How long did the United States control the Philippines?

After winning the Spanish-American War and destroying the Spanish navy in Manila Bay, the United States received the Philippines in the Treaty of Paris in 1898. The controversial decision was made to annex the islands in that year. This led to a bloody insurrection that was defeated in four years, with hundreds of thousands of Filipino civilian deaths. After the so-called Filipino-American war, the United States governed the Philippines as a territory until 1935, when it gained commonwealth status, though not formal independence. In 1941 (simultaneously with their attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii) the Japanese army invaded and crushed the American garrison there. The Philippines were occupied by the Japanese for most of the war. American troops under Douglas MacArthur retook the islands in 1944, and the Philippines gained fully independent status one year after the war's end, in 1946. They remain an independent nation today.