Captain Li talked to Wang Santai and was very excited, and he went to contact other guerrillas in a hurry. There are dozens of guerrilla groups in the Philippines www.biquge.info, some of which are private units of local chaebols. These people are looking for ways to contact the US military, and the US military actively contacts them at night, gives money for guns, trains personnel, and gathers intelligence.

In order to expand the influence of his guerrillas, Captain Li was naturally willing to make contact. With the secret information provided by the New Fourth Army, as well as the weapons and personnel training provided by the New Fourth Army, he was not worried that other guerrillas would steal the limelight.

After Captain Li left, Wang Santai sent out several people one after another, and the task was to observe the development of the Manila Battle from afar. Investigators must not get too close to the battlefield and scout the battlefield situation in Manila and the progress of the war around the battlefield.

According to available information, large Japanese forces are being withdrawn from northeastern Manila, and their new headquarters will be located in Baguio. Baguio is a small city in central Luzon.

The situation on the battlefield was quickly reported back, and the withdrawal of the large Japanese troops went smoothly, and they left the defensive troops in Manila without retreating, and insisted on fighting the American troops. These defensive units attracted the combat power of the American army. Under their cover, large units of the Japanese Army calmly withdrew. According to the latest news, the defending Japanese army, except for more than 3,000 land forces, are all navies.

The U.S. military seemed unwilling to fight the Japanese on the battlefield, and as in previous weeks, they used aircraft artillery to open the way as long as there were Japanese positions, and they brought in aircraft and artillery to bomb them first.

Beginning on the 18th, the massacre began in Manila, and tens of thousands of people were killed one after another, but after all, there were too many dead bodies, and the whole of Manila was full of corpses.

Scouts couldn't tell if it was the Japanese who were slaughtering or the Americans who were slaughtering. The Japanese killed people on the ground, and the two US troops dropped bombs in the air, indiscriminately, which was also a massacre. The situation was most tragic in downtown Manila, where buildings were almost completely destroyed.

March 20, 1945.

Captain Li brought other leaders of the Hook Army to visit Wang Santai. Wang Santai told them in detail about the plans that Yan'an, Fujian, and Shenyang had helped them make.

After listening to the suggestions clearly, everyone's opinions were somewhat divided, and the leadership of the Hook Army was constantly arguing. Some people are unwilling to go along with the enemy and want to make their political ideals public, while others are willing to listen to Yan'an's suggestions, establish good relations with the US military, engage in economic warfare, and strive to develop themselves.

However, the news brought by the Hook Army was good, and the American army was soon about to achieve a final victory, and the Japanese naval defenders were basically wiped out. U.S. forces occupied the vast majority of urban areas, and only a few were resisting.

Even so, the US command believed that victory was in sight and was preparing for an entrance ceremony. I hope that the broad masses of the people will come to participate and boost their confidence in the US government.

The next day, the guerrillas heard that the last retreating Japanese unit had left the Philippines for hundreds of kilometers. The number of Japanese troops who stubbornly held out in the city was already very small.

Interestingly, the retreating Japanese army did not retreat quickly because they led some Japanese civilians and even took some Filipinos with some boxes of Japanese cooperation.

At the same time, the Hook Army also transmitted the news to the US military in a timely manner. Because the Hook Army gave a lot of highly credible information, the U.S. military trusted them and sent several intelligence officers to their guerrilla units. Anything that comes from American intelligence officers.

March 23, 1945. The Allies announced the occupation of the main city of Manila. In fact, only 80 percent of the urban areas were occupied, and there were still large areas of the suburbs fighting, and in some areas where resistance had ceased to be rekindled, the US Army was not making rapid progress.

The commander of the Japanese 14th Front, Admiral Yamashita Fumi, ordered early on that the troops would not defend Manila, but would make a strategic retreat from the coast to the interior, and that blocking the US forces in the interior was their set goal.

Most of the troops retreated, but there was one that did not, and that was Major General Iwabuchi San. He did not retreat, but took his troops with him, holding on to Manila, determined to fight to the death.

Although the Allies managed to organize a mass rescue of prisoners of war, about 1,000 people were killed and nearly 6,000 wounded in the battle. The Japanese army slaughtered more than 100,000 Manilans, and more than 10,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in battle. In street fighting, the Japanese relied on urban buildings, while the American army used aircraft artillery to bombard buildings.

How the Filipinos died, slaughtered, bombed, it is really unclear.

March 24, Manila.

The gunfire in Manila calmed down, and there were some sparse gunfire in the morning, and the gunfire ended in the afternoon. At one o'clock in the afternoon, the American troops, guided by tanks, drove into the city and circled around until four o'clock.

At around three o'clock in the afternoon, people began to come out of the rubble.

Wang Santai personally entered the city today.

The city was littered with corpses, and Wang Santai and several people dressed as Filipino natives observed the movements of American troops in downtown Manila. When they walked to the dock area, they found hundreds of American soldiers cleaning up the bodies, and a large area of the dock area had been cleaned up.

This shows that there is an initiation ceremony. From now to your venue, it is estimated that it will be tomorrow. When you arrive at the pier, you can see that there are more than a dozen warships in the sea of Manila Bay, moored far away on the sea.

While he was looking, an American officer came over and said, "Hey, what are you doing?" ”

Wang Santai: "We are locals. Our pre-war boat was moored at the pier to come and see the ship. Hey, my ship sank here. "Even with analogies. Wang Santai can practice English like this in half a year, it's really hard for him. Years later, Mr. Wang's colleagues joked about his English, saying that he spoke with a Filipino accent.

The U.S. officer looked at the cockpit exposed on the water and said, "The ship is gone, but the people are still there." It's not bad. ”

Wang Santai: "Yes. I'll salvage it later. We in Manila are looking forward to you coming, to seeing General MacArthur. ”

The surrounding U.S. soldiers began to let their guard down.

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1. Historical sources estimate that in the Philippine Campaign in 1945, about 12,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, and about 1,020 American soldiers were killed and 5,565 were wounded. From the beginning of February to February 23, 1945, between 100,000 and 150,000 civilians died. Deaths were concentrated in the last days of the campaign. As for the cause of the death of the citizens of Manila, most blame the Japanese army for the massacre. Historical sources can also show examples of massacres of civilians by the Japanese army. The Japanese said that the thinking of the citizens of Manila was mainly the death caused by the attack of the American army in the fighting between the two sides. At that time, the Philippines also had a president, a president in exile. However, the Philippines was a colony of the United States, and MacArthur was the Governor General of the Philippines before the war.