The Battle of Manila had brought an appalling amount of death and destruction to the Pearl of the Orient, and to this day the scars have not fully healed. The massive toll in human lives, cultural heritage and economic damage can still be felt to this day.

Since landing on Leyte in late 1944, the Americans had expanded their hold in the Philippines. In January of 1945 a significant force had landed on Luzon, and was advancing on Manila from both north and south, as the Japanese garrison dug in to hold the city.

Manila was, in the 1930s, famous as the “Pearl of the Orient”; a beautiful city with a booming economy and complete with modern amenities and construction. With urban planning by the same architect that had designed Chicago and Washington, DC it was a city befitting the status of a capital, with grandiose concrete government buildings among the multiple colleges and cultural locations.

By 1945 the United States was the most powerful force on the planet. Able to equip not only its own by all other allied nations with some of the best weapons and equipment available, they stood in stark contrast to the depleted Japanese that they faced on Luzon.

Mainly made up of sailors and shore personal, the Manila Naval Defense Force had to make due with whatever weapons could be made available to them, including large numbers of repurposed naval and aircraft weapons, along with captured US weapons from 1942.

After the humiliating loss of the Philippines in 1942, the United States has finally pushed the Japanese back to Luzon, bringing their awesome industrial and military might to bear on Manila. Backing them are the forces of the Philippine Commonwealth, including one of the most effective insurgencies of the entire Second World War.

As the Americans landed on Luzon the bulk of the Imperial Japanese Army forces on the island began to withdraw into the mountains around Baguio, but in the city of Manila itself the commander of the naval garrison refused to comply with his orders to abandon the city, instead opting to dig in with what forces were available for a last stand.