Photos of the Battle at Mt. Maculot 1945

Captured Japanese artillery on Mt. Maculot, 1945.

Considered among the fiercest battles fought between United States and Japanese forces in the Western Pacific Theater of War was that fought in Mount Maculot – or Mount Macolod as many American war documentation referred to the mountain. In fact, the two-pronged pincer strike of US Army troops from Nasugbu through Tanauan and Santo Tomas in the north and Batangas town from the southwest had already closed in Lipa late in March 1945 before the Americans returned to Mount Maculot to try to finally subdue the Japanese defenses. The pictures shown in this post were taken from the battles that ensued.

Both have been taken from the public domain book entitled “The Angels: A History of the 11^th Airborne Division 1943-1946,” written by Major Edward M. Flanagan Jr. and published in 1948 in the United States. For the picture above, the original caption was “At Mount Macolod, in Southern Luzon (to be more specific, the town of Cuenca), the Japs employed their biggest artillery piece. This is a 300mm howitzer which before the 11^th Airborne Division artillery knocked it out, had a sliding, camouflaged roof over it. Note the shell cases in the right rear, just slightly smaller than the GI cans.”

For the picture below, the caption in the book was “Tank destroyers, 37mm guns and 155mm howitzers fired point blank at Jap caves and pillboxes on Mt. Macolod.”

American armor and soldiers in the Battle of Mt. Maculot, 1945.

Both pictures have been processed using graphics editing software to improve clarity and then colorized courtesy of Algorithmia.

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