by Toland, John
A little after midnight the last American plane took off from the dying island of Java with thirty-five passengers, and at dawn a flying boat lifted ponderously off a lake near Bandung for Ceylon. In it was Admiral Helfrich. He felt like a raw ensign.
Almost completely unopposed, Japanese land forces converged on Batavia and Bandung from two sides. The Dutch commander of the scattered and disorganized Allied forces knew that guerrilla warfare was impossible because the natives were too hostile to their Dutch masters. On March 8 he ordered everyone to lay down arms. The last message to the outside world came from a dispatcher at Bandung’s commercial station. “We are shutting down,” he said. “Good-bye till better times. Long live the Queen!”
Like Singapore, Java was gone. Despite the devastating defeat and bitter arguments and recriminations, the Americans, British, Dutch and Australians had achieved momentary unity in a gallant but hopeless battle at sea. Now there was only one remaining pocket of resistance inside the Japanese Empire—Bataan and Corregidor.
* MacArthur’s staff was fiercely loyal and even more outspoken in their criticism of those back home. Like their chief, they believed that the man primarily responsible for their abandonment was George Marshall, who had presumably never forgiven MacArthur for not promoting him to general when MacArthur was Chief of Staff. Those close to Marshall insist he was too objective to let personal differences ever sway his military judgment. He knew and loved the Philippines (as a young lieutenant he had put up NO TRESPASSING signs on the three little islands near Corregidor), but he had long been convinced that a massive U. S. commitment in the Pacific would be playing into Hitler’s hands.
† It seems evident that Roosevelt wanted to do everything possible for MacArthur. On December 30, 1941, he wrote this memorandum to Secretary of the Navy Knox: “I wish that War Plans would explore every possible means of relieving the Philippines. I realize great risks are involved but the objective is important.”
‡ At first tires blown out by the intense heat slowed the advance, but the Japanese soon learned to ride down the paved highways on the rims. The resulting clatter sounded like tanks and at night the defenders, particularly the Indians who were terrified of any kind of armor, would shout “Tanks!” and break for the rear.
§ After the war Yamashita said, “I felt that if we had to fight in the city we would be beaten.” He described his strategy at Singapore as “a bluff, a bluff that worked.”
ǁ Commander Shukichi Toshikawa of the 5th Destroyer Florilla was sent to apologize to Imamura for torpedoing the four transports and dumping the general into the bay. But Imamura’s chief of staff advised Toshikawa to keep quiet; Imamura imagined a Houston torpedo had sunk him. “Let her have the credit,” the chief of staff told Toshikawa. To this day official records on both sides have been crediting Houston with the hit.
11
“To Show Them Mercy Is to Prolong the War”
1.
Bataan was quiet. The defenders set out patrols, and tried to strengthen the line across the peninsula. Food had become an obsession. Front-line troops got a third of a ration a day. The efforts to bring supplies to Corregidor and Bataan through the Japanese sea blockade had failed. There was so little fodder for the remaining cavalry horses and mules that General Wainwright, with tears in his eyes, ordered them all, including his own prize jumper, Joseph Conrad, to be destroyed.
By mid-February the sickness rate rose alarmingly. Bataan was one of the most malaria-infested areas in the world and the supply of quinine was almost gone. Weakened by hunger and dysentery, over five hundred men were hospitalized for malaria in the first week of March and doctors feared an epidemic. There was still talk of the “mile-long” convoy filled with supplies and reinforcements, but Filipinos as well as Americans repeated with relish the verse just written by correspondent Frank Hewlett, a frequent front-line visitor:
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 or artillery pieces,
And nobody gives a damn.
On March 10 Wainwright was summoned to Corregidor, where Sutherland informed him that MacArthur was leaving the next evening by torpedo boat for Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippines. A Flying Fortress would take him from there to Australia. Sutherland told Wainwright he would command all troops of Luzon as head of the newly established Luzon force. “If it’s agreeable to you, General Jones will get another star and take over your I Corps.”
