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The Fall of Bataan (part 3)
Night April 29/April 30
The Philippine Army's 1st Infantry Division, down to 3,700 men, has been moving since early afternoon to get into position to attack the flanks of the Japanese eastern drive. Around 2200 hours (times are estimated from interviews post war), the 1st and 2nd Regiments of the 1st Infantry Division launch the last Filipino counterattack of the campaign into the I Corps area, where the Japanese 228th Infantry Regiment and elements of 2 Japanese engineer battalions are resting after overrunning the support units of that corps. The Filipinos achieve surprise and overwhelm several unprepared Japanese platoons before the Japanese swiftly rally and launch their own counterattack. A fierce fight lasts nearly an hour before the Filipino troops exhaust their ammunition and are forced to pull back. The Japanese pursue, and heavy fighting lasts until dawn when the Japanese pause to rest. The battered remnants of the 1st Philippine Army Division begin retreated through the eastern slopes of the Bataan Mountains using the jungle to hide them as they head south.
During the night the isolated and cutoff 11th, 12th and 23rd begin to fall apart into small groups. The daring or those led by daring officers or NCOs take small groups and head north, hoping to use the jungle to hide them in hopes of making it north out of Bataan and into the Zambales Mountains. Many of those groups run smack into the Japanese 33rd Infantry Regiment, which along with military police from all 3 Japanese divisions are patrolling the Bagac-Balanga Road. In sharp fights, some still manage to break through and make it north, a number estimated at nearly 1,000 men post war, while a similar number die there or are never heard from again.
A few hundred more take the initiative and head south for Mariveles, but most have reached the point of despair and exhaustion and remain where they are, cut off from supply and communication to higher authority.
At daybreak, Japanese patrols are probing positions held by the 47th and 57th Philippine Scouts on both coast roads and are waiting for additional reinforcements to come up.
Dawn April 30, 1942 The Surrender
General King realizes that further resistance is now hopeless and would lead to nothing more than murder. He has no communications with any division except the 1st Division, and has lost contact with most of I and II Corps. Reports from yesterday are of overwhelming Japanese power and collapsing units. He has formal permission to do what he can to save lives so at 0715 Hours, he sends a party of officers to the Japanese lines with white flags and by 0900 hours King himself is driven to the Japanese headquarters where he meets with General Seichi and formally surrenders.
The final shooting ends at noon.
Four months of bloody fighting on the Bataan Peninsula have come to an end.
Bataan Death March
That afternoon, word finally reaches the various isolated units which are ordered to assemble along both coast roads into temporary camps. No food or water is provided by the Japanese, but most of the men still have a little water and a few bites of food. As a condition of the surrender, the Japanese agree to transport the sick and wounded in Hospital Number One and Hospital Number Two aboard American trucks as long as they are handed over intact. This would be a major mercy for 10,000 Filipino and 1,000 American wounded, sick and medical personnel who are driven to Camp O'Donnell directly. It is the only mercy shown.
The final battle cost the Filipino-American troops approximately 11,000 dead or missing, another 1,000 managed to escape north through the mountains, and 11,000 are transported by truck. Another 1,000 mostly American officers and NCOs are separated from the Filipino units they are assigned, or are special people like Generals Weaver, Parker and King, and are also transported by truck to Manila. Some of these officers are Filipinos with particularly valuable ties to the Filipino elites of Luzon. Those men will soon be released, while the Americans are soon transported to internment camps in Manchuria as captives (as the Japanese generally refuse to honor the conventions honored by the West under the Geneva Convention). They face a brutal captivity but still fare better than the remaining Americans captured at Bataan as well as most of the Filipino troops that remain.
On May 1, roughly 2,500 American and 37,000 Filipino troops begin marching north to the Capas Train Station at San Fernando, a distance of 60-70 miles depending on where their assembly area was, without canteens or rations and with many of the men suffering from diarrhea or malarial fevers. The march is marked by brutal discipline that varied in intensity from group to group, frequent murders and physical abuse, and little mercy shown to the sick. They are then loaded into boxcars, with the doors sealed, in brutal heat, and taken by rail to Camp O'Donnell for initial imprisonment. The official Japanese count from Camp O'Donnell shows the at least 500 American and 15,000 Filipino troops do not make it to the camp. Other post war sources indicate that roughly 5,000 Filipinos and 20 Americans managed to escape during the march. The others were murdered along the way.
