The Fall of Bataan

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.

General George Marshall, Statement on Japanese atrocities, particularly the Bataan Death March (1944)

 

Eighty years ago American and Filipino troops, on starvation rations and wracked with malaria, had finished a heroic stand for months against the Japanese Imperial Army.

Believing themselves deserted by the US, the troops sang this bit of bitter doggerel:

We’re the battling bastards of Bataan,

No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam.

No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,

No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces.

And nobody gives a damn.

General Douglas MacArthur, in command of all American and Filipino troops in the Philippines, continually pleaded with Washington for a relief force to Bataan.  Shamefully, some of the messages from Washington indicated that a relief force was being put together.   These were lies.   After Pearl Harbor the US simply lacked the naval assets to successfully reinforce Bataan.  Any attempt to do so would almost certainly have led to a military disaster for America.

On Corregidor, MacArthur exposed himself to frequent enemy bombing to the point of recklessness.  He visited his troops on Bataan only once, however, who gave him the lasting nickname of Dugout Doug.  Why?

The reason was not lack of physical courage but rather his inability to lie to his troops to their face.  Washington kept telling MacArthur that a relief force was on the way.  MacArthur relayed this news to his troops, but I doubt if he believed it in his heart.  A master strategist, MacArthur knew that neither the forces nor the logistics were there for a successful rescue of Bataan, and he could not bring himself to face his doomed men and lie about this to their faces.

When directly ordered by FDR to leave the Philippines, he came close to disobeying, something almost impossible to even contemplate for a career American officer, saying he would resign and join the troops on Bataan to fight as a volunteer.  He was convinced to obey only with great difficulty.  He refused to go out by submarine, taking a dangerous trip by a PT boat instead on March 11, 1942, to demonstrate that the Japanese blockade could be penetrated.  For the rest of the War his goal was to liberate the Philippines and to rescue the men who had fought under him on Bataan.

The men on Bataan fought on for another month after MacArthur left, until they could fight no more, lacking food, ammunition and medical supplies.  Twenty thousand of them paid with their lives for their gallant stand.  After their surrender they found that their ordeal had only begun. Awaiting them was the Bataan Death March, a 60 mile trek straight out of Dante’s inferno, organized by the Japanese Imperial Army after the fall of Bataan.  Given virtually no food and no water, subject to random beatings and casual murder by their guards, out of a force of 75,000 troops, some 5000-10000 Filipinos died and some 600-650 Americans.  Walt Straka, the last American survivor of the Death March passed away, fittingly enough, on July 4, 2021 at age 101.