BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: Burning City

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The harder they were pressed, the harder the Japs fought. They had 5-in. naval guns on the second and third floors of the Philippine General Hospital. But this week, the U.S. cavalry and infantry had joined and the enemy was being "compressed into extinction."

The Squeeze. Across Manila Bay, on the west coast of Bataan, the 38th Division (Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia National Guardsmen), pushed southward ten miles from Olongapo and took Moron. Lieut. General Robert L. Eichelberger's Eighth Army was in contact with Lieut. General Walter Krueger's Sixth, and Bataan was sealed off. But there was yet no indication whether the Japs would defend Bataan, as U.S. and Philippine troops had defended it in 1942.

Far to the north. Major General Innis P. ("Bull") Swift's I Corps was corralling the Japs in their mountain strongholds. Here the fighting had been bitter since the first days of the campaign. Major General Edwin D. Patrick's 6th Division (Regular Army) pushed armored units east from Bongabon to the Pacific. That move cut the Japs off. The 32nd ("Red Arrow") Division, composed originally of Michigan and Wisconsin National Guardsmen, hacked its way along the Villa Verde Trail toward the upper Cagayan River. That move put the squeeze on the cutoff Japs.

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