The news of the Bataan Death March will reach American intelligence officers through intelligence intercepts in early May, although they are not decoded until mid summer and the first eye witness reports from Americans evacuated with the help of Filipino guerillas reaches the US South Pacific Command in September 1942. The American public is not informed until January 1944 when pictures are released in Life Magazine, along with the awful story.
Nearly 15,000 Filipino troops are released by the Japanese, all Philippine Army personnel, within a few months. Nearly half, along with most of those who escaped either during the Fall of Bataan or during the Death March, join guerrilla forces within a year. For the rest, a miserable and all to often fatal captivity awaits which nearly 30% do not survive.
Perhaps the best epitaph for the men and women of Bataan is this:
Radio Broadcast – Voice of Freedom – Malinta Tunnel – Corregidor –
“ Bataan has fallen. The Philippine-American troops on this war-ravaged and bloodstained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody but unbowed, they have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the enemy.
The world will long remember the epic struggle that Filipino and American soldiers put up in the jungle fastness and along the rugged coast of Bataan. They have stood up uncomplaining under the constant and grueling fire of the enemy for more than three months. Besieged on land and blockaded by sea, cut off from all sources of help in the Philippines and in America, the intrepid fighters have done all that human endurance could bear.
For what sustained them through all these months of incessant battle was a force that was more than merely physical. It was the force of an unconquerable faith—something in the heart and soul that physical hardship and adversity could not destroy. It was the thought of native land and all that it holds most dear, the thought of freedom and dignity and pride in these most priceless of all our human prerogatives.
The adversary, in the pride of his power and triumph, will credit our troops with nothing less than the courage and fortitude that his own troops have shown in battle. Our men have fought a brave and bitterly contested struggle. All the world will testify to the most superhuman endurance with which they stood up until the last in the face of overwhelming odds.
But the decision had to come. Men fighting under the banner of unshakable faith are made of something more than flesh, but they are not made of impervious steel. The flesh must yield at last, endurance melts away, and the end of the battle must come.
Bataan has fallen, but the spirit that made it stand—a beacon to all the liberty-loving peoples of the world—cannot fall!
(authors note: actual message sent on April 9, 1942)
The Philippine Army's 1st Infantry Division, down to 3,700 men, has been moving since early afternoon to get into position to attack the flanks of the Japanese eastern drive. Around 2200 hours (times are estimated from interviews post war), the 1st and 2nd Regiments of the 1st Infantry Division launch the last Filipino counterattack of the campaign into the I Corps area, where the Japanese 228th Infantry Regiment and elements of 2 Japanese engineer battalions are resting after overrunning the support units of that corps. The Filipinos achieve surprise and overwhelm several unprepared Japanese platoons before the Japanese swiftly rally and launch their own counterattack. A fierce fight lasts nearly an hour before the Filipino troops exhaust their ammunition and are forced to pull back. The Japanese pursue, and heavy fighting lasts until dawn when the Japanese pause to rest. The battered remnants of the 1st Philippine Army Division begin retreated through the eastern slopes of the Bataan Mountains using the jungle to hide them as they head south.
During the night the isolated and cutoff 11th, 12th and 23rd begin to fall apart into small groups. The daring or those led by daring officers or NCOs take small groups and head north, hoping to use the jungle to hide them in hopes of making it north out of Bataan and into the Zambales Mountains. Many of those groups run smack into the Japanese 33rd Infantry Regiment, which along with military police from all 3 Japanese divisions are patrolling the Bagac-Balanga Road. In sharp fights, some still manage to break through and make it north, a number estimated at nearly 1,000 men post war, while a similar number die there or are never heard from again.
A few hundred more take the initiative and head south for Mariveles, but most have reached the point of despair and exhaustion and remain where they are, cut off from supply and communication to higher authority.
At daybreak, Japanese patrols are probing positions held by the 47th and 57th Philippine Scouts on both coast roads and are waiting for additional reinforcements to come up.
Dawn April 30, 1942 The Surrender
General King realizes that further resistance is now hopeless and would lead to nothing more than murder. He has no communications with any division except the 1st Division, and has lost contact with most of I and II Corps. Reports from yesterday are of overwhelming Japanese power and collapsing units. He has formal permission to do what he can to save lives so at 0715 Hours, he sends a party of officers to the Japanese lines with white flags and by 0900 hours King himself is driven to the Japanese headquarters where he meets with General Seichi and formally surrenders.