MacArthur came out of a small gray house at the eastern end of Malinta Tunnel and said to Wainwright, “I want you to make it known throughout all elements of your command that I’m leaving over my repeated protests.” He had considered disobeying direct orders from Washington so he could lead his troops to the end, but his advisers had persuaded him that he could do more in Australia for his beleaguered troops.
“Of course, I will, Douglas,” said Wainwright.
“If I get to Australia, you know I’ll come back as soon as I can with as much as I can.”
“You’ll get through.”
“And back.” MacArthur gave Wainwright a box of cigars and two large jars of shaving cream. “Good-bye, Jonathan.” They shook hands. “If you’re still on Bataan when I get back, I’ll make you a lieutenant general.”
The next evening, March 11, at about eight o’clock, PT-41, commanded by a colorful bearded lieutenant, John Bulkeley, pulled away from “The Rock” with General MacArthur, his wife, his four-year-old son, Arthur, General Sutherland and several other officers. MacArthur removed his familiar field marshal’s cap, raising it in farewell to the small group on the pier.
For thirty-five hectic hours Bulkeley navigated PT-41 through the enemy-controlled waters, and a little after dawn on March 13, made a landfall on the north coast of Mindanao near the Del Monte pineapple factory. MacArthur’s face was pale, his eyes dark-circled as he stepped off the boat. He told Bulkeley he was recommending him and his crew for the Silver Star. “You’ve taken me out of the jaws of death and I won’t forget it.”
Waiting for MacArthur on an airstrip hacked out of long lines of pineapples was a worn-out B-17 flown from Australia. The general was infuriated that a single dilapidated plane had been sent and refused to let anyone get aboard. It wasn’t until the evening of March 16 that three new Flying Fortresses touched down. MacArthur and his party took off soon after ten o’clock with each passenger, regardless of rank, allowed thirty-five pounds for luggage.*
The next morning MacArthur landed at Batchelor Field, thirty-five miles south of Darwin. “It was close,” he told those anxiously awaiting him on the runway. “But that’s the way it is in war. You win or lose, live or die—and the difference is just an eyelash.”
Then came another eyelash escape. Two fighters appeared out of the blue just as MacArthur’s plane took off. The MacArthur luck held and three hours later he landed softly at Alice Springs in the middle of Australia. Reporters clustered around for a statement and he scribbled a few lines on the back of a used envelope:
The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines.
I came through and I shall return.
Tojo’s chagrin at the stalemate in Bataan was aggravated by MacArthur’s daring escape. He was no longer certain of Homma’s ability to achieve quick success without help. The Prime Minister was reluctant to speak directly to Army Chief of Staff Sugiyama; instead he delegated his secretary, Colonel Susumu Nishiura, to convey his concern about Bataan.
Nishiura took the problem to the Chief of Operations, Colonel Takushiro Hattori, a long-time friend—as boys they had attended the same military school. Study convinced Hattori that what appeared to be the strongest feature in the Bataan defense system was
the weakest. This was Mount Samat, a rugged hill rising 1,920 feet just behind the center of the American front lines. Once in Japanese hands, Wainwright’s entire line would fold. First should come a concentrated air and artillery bombardment on a two-and-a-half-mile sector in front of Mount Samat, followed by a full-scale infantry drive through the hole.
Hattori had no trouble in persuading General Sugiyama to approve the plan. Now, he thought, it would have to be presented to 14th Army so subtly that they would think it was their own idea and wouldn’t lose face. He need not have worried. One glance at the proposal satisfied Homma that this was the solution of the problem that had been harassing him.
Wainwright was established in new headquarters on Corregidor. The War Department had promoted him to lieutenant general and made him commander in chief of all forces in the Philippines. MacArthur had not been consulted, perhaps because Washington knew he would never approve; he wanted to control the islands from Australia. Privately MacArthur did not feel Wainwright was qualified to assume overall command, and he reacted sharply when the new commander cabled Washington that his troops would be “starved into submission,” unless he got food by April 15. MacArthur curtly radioed Marshall:
IT IS OF COURSE POSSIBLE THAT WITH MY DEPARTURE THE VIGOR OF APPLICATION OF CONSERVATION MAY HAVE BEEN RELAXED.
