Philippines Force were negligible From July 1941, these forces were combined under the U.S command of General Douglas MacArthur, an old Philippine Army hand like his father before him MacArthur had about 10,000 men available, of whom 8,000 were the crack Philippine Scouts MacArthur also had a U.S bomber force at Clark Field and fighters at Iba He deployed all his forces badly, and lost most of his aircraft during the opening hours of the Philippines campaign (1941–1942) Having retired to Australia during the Japanese conquest, President Manuel Quezon established a government-in-exile in Washington on May 14, 1942 He died in American exile on August 1, 1944 The varied population of the Philippines archipelago he and MacArthur left behind occupied over 7,000 large and small islands, many profoundly isolated by geography and language Not surprisingly, different peoples reacted in different ways to the Japanese The one real constant was brutal Japanese treatment of Filipinos, who were ranked low on the racist hierarchy of the Japanese imperial world view Mistreatment was chronic and daily, but worsened as Japan clearly began to lose the war Filipinos soon faced starvation in the midst of plenty, as their harvests and other products of their labor were expropriated and exported to serve the Japanese Guerrilla resistance to the Japanese occupation was regional, rather than national The most violent was by the Huk (Hukbalahap) on southern Luzon The Huk were a superficially left-wing but fundamentally nationalist movement with deep roots in resistance to any foreign occupation They survived in a local culture of war dating to protracted struggles against the Spanish and Americans The Huk would continue to fight after World War II, rebelling against the Philippine government from 1946 to 1954 Other guerillas fought the Japanese in northern Luzon while a separate group was active on Mindanao Active armed resistance continued throughout the occupation, unlike large parts of the rest of the Pacific and SE Asian theaters Japanese reprisals were savage In 1943 the United States formally reconfirmed its prewar promise made in the Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934 to grant full independence to the Philippines, now dating it to liberation The Japanese hinted at the same outcome but showed no sign of delivering on a promise made to Filipino leaders directly by Hideki To ˉjoˉ Besides, the Japanese demanded a Filipino declaration of war on the United States as a quid pro quo Anti-Japanese Filipinos from various guerilla movements thus stayed active They were especially important in providing advance intelligence to the American invasion forces, then in aiding and scouting for them after landings on Luzon initiated the second Philippines campaign (1944–1945) The liberation of the Philippines was a terribly bloody, brutal, and protracted fight that lasted from June 1944 to July 1945 Its worst episode was the battle for Manila, where the Japanese Army rampaged: rape and killing by the Japanese in Manilla was reminiscent, though on a lesser scale, of the earlier Rape of Nanjing American bombing and shelling completed destruction of much of the city and contributed to the loss of over 125,000 lives Most of the dead were Filipino civilians Emilio Aguinaldo (1870–1964), venerable nationalist enemy of Spain and the United States, was briefly arrested as the Japanese were defeated He and other collaborators with the Japanese were subsequently treated with extraordinary, and 846