66 years ago: The liberation of Cebu began!

Exactly 66 years ago today at 0730 elements of the Americal Division led by Maj. Gen. William H. Arnold and the 82nd Division (aided by some 2,700 armed guerrillas under Lt. Col. James Cushing who were already operating within Cebu) commenced Operation Victor II or the invasion of Cebu with an amphibious landing in Tangke Beach, Talisay, Cebu. There were a total of 59 ships (carrying 14,000 soldiers) in this attack group that included cruisers, destroyers, four assault personnel destroyers, eight minesweepers, seventeen Landing Ship Transports (LSTs) and small landing craft that participated in this historic event in Cebu’s history.

The invasion of Cebu began at 0730 with the heavy bombardment of the beaches in Talisay, including the rocket-firing LCIs that pounded the Japanese shoreline defenses. At exactly 0830, LVTs, together with Amtracs, rushed to the Talisay beachhead, getting only sporadic or token machinegun and mortar fire from the Japanese holed out in bunkers built by the beach.

With the Americal Division believing that Talisay would be a “walk in the park,” because of the light resistance, they literally walked into a minefield, when 10 of the first 15 LVTs were disabled because of mines. All of the sudden, the first wave of the landing operations in Talisay were stopped on its tracks as mine-clearing operations had to be called in. This caused traffic along the beach as the other LVTs and Amtracs already in the water had to land on the beach, but could not move forward.

All in all, it took more than an hour and a half to clear certain areas of the beach from the Japanese minefield, which the Americal Division characterized as “the most elaborate and effective beach defense that the Americans ever encountered in the Philippines.” While the Americans expected a stiff resistance, the Japanese actually prepared themselves for the bigger battle of Cebu that was yet to come, first on Go Chan Hill (which is a small hill near my house, where the EcoTech Center is located) a few days later and then at the famous Battle of Babag Ridge in Busay, Cebu. This US military operation in Cebu would last for five months until the Japanese surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945.

The first wave took the first US casualties in the Liberation of Cebu with eight Americal Division soldiers killed and 39 wounded because of the mines in Tangke beach. Once the mine-clearing operation was done, the US Forces lost no time in proceeding toward Pardo and then into Cebu City where the Cebuanos cheered the US invasion forces. By nightfall, 88 Japanese soldiers were killed and 10 where taken prisoner. Lt. Col. John V. Belmonte then converted the Pardo Church into a surgical hospital to care for the wounded. The first biggest battle the US Forces faced was on Go Chan Hill, which took three days and where 200 Japanese were killed. Thus ended the first day of the Liberation of Cebu.

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With the whole world in turmoil, I wouldn’t want to be on the shoes of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III (even if he is driving his Porsche 911) because our nation is beset with so many problems that were not there during the time of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA). P-Noy came into the political scene armed with the promise for reforms and a quest to fight corruption on its roots. But today, nothing much has really changed and those reforms are nothing by a pipe imagination of P-Noy.

Worse of all, the Aquino government is still embracing the old concepts, like whenever an officer of the Philippine National Police (PNP) gets into trouble, that officer is yanked out of his post and recycled to another post where people have no idea of what this officer did in his past post. We’ve always chastised the PNP hierarchy on this and nothing has changed.

A case in point is a report we’ve read that former National Capital Regional Police Office (NCRPO) chief Director Leocadio Santiago Jr. who figured infamously in the Aug. 23, 2010 botched hostage-taking crisis at the Quirino Grandstand that ended with the killing of eight innocent tourists from Hong Kong has been promoted as chief of the PNP-Directorate for Operations (DO). Director Santiago was slapped with a very light 11-day suspension for the incident. Now he is the top cheese on the PNP operations?

It’s not even a year since that infamous hostage-taking incident and the man on top of that bungled operation has been booted upstairs to be chief of PNP operations? What’s really going on here? Is the President taking too much time driving his Porsche to notice that the PNP has just done a great disservice to our country? At this point… all I can say proudly is that, I didn’t vote for P-Noy, and for those of you who voted for him and are aghast why this is happening, you should confront the President to stop this very abhorrent practice by the PNP hierarchy. After all, he is the President.

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