The Filipinos on Bataan still regarded MacArthur as the greatest man alive, and his pledge to return was a personal guarantee that their country would be freed. But an increasing number of Americans on Bataan felt he had abandoned them and passed around a parody of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Dugout Doug’s not timid, he’s just cautious, not afraid,
He’s protecting carefully the stars that Franklin made.
Four-star generals are rare as good food on Bataan.
And his troops go starving on.
April 2 was the eve of Good Friday. More significant, it was also the eve of the birthday of Japan’s first emperor, the legendary Jinmu. By nightfall 50,000 Japanese, including 15,000 fresh troops from the homeland, were massed for the all-out attack. Behind them 150 guns, howitzers and mortars—many sent from Hong Kong—were ready to lay down the heaviest barrage of the campaign.
“Our four groups have been brought into line, and on a front of twenty-five kilometers ten flags are lined up,” Homma wrote in his operational diary that evening. “Artillery is plentiful.… There is no reason why this attack should not succeed.” It should take, he estimated, about a month.
Across the line waited 78,000 starving Americans and Filipinos, but only 27,000 were listed as “combat effective” and three fourths of these were weak from malaria. Dawn was clear. At ten o’clock the firing started. The Filipinos had never experienced anything so devastating. Shells seemed to explode on top of each other. It reminded American veterans of the heaviest German barrages in World War I.
Bombers of the 22nd Air Brigade approached unmolested in perfect formation and dropped tons of explosives on the two and a half miles in front of Mount Samat. Bamboo groves burst into flame. The phenomenon was treated lightly at first; men lit cigarettes on the burning trees. Then brush, dry as tinder, ignited and the heat became intolerable. Americans and Filipinos alike leaped from their foxholes and scrambled back to the second line of defense. Here foliage had been blasted away, leaving the ground almost barren, and the defenders thought they were safe. But a wind sprang up and flames leaped over the cleared area to the lush jungle growth beyond. The men were trapped in a circle of fire; hundreds were cremated. Those who escaped fled to the rear like frenzied animals, spreading panic.
Masked by smoke and flame, the Japanese infantry and tank attack began rolling south almost unimpeded at three o’clock in the afternoon. Within an hour they had ripped open a three-mile gap. General George Parker, commander of II Philippine Corps which defended the eastern half of Bataan, didn’t learn this until dusk. He ordered his reserve, six hundred men, to plug up the hole. It was too late. By the end of the next day General Akira Nara swept west of Mount Samat while fresh troops from Shanghai circled around the other side of the craggy hill.
April 5 dawned hot. It was Easter Sunday. While many Americans and Filipinos, entrenched on by-passed Mount Samat, worshiped at sunrise services, shells began screeching overhead. Once the barrage lifted, Japanese troops started up the little mountain, and after lunch planted the Rising Sun on its summit. At Hattori had predicted, its seizure threatened the collapse of the entire defense system across Bataan. In desperation Parker ordered a counterattack, which failed, and by the following noon the entire left half of his corps had disintegrated. There was nothing to keep Nara from sweeping all the way to the end of the peninsula.
The lines still held on the right. East of Mount Samat, Brigadier General Clifford Bluemel, a peppery man who had terrorized his junior officers before Pearl Harbor, tried to counterattack with the 31st Division, but the collapse on his left forced him to pull back. Without orders he began forming a new defense line along the little San Vicente River. He confronted the demoralized stragglers with his Garand rifle. By threat and insult he herded them into new positions.
