catastrophe, but MacArthur’s obsession with seizing the city created the circumstances for it. The U.S. lost 8,140 men killed on Luzon. Around 200,000 Japanese died there, many of disease. If the exchange ran overwhelmingly in America’s favour, those same enemy forces could have gone nowhere and achieved nothing had the Americans contented themselves with their containment. SWPA’s supreme commander compounded his mistakes by embarking upon the reconquest of the entire Philippines Archipelago, even before Luzon had fallen. MacArthur presided over the largest ground campaign of America’s war in
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