Luzon 1945: The final liberation of the Philippines

Osprey Campaign #306

by Clayton K.S. Chun

Driven from the Philippines in 1942, General Douglas MacArthur returned three years later to force the Japanese off of its main island of Luzon. Containing the capital of Manila, vital natural resources as well as thousands of Allied prisoners of war, the triumph at Luzon would be a vital step on the road to victory as the Americans continued to island-hop their way towards the Japanese home islands. This new study details one of the hardest-fought campaigns of the Pacific War with Japanese fatalities alone on Luzon topping 200,000. Emphasizing the differences in Japanese and American strategy, and detailing the combat operations of the campaign, this volume tells the story of how MacArthur kept his promise to return and liberate the Philippines.

Genres: History

153 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 18, 2017

About the author

Dr. Clayton K. S. Chun is the Chair for the Department of Distance Education at the U.S. Army War College located at Carlisle Barracks, PA. Before assuming his current duties, he was Professor of Economics at the College. Dr. Chun completed a full career in the U.S. Air Force with assignments to missile, space, acquisition, education, strategy development, and command positions. He has written articles and books dealing with issues related to national security, military history, and economics. He held the Army War College’s General Hoyt Vandenberg Chair of Aerospace Studies. Dr. Chun has a B.S. in business from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.A. in economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, an M.S. in systems management from the University of Southern California, and a Ph.D. in public policy analysis from the RAND Graduate School.

Reviews

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clayton Chun is nothing if not workmanlike as an author and, for all practical purposes, seeing as he's on the faculty of the U.S. Army War College, this constitutes official history. This means one has a very "lines on the map" kind of narrative, as Chun examines the operational trade-offs the American and Japanese chains of command made, what with the United States looking for the most efficient way to get to grips with the Japanese home islands, and the Japanese desperately looking for their "decisive" battle that would stop the United States in their tracks. This opens up a whole range of political and cultural questions that a library of books have been written about.

What is striking to me, and this work is far from the first time that I've studied this topic, is that for all the epic and horrifying events that occurred during this campaign, is how little has really been written about it. To a large degree Chun depends on the old U.S. Army "Green Books" in relating this story; I'd been hoping that there was some more contemporary operational sources he could refer to. It's as though Douglas MacArthur's insistence on making this campaign about "him" sucked all the energy out of the room, not helped by Walter Krueger (the main operational architect of this campaign), being uninterested in leaving a memoir. Still, if you want to get the distilled content of the official history, this is a useful work. If there is a particular plus, the contributions of the large Filipino resistance force are integrated into this study.

[Jonie Marce · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do i read this?