Bataan, P.I., 1942

When the U.S. Government told its military, “Sorry, we can’t help you.”

It was Sunday morning when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Less known was that they simultaneously attacked the other major U.S. territory in the Western Pacific, The Philippine Islands.

Douglas MacArthur was the Commanding General in Manila, with about 70,000 troops on hand. He had zero air power. When the Japs attacked, he realized that his presence in Manila would only lead to the total destruction of that city by Japanese bombers. He declared Manila an Open City and moved the American forces to the Bataan peninsula. His command post was moved to Corregidor, a rocky mountain of an island off the peninsula. Corregidor was laced with natural caverns, an impenetrable fortress.

In Washington, in 1942, the American government realized that Britain was about to fall to Germany and decided that saving Europe was more important. Our forces in the Pacific had to be written off. Truth be known, they probably could not have helped if they had wanted to.

On Corregidor General MacArthur had radioed Washington that they were running out of ammunition, and food, and were too weak to hold out much longer, but that he was staying with his troops. Washington convinced him that the best he could do for those troops was to escape and lead the struggle to return. General MacArthur turned the command over to General Jonathon Wainwright, promised the Americans and Filipinos that he would return and slipped aboard a submarine sent to pick him up.

We do not know how long it took MacArthur’s sub to reach Australia. We do know that the return trip took three and one half years. The U.S. military was pitifully small and ill equipped when the Japanese attacked. Japanese forces probably could have invaded and captured Hawaii at that time, and that may have been their goal. To everyone’s surprise, however, the U.S, forces on Bataan fought the Jap conquest to a standstill for four long months. Finally, on April 9, 1942, the Americans surrendered.

The Japanese were overwhelmed by the size of the force they had captured. How do you suddenly feed 70,000 troops? They decided to move the prisoners some 65 miles north to Camp O’Donnell, near Clark Air Field. That move became known as the Bataan Death March.

The March began in April of 1942. I, and most Americans, learned of the atrocities in 1944. In my case, it was when the Chicago Tribune published an interview with Lt. Col. W. E. Dyess, a Bataan survivor, who had escaped from a Japanese prison camp.

Col. Dyess told of seeing an American Army Captain beheaded for having a few Japanese yen in his pocket; of an American Colonel who was flogged until his face was unrecognizable; of laughing and yelling Jap soldiers leaning from the back of speeding trucks to smash their rifle butts against the heads of straggling prisoners; of Jap soldiers rolling unconscious American and Filipino prisoners into the path of Jap army trucks which ran over them. Col. Dyess estimated that six thousand Americans and seventeen thousand Filipino prisoners were murdered on that march. Those figures were later scaled downward, but Col. Dyess may have had the correct numbers.

Four years later I stood on the deck of the U.S. Army transport Gen. O.H. Ernst, anchored between the Bataan peninsula and the island of Corregidor, waiting for a harbor pilot to guide the ship into Manila harbor which was littered with sunken American and Japanese ships and aircraft. Someone pointed to an endless line of dorsal fins in the water below as sharks circled our ship. We sadly realized that on Corregidor, our men and women would have starved. In the water, they would have fed sharks. On the peninsula, they would be murdered by Japs.

Our soldiers on Bataan had largely consisted of peace time troops, ill-trained for combat. Many were National Guard soldiers, who had joined the service to provide a little extra income during the depression. They were armed with World War One weapons. They were sent to the South Pacific when the Japanese War Lords first began saber rattling in 1940 and 1941. They called themselves The Battling Bastards of Bataan and sang, “We’re the Battling Bastards of Bataan, no mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam.... and nobody gives a damn.” Seemingly, no one did.

MacArthur’s return to Bataan had to wait for American manufacturers to build more ships and aircraft and to recruit and train a combat military force. The Japs had penetrated all of the South Pacific and fiercely resisted the Americans in the tropic jungles of New Guinea, and on so many islands, unheard of by Americans until they became the site of staggeringly bloody battles.

Some American military men described the Jap soldiers as first class soldiers in a fourth class army. In the Philippines, I heard first person stories of Jap soldiers with feet rotting inside their boots from gangrene who loaded up with morphine and kept fighting. When they surrendered, often as not they did so with a live grenade in their pockets, which they detonated when surrounded by Americans. No, the Islamists did not invent the suicide bomber. Americans quickly learned, and when they captured Japs they held them at bay with flame throwers and made them strip naked, before taking them into custody.

General MacArthur’s forces first returned to Philippine soil in October, 1944, near the town of Palo on the island of Leyte. The various landing areas were named and marked on maps. Early landing troops erected huge signs; triangular, tent like devices, identifying the segments of beach for the pilots of landing craft to follow. This spot was designated White Beach. My late brother-in-law, Hugh Baker, was with the first forces that landed on Leyte. Almost his entire unit was killed, Hugh being one of only a few that survived unharmed.

It was a beautiful beach. Inland a few hundred yards was a veritable forest of palm trees. Two years later, I wandered that area, as my friends and I searched for a spot on a tree trunk where we could place our hand without covering at least one bullet hole. Such was the fury that once existed on White Beach.

The Philippines consist of 7000 islands. Once Leyte was secured and U.S. forces had a safe place to land incoming war materiel, forces began battling north, toward the island of Luzon, the City of Manila and the Bataan peninsula. They defeated the last Jap forces there on February 16, 1945, four months after landing at White Beach. I especially remember remnants of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division grousing that they had fought through miles of jungle on foot, but, nearing Manila, the mobile 1st Cavalry passed them and rolled into Manila. Headlines around the world proclaimed that the American 1st Cavalry Division had liberated the Philippine capitol.

The pictures below were taken at a Las Cruces, NM Memorial to those who endured the Bataan Death March.

The footprints on this walkway were made by actual survivors of the Death March. Each step reflects an incredible story of bravery under unimaginable duress.

Rudy Tellez was one of those honorable men, pictured here in 2003.

Click images to enlarge.