Engineers' War

In northern Luzon a Japanese retreat was developing into something resembling a rout.

After three months of defense in the incredibly difficult mountains, the pride of Japan's Philippine Army had had enough. As braggart Lieut. General Tomoyuki Yamashita's 20,000 remaining men, demoralized and disorganized, stumbled toward the coast, U.S. troops came in fast behind them through the rough-walled gorges of the Cagayan Valley.

The veteran 37th Division, under a confident Ohio National Guardsman, Major General Robert S. Beightler, drove 22 miles in 24 hours, captured Santiago, then pushed on 15 miles more. To the west, Brig. General Charles E. Hurdis' 6th Division swept up the Japanese trying to escape on Highway 4.

Japanese prisoners were being taken as never before--although still not in large numbers. Four waved a white flag to a cub plane, threw away their rifles, trudged into infantry lines to give up. Two souvenir-hunting doughboys came back with 28 live Japs. Another Jap, surrendering to a sergeant, explained in fluent English, "I know Germany has fallen and our situation on Luzon is hopeless." Still another turned to his captors and asked plaintively: "What is it you have that breaks our Bushido spirit?"

Supplies, Engineers, Fighters. His answer was in the endless columns of U.S. supply trucks, jeeps, tanks, artillery and bulldozers rumbling down from Balete Pass through dust and mud. It was in the roads punched out of mountain sides while the battles went on, in the bridges built, the airstrips rolled, the lumber cut, the dirt hauled by the engineers. He would also find it in the muddy, lined, unshaven faces of the infantrymen, seasoned fighters who beat mountains, jungles and rain as well as Japanese. What the Americans had better than Bushido was fighting heart and unmatched ability to fight an engineers' war.

As the Japanese rout grew, U.S. planes searched the roads and trails for the retreating enemy. One observation plane called for fire on a column in shiny American cars, stolen in Manila, and bamboo-hooded carabao carts, snatched from Igorot farmers. Wrote TIME Correspondent William Gray: "When I saw the area two days later, burned roadside huts were still smoking, the air was ripe with the stench of dead men and animals and souring spilled rice. A scattered pile of

Japanese Philippine invasion money lay on the road where it was blown during the shooting."

Worse than Burma. The Cagayan Valley drive was the culmination of fighting in terrain so cruel that General Joseph W. Stilwell said it was worse than Burma. Major General Innis P. ("Bull") Swift, corps commander, had sent his divisions driving through backbreaking country that was all gorges and razor-backed ridges and mountain peaks that prodded the clouds. One division had advanced only 1,000 yards in four weeks, lost and retook one hill four times. The world may never have seen steeper fighting.

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