After launching their campaign to recapture the Philippines at Leyte in October 1944, the Allies followed up that victory by dispatching troops to Luzon in January 1945.

A month later, General Douglas MacArthur, overall commander of Allied forces in the Pacific, began planning to take the rest of the Philippines.

[5] General Robert L. Eichelberger's Eighth Army was then tasked with conducting a series of amphibious landings in the southern Philippines on islands between Mindanao and Luzon, including Cebu.

[6] Prior to the war, Cebu had been the Philippines second-most important industrial center, and it offered the Allies a harbor for future operations.

[9] Staging out of Leyte, where they had conducted rehearsal landings two days earlier, a large flotilla of cruisers and destroyers from the Seventh Fleet Task Force 74 escorted the Cebu Attack Group to the island.

The 182nd came ashore southwest of the city, while the 132nd landed at a wide gravel beach to the northeast opposite a palm grove.

[10] Meeting no Japanese opposition, the U.S. forces nevertheless suffered heavily from mines and booby traps as they crossed the beach.

[12] The Americal Division slowly forced its way off the beach and moved inland against only small pockets of Japanese resistance that were carrying out delaying actions.

[3] On March 28, more significant fighting broke out as the Americans captured the airfield, as well as Mactan Island in Cebu Harbor.

[14] Around 8,500 local Cebuano guerrilla and irregular forces, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James M. Cushing took part .

Spearheaded by US troops from 'G' Company, 182nd Infantry Regiment and some local soldiers from the Philippine Commonwealth military and Cebuano guerrillas, the battle lasted for two days, clearing the IJA from Minglanilla.

By the time the battle was at its height on April 10, Suzuki fled south in an effort to avoid capture and rejoin the main part of his command on Mindanao, in the southern Philippines.