America's introduction into World War II would begin with a horrific event that would stun the
world. The day after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941 the Japanese
with 129 400 soldiers and air support began their invasion of the Philippine Islands.
Within a month the Japanese had captured the capital of Manila
What happened at the Battle of Bataan?
How did over 100 000 American and Filipino soldiers and civilians become prisoners of war?
What was the Bataan Death March? What was the prisoners' experience? Were any of them rescued in
time? Hello i'm Colin Heaton former soldier, Marine Corps scout sniper, history professor, historian and
book author, and we'll answer these questions and other issues on this segment of Forgotten History.
On December 8th 1941 Major General Jonathan M. Wainwright commanded the North Luzon Force
comprising three reserve Filipino divisions and the 26th Cavalry Regiment also known as
the Filipino Scouts. The main force of Lieutenant General Masahiro Homma's 14th Army came ashore at
Lingayen Gulf on the morning of December 22nd. The Americans and Filipinos, outgunned, outnumbered
and without air support could not hold the beaches at ling Lingayen Gulf. By the end of the day the
Japanese had secured most of their objectives and were advancing onto the central plain.
Late on the afternoon of the 23rd Wainwright telephoned General MacArthur's headquarters
in Manila and informed him that any further defense of the Lingayen beaches was impractical.
He requested and was given permission to withdraw behind the Agno River.
Retreating from the Japanese, Allied forces had withdrawn onto the Bataan Peninsula
and Corregidor by January of 1942 where they defended the entrance to Manila Bay. This
forced the American and Filipino defenders of Luzon to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula for the next three
months. The combined U.S. Filipino army held out despite a lack of navel and air support.
In March Wainwright was promoted to Lieutenant General and informed
that reinforcements were coming, just hang on. That was a lie from General Douglas MacArthur
just to give the men some hope and hopefully have them continue resisting to buy more time.
Finally on April 9th out of ammunition and without resupply and with his forces crippled by
starvation and disease, U.S General Edward King Jr. surrendered with his approximately 75 000 troops.
Ironically MacArthur decided to abandon his own plan for robust defense and evacuated President
Emmanuel L. Quezon, High Commissioner Francis B. Sayre, their families and his own headquarters
to Corregidor. On the 24th Brigadier General Richard J. Marshall remained behind in Manila
as the chief of staff to close the headquarters and to supervise shipping of supplies and the
evacuation of the remaining troops. On December 26th manila was officially declared an open city
and MacArthur's proclamation was published in the newspapers and broadcast over the radio.
The Battle of Bataan proper lasted from January 7th 1942 until April 9th when Major General
Edward King Jr surrendered his force to Colonel Mootoo Nakayama
a regimental commander in the 14th Army. On April 9th 1942 U.S. and local forces surrendered
stunning the Japanese. Lieutenant General Masahuru Homma inherited twice as many captives as his
reports had estimated, creating an enormous logistical challenge. There was no way he could
transport over 78 000 prisoners of which 12 800 were American servicemen as well as the remaining
starved, sick and wounded prisoners and civilians which numbered 38 000 who became prisoners as well.
Colonel Nakayama wanted to move the prisoners and refugees to the north to get them out of
the way of Homma's final assault on Corregidor, but there was simply not enough mechanized transport.
As a result of these circumstances the collective Filipino-American prisoners were soon rounded up
by the Japanese. The men were divided into groups of approximately 100 men and the march typically
took each group around five days to complete. The prisoners started off from Mariveles on April 10th
and Bagac on April 11th converging in Pilar, Bataan and heading north to the San Fernando railhead.
Initially there were instances of kindness by Japanese officers and soldiers who spoke English
such as the sharing of food and cigarettes and allowing for personal possessions to be kept.
However the horrors they were to soon experience would not be unique to the prisoners of war
captured on Bataan. Japanese atrocities would become well known against other Allied soldiers
such as the British and Australians after the fall of places such as Hong Kong,
Singapore and the invasions of Burma and Borneo as well as New Guinea. Japanese mass murders against
Korean and Chinese civilians were already coming to light. Mass shootings, bayoneting and beheadings
were the order of the day. However despite the initial cordiality extended by the Japanese to the
Americans and Filipinos, this congenial attitude rapidly changed; their prisoners soon became
victims of unrelenting brutality, theft and even knocking men's teeth out for their gold fillings.
The Japanese had little respect for men who surrendered and did not fight to the death.
The first atrocities are attributed to Colonel Masanobu Tsuji when approximately 350 to 400
Filipino officers and NCO's were executed. This became known as the Pantingan River Massacre.
Tsuji in fact disobeyed General Homma's wishes that the prisoners be transferred peaceably.
Tsuji had actually issued orders to his officers to execute all of the prisoners in their custody.
although some Japanese officers ignored the orders and would not murder, others became active
in murdering POW's during the march. Prisoners received little food or water and many died
from disease and exhaustion. Those not immediately executed were subjected to severe physical abuse
including beatings and torture. On the march the sun treatment was a common form of torture.
Prisoners were forced to sit in the blazing sunlight without head coverings.
Anyone who asked for water or broke formation to drink from standing pools of water was shot dead
or beheaded. Trucks drove over some of those who fell behind or succumbed to fatigue.
Those prisoners too weak to continue were murdered, many were randomly stabbed, bayonets, beaten
or continuously beheaded. American Lieutenant Kermit Lay later recounted how this was done.