The final shooting ends at noon.
Four months of bloody fighting on the Bataan Peninsula have come to an end.
Bataan Death March
That afternoon, word finally reaches the various isolated units which are ordered to assemble along both coast roads into temporary camps. No food or water is provided by the Japanese, but most of the men still have a little water and a few bites of food. As a condition of the surrender, the Japanese agree to transport the sick and wounded in Hospital Number One and Hospital Number Two aboard American trucks as long as they are handed over intact. This would be a major mercy for 10,000 Filipino and 1,000 American wounded, sick and medical personnel who are driven to Camp O'Donnell directly. It is the only mercy shown.
The final battle cost the Filipino-American troops approximately 11,000 dead or missing, another 1,000 managed to escape north through the mountains, and 11,000 are transported by truck. Another 1,000 mostly American officers and NCOs are separated from the Filipino units they are assigned, or are special people like Generals Weaver, Parker and King, and are also transported by truck to Manila. Some of these officers are Filipinos with particularly valuable ties to the Filipino elites of Luzon. Those men will soon be released, while the Americans are soon transported to internment camps in Manchuria as captives (as the Japanese generally refuse to honor the conventions honored by the West under the Geneva Convention). They face a brutal captivity but still fare better than the remaining Americans captured at Bataan as well as most of the Filipino troops that remain.
On May 1, roughly 2,500 American and 37,000 Filipino troops begin marching north to the Capas Train Station at San Fernando, a distance of 60-70 miles depending on where their assembly area was, without canteens or rations and with many of the men suffering from diarrhea or malarial fevers. The march is marked by brutal discipline that varied in intensity from group to group, frequent murders and physical abuse, and little mercy shown to the sick. They are then loaded into boxcars, with the doors sealed, in brutal heat, and taken by rail to Camp O'Donnell for initial imprisonment. The official Japanese count from Camp O'Donnell shows the at least 500 American and 15,000 Filipino troops do not make it to the camp. Other post war sources indicate that roughly 5,000 Filipinos and 20 Americans managed to escape during the march. The others were murdered along the way.
The news of the Bataan Death March will reach American intelligence officers through intelligence intercepts in early May, although they are not decoded until mid summer and the first eye witness reports from Americans evacuated with the help of Filipino guerillas reaches the US South Pacific Command in September 1942. The American public is not informed until January 1944 when pictures are released in Life Magazine, along with the awful story.
Nearly 15,000 Filipino troops are released by the Japanese, all Philippine Army personnel, within a few months. Nearly half, along with most of those who escaped either during the Fall of Bataan or during the Death March, join guerrilla forces within a year. For the rest, a miserable and all to often fatal captivity awaits which nearly 30% do not survive.
Perhaps the best epitaph for the men and women of Bataan is this:
Radio Broadcast – Voice of Freedom – Malinta Tunnel – Corregidor –
“ Bataan has fallen. The Philippine-American troops on this war-ravaged and bloodstained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody but unbowed, they have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the enemy.
The world will long remember the epic struggle that Filipino and American soldiers put up in the jungle fastness and along the rugged coast of Bataan. They have stood up uncomplaining under the constant and grueling fire of the enemy for more than three months. Besieged on land and blockaded by sea, cut off from all sources of help in the Philippines and in America, the intrepid fighters have done all that human endurance could bear.
For what sustained them through all these months of incessant battle was a force that was more than merely physical. It was the force of an unconquerable faith—something in the heart and soul that physical hardship and adversity could not destroy. It was the thought of native land and all that it holds most dear, the thought of freedom and dignity and pride in these most priceless of all our human prerogatives.
The adversary, in the pride of his power and triumph, will credit our troops with nothing less than the courage and fortitude that his own troops have shown in battle. Our men have fought a brave and bitterly contested struggle. All the world will testify to the most superhuman endurance with which they stood up until the last in the face of overwhelming odds.
But the decision had to come. Men fighting under the banner of unshakable faith are made of something more than flesh, but they are not made of impervious steel. The flesh must yield at last, endurance melts away, and the end of the battle must come.
Bataan has fallen, but the spirit that made it stand—a beacon to all the liberty-loving peoples of the world—cannot fall!
(authors note: actual message sent on April 9, 1942)
- galveston bay
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