Battle of Mindanao

The Battle of Mindanao (Filipino: Labanan sa Mindanao; Cebuano: Gubat sa Mindanao; Japanese: ミンダナオの戦い) was fought by the Americans and allied Filipino guerrillas against the Japanese forces on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines as part of Operation VICTOR V. It was part of the campaign to liberate the Philippines during World War II. The battle was waged to complete the recapture of the southernmost portions of the archipelago from the Imperial Japanese Army. The campaign for Mindanao posed the greatest challenge for the liberating Allied forces, primarily for three reasons: the island's inhospitable geography; the extended Japanese defenses; and the strength and condition of the Japanese forces, which contained the significantly remaining concentration of combat troops in the Philippines. Like most of the Philippine Islands and other similar places the U.S. Army operated elsewhere in the Pacific, the geographical conditions of Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, offered very little inspiration for soldiers who would have to fight there. It boasted a long and irregular coastline, and the topography was generally characterized as rugged and mountainous. Rain forests and numerous crocodile-infested rivers covered the terrain, the rest by either lake, swamp or grassland. These grassland regions—along with dense groves of abacá trees, a source of hemp fiber—offer the worst obstacles, limiting vision and sapping the strength of soldiers. The few roads in Mindanao further complicated the problem of movement. The generously named Highway 1 cut across the southern portion of the island, from just south of Parang on Illana Bay in the west to Digos on Davao Gulf in the east and then north to Davao. The other, Sayre Highway the main north-south road, started at Kabacan, midway between Illana Bay and Davao Gulf, then ran north through the mountains of Bukidnon and Macajalar Bay (off Misamis Oriental Province) on the northern coast.