The Luzon Campaign, 1945

MacArthur Returns

By Nathan N. Prefer, and Reviewed by Robert D Seals

Article published on: March 1st, 2025 in the Army History Spring 2025 issue

Read Time: < 4 mins

Casemate Publishers, 2024 Pp. ix, 307. $37.95

In September 1944, pugnacious U.S. Navy Admiral William Halsey Jr. proposed landing directly on Leyte in the Philippines the following month. Approved by the U.S. Chiefs of Staff, the plan was thought to be brilliant because the Japanese would have to split their forces in the Philippines and it would perhaps force the Japanese Combined Fleet to come out to meet the threat in a decisive naval battle. With the Leyte campaign, General Douglas MacArthur was finally able to return to his beloved Philippine Islands, but after Leyte, what next? For the Southwest Pacific Area Commander, the next target in 1945 was the largest and most important island in the commonwealth, Luzon. Now, almost eight decades later, Nathan N. Prefer tells us a familiar story with his latest book The Luzon Campaign, 1945: MacArthur Returns.

Prefer’s book seemingly aims to “fill [a] historical gap” because “few studies of that battle [campaign] have been produced” and they are rather “histories of incidents” within the Luzon campaign (1). Additionally, the author believes existing histories “do not do justice to the ordinary soldiers who fought” and Prefer intends to correct that by celebrating their heroism in his narrative account (1). There was no shortage of heroism, on both sides, during the bitter eight-month long Luzon campaign in 1945. The Luzon Campaign, 1945 is the author’s fourth book on subjects involving World War II in the Pacific and his previous book in 2012 was Leyte, 1944: The Soldier’s Battle, also published by Casemate. A veteran of the Marine Corps, he received his PhD in military history from the City University of New York.

In the introduction, Prefer reviews the status of the war in 1945 and provides brief summaries of the opposing Generals Douglas MacArthur and Tomoyuki Yamashita. Here, the author begins to commit missteps. MacArthur’s father, Arthur, was not a “Civil War General” but became known as “the Boy Colonel” at the age of 19 (2). Additionally, Douglas MacArthur’s career after World War I did not include “serving as aide to President Theodore Roosevelt” because that assignment was in 1906 (3). MacArthur had not “resigned from the U.S. Army” to become field marshal of the Philippines but remained on the active list until retirement in 1937 (4). Of the two opposing generals, Prefer regards Yamashita, “their best field commander,” who seemingly made “only [one] error” as the superior. Yamashita believed that somehow tens of thousands of Japanese troops could withdraw “deep into the Luzon mountains where they could produce their own food” (5–7). However, clearly Yamashita had to delay the inevitable as long as possible.

Written chronologically, the book’s chapters begin a broad survey largely focused at the operational and tactical level with short vignettes on individuals, including many of the twenty-nine soldiers who received the Medal of Honor during the Luzon campaign. Beginning with the Sixth Army assault landings on the Lingayen beaches on 9 January, Prefer narrates the campaign’s eight months from the drive on Manila to the end in the northern mountains. The chapters are short, ranging from twelve to seventeen pages, and most include maps. However, fourteen maps, largely from Robert Ross Smith’s excellent “Green Book” work Triumph in the Philippines, are at times hard to read and do not support the narrative.

The last two chapters of the book, “Pursuit” and “The Luzon Campaign,” are perhaps the strongest as they provide some needed context. By July 1945, the most significant fighting of the campaign was over as the Eighth Army relieved the Sixth Army and I Corps, but hard fighting continued in the mountains. Use of the term “mopping-up operations” does not do justice to the soldiers who continued fighting until the Japanese surrender in September (58). Prefer continues his praise of Yamashita who “accomplished much more than expected” by his “prolonged defense” as opposed to MacArthur who “[corralled] his forces in a dead-end location like Bataan” in 1941 (257–63). The author also criticizes MacArthur for being hesitant to authorize heavy firepower during the Manila fighting, quite possibly to limit civilian causalities.

Ironically, Prefer does not see the similarities between MacArthur in 1941 and Yamashita in 1945. Both faced logistical, transportation, communications, fire support, and air supremacy problems on Luzon while fighting a prolonged delaying action against a stronger enemy. To the author, MacArthur “seems to have lost any interest” after the recapture of Manila. He does not mention MacArthur’s selection as the commander in chief, U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific, and responsibilities associated with the Operation Olympic invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese home island, scheduled for November 1945 (171). Prefer does honor the Philippine people and guerrilla forces, but the book does not convey the incredible success of the unconventional warfare effort, begun by MacArthur in January 1942. On Luzon alone, there were eighteen major groups on the island that had grown into a capable and complex force. They were capable of operating as regiments, battalions, and rifle companies with some having special weapons platoons armed with machine guns and light mortars.

The Luzon Campaign, 1945: MacArthur Returns does give the reader a good understanding of the grinding nature of ground combat on Luzon. As always, it was the infantry who took the brunt of the casualties, accounting for “about 90 percent of [what the] Sixth Army” suffered during the campaign (262). The four appendixes and endnotes will help those unfamiliar with the topic, but at times they are idiosyncratic and digress into details about German “dive-bombers” which add little (291). To me, the author has accepted considerable risk by relying largely on secondary sources and he should have made greater use of archival sources and records. Prefer has written a history of the Luzon Campaign that does indeed honor “the ordinary soldiers who fought,” but Army historians remain better served by Smith’s 1963 work Triumph in the Philippines (1).