Word: baguio
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...incredibly tough fighting remained. In northern Luzon strong Jap forces, bountifully supplied from their Aparri base, were holding their mountain lines before Baguio. The weary 25th Division in Balete Pass won and lost a single hill four times; after four weeks' bitter fighting it had managed to gain 1,000 yards. Thirty-third Division troops fought artillery duels with Japs snugly hidden in caves on mountain slopes. Bit by bit both divisions worked closer to their objectives. On Mindanao the slow cleanup of Zamboanga peninsula continued. Davao, the excellent port and key area of the second largest island...
From two directions Major General Innis Palmer ("Bull") Swift's I Corps moved on Baguio, summer capital of the Philippine Government. It was hard slugging over tortuous mountain terrain dominated by Japanese mortar and artillery fire. Progress was measured in yards. Fighting was a matter of probing the resistance with infantry patrols, then falling back until artillery could soften the hard spots-and they were very hard...
Inching through the Balete Pass, south of Baguio, was Major General Charles L. Mullings' 25th Division, which was at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 and has been in the Pacific ever since. Behind these veterans were Guadalcanal, New Georgia, Vella Lavella. Ahead of them, seven exasperating miles filled with Japs fighting from caves, was Baguio. Pushing in from the west, over the same kind of country, at the same pace, against the same stiff opposition, were Swift's other divisions, the 32nd and 33rd...
...always came back to Baguio. There Lieut. General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Japanese commander, stood for the final Philippines battle...
...Combat Team, now under the command of Brigadier General Hanford MacNider, smashed a Japanese attempt to bring troops in from one of the other islands. But in northern Luzon the 33rd Division, after taking a month to gain 13 miles through difficult mountain terrain, was still seven miles from Baguio. And in Mindanao, Jap artillery and electrically-controlled land mines slowed the advance beyond Zamboanga. The road ahead was steep...