Bataan Death March

When I was in Korea in the mid 1980s I had the opportunity to visit Inchon. The town is beautiful other than the giant statue of General Douglas MacArthur overlooking the harbor.  There was something about that statue that rubbed me wrong.

I looked up the giant phallic representation of the ‘great’ general and thought he looked like a tool.  As I learned more about World War II specifically about how he abandoned over 70,000 Americans in the Philippines in early 1942 I agreed with what President Truman said about MacArthur after the general was relieved of his command.

I didn’t fire because he was a dumb son-of-a-bitch, although he was.

The United States had maintained a military presence in the Philippines since the 1890s following the Spanish-American War.  The nation had been an important naval holding to support US commercial vessels transporting the haul of Made-in-America products being shipped to Asia (Yeah I know it sounds funny, but once upon a time the United States actually produced things).At the start of WWII the US military had a combined US/Filipino force of 75,000 men stationed in the Phillipines.. 

After successfully executing the attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese military turned its attention to other American holdings in the Pacific.  When it looked like the Japanese were going to attack the Philippines MacArthur left his soldiers and made the quote he is famously known for:  I’ll be back!

The Japanese quickly stormed through the Philippines and the US forces retreated to the easily defended Bataan Peninsula to hunker down and wait for MacArthur to send support.  As the early months of 1942 slipped by the Calvary never showed up.  The US troops on Bataan were not resupplied although it would have been difficult to get supplies through the Japanese blockade. There is little evidence that MacArthur even tried to get the US forces off the Philippines. 

As January slipped into February the soldiers went down to half rations and as March approached they went down to ¼ rations.   Unknown to the Japanese commanders when they staged their assault in early April 1942, the US forces had not eaten in several days.   There was also about ten times as many Americans as the Japanese were prepared to handle. The fight was fast and furious, and the Japanese military quickly captured the US force on Bataan. 

This was the largest number of Americans to ever surrender following a single campaign. But then the problem for the Japanese began what to do with this many captives?  The plan was to march the POWs to put them on a train and then to ship them to a camp in Japan.  The march to the train was longer than anticipated and about 10,000 Americans died on the forced march of 55 miles following the surrender. 

The Americans were much weaker than the Japanese expected and those that could not keep up were bayoneted in the sweltering Filipino sun. While over 50,000 soldiers made it to the POW camps, the conditions they were held in were even more despicable.  Only a couple thousand of the Bataan soldiers survived to the end of the war.

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