The Philippines Campaign Opened

On 20 October 1944, the Allied campaign to recapture the Philippines opened. The larger plan had been set well before that month. In mid-1943, Allied planners had decided that the main offensive should advance from the south and southeast, through the Philippines and Micronesia, rather than from the Aleutians or the Asian mainland.

The two routes served different purposes. Occupying the Philippines would disrupt Japanese communications with the East Indian islands west of New Guinea and with Malaya. Taking Micronesia, island by island from the Gilberts through the Marshalls and Carolines to the Marianas, would offer bases for heavy air raids on the Japanese mainland. It also offered the possibility of forcing the Japanese fleet into a naval showdown.

The Allies had first needed to reduce other Japanese positions. Rabaul, the large Japanese garrison in the Bismarck Archipelago, had been isolated by land and air. In western New Guinea, U.S. troops and Australian infantry advanced along the coast, while simultaneous landings at Hollandia on April 22, 1944, put Allied forces in position to capture its airfields. The larger campaign had depended on several fronts moving forward; the Philippines were not an isolated destination on a map.

October brought the next phase. The Allied campaign to recapture the Philippines began that month, and on October 23 the Battle of Leyte Gulf began. The short interval put the campaign’s opening and one of its major naval battles almost side by side in the timeline. The battle followed the Allied approach through the central and southwest Pacific, rather than arriving as a separate episode.

The consequences of Leyte Gulf were stark in the account of the Pacific War. Afterward, the Japanese were unable to fight further surface engagements and resorted to kamikaze attacks. The campaign’s opening therefore belonged to a larger sequence: Allied advances across island groups, the effort to cut Japanese communications, and the approach to the Philippines. By 20 October, that plan had moved into its next phase. The timeline’s next dated marker came only three days later.