Considering they gave up the Philippines at the end of WW2 why would they give up such a strategic area at the brink of the Cold War. The US just fought and won the Philippine-American war years prior so they were able to project strength on the territory over insurrections. Japan was still in ashes at the end of the war. Korea hasn't developed the strong economy it has now and events were developing in a way that gave us the Korean War. China isnt much of an ally to the US after the communist revolution there. The red scare was occuring and countries in Asia could have turnt to communism that the US seem to really dislike in that time. North Korea and Vietnam eventually turn to communism. So why would the US just give up a territory like that considering it might also fall to communism along with the value the country had for the US. The Philippines seems like the strongest asset the US had in Southeast Asia to project power over communist expansion. I've heard that racism had to do with America not wanting Filipinos to assimilate into the USA (so much for that with Filipino Nurses in the later part of the 20th century) if racism was a major role in the Philippines achieving independence why was Puerto Rico and Guam kept as US territories, why was Hawaii made into a state.
I gave an answer a couple months ago that indirectly touches on this topic via the introduction of an important concept in international studies post-WWII: neocolonialism. The post is here, and it essentially discusses how Taft's policies in the Philippines created a new indirect way of having a certain amount of control of places without direct military or political control. This formed the blueprint of foreign relations to this day.
I want to expand on this though. The US's granting of independence to the Philippines is tied to the grant of independence to Cuba. During this period the US was constructing this indirect way of controlling other nations, and it was a means to better stabilize US dominance abroad and at home. The Boston anti-imperialists made this clear in their addresses and demonstrations as early as 1901, with their protests against colonialism. The Bell Trade Act of 1946 was passed two days before Philippine indepedence and tied the Philippine economy to the US economy, privileging the the US's trade relationship with the new country. In 1947, the Military Bases Agreement provided the US with military facilities in the Philippines for a term of 99 years. In 1966 this was reduced to an expiration in 1991, but the neocolonial aspect of this was felt greatly during that time period, and still is to this day. There is much racial and societal baggage tied to those bases, and the research done on the systems of prostitution that were grown up around the bases, for example, shows that the availability of women to military men stationed in the Philippines was a matter of implicit foreign policy; an example of the colonial fetishization of Filipino bodies, something that is still extremely prevalent to this day. On the topic of racism, it did play a role in the granting of independence to the Philippines. As I have discussed on AskHistorians in the past, Filipinos were victims of segregation in the US, and during the 1920s and 1930s, race riots against Filipinos were common enough to influence international policy. In fact, many of the biggest American anti-imperialist voices of the time were white racists that did not want the US to try to assimilate the brown Filipinos into American culture and society.
In summary, American control did not need to come from political occupation. It was crafted into the "freeing" of the Philippines from the start. The economy would never function independently of the US (not to mention the disaster that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have been for developing countries, particularly PH), the US would have a presence there for the foreseeable future (and in fact the US military does still have training there nowadays), and the political system would be marred by a ruling class that owed its position to collaboration with the American colonialists. Of course, there is way more to write about this than a Reddit post can cover, but I am trying to sketch out major concepts for you. The Philippines achieved foreign independence but has never eliminated foreign domination. That is really the overarching point.
Sources:
"Selection 2.5: Free America, Free Cuba, Free Philippines, George S. Boutwell" in The Philippines Reader edited by Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Shalom
"Selection 2.7: Anti-Filipino Race Riots, Emory S. Bogardus" in The Philippines Reader edited by Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Shalom
"Chapter 4: Independence With Strings, Introduction" in The Philippines Reader edited by Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Shalom
"Selection 4.1: Summary, Bell Trade Act" in The Philippines Reader edited by Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Shalom
"Selection 4.4: Military Bases Agreement, March 14, 1947" in The Philippines Reader edited by Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Shalom
Let The Good Times Roll: Prostitution And The U.S. Military In Asia by Saundra Pollock Sturdevant and Brenda Stoltzfus
Philippines had a massive population of non-white people. America was a racially segregated society with racist attitudes back then. Filipinos were portrayed as apes, monkeys and baboons in the American media at the time and an island on non-white yellow savages wearing vines and loincloth. Many Americans did not want resources "wasted" on "civilizing" more "savages".
This was before the invention of the model minority stereotype about Asians and the average white American viewed Asians as the original gang banging lazy criminal savage. The idea to hold on the Philippines would mean they'd have a massive influence in American politics when they get senators and congress people, etc. Overnight America would add a massive non-white population who is living in 3rd world squalor which would demand resources to bring up to decent living standards. Further, knowing they had massively high birth rates, they'd not like to deal with those problems. Today Philippines has 104 million people, there are around 200 million white Americans. I believe Whites would lose their plurality if that was done back then. There was also no significant white Filipino population pushing for that.
Puerto Rico and Guam are still denied statehood, furthermore, they had tiny populations compared to the US mainland unlike Philippines. Hawaii was made into a state only after they killed off most of the Hawaiian natives and whites had formed the 2nd largest ethnic group behind Japanese immigrants. Further, Hawaiis population then was only like 400k people compared to Philippines which was between 20-30 milllion people. Of that 400k basically 25%-30% were whites by the time of statehood. And most of the people living in Hawaii then were recent immigrants from East Asia who could be sent back to Japan, China and Korea if they made any trouble. There was nowhere to send Filipinos to if they made trouble and Philippines was a state. Guam was tiny so a similar reasoning applies. It is was the Virgin Islands get to be part of America but Liberia did not. America tried to avoid keeping large colonies with large populations of non-whites. Same reason why Cuba with a 30% white population was allowed to be part of America for a while, but Mestizo Mexico wasn't and African population Haiti was not. Any act that would be perceived as adding millions of non-whites would have been avoided then.
USA also now had Japan who just kick the butts of all the other Asian countries, Russia and Britain. So Japan was their strongest ally and China allied with USA in WW2. No need for Filipino colony as Japan filled that roll.
Further colonialism fell out of favour after WW2 because Hitler and the Russians colonized white nations in Western and Eastern and Central Europe so the average European realized that colonialism was not the bag of jelly beans and glory and fun that their dictators had been telling them when they got the receiving end of. As such to colonize Philippines by that point would be viewed as morally distasteful. Post ww2, countries were being pressured by their locals to release colonies as it was viewed as morally objectionable to basically do to people in Asia and Africa what Hitler and Stalin and Lenin were doing in Europe. After all, hard to call yourself the leader of the free world, when you are preventing millions of Filipinos from having freedom.