Mindanao 1945 - Battle for the Visayas

Panzer Grenadier: Mindanao 1945 is a Campaign Study, featuring 10 new scenarios based on the battles for control of the Visayas and Mindanao. You'll need Saipan 1944, Dragon’s Teeth (two pieces for one scenarios), Marianas 1944 and Leyte 1944 to play them all.

The Visaya Islands of the central Philippines lie between Luzon to the north and Mindanao to the south. They’re fairly mountainous, covered in lush vegetation, and thickly populated. The islands produce sugar, copra, rice, and other agricultural items, and the people are known for throwing almost-constant festivals. Samar, in particular, became noted as a hotbed of resistance to all foreign interlopers: Spanish, American, and Japanese.

The Japanese occupied the islands in early 1942 and set up their own administration. Filipino resistance mounted steadily, and by the time the Americans invaded Leyte (the northernmost of the Visayas) in October 1944, tens of thousands of guerillas had taken to the hills and forests to wage war on the Japanese.

The American campaign in the Visayas began in March 1945, on the island of Panay. The Japanese garrison numbered about 1,500 combat troops, all of them from the 102nd Infantry Division, and about 400 civilian personnel. The guerillas included about 22,000 men, most of them uniformed and organized as part of the 107th Division. The 61st Infantry Division of the Philippine Commonwealth Army had defended Panay in 1942, and its disbandment provided a solid cadre for the guerillas.

Following a lengthy air and naval bombardment, the American 40th Infantry Division, a California National Guard unit, landed on Panay on 15 March 1945. The Japanese did not contest the landing and only put up token resistance to the American drive on the island’s capital, Iloilo. The garrison commander, Lt. Col. Ryoichi Totsuka, did not defend the city (which housed his headquarters and almost all of his troops) and instead withdrew his men into the mountains in the island’s interior, just as the Filipino and American defenders had done in 1942. The American 185th Infantry Regiment on Panay claimed that fewer than 500 Japanese had fled into the hills in isolated groups, and both American and Filipino troops made little effort to find them. When he learned of Japan’s surrender, Totsuka led 1,560 men out of the mountains, the unofficial and unspoken truce having spared lives on both sides.