By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part One of Two: Who should take the blame for the Death March?

Reflecting on “Araw ng Kagitingan”, I sadly looked at the clippings of what in our history has been labelled as “The Death March”, or how prisoners of war marched roughly 65 miles from Bagac and Mariveles, Bataan over the course of about six days until they reached San Fernando, Pampanga.

There, groups as large as 115 men were forced into boxcars designed to hold only 30-40 men, transported by rail to Capas town to another 9 mile walk to concentration camps in Camp O’Donnell.

I had many relatives who fought in Bataan. Some died there mainly because of Japanese bombing, and most who survived joined the march. Scores died on the way, and of the many who made it to Capas, a few more died inside the camp, but most managed to escape to become guerillas.

As to why General Douglas MacArthur agreed to position the main USAFFE force in Bataan and Corregidor bewilders me up to this day. He himself, having lived here, had advocated to position our forces at key vulnerable beaches, but at the ultimate moment, he backslided to Washington DC’s “Plan Orange” (WPO-3) which was to fortify Bataan and Corregidor against the foreign naval attack into Manila Bay to protect the City of Manila.

MacArthur rejected WPO-3 as defeatist, preferring a more aggressive course of action. He recommended—among other things—a coastal defense strategy that would include the entire archipelago.

Louis Morton of the US Army Center of Military History said in his book The Fall of the Philippines (1953), “His recommendations were followed in the plan that was eventually approved.”

So why did MacArthur changed his mind at the penultimate hour, refused to confront the enemy in battle and ended up concentrating more than 60% of his national strength in Bataan and Corregidor which is what WPO-3 all about?

On December 8, 1941, the Japanese Air Force attacked neutralizing the American bases at Clark, Subic and elsewhere to gain air superiority. And so, the inevitable happened. Knowing the heavy defense concentration at Bataan and Corregidor, the positions were peppered with constant heavy bombardments.

Homma lands in Lingayen Gulf

MacArthur was caught with his pants down. Yet official military accounts tried to cover him up, claiming “The Japanese landing at Lingayen did not surprise the high command in the Philippines. It was the logical place to land a large force whose destination was Manila.” Duh?

The accounts continued on to say the first report of the arrival of the invasion force came from the submarine Stingray which had been on patrol off Lingayen for several days. Sightings began on December 18 so why did US submarines not engage any of the 84 Japanese naval transports as close as forty miles north of Lingayen Gulf. All it indicated was before any action could be taken, the landings had begun.”

On the evening of December 21, seventy-six heavily loaded Army transports and nine Navy transports, all under strong naval escort, steamed into Lingayen Gulf unchallenged and dropped anchor.

In fairness, our allies provided outside help, albeit token, an American S-38 submarine pushed into shallow waters of the gulf and sank the Army transport Hayo Maru. Four B-17’s coming from Batchelor Field in Australia flew in to strafe the cruisers and destroyers and inflict some damage on the Japanese. Even the Japanese cover force, about 100 miles northwest of Lingayen Gulf, came under attack.

PBY patrol bombers and Army planes went for the flagship Ashigara, mistaking it for the Haruna but although they scored no hits, the planes reported the sinking of Haruna. So much for outside help.

As the rising sea forced many of the Japanese ships to shift anchorage into the inner bay, they ran into trouble coming into range of four 155-mm. guns of the 86th Field Artillery Battalion (PS), two at San Fabian and another two at Dagupan. Although claiming to have sunk three transports and two destroyers, the coastal guns actually did no damage.

Despite warnings, the Americans were ill-prepared to drive off the invaders. At this time the 120-milelong coast line of Lingayen Gulf was defended by two Philippine Army divisions, only one of which had divisional artillery.  

Only at Bauang were Filipino troops waiting at the beach. Here the Headquarters Battalion, 12th Infantry (PA), with one 50-caliber and several .30-caliber machine guns, faced the oncoming Kamijima Detachment causing heavy casualties among the Japanese. Despite the casualties, the Japanese pushed ahead and established a foothold on shore, whereupon the Filipinos withdrew.

All told, Masaharu Homma landed 43,110 troops at the Lingayen Gulf, from December 22 to 24. He negotiated virtually without any strong opposition the entire Highway Three from Pangasinan all the way to Manila which was earlier hurriedly declared an “Open City”, occupying it on January 2, 1942.

        From January 2 to April 9, 1942, Homma took on Bataan and Corregidor.

Broken picture

Some pieces are missing in this puzzle. I am sure the American commanders knew about the enemy landing in Lingayen. But first, past the defense perimeters at Lingayen, San Carlos, Urdaneta and Tayug in Pangasinan, why wasn’t there any deliberate opposition as Homma proceeded towards Manila taking that single Highway 3 southwards?

Second, it took Homma 12 days to take Manila and even after it was taken, why weren’t the troops dispersed and repositioned eastward to spread out in the Central Plains of Luzon? USAFFE outnumbered the Japs at least 2:1 and there was a lot of time to flex, considering the ensuing Japanese attack started only after Manila was taken and the Battle of Bataan took another three months.

