2. Takesada Shigeta, interviews and correspondence, 2000–2001.
3. Hirohisa Murata, interview, 2000.
4. Handbook on Japanese Military Forces, 65; Hirohisa Murata, interview.
5. Details about the experience of the Provisional Air Corps unit in Sector B March 29 through April 7, 1942, are drawn from interviews with Ben Steele and Q. P. Devore, and from Coleman, Bataan and Beyond, 41–57.
6. Brougher, “Battle of Bataan,” 4–5.
7. Material on the second offensive is drawn from Chunn, Of Rice and Men; Babcock, “Philippine Campaign,” parts I and II; Mallonée, Naked Flagpole; Morton, Fall of the Philippines; Tisdelle, “Story of Bataan Collapse”; and Whitman, Bataan. The figure of fourteen rounds per minute comes from Toland, interview with Jesse Traywick.
8. Profiles of the American Generals on Bataan; Whitman, Bataan, 30–31, 169–71.
9. Holt, “King of Bataan,” 3.
10. Snow, Signposts of Experience, 36.
11. Jones, interview with Brigadier General Jones.
12. Morton, Fall of the Philippines, 405.
13. Chunn, Of Rice and Men, 1–3.
14. Mallonée, Naked Flagpole, 120.
15. Morton, Fall of the Philippines, 384, 431–32; Whitman, Bataan, 491–92.
16. Dooley, “Personal Record,” 133.
17. Whitman, Bataan, 512–13.
18. Mallonée, Naked Flagpole, 128.
19. The account of the action in Sector B and the events involving the Provisional Air Corps Regiment from April 7 through April 9 are drawn from Coleman, Bataan and Beyond, 41–57; Whitman, Bataan, 528–31; and interviews with Q. P. Devore and Ben Steele.
20. Wainwright, General Wainright’s Story, 79, 82.
21. Judge Advocate General, Basic Field Manual, 67.
22. Toland, interview with James R. N. Weaver.
23. Collier, Notebooks, book 4, 2.
24. The scene, including King’s speech, ibid., 2–6.
25. King, “General King’s Own Story,” 6.
26. Ryotaro Nishimura, interview, 2000.
27. There are many versions of the meeting at the agricultural station in Lamao, all based on the observations of King’s aide, Major Achille C. Tisdelle. Major Tisdelle’s handwritten diary offers none of the detail found in Louis Morton’s two versions of the event, one in his official U.S. Army history, Fall of the Philippines, and the other, “Bataan Diary of Major Achille C. Tisdelle.” Morton cites the “diary” as his source for both but says “the original” was in Tisdelle’s possession. It is possible that Morton was given a composite account or that Tisdelle used his handwritten diary to reconstitute the scenes in a memoirlike diary immediately after the war. Files at the army’s Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, contained typed accounts of Tisdelle’s experience and these accounts support Morton’s version, though their provenance is unclear. Since there was no reconciling the obvious discrepancies, we used those portions of the story that were either verified or tangentially supported by King’s and Tisdelle’s testimony in USA v. Homma, as well as John Toland’s handwritten notes of his interviews with the two men. King’s final thoughts in the section come from “General King’s Own Story,” 6.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1. Durdin, “All Captives Slain,” 1.
2. Brown Davidson, interview, 2000.
3. Humphrey O’Leary, interview, 2000.
4. Comments that follow are from interviews with Jinzaburo Chaki, Tozo Takeuchi, and Tasuku Yamanari, 2000.
5. John Emerick, interviews, 1998–1999.
6. FitzPatrick, Hike into the Sun, 56.
7. Dyess, Dyess Story, 68.
8. Ibid., 70. Dyess gets this story from someone else, whom he does not identify. Other accounts, those less detailed, confirm the incident.
9. Coox, “Effectiveness of the Japanese Military,” 39.
10. Richard Gordon, interview, 1999.
11. Stewart, Give Us This Day, 68–70.
12. Hunt, Behind Japanese Lines, 29.
13. Goldblith, Appetite for Life, 54.
14. Gordon, interview, 1999.
15. Gautier, I Came Back from Bataan, 72.
16. Levering, Horror Trek, 63.
17. O’Leary, interview, 1999.
18. Tenney My Hitch in Hell, 48. Other men mentioned this incident in interviews and had a slightly different version of the quotation offered by Tenney.