From the heights of Mount Samat, Colonel Hattori watched the plan he had conceived in Tokyo develop beyond his hopes. Close by, to the west, he could see Nara’s troops stream relentlessly past scattered American units. To the east the assault by the Shanghai troops was beginning on Bluemel’s hastily improvised line. By nightfall this alone stood between Homma and a complete rout—and it could not hold for long. On his inspection tour at daylight Bluemel confronted a truck column rumbling toward the rear. “The San Vicente line has broken!” shouted a GI from the first vehicle.
This time even Bluemel could not stop the stampede. It was appalling to see American soldiers running again and again from a fight. A mass of Filipinos surged toward him. Brandishing his rifle, he ordered them to form a line on either side of the trail. A shell burst along the road, then another and another. The men pushed past him, scattering in terror to the south. The irate general tried to grab and hold on to several, but they wrenched themselves loose.
2.
Major General Edward P. King, Jr., who had taken over command of the Luzon Force after Wainwright’s promotion, was a modest man, courteous to all ranks, an intellectual with the air of a professor. An artilleryman of wide experience, he was an extremely able soldier, reasonable and realistic, who gave out orders in a quiet, undramatic way. On April 7, a few hours after Bluemel’s line broke, he received a phone call from Corregidor. Wainwright said that since the troops on the western half of the peninsula were intact, why shouldn’t they turn right and attack toward Manila Bay, cutting Homma’s line in two?
It was true that the entire left half of the line was still in position, but King was sure they were in no physical condition to attack. Nevertheless, he reluctantly agreed to give it a try. The recently promoted Major General Albert M. Jones, commander of I Philippine Corps, was not so easily persuaded. The outspoken General Jones thought any attack was senseless and told Wainwright so directly in a three-way telephone conversation with King. With some exasperation Wainwright said he would leave the decision to King and hung up. King ordered Jones to pull back his men in four phases, then sent his chief of staff, Brigadier General Arnold J. Funk, to Corregidor to impress upon Wainwright the fact that surrender might come at any minute.
The gaunt Wainwright knew what the men on Bataan were going through but he was under constant pressure from MacArthur, down in Australia, to hold out. Recently MacArthur had radioed that he was “utterly opposed under any circumstances or conditions to the ultimate capitulation of this command,” and that Wainwright should “prepare and execute an attack upon the enemy” once food supplies were exhausted.
Wainwright could not accept Funk’s talk of capitulation. “General,” he said in his slow drawl, “you will go back and tell General King he will not surrender. Tell him he will attack. Those are my orders.”
“General,
you know, of course, what the situation is over there.” Funk’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You know what the outcome will be.”
“I do.”
The next afternoon Colonel Takeo Imai planted a large flag on top of Mount Limay, one of the peaks of the southern volcano. He could see Japanese steadily pouring down the eastern half of Bataan. After dark he returned to the summit. Flashes of light came from the southern tip of Bataan where the enemy was blowing up equipment and munitions. Beyond he could make out the dark polliwog outline of Corregidor. Every so often angry spits of fire erupted from its heights; giant cannon were trying to stop the advance by interdicting the eastern road.
Fleeing before the Japanese columns, Americans and Filipinos poured out of the jungles into the toe of the peninsula. They came by trail, across rugged mountains, by the coast road. There was no order anywhere. Terror alone kept the exhausted men moving.
At the end of Bataan in the town of Mariveles a few boats were evacuating the last refugees to Corregidor while the remaining vessels were towed out into the bay and sunk. Mobs of disorganized soldiers bitterly watched the privileged few pull away from the docks: they were going to join those draft dodgers on Corregidor where life was soft—with plenty of drinking water, canned food and romantic nurses; they would sit safely in Malinta Tunnel until the mile-long convoy arrived to relieve them; they would be the heroes while those left to rot on Bataan would be disgraced for throwing in the towel.
Suddenly the ground began to shake violently. It was an earthquake, but some of the dazed men thought it was the end of the world.
At his office in Malinta Tunnel the distraught Wainwright phoned King at eleven-thirty in the evening on April 8 and told him to launch an attack northward with Jones’s I Corps. King passed on the order to Jones, who characteristically replied, “Any attack is ridiculous, out of the question.”