Japanese had pressed large numbers of Filipinos into work details
and even put young Filipino women into brothels. General MacArthur kept his promise to return
to the Philippines on October 20, 1944. The landings on the island of Leyte were accomplished
by a force of 700 vessels and 174,000 men. Through December 1944, the islands of Leyte
and Mindoro were cleared of Japanese soldiers. During the campaign, the Imperial Japanese
Army conducted a suicidal defense of the islands. Cities such as Manila were reduced to rubble.
Between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Filipinos died during the occupation.
Background
Japan launched an attack on the Philippines on December 8, 1941, just ten hours after
their attack on Pearl Harbor. Initial aerial bombardment was followed by landings of ground
troops both north and south of Manila. The defending Philippine and United States troops
were under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, who had been recalled to active
duty in the United States Army earlier in the year and was designated commander of the
United States Armed Forces in the Asia-Pacific region. The aircraft of his command were destroyed;
the naval forces were ordered to leave; and because of the circumstances in the Pacific
region, reinforcement and resupply of his ground forces were impossible. Under the pressure
of superior numbers, the defending forces withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula and to the
island of Corregidor at the entrance to Manila Bay. Manila, declared an open city to prevent
its destruction, was occupied by the Japanese on January 2, 1942.
The Philippine defense continued until the final surrender of U.S.-Philippine forces
on the Bataan Peninsula in April 1942 and on Corregidor in May. Most of the 80,000 prisoners
of war captured by the Japanese at Bataan were forced to undertake the infamous "Bataan
Death March" to a prison camp 105 kilometers to the north. Thousands of men, weakened by
disease and malnutrition and treated harshly by their captors, died before reaching their
destination. Quezon and Osmeña had accompanied the troops to Corregidor and later left for
the United States, where they set up a government-in-exile. MacArthur was ordered to Australia, where
he started to plan for a return to the Philippines. The occupation
The Japanese military authorities immediately began organizing a new government structure
in the Philippines. Although the Japanese had promised independence for the islands
after occupation, they initially organized a Council of State through which they directed
civil affairs until October 1943, when they declared the Philippines an independent republic.
Most of the Philippine elite, with a few notable exceptions, served under the Japanese. The
puppet republic was headed by President José P. Laurel. Philippine collaboration in puppet
government began under Jorge B. Vargas, who was originally appointed by Quezon as the
mayor of Greater Manila before Quezon departed Manila. The only political party allowed during
the occupation was the Japanese-organized KALIBAPI. During the occupation, most Filipinos
remained loyal to the United States, and war crimes committed by forces of the Empire of
Japan against surrendered Allied forces, and civilians were documented.
Resistance
Japanese occupation of the Philippines was opposed by active and successful underground
and guerrilla activity that increased over the years which eventually covered a large
portion of the country. Opposing these guerrillas were a Japanese-formed Bureau of Constabulary,
Kempeitai, and the Makapili. Postwar investigations showed that about 260,000 people were in guerrilla
organizations and that members of the anti-Japanese underground were even more numerous. Such
was their effectiveness that by the end of the war, Japan controlled only twelve of the
forty-eight provinces. The Philippine guerrilla movement continued
to grow, in spite of Japanese campaigns against them. Throughout Luzon and the southern islands,
Filipinos joined various groups and vowed to fight the Japanese. The commanders of these
groups made contact with one another, argued about who was in charge of what territory,
and began to formulate plans to assist the return of American forces to the islands.
They gathered important intelligence information and smuggled it out to the U.S. Army, a process
that sometimes took months. General MacArthur formed a clandestine operation to support
the guerrillas. He had Lieutenant Commander Charles "Chick" Parsons smuggle guns, radios
and supplies to them by submarine. The guerrilla forces, in turn, built up their stashes of
arms and explosives and made plans to assist MacArthur's invasion by sabotaging Japanese
communications lines and attacking Japanese forces from the rear.
Various guerrilla forces formed throughout the archipelago, ranging from groups of U.S.
Army Forces Far East forces who refused to surrender to local militia initially organized
to combat banditry brought about by disorder caused by the invasion. Several islands in
the Visayas region had guerrilla forces led by Filipino officers, such as Colonel Macario
Peralta in Panay, Major Ismael Ingeniero in Bohol, and Captain Salvador Abcede in Negros.
The island of Mindanao, being farthest from the center of Japanese occupation, had 38,000
guerrillas who were eventually consolidated under the command of American civil engineer
Colonel Wendell Fertig. One resistance group in the Central Luzon
area was known as the Hukbalahap, or the People's Anti-Japanese Army, organized in early 1942
under the leadership of Luis Taruc, a communist party member since 1939. The Huks armed some
30,000 people and extended their control over portions of Luzon. However, guerrilla activities
on Luzon were hampered due to the heavy Japanese presence and infighting between the various
groups, including Hukbalahap troops attacking American-led guerrilla units.
