Two main prizes in Manila seized
Battle’s end in sight, MacArthur declares
MANILA, Philippines (UP) – Nichols Field and the U.S. Navy’s wrecked anchorage at Cavite were back in American hands today.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur proclaimed triumphantly that the end of the battle for Manila is in sight.
With Manila’s two main military prizes reconquered, Gen. MacArthur’s tanks and infantrymen swarmed in from all. sides to finish off the remaining Japs trapped along the flaming waterfront and around Fort McKinley, on the city’s southeastern outskirts.
The doomed Japs were writing off their three-year stay in Manila in a last orgy of fire and blood. Thousands of terror-stricken Filipinos escaped into the American lines with word that the Japs were massacring men. women and children indiscriminately in the teeming residential districts still under their control.
Inside the old Walled City, where the bulk of the enemy garrison was digging in for a last stand, the Japs barricaded the streets and ordered all civilians into their homes.
Then they fired the buildings and machine-gunned the occupants as they tried to flee.
Captured by paratroops
Units of the 11th Airborne Division, advancing on Manila from the south, captured the Nichols Airfield yesterday after more than a week of savage fighting, and then pushed on along the shores of Manila Bay to take the Cavite Naval Base.
At Cavite, which was burned once by the Americans before they abandoned it in December 1941 and now again by the Japs, Gen. MacArthur’s troops captured 10 enemy seaplanes and a battery of three-inch guns intact.
Armored spearheads of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, meanwhile, broke through to Manila Bay north of the 11th Airborne, clearing the Pasay District, and wheeled north toward the Walled City. They also mopped up a small Jap pocket around Nielson Airfield, near Fort McKinley.
The 37th Infantry Division was also moving in on the Walled City from the east and southeast, in conjunction with the 1st Cavalry.
Japs lose 68,000
Gen. MacArthur announced that the Japs so far have suffered more than 68,000 casualties in the five-week Luzon campaign, against 9,683 American losses – 2,102 killed, 192 missing and 7,389 wounded.
Eighty-five miles northeast of Manila, troops of the 6th Armored Division cut clear across Luzon win their second hold on the island’s east coast at Baler. Another column previously had reached the east shore at Dingalan Bay, 30 miles below Baler. The Baler Airfield was found abandoned.
Japs beaten off
Northeast of the Lingayen beachheads, the Japs attempted a night raid on Rosario but were beaten off in short order.
Systematic mopping-up operations were reported continuing in the foothills of the Zambales Mountains overlooking Clark Field and Fort Stotsenburg, 40-odd miles north-northwest of Manila.