The Liberation of the Philippines - Luzon, Mindanao, the Visayas, 1944 - 1945

The smoke from the Battle for Leyte Gulf had hardly cleared before plans were being made for the liberation of the rest of the Philippine Archipelago. Volume 13 of Morison's masterful history covers the taking of Mindoro as a stepping stone to Luzon, the major landings on the shores of Lingayen Gulf, and the amphibious landings that wrested Borneo from the Japanese, as well as the series of short, swift operations that liberated Palawan, Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol, and Mindanao. In this volume, Morison describes the newly prominent role of the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps, whose frenzied suicidal bombings offered the main resistance to the Allied occupation of Mindoro. Alongside details of military operations, Morison includes a heartstopping account of the typhoon of 18 December 1944, which blew up unexpectedly into a shrieking hellcat of a storm while Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet worked frantically to refuel. He also recounts the work of the "Rice Paddy Navy", a combined corps of American volunteers from the Navy, Army, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard that collaborated with thousands of Chinese sailors, fishermen, pirates, and guerrillas and ended up fighting the last naval battle of the war using sailing junks.