Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War
Oxford Press, 2025, Hardcover ISBN 9780199948857, 504 pp
Author: Nicholas Evan Sarantakes
Reviewed by: Brian P Farrell
The US Army studies the Battle of Manila of February 1945 in its efforts to analyse combat in urban and built-up areas. Nor have historians ignored it. For example, Filipino literature includes Alfonso Aluit’s landmark 1994 study By Sword and Fire. While less extensive, Japanese literature features Maehara Toru’s Manira Boeisen, published in 1982, as well as relevant volumes of the massive official history project Senshi Sosho, published from 1966 to 1980. Meanwhile, American literature ranges from the 1963 volume of the US Army official history series Triumph in the Philippines by Robert Ross Smith to Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James Scott, published in 2018, with miscellaneous studies in between. The Battle of Manila is a British–Australian co-authored study by Richard Connaughton, John Pimlott and Duncan Anderson. It was commissioned as part of a heritage anniversary commemoration in 1995 and it also made a mark.
In combination, the existing literature concerning the Battle of Manila has identified major themes, generated enduring controversies, connected different discussions, and produced stubborn gaps. What has been missing, however, is a single study to consolidate these varied perspectives. Finally, The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War by Nicholas Sarantakes accomplishes exactly that, adding substantial original research and providing a ‘must read’ study of the subject.
The Battle of Manila remains relevant to historians and military practitioners alike. Controversy exists about why so many civilians died, why so much of the city was destroyed (and whose ‘fault’ it was), what else could/should have been done, and what part Douglas MacArthur played in these matters. Beyond this, questions exist about the impact of the battle on subsequent events in the Pacific Theatre and on various postwar experiences. The battle also offers enduring lessons concerning urban warfare. Sarantakes navigates through the sources and the controversies with clarity and skill and addresses all of the previously unanswered questions.
A key strength of the book is Sarantakes’s decision to approach the Battle of Manila as a comprehensive ‘whole of army’ problem requiring analysis of all aspects of the battle on all ‘sides’. As a result, the book spans higher strategy and operations, tactics, and command and control in both attack and defence. Beyond combat power, Sarantakes also covers supply, communications, medical and civil services and support. He makes connections between why the battle was fought (by all concerned) and its relevance to the wider war in the Pacific Theatre. This approach allows Sarantakes to avoid merely repeating, for example, the extensive accounting of civilian suffering (first fully chronicled by Aluit) or devoting too many pages to MacArthur and his legacy (something that weakened Scott’s well-written but not terribly analytical study). Sarantakes contextualises his treatment of all these factors and draws from an impressively wide base of primary sources to produce an analysis of real value to readers of the Australian Army Journal. The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War critically evaluates the strategic, operational and tactical levels of the battle with insight that connects them to each other and that generates a convincing ‘whole of battle’ conclusion.
Sarantakes makes five particularly salient points. First, MacArthur and his staff were right to see Manila as the centre of gravity of the campaign for Luzon, but did not realise (before it was too late) that the Japanese Army’s dysfunctional chain of command would force it to fight a bloody battle to liberate the city. Second, MacArthur provided too little higher direction to his senior subordinates, who as a result focused too much on tactical considerations at the expense of operational concerns. Third, weaknesses in the Japanese defence could have been better exploited had the Americans been able to move more quickly or been more imaginative in their advance into the city (for example, by mounting a direct amphibious assault). Instead, the US wound up having to defeat a fanatical but disjointed Japanese defence in detail, relying too much on firepower to do so. Fourth, the battle was so destructive that it virtually negated the reasons for which Manila was attacked in the first place. Those reasons included to seize a base hub necessary to stage the invasion of Japan and to redeem the political bonds between the US and the Philippines by liberating the capital. Finally, the damage the battle caused to postwar relations (the ‘poison’ in the victory) was definitely mitigated by the rogue Japanese decisions both to stand and fight in central Manila and to carry out a sickening rampage of mass murder, widespread atrocity and wholesale destruction as they did so. Sarantakes is clear. The Americans were caught by surprise by having to fight for Manila, in a battle environment for which they were not prepared, but moral culpability for both battle and atrocity rested squarely on Admiral Iwabuchi and those who obeyed him.
Sarantakes’ account of street fighting is clear, detailed and analytical. It emphasises the extent to which US forces had to adapt and improvise, how heavily they came to rely on firepower, and how infinitely complicated such a battle environment was—especially in a ‘friendly’ city full of civilians being liberated from brutal occupiers defending so stubbornly and behaving so atrociously. By devoting attention to the corps, division and other subordinate commands that actually fought the battle, Sarantakes goes beyond the focal points of ‘MacArthur and Japanese savagery’ that characterise most previous studies.
In sum, this book is an important study of urban warfare, a skillful analysis of a truly unique battle, and a model example of how to pull together a mature historical literature. Here, indeed, is ‘the’ book on Manila 1945.