Last-stand Japs battle with spears
Yanks gain in Manila – Bataan mop-up ends
MANILA, Philippines (UP) – The last stage of the Battle of Manila degenerated into medieval warfare today with the Japs taking up spears in a desperate attempt to stave off certain annihilation.
U.S. troops encountered the frenzied tactics of the trapped enemy naval and marine personnel as they reduced the Jap pocket south of the Pasig River to less than one-tenth of a square mile.
The Americans were entrenched in a siege line along the playground and golf links, which once were the bed of the medieval moat around Manila’s ancient walled city.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur announced, meanwhile, that Bataan Peninsula was cleared completely and that the Jap forces on Corregidor were practically destroyed.
Bury 1,700 Japs
“So far as can be found, no living Japanese soldier is now on the peninsula,” Gen. MacArthur said, in disclosing the vindication of the famous American stand on Bataan three years ago.
More than 1,700 Japs were already buried on Corregidor, he said, and the count was only partially complete. Only isolated enemy stragglers holed up in caves remained to be mopped up on the island fortress guarding Manila Bay.
Reports from the front lines in Manila said the Japs apparently were running short of arms and were using spears in a bitter defense of their tiny pocket.
One group of 21 Japs was armed with only spears and grenades, while an enemy platoon fighting near the Army-Navy Club had only four rifles. The rest fought with spears attached to poles.
The Americans were withholding heavy shellfire from the area to avert as many civilian casualties as possible and the battle continued on savage hand-to-hand fighting.
Indicative of the situation was a report by Maj. Gen. O. W. Griswold, commander of XIV Army Corps which was attacking the holdout Japs.
“We will just go in fighting and kill every last Jap,” he said.
Blast Formosa
Gen. MacArthur’s communiqué revealed that Allied heavy bombers continued the steady attacks on Formosa, dropping 50 tons of explosives on installations near Heito and the barracks at Takao. Two more enemy freighters were sunk, one off the east coast of Formosa near Hong Kong.