The Hospital and the University

The focal point of Japanese resistance in the 148th Infantry's zone was the area covered by the Philippine General Hospital and the University of the Philippines.¹⁸ The hospital-university complex stretched about 1,000 yards south from Isaac Peral Street along the west side of Taft Avenue to Herran Street. The hospital and associated buildings extended west along the north side of Herran about 550 yards to Dakota Avenue while, about midway between Isaac Peral and Herran, Padre Faura Street separated the hospital and the university grounds.

Fortified in violation of the Geneva Convention--Japan, like the United States, was not a signatory power, but both had agreed to abide by the convention's rules--the hospital buildings, all of reinforced concrete, were clearly marked by large red crosses on their roofs, and they contained many Filipino patients who were, in effect, held hostage by the Japanese. XIV Corps had initially prohibited artillery fire on the buildings, but lifted the restriction on 12 February when the 148th Infantry discovered that the hospital was defended. The presence of the civilian patients did not become known for another two or three days.

On 13 February the 148th Infantry, having fought every step of the way from the Estero de Paco, began to reach Taft Avenue and get into position for an attack on the hospital. On that day the left flank extended along Taft from Herran south four blocks to Harrison Boulevard, the 148th Infantry-12th Cavalry boundary. The infantry's extreme right was held up about three blocks short of Taft Avenue, unable to advance until the 129th and 145th Infantry overran the New Police Station strongpoint. By evening the center and most of the right flank elements had learned the hard way that the Japanese had all the east-west streets east of Taft Avenue covered by automatic weapons emplaced in the hospital and university buildings. The 148th could not employ these streets as approaches to the objectives, and the regiment accordingly prepared to assault via the buildings and back yards on the east side of Taft.

On 14 February the 2d Battalion, 148th Infantry, trying to push across Taft Avenue, found that the Japanese had so arranged their defenses that cross fires covered all approaches to the hospital and university buildings. The defenders had dug well-constructed machine gun emplacements into the foundations of most of the buildings; inside they had sandbagged positions on the first floors; lastly, Japanese riflemen and machine gunners were stationed at the windows of upper stories to good advantage. The Japanese, in brief, stopped the American battalion with mortar, machine gun, and rifle fire from the Science Building and adjacent structures at the northwest corner of Taft and Herran, from the main hospital buildings on the west side of Taft between California and Oregon, and from the Nurses' Dormitory at the northwest corner of Taft and Isaac Peral. On the left the 3d Battalion, pushing west across Taft Avenue south of Herran Street, had intended to advance on to Manila Bay, but halted, lest it become cut off, when the rest of the regiment stopped.

On the 14th, at the cost of 22 killed and 29 wounded, the 148th Infantry again could make only negligible gains. Indeed, the progress the regiment made during the 14th had depended largely upon heavy artillery and mortar support. The 140th Field Artillery fired 2,091 rounds of high-explosive 105-mm. ammunition, and 4.2-inch mortars of the 82d Chemical Mortar Battalion expended 1,101 rounds of high explosive and 264 rounds of white phosphorus.¹⁹ The white phosphorus, setting some fires in a residential district south of the hospital, helped the advance of the 3d Battalion, but neither this nor the high-explosive shells appreciably decreased the scale of Japanese fire from the hospital and university.

On 15 February the 3d Battalion reached Manila Bay via Herran Street--before the 12th Cavalry was that far north--and then wheeled right to assault the hospital from the south. That day the 2d Battalion, in the center, was again unable to make any gains westward across Taft Avenue, but on the 16th had limited success in a general assault against the main hospital buildings, the Science Building (at the northwest corner of Taft and Herran), the Medical School (just west of the Science Building), and the Nurses' Dormitory. The Nurses' Dormitory, dominating the northern approaches to the university buildings, actually lay in the 129th Infantry's zone, but the 148th attacked the dormitory because the 129th was still held up at the New Police Station.

By afternoon of the 16th the 148th Infantry had learned that some Filipino civilians were in the hospital. Making every possible effort to protect the civilian patients, the 2d Battalion, 148th Infantry, which had to direct the fire of tanks, tank destroyers, and self-propelled mounts against every structure in its path in order to gain any ground at all, limited its support fires at the hospital to the foundation defenses insofar as practicable. With the aid of the close support fires, the battalion grabbed and held a foothold in the Nurses' Dormitory after bitter room-to-room fighting. Further south, other troops, still unable to reach the Medical School, had to give up a tenuous hold in the Science Building when most of the 2d Battalion withdrew to the east side of Taft Avenue for the night. The cost of the disappointing gains was 5 men killed and 40 wounded--the attrition continued.

During 17 February, with the aid of support fires from the 1st Battalion, now on the south side of Herran Street, the 2d Battalion smashed its way into the two most easterly of the hospital's four wings and overran the last resistance in the Nurses' Dormitory and the Science Building. The advance might have gone faster had it not been necessary to evacuate patients and other Filipino civilians from the hospital. By dusk over 2,000 civilians had come out of the buildings; the 148th Infantry conducted 5,000 more to safety that night. At the end of the 17th the 148th had overcome almost all opposition except that at the Medical School and in a small group of buildings facing Padre Faura Street at the northwestern corner of the hospital grounds.

Throughout the 18th the 148th Infantry mopped up and consolidated gains, and on the morning of the 19th the 5th Cavalry relieved the infantry regiment. The cavalrymen were to complete the occupation of the hospital buildings, destroy the Japanese at the university, and clear Assumption College, lying west of the Medical School. The 148th Infantry relinquished its hold on the Medical School before the 5th Cavalry completed its relief,²⁰ and the cavalry regiment started its fighting with a new assault there, moving in behind point-blank fire from supporting medium tanks. Troop G, 5th Cavalry, gained access by dashing along an 8-foot-high wall connecting the Medical School to the Science Building. Employing flame throwers and bazookas as its principal assault weapons, the troop cleared the Medical School by dark on the 19th, claiming to have killed 150 Japanese in the action.²¹ The cavalry also secured Assumption College and a few small buildings on the hospital grounds that the 148th Infantry had not cleared. The 5th's first day of action at the hospital-university strongpoint cost the regiment 1 killed and 11 wounded.

The 5th Cavalry, leaving elements behind to complete the mop-up at the hospital, turned its attention to Rizal Hall, the largest building on the university campus. Centrally located and constructed of reinforced concrete, Rizal Hall faced south on the north side of Padre Faura Street. The Japanese had strongly fortified the building, cutting slits for machine guns through the portion of the foundations lying just above ground, barricading doors and windows, emplacing machine guns on the flat roof, and setting up the ubiquitous sandbagged machine gun nests inside.

After a two-hour tank and tank destroyer bombardment, a Troop B platoon entered from the east about 1130 on 20 February. During the shelling most of the Japanese had taken refuge in the basement, but reoccupied defenses on the three upper floors before the cavalry could gain control of the stairways. Nevertheless, the platoon cleared the first floor and secured a foothold on the second after two hours of fighting. The small force then stalled, but the squadron commander declined to send reinforcements into the building. First, the interior was so compartmented that only two or three men could actually be engaged at any one point; more would only get in each other's way. Second, he feared that the Japanese might blow the building at any moment.

Accordingly, the Troop B platoon resumed its lonely fight and, without losing a single man, reached the top floor about 1700. Half an hour later the squadron commander's fear of demolitions proved well founded, for Japanese hidden in the basement set off a terrific explosion that tore out the entire center of Rizal Hall, killing 1 cavalryman and wounding 4 others. The platoon withdrew for the night.