Background
As the elements of the U.S. Sixth Army under Lieutenant General Walter Krueger moved into the city of Manila to retake it from the well dug-in Japanese forces, General Douglas MacArthur issued orders for the start of preplanned operations to recapture the entire southern Philippine archipelago from the Japanese, all code-named VICTOR, regardless by which the assigned forces were to proceed.
With Mindoro island already in Allied hands since 16 December 1944 and the campaign for the recapture of Luzon already in full swing, the Americans wanted to establish another base of operations that would diminish the threat of Japanese troop incursions from the larger islands down south and cut off reinforcements coming from Japanese-occupied Indochina in mainland Asia via the South China Sea and the southwestern Sulu Sea.
The U.S. Eighth Army of Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger was directed to invade and seize the provincial capital of Palawan, Puerto Princesa, after which they would proceed to the Zamboanga Peninsula in western Mindanao and parts of the Sulu Archipelago.
Read more about this topic: Invasion Of Palawan
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