As a result, most of the USAFFE forces which was originally estimated at over 100,000 were not merely trapped in that western position with their backs to the sea, but were isolated from the food basket on the east? Our troops ended up sitting ducks in Bataan and Corregidor.

Third, why were our forces surrendered when most of them, especially the Filipinos, were willing to die with their boots on? Again, I will repeat what I said earlier – The more appropriate move would have been to decommission the USAFFE into small loosely knit armed pockets of defense. This what eventually happened when most who escaped the march and incarceration, ended regrouping anyway as guerillas.

At any rate, the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) commander for Luzon, Major General Edward P. King, surrendered to Colonel Mootoo Nakayama of the 14th Army on April 9, 1942.

King went against his superior’s orders and told his troops to lay down their arms, accepting personal responsibility for the surrender. He made the following statement: “You men remember this. You did not surrender … you had no alternative but to obey my order.”

Fourth, of course the American commanders also did not anticipate that the Japanese would not be foolish to set up concentration camps away from the main north-south corridor (Highway 3) and far from the source of food supply in the east? Just by looking at the map, the location of O-Donnell was ideal as it fulfills those two imperatives, on top of already being an established army camp.

Fifth, American propaganda tagged the Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army. What a cop out! Didn’t the Americans anticipate that moving 75,000 out of Bataan and Corregidor would be a logistical nightmare because Japanese equipment would still be busy elsewhere securing the sustainability of other occupied strategic locations?

The inventory Homma landed at Lingayen, did not have many trucks as the Japanese also did not foresee the defense forces would concede defeat that easily. Most that arrived were artillery and tanks. In fact, they planned for a slow offense with an army intended to be marched with the officers provided with horses and bicycles.

General King was a coward. Who would not be, given that Douglas MacArthur was already seeping wine, dining and may be even womanizing in Australia? Did he expect his troops to be limousined all the way to Capas. Homma landed less than 45,000 troops. Did the Americans expect all of them to serve as caregivers to the USAFFE forces whom they first starved and left to diseases in defending Bataan?

Raymond G. Woolfe Jr. in his book The Doomed Horse Soldiers of Bataan: The Incredible Stand of the 26th Cavalry (2016) was more honest when he observed, “Homma and his staff encountered almost twice as many captives as his reports had estimated, creating an enormous logistical challenge: the transport and movement of over 60,000 starved, sick, and debilitated prisoners and over 38,000 equally weakened civilian noncombatants who had been caught up in the battle. He wanted to move prisoners and refugees to the north to get them out of the way of the final assault on Corregidor, but there was simply not enough mechanized transport for the wounded, sick, and weakened masses.”

The nightmare began. Prisoners started out from Mariveles on April 10 and from Bagac on April 11, converging in Pilar and heading north to the San Fernando railhead. The prisoners were put in groups of 100 men each, with four Japanese guards per group. That means 3,000 Japanese to guard 75,000 prisoners. Another account said 5,000. Still a nightmare.

And so how many finally made it to Capas?

Stanley L. Falk, in his book Bataan: The March of Death (1962) took the number of American and Filipino troops known to have been present in Bataan at the start of April, subtracted the number known to have escaped to Corregidor and the number known to have remained in the hospital at Bataan. Then he made a conservative estimate of the number killed in the final days of fighting and of the number who fled into the jungle rather than surrender to the Japanese.

On this basis he suggests that during the march 650 American and 5,000 to 10,000 Filipino died. Other sources, such as US-Japan Dialogue on POWs 2006 report Filipino death numbers as high as 18,000.

On May 6, 1942, Corregidor finally fell into the hands of the Japanese under the command of General Jonathan Wainwright.

According to a report by the Office of the Provost Marshall General dated November 19, 1945, the 7,000 American prisoners of war from Corregidor fared better than did those captured on Bataan. After being interned for a week in a small, crowded area on Corregidor, they were placed aboard transports and taken to Manila, where they were first paraded through the streets and then incarcerated in the Old Bilibid Prison. They stayed there only for a short time, to be transported to Cabanatuan by freight cars.

How come? One month after the Fall of Bataan, the Japanese had somewhat acclimated to the conditions of North Luzon. Their capture of Corregidor gave them full access to Manila Bay and the nearby seas. Having achieved the tallest order of the invasion, Homma had better flexibility now in managing logistics.

To this day, the Americans being the victors, have written history. From my viewpoint they have extracted maximum juice to fuel the emotional aspect of the Death March, once again capitalizing on the Filipinos’ penchant for victimology, to promote Filipino jingoism and the US own brand of exceptionalism.

But eight decades after, isn’t it about time we get to the bottom of so-called atrocities?

To be continued. 

Next: Overcoming the Fog of War to Revisit Causes of the Death March

   

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