‘This was a difficult operation in December of 1944 against the godless Grinch of the Orient.’
EIGHT decades ago…
“Landings in Mindoro. Heard people talking about it in street corners yesterday afternoon. The news spread like wildfire: landings in Mindoro, Mindoro, Mindoro. The Japs are stumped. American planes had complete dominion over the air over Luzon. They kept flying over Manila all day yesterday.
“From the morning of December 15th to the evening of December 17th, Americans were in the air, bombing, strafing, reconnoitering. Traffic of trucks, movement of troops and supplies, were completely paralyzed. Bridges in Calumpit and Pampanga were bombed. Japs couldn’t move around in their cars, trucks, trains and boats. Not a single Jap plane flew up to challenge the Americans.
“Many and varied comments from people yesterday: The bombing was very accurate. The American planes circled over targets many times before dropping bombs. Japs have spread their dumps in private houses. Guerillas have given information to the Americans. Accuracy was important. They had to hit targets in between residences of civilians to minimize destruction and casualties. I saw an American plane flying just above the rooftop of our neighbor’s house. It flew very low. Radio reports that 245 Jap planes were grounded in the Luzon area.
“This morning in church the people forgot about the non-stop three-day raid, talked about the landings in Mindoro. Many people that were already depressed by the ‘delay’ in Leyte because of the Jap stand in Ormoc coupled with the bad weather, had happy faces in church this morning. Consensus is that the Americans will finish with Mindoro in ‘a couple of days’ and then ‘they will land in Luzon proper before Christmas.’
“Some think: ‘New Year’s’…Happy New Year!” [17 December 1944, Diary of Felipe Buencamino III]
Eighty years ago, Kris Kringle (in the form of the assault ships of the Western Visayan Task Force and troops of the 19th RCT and the 503rd Parachute Regiment) disciplined the minions of the godless Grinch (in the shape of Hirohito) when the United Nations armed forces recovered Mindoro by landing successfully on the island’s southwest beaches. “By noon of the invasion day (15 December 1944), the town of San Jose had been occupied and work was begun on its airstrips…Mindoro was but lightly defended by the Japanese, and Sixth Army operations in the objective area consisted mainly of patrolling and light skirmishing.” [https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V1/ch09.htm]
The Americans were not alone: “Taking full advantage of the delay in the Japanese air reaction to the landing on Mindoro Island, in the Philippines, R.A.A.F. and American airfield engineering units are pushing ahead rapidly with the construction of the airfields which were the principal purpose of the landing. The Japanese air strength near Manila and on other islands has not yet recovered from the staggering blow it received from our bombers and fighters the day before the landing. Yesterday very few enemy planes appeared and these were driven off before they had the slightest chance of interfering with either combat or constructional troops…Weather conditions, too, are with us in this race…The combat troops also have made excellent progress on Mindoro and their hold on the south-western section is secure. They hold more than 15 miles of the coast and have advanced 11 miles inland to commanding ground six miles beyond San Jose township and the pre-war aerodrome. A few scattered Japanese parties have been met but their resistance has been negligible, and very little is likely from the remnants of the garrison which fled to the hills on the landing day.” [Kalgoorlie Miner, Tuesday, 19 December 1944, page 2]
It was the Battle of Mindoro whereby United States, Australian and Philippine Commonwealth troops landed on Mindoro Island in the Philippines and sparked the start of the United Nations’ liberation of Luzon from the fascist Japanese. This was coincident with the Battle of Kesternich as well as the conclusion of the Battle of Metz plus the Soviet-Romanian Budapest offensive all in Europe, the British offensive in the Arakan in Burma, and the American First Lady’s comments that: “the final stamping out of Nazism and Fascism must be done in every country in the world, and in every individual.” [Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day, December 16, 1944,” The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017)]
There was also the Palawan massacre: “On December 14, Japanese aircraft reported the presence of an American convoy, which was actually headed for Mindoro, but which the Japanese thought was destined for Palawan. All prisoner work details were recalled to the camp at noon. Two American Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft were sighted, and the POWs were ordered into the air raid shelters. After a short time the prisoners re-emerged from their shelters, but Japanese 1st Lt. Yoshikazu Sato, whom the prisoners called the Buzzard, ordered them to stay in the area. A second alarm at 2 p.m. sent the prisoners back into the shelters, where they remained, closely guarded. Suddenly, in an orchestrated and obviously planned move, 50 to 60 Japanese soldiers under Sato’s leadership doused the wooden shelters with buckets of gasoline and set them afire with flaming torches, followed by hand grenades. The screams of the trapped and doomed prisoners mingled with the cheers of the Japanese soldiers and the laughter of their officer, Sato. As men engulfed in flames broke out of their fiery deathtraps, the Japanese guards machine-gunned, bayoneted and clubbed them to death. Most of the Americans never made it out of the trenches and the compound before they were barbarously murdered, but several closed with their tormentors in hand-to-hand combat and succeeded in killing a few of the Japanese attackers.” [https://www.historynet.com/american-prisoners-of-war-massacre-at-palawan/]
This Japanese war crime was relayed to MacArthur’s HQ by Filipino guerrillas in January 1945. [https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/dispose-them-massacre-american-pows-philippines]
Kris Kringle’s original mission was to keep adults off the naughty list. This was a difficult operation in December of 1944 against the godless Grinch of the Orient.
