GEN MACARTHUR'S HEADQUARTERS, Luzon -- Gen. Douglas MacArthur Saturday announced the destruction of the trapped Japanese Manila garrison and forecast that the entire Philippines archipelago soon would be freed from an enemy he said had been doomed by his heavy losses.
MacArthur, 22 days after his troops first entered Manila, announced that elements of Maj. Gen. Robert S. Beightler's 37th infantry and Maj. Gen. Verne D. Mudge's First cavalry had overwhelmed the last enemy positions in Intramuros, the ancient section of south Manila.
They "completed the destruction of the trapped-garrison," he said, and 12,000 enemy bodies already have been found in Manila with "many more to come." Some 3000 civilians whom "the incorrigible, enemy" had herded into Intramuros, including a number of Catholic priests and nuns, were freed.
Supreme Effort Failed
MacArthur said the enemy "apparently expected to turn the tide of battle in a supreme effort and he has failed." MacArthur's communique said:
"This operation and the tremendous and disproportionate losses in men and material sustained during the progress of our advance through Luzon, following the catastrophic defeat in Leyte, dooms Gen. Yamashita's Philippine campaign and presages the early clearance of the entire archipelago."
Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, whose armies captured Bataan in the early days of the war, is the Japanese commander in the Philippines. His army on Luzon has been split. On Leyte, first major Philippines island to be liberated by MacArthur's men, Japanese losses were more than 112,000 men.
American troops are also levying a mounting toll of the trapped and desperate Japanese garrison of Corregidor, rocky island in the entrance of Manila bay.
Japs Trapped In Tunnels
Known enemy dead there total 2309, MacArthur's communique said, and it is believed several thousand others have been destroyed in Corregidor's labyrinth of rocky corridors by the blasting and closing of somo 132 tunnels. Some of these have been destroyed by Japanese demolitions, others by Americans.
East and north of Manila, American infantry have scored gains of up to 10 miles against Japanese troops drawing into the mountains.
Troops of the First cavalry and of Maj. Gen. Edwin Patrick's Sixth division, thrusting into the Marikina watershed area, have advanced a mile from San Mateo to within two miles of Montalban, 12 miles northeast of Manila.
Along the north shore of Laguna Do Bay, inland Jake southeast of Manila, they have reached Angono, 10 miles southeast of the capital, after a three-mile advance from Taytay.
Maj. Gen. Charles L. Mullins' 25th division spearheads, last reported around Rizal at the edge of the Caraballo mountains, have penetrated 10 air-line miles northward into the hills, and captured the town of Pantanbangan.