Quote: They pulled us off into a rice paddy and began shaking us down. There were about a
hundred of us so it took time to get to all of us. Everyone had their pockets wrong side out and laid
all their things out in front. They were taking jewelry and doing a lot of slapping. I laid out
my New Testament. After the shakedown the Japs took an officer and two enlisted in behind a rice shack
and shot them. The men who had been next to them said that they had Japanese souvenirs and money
on them." The exact figures of the murdered are unknown. Estimates are from 5 000 to 18
000 Filipino deaths and 500 to 650 American deaths. During the march to the railway once the surviving
prisoners arrived in Balanga the overcrowded conditions and poor hygiene caused dysentery and
other diseases to spread rapidly. The Japanese did not provide the prisoners with medical care so U.S.
medical personnel tended to the sick and wounded as best they could with few or no supplies. Upon
arrival at the San Fernando railhead prisoners were stuffed into brutally hot metal box cars
for the one hour trip to Capas, but the outside temperature was 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The box car
temperatures became ovens. At least 100 prisoners were pushed into each of the un-ventilated box cars
which had no sanitation facilities and the dead mounted. When the train arrived at Capas
train station the survivors were forced to walk the final nine miles to Camp O'Donnell.
Even after arriving at Camp O'Donnell the survivors of the march continued to die at rates
of up to several hundred per day which amounted to a death toll of as many as 20
000 prisoners. The total distance of the march from Mariveles to San Fernando and from Capas to
Camp O'Donnell is about 65 miles. It is believed that thousands more troops died because of the
brutality of their captors who starved and beat the marchers and bayoneted those too weak to walk.
Survivors were taken by rail from San Fernando to prisoner of war camps where thousands more died from
more disease, mistreatment and starvation. Most of the dead were buried in mass graves the Japanese
had dug behind the barbed wire surrounding the compound. But of the estimated 78 000 POW's at the
march only 54 000 made it to Camp O'Donnell. Three American officers managed to escape during the
march and eventually in January 1944 news of the march and the unmitigated savagery meted
out to the prisoners became public knowledge in America. It was not until January 27th 1944
that the U.S. government informed the American public about the march when it released sworn
statements of military officers who had escaped. Shortly thereafter the stories of these officers
were featured in a Life magazine article. The Bataan Death March and other Japanese actions
incited intense hatred for Japan. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George C. Marshall
made the following statement: "These brutal reprisals upon helpless victims evidence the
shallow advance from savagery which the Japanese people have made. We serve notice upon the Japanese
military and political leaders, as well as the Japanese people that the future of the Japanese
race itself depends entirely and irrevocably upon their capacity to progress beyond their aboriginal
barbaric instincts," end quote. Survivors of the Bataan Death March endured three
and a half years of death camps, brutal labor and unimaginable indignities and injury. More than half
the Americans taken prisoner on Bataan died before the war ended. This was greater than the overall
death rate for american POW's in Japan which was 40 percent. It was more deadly to be a POW
than it was to be a combat Marine in the Pacific. By comparison the death rate for Americans taken
prisoner by the Nazis was less than two percent. American forces invaded the island of Leyte in
October of 1944. General Douglas MacArthur who in 1942 had famously promised to return to the
Philippines made good on his word. In February 1945 U.S.-Filipino forces recaptured the Bataan Peninsula
and Manila was liberated in early march and prison camps were liberated. The few survivors were truly
walking dead, malnourished diseased and unable to walk on their own, but they were alive. Lieutenant
General Wainwright earned the respect of the men who were imprisoned with him. He always felt guilty
about surrendering but he knew that he had no choice if he was to save as many men as possible.
He had later received the Medal of Honor which had first been proposed during his captivity in
1942, but was rejected by MacArthur who was the top of his chain of command, who felt that Corregidor
should not have surrendered. This is an interesting position considering that MacArthur bailed out on
Wainwright and lied to him about sending support. He did witness the Japanese surrender aboard the
USS Missouri on September 2nd 1945, and he joined British Lieutenant General Arthur Percival
and returned to the Philippines to receive the surrender of the Japanese commander Lieutenant
General Tomoyuki Yamashita. It was during this period that on September 5th 1945 Wainwright was
given his fourth star. After the war the U.S. Army conducted interviews with the survivors including
Wainwright and drafted formal war crimes charges against specific Japanese officers. The American
military tribunal during the Tokyo War Crimes Trials tried Lieutenant General Homma Masahuru
commander of the Japanese invasion forces in the Philippines. He was held responsible for the death
march, a war crime and was executed by firing squad in 1946. Two of his officers Major General
Yoshitaka Kawane and Colonel Kurataro Hirano were also tried by the United States military
commissions for war crimes. They were sentenced to death on charges of failing to prevent their
subordinates from committing war crimes. Homma was executed by firing squad on April 13th 1946 while
Kawane and Hirano were sentenced to death by hanging and executed as Sugamo Prison in June
of 1949. In an interesting twist the Bataan Death March is also one of the few Japanese war
crimes which the Japanese government has made a specific effort to atone for. In 2009 the Japanese
ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki offered his country's apologies. Fujisaki said,
"We extend a heartfelt apology for our country having caused tremendous damage and suffering to
many people including prisoners of war." The word hero is often thrown around a lot. I would like to thank
these true heroes who endured so much, many until death who served their country. Never forget them.
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