CHAPTER XIX
The Entrances to Ormoc Valley
General Bruce’s quick exploitation of the surprise landing of the 77th Division just below Ormoc had resulted in the capture of Ormoc on 10 December. With each successive advance, he had displaced his entire division forward. General Bruce, as he phrased it, preferred to “drag his tail up the beach.”[1]
With the seizure of Ormoc, General Krueger’s Sixth Army had driven the main elements of the Japanese 35th Army into Ormoc Valley. The Japanese were caught in the jaws of a trap—the 1st Cavalry Division and the 32d Infantry Division were closing in from the north and the 77th Infantry Division from the south. General Krueger ordered the X and XXIV Corps to close this trap upon the Japanese.
Southern Entrance to Ormoc Valley
Japanese Plans
When General Suzuki, the commander of the Japanese 35th Army, ordered the action against the Burauen airfields, his anticipations had been high. Accompanied by his chief of staff and six other staff officers, he had gone to the headquarters of the 26th Division, in the mountains near Lubi, in order to supervise the operation personally. General Tomochika, the deputy chief of staff, remained at Ormoc because of the advance of the Americans up the west coast, and took command of operations in the area.
A mixed battalion, consisting of four companies, reinforced the 12th Independent Infantry Regiment. This regiment, under Colonel Imahori, was to be prepared at a moment’s notice for action in the Ormoc sector.[2] The 16th and 26th Divisions received orders to retreat westward and establish defensive positions in the Ormoc Valley. The 16th Division, which had less than 200 men, had ceased to exist as a fighting unit. The Japanese decided that henceforward their operations would be strictly defensive. The 26th Division started to withdraw through the mountains, but its orders to retreat were very hard to carry out. The Americans had blocked the road, and the 11th Airborne Division units, which had advanced west from Burauen, were attacking in the vicinity of Lubi. As a result, the staff officers of General Suzuki’s 35th Army “disbanded and scattered.” General Suzuki passed through the American lines and reached the command post at Huaton, four miles north of Ormoc, on 13 December; his chief of staff arrived there the following day. As for the 26th Division, “all contact with the Division was lost by Army Headquarters until the early part of March.”[3]
In the meantime General Tomochika had prepared new plans. On 6 December he was told by a staff officer of the 1st Division, which was fighting the 32d Division in the north, that the 1st Division had “reached the stage of collapse.”[4] The mission of the 1st Division was then changed to one of defense. Colonel Imahori by the night of 7 December had sent two companies south.[5] These companies, known as the Kamijo Battalion, were destroyed at Ipil by the 77th Division in its march to Ormoc. Colonel Imahori, fearful that the rest of his detachment would suffer the same fate, ordered his main force, the Tateishi and Maeda Battalions, to construct positions north of Ormoc. The remnants of the Kamijo Battalion established a position northeast of Ormoc. In his plan for the parachute attack on the Burauen airfields, General Suzuki had decided to use as a part of his attacking force the 4th Air Raiding Landing Unit. In view of the unfavorable situation that had developed, the 14th Area Army commander, General Yamashita, decided that after the 4th Air Raiding Landing Unit landed at the Valencia airfield it was to be kept in the Ormoc area. From 8 to 13 December approximately 500 men from the unit arrived in the Ormoc area, and were attached to the Imahori Detachment. They had traveled only at dawn or dusk to avoid detection.