Lack of equipment, difficult terrain and undeveloped infrastructure made coordination of these
groups nearly impossible, and for several months in 1942, all contact was lost with
Philippine resistance forces. Communications were restored in November 1942 when the reformed
Philippine 61st Division on Panay island, led by Colonel Macario Peralta, was able to
establish radio contact with the USAFFE command in Australia. This enabled the forwarding
of intelligence regarding Japanese forces in the Philippines to SWPA command, as well
as consolidating the once sporadic guerrilla activities and allowing the guerrillas to
help in the war effort. Increasing amounts of supplies and radios
were delivered by submarine to aid the guerrilla effort. By the time of the Leyte invasion,
four submarines were dedicated exclusively to the delivery of supplies.
Other guerrilla units were attached to the SWPA, and were active throughout the archipelago.
Some of these units were organized or directly connected to pre-surrender units ordered to
mount guerrilla actions. An example of this was Troop C, 26th Cavalry. Other guerrilla
units were made up of former Philippine Army and Philippine Scouts soldiers who had been
released from POW camps by the Japanese. Others were combined units of Americans, military
and civilian, who had never surrendered or had escaped after surrendering, and Filipinos,
Christians and Moros, who had initially formed their own small units. Colonel Wendell Fertig
organized such a group on Mindanao that not only effectively resisted the Japanese, but
formed a complete government that often operated in the open throughout the island. Some guerrilla
units would later be assisted by American submarines which delivered supplies, evacuate
refugees and injured, as well as inserted individuals and whole units, such as the 5217th
Reconnaissance Battalion, and Alamo Scouts. By the end of the war, some 277 separate guerrilla
units, made up of some 260,715 individuals, fought in the resistance movement. Select
units of the resistance would go on to be reorganized and equipped as units of the Philippine
Army and Constabulary. End of the occupation
When General MacArthur returned to the Philippines with his army in late 1944, he was well supplied
with information; it is said that by the time MacArthur returned, he knew what every Japanese
lieutenant ate for breakfast and where he had his hair cut. But the return was not easy.
The Japanese Imperial General Staff decided to make the Philippines their final line of
defense, and to stop the American advance toward Japan. They sent every available soldier,
airplane, and naval vessel to the defense of the Philippines. The Kamikaze corps was
created specifically to defend the Philippines. The Battle of Leyte Gulf ended in disaster
for the Japanese and was the biggest naval battle of World War II. The campaign to re-take
the Philippines was the bloodiest campaign of the Pacific War. Intelligence information
gathered by the guerrillas averted a disaster—they revealed the plans of Japanese General Yamashita
to trap MacArthur's army, and they led the liberating soldiers to the Japanese fortifications.
MacArthur's Allied forces landed on the island of Leyte on October 20, 1944, accompanied
by Osmeña, who had succeeded to the commonwealth presidency upon the death of Quezon on August
1, 1944. Landings then followed on the island of Mindoro and around Lingayen Gulf on the
west side of Luzon, and the push toward Manila was initiated. The Commonwealth of the Philippines
was restored. Fighting was fierce, particularly in the mountains of northern Luzon, where
Japanese troops had retreated, and in Manila, where they put up a last-ditch resistance.
The Philippine Commonwealth troops and the recognized guerrilla fighter units rose up
everywhere for the final offensive. Filipino guerrillas also played a large role during
the liberation. One guerrilla unit came to substitute for a regularly constituted American
division, and other guerrilla forces of battalion and regimental size supplemented the efforts
of the U.S. Army units. Moreover, the loyal and willing Filipino population immeasurably
eased the problems of supply, construction and civil administration and furthermore eased
the task of Allied forces in recapturing the country.
Fighting continued until Japan's formal surrender on September 2, 1945. The Philippines had
suffered great loss of life and tremendous physical destruction by the time the war was
over. An estimated one million Filipinos had been killed from all causes; of these 131,028
were listed as killed in seventy-two war crime events. U.S. casualties were 10,380 dead and
36,550 wounded; Japanese dead were 255,795. See also
Emergency circulating notes Japanese government-issued Philippine fiat
peso Military history of the Philippines during
World War II Second Philippine Republic
References This article incorporates public domain text
from the Library of Congress July 1994, Retrieved on 11 November 2008
Further reading Agoncillo Teodoro A. The Fateful Years: Japan's
Adventure in the Philippines, 1941–1945. Quezon City, PI: R.P. Garcia Publishing Co.,
1965. 2 vols Hartendorp A. V.H. The Japanese Occupation
of the Philippines. Manila: Bookmark, 1967. 2 vols.
Lear, Elmer. The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines: Leyte, 1941–1945. Southeast
Asia Program, Department of Far Eastern Studies, Cornell University, 1961. 246p. emphasis on
social history Steinberg, David J. Philippine Collaboration
in World War II. University of Michigan Press, 1967. 235p.
Primary sources Ephraim, Frank. Escape to Manila: From Nazi
Tyranny to Japanese Terror. University of Illinois Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-252-02845-8.