Sunday, 11 February
Yard by Yard
American howitzers fire from the yard of the University of Santo Tomas
US National Archives
As the brutal melee for the Pearl of the Orient continued, the Americans continued to slowly push toward the city center against stiff Japanese resistance, fighting a brutal hand to hand battle as they fought room by room and block by block in a city still blanketed in black smoke and permeated with the stench of the dead.
Today at Provisor Island the Americans attacked once again, this time finally managing to force the Japanese from the small landmass after a long saturation bombardment. Despite this victory the objective of securing the power station intact was a failure, the fighting having razed most of the island’s structures and destroyed most of the equipment. Never the less, the capture of the island provided an avenue from which to begin the assault on the most heavily defended area of the city; the government district of Ermita and the Intramuros.
A GI surveys the destruction from atop the Ocampo Pagoda mansion, one of the only intact buildings in the area near Escolta Street
US National Archives
In the south the initial contact between the forces of the 11th Airborne Division and the 1st Cavalry Division was reinforced, consolidating the envelopment of the city with elements of the cavalry preparing to join in their assault on Nichols Field.
“From now on our advance was not measured in miles. It was measured in yards.”
The fight there continued as it had for a week, with the paratroopers managing only small advances against the heavily entrenched defenders. Noted in the Divisional History were the actions of two men, both warranting the Distinguished Service Cross. One was Lieutenant Henry Hynds, who had for the last two days been holding a small elevated position, refusing to yield to the enemy and crawling out under fire to drag back wounded comrades, later fending off two Banzai charges despite his serious wounds. The other was Major Charles Loeper, who personally led an assault that overcame Japanese pillboxes that were pinning his unit down.
In the secured are north of the Pasig, the decision had been made to evacuate the remaining internees from Santo Tomas, both because Japanese artillery continued to target the campus, as well as to free up space in what was becoming a field hospital. The final leg of the long, difficult journey of the internees had begun, as a group of the Army nurses who had been so vital to the survival of the inmates were taken away in trucks to a staging area in the Quezon Institute to the north, in preparation for final repatriation to the United States.
US Army signalmen replace lines in northern Manila
US National Archives
Also at Santo Tomas was a ballooning American cemetery for war dead, and the internees had begun growing flowers in their small garden plots to decorate the graves. Internees have also still been dying as the days pass, both from complications of their treatment by the Japanese and from the bombardment that was still ongoing. Sixteen internees had so far been killed by Japanese shellfire, although MacArthur’s headquarters blocked information regarding those deaths from reaching the press.
The Americans continued to face a massive human tragedy as the survivors of Japanese butchery streamed into their lines as they advanced, overwhelming what hospitals were available. The 29th Evacuation Hospital had been running around the clock, as had the 287 bed makeshift hospital at Santo Tomas. Today another medical unit deployed to the city, as the 54th Evacuation Hospital set up at the Quezon Institute, taking in the aforementioned internees from the University of Santo Tomas almost immediately, freeing the university for more battle casualties.
As the Americans tried to save lives in their areas of the city, the Japanese continued in their efforts to take them. At Santa Rosa College in the Intramuros they took women in groups of three to the ruins of the Santa Domingo Church and commenced hacking them to pieces with bayonets. On Isaac Peral Avenue they also killed some 50 civilians at the Tabacalera Cigarette Factory and behind a nearby Shell station.
The Shell station where the Japanese massacred civilians
US National Archives
Meanwhile, the rapes of the women trapped in the Bayview Hotel continued unabated, and individual incidents of rape and murder happened everywhere the Japanese found civilians on the streets, as the fires continued to spread amidst the deluge of American shells.
Manila: 11 February, 1945
University of Santo Tomas
Quezon Institute - Site of new US field hospital to handle overflow from Santo Tomas
Provisor Island - Today the Americans secure the island, but the power plant is utterly destroyed in the process
11th Airborne continues its assault on Nichols Field, advancing at a crawl against the Genko Line
Major War Crimes
Bayview Hotel - Mass rapes continue
Tabacalera Building and Shell Station - 50 civilians are murdered here by the Japanese as the Americans approach
Santa Rosa College - The Japanese bayonet numerous women in small groups brought to the college