Compared to some of its neighbors, the Philippines, an American possession since 1898, was a bit of a backwater. None of Singapore’s sparkle or the hustle of Hong Kong, but the guidebooks of the day called the place “paradise,” and the books were right. Manila was beautiful, palms leaning gently over the seawall along the bay, the night filled with the sweet scent of kamias. Besides its charms, paradise had the best deep-water port in the southwest Pacific, and in 1941 that port, that strategic transit point, made the Philippines valuable to the Japanese and American generals and admirals who were furiously preparing for war, a war in the Pacific almost everyone in uniform believed was at hand. On December 8, eight hours after it attacked the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Japan sent its bombers and fighters against American air, infantry, and naval bases in the Philippines. Two weeks later, 43,000 Japanese troops invaded the islands. Waiting for them was a large force of American and Filipino defenders, more than 130,000 men, untried and ill trained, most of them.
