As he was forced to withdraw from the Philippines in the dark days of spring 1942, Dougias MacArthur vowed 'I wiII retum'. Almost three years later he did, at the head of a massive US invasion force. Between October 1944 and August 1945, General Douglas MacArthur and his men recaptured the Phillipines from the Japanese, led by General Tomoyuki Yamashita, in the largest single US campaign in the Pacific War. Knowing that he could not hope to successfully fight this force on the beaches, the Japanese commander Tomoyuki Yamashita planned a final stand in the mountains to tie down as many US troops as possible. The campaign went very much as he intended with fierce fighting continuing until the end of the war.