Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, "The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War" (Oxford UP, 2025)

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Welcome to The New Books Network.

**Nicholas Gordon** (1:20)
Hello, I'm Nicholas Gordon, host of The Asian Review of Books podcast and partnership with The New Books Network. In this podcast, we're going to review fiction and non-fiction authors working in, around, and about the Asia-Pacific region. On February 6th, 1945, just three days after the US. Army started to fight the Japanese in the city of Manila, General Douglas MacArthur declared that Manila had fallen. In truth, the battle would take another month as US forces fought their way through block after block. By the end of the battle, Manila was ruins, the old walled in city of Ingemuros was flattened, and 100,000 Filipino civilians were dead. Nicholas Evan Sarantakes writes a comprehensive history of the fighting in the Battle of Manila, Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War from Oxford University Press. He's an associate professor in the strategy and policy department at the US. Naval War College. He's the author of four books, including Dropping the Torch, Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War. Nicholas, thank you so much for coming on the show today to talk about your book that talks all about the Battle of Manila. Where does this kind of sit in the timeline of the Second World War? When the Philippine Campaign happens, how far along is the US in the Pacific Theater?

**Nicholas Evan Sarantakes** (2:38)
Well, the short answer to that is we're about six months from the end of the war. This comes fairly late in the war. One of the interesting things about this is basically, the Japanese come in, and they do their rampage during the first six months of the conflict in 41 and 42 And basically, that stops around mid-42. And then the United States basically begins pushing back. And that basically characterizes the rest of the war.
This is kind of portrayed in the media as one of the major strategic objectives of the conflict, with the seizure of Tokyo being the only other major strategic objective. This war is different from the European War in that there are fewer tangible goals or objectives. So this conflict, this battle does come late. And what's interesting about it is up to this point in time, all the ground come. The Pacific War is a mixture of air, sea, a lot of sea, a great deal of sea battles, and then some ground battles. Most of the ground battles are fought in isolated pieces of real estate that really are undeveloped and in many, most cases are still undeveloped to this day. But Manila is one of the biggest, most populated objectives that the United States will fight for. And it is the first urban battle of the Pacific Theater. It's not necessarily the first urban fight for the Japanese, and it's not the only urban fight in World War II, but it's the first one where the Americans and the Japanese are going at it. So it comes late and it's distinctive and unique in that sense.

**Nicholas Gordon** (4:26)
So maybe let's talk about kind of specifically the decision to fight, to try and capture Manila. What was the decision that let them to try to capture the city rather than to do something else?

**Nicholas Evan Sarantakes** (4:42)
Well, there is constant strategic reassessment during the war. So there isn't a plan of like we're going to march from point A, we're going to take one, two, three, and then we're going to be in Tokyo. There is the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also MacArthur and Nimitz have a series of meetings where they constantly kind of reassess and adapt. And obviously the main objective is to get to and occupy Japan. But how you do that is depends a lot on how things are going. And oh, by the way, you also have to fight the war in Europe at the same time. And the two are affecting one another. In fact, I would argue that the having two theaters in the Pacific slows down the advance in Europe. And then when the United States in Britain, really Britain, makes a firm commitment to go across the channel in 44, Europe really does become the first priority. And then you see the Pacific Theater getting a lot less, because I mean, really the first priority for manpower, the first priority for equipment is Europe. Okay, so you're doing this reassessing, assessing and adapting with this yin and yang pull, push-pull kind of relationship. And the Navy wants to go through the Central Pacific, and they do. MacArthur is basically, he's got a theater, and he's marching up kind of through the Southwest Pacific. And at some point, these two impulses or these two theaters or these two prongs are going to connect. And the question is, where are they going to connect? It might be Japan itself, it might be the Philippines. There's a great deal of debate and talk about going into attacking Taiwan. That is an idea that the Navy wants to do for a great deal of time. And that would have been a mistake for a variety of reasons. But ultimately, MacArthur is pushing a return to the Philippines.