19. Dyess, Dyess Story, 75.
20. Zoeth Skinner, interviews, 1999, 2005.
21. Dyess, Dyess Story, 76.
22. Mallonée, Naked Flagpole, 149.
23. Tenney, My Hitch in Hell, 53–58.
24. Thomas, As I Remember, 151.
25. Aquino, Statement to John Toland, 3.
26. Smith, Affidavit/Statement.
27. Dyess, Dyess Story, 79; Cave, Beyond Courage, 173; Gordon, interview.
28. Levering, Horror Trek, 65.
29. Gordon, interview, 1999.
30. Stewart, Give Us This Day, 72.
31. John Olson, interview, 1999.
32. Stewart, Give Us This Day, 73.
33. Thomas, As I Remember, 147.
34. FitzPatrick, Hike into the Sun, 62.
35. Sneddon, Zero Ward, 25.
36. Davidson, interview, 2000; Irwin Scott, interview, 2005; Coleman, Bataan and Beyond, 72; Hunt, Behind Japanese Lines, 52.
37. Hunt, Behind Japanese Lines, 32.
38. Gautier, I Came Back from Bataan, 76.
39. Grashio, Return to Freedom, 39.
40. Cave, Beyond Courage, 172.
41. Dyess, Dyess Story, 77; Ashton, And Somebody Gives a Damn! 201.
42. Davidson, interview, 2000.
43. Monaghan, Under the Red Sun, 109.
44. A. C. Drake, Affidavit/Statement, 95; Alabado, Bataan, 54; Agoncillo, Fateful Years, 212.
45. Skinner, interview, 2005.
46. J. Baldassarre, Affidavit/Statement, 37.
47. In late March 1942, five Imperial Army officers met to draw up a plan to deal with POWs. From intelligence reports, they expected some 40,000 captives, and since the army’s plan of attack anticipated a three-week campaign on Bataan, the five planners thought they would have until April 20 to get everything ready to receive the prisoners. When the plan was done, the officers—Major General Yoshikata Kawane, commander of the Luzon Line of Communication Unit (transportation and supply); Colonel Toshimitsu Takatsu, Kawane’s chief of staff; Major Moriya Wada, a staff officer; Major Hisashi Sekiguchi from the Medical Department; and an officer from a well-digging unit—reviewed the details with Major General Takeji Wachi, the 14th Army chief of staff. Wachi, in turn, took the scheme to Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma for final approval. The plan was simple: Filipino and American soldiers would be collected together at various spots between Mariveles and Cabcaben at the tip of the peninsula, assembled in marching formations on the Old National Road, then walked north to the railhead at San Fernando—from the town of Mariveles, a hike of exactly sixty-six miles. At the San Fernando train station, the prisoners would be put in boxcars and hauled north twenty-five miles to the town of Capas. At Capas they would detrain and march another seven miles to Camp O’Donnell, a former Philippine Army training base in Pampanga Province that would be converted to hold prisoners of war. On the first part of the march—from Mariveles to Balanga—the prisoners would be guarded by soldiers from the various units that had taken part in the final offensive, combat and support troops from frontline units. At Balanga, rear-echelon troops under the command of General Kawane, men from the 61st Line of Communication Dispatch Unit (service), would take over as guards for the rest of the trek. Kawane was told he could carry the prisoners in trucks—if he could find them. The Imperial Army had some 240 trucks in its inventory. It also had captured an unknown number of vehicles from the American Army. (Perhaps a thousand to fifteen hundred allied vehicles were in running condition at the time of surrender; it is anyone’s guess.) The Imperial Army us
ed all available transport to move its own men and supplies south on Bataan to stage for the upcoming invasion of Corregidor. The plan also called for the army’s Sanitation Unit to set up field hospitals in Balanga. The army’s chief of administration was ordered to dispatch cooks and trucks with food and cooking supplies to Bataan and to set up feeding stations. The first station would be at Balanga, then, moving north, at Orani, Lubao, and, finally, San Fernando. The prisoners would eat what Imperial troops ate: rice and whatever else happened to be available at the time. On April 2, seven days before surrender, staff aides told Colonel Takatsu and Major Wada that the preparations to receive, quarter, and feed the prisoners were still incomplete. The two officers told their subordinates to “put in their best effort and further their preparation.” On April 9, the day General King sent a white flag forward, Major Wada asked for an update on the preparations and was told little had changed since April 2. Meanwhile, Wada and the others discovered that they would have to move and feed some 76,000 POWs, almost twice the number they had expected. What is more, there were some 25,000 Filipino refugees in the battle zone as well, and they too would have to be relocated. The officers quickly concluded that motor transport would be impossible. General Kawane decided to move them on foot and assigned a unit of some 300 men from the 61st Line of Communication Unit, under the command of First Lieutenant Toshio Omura, to guide the prisoners as they marched north from Balanga to the railhead at San Fernando. The formations would cover some twelve to fifteen miles a day. The only surety was water; there were plenty of artesian wells along the route of the march so the prisoners would be able to slake their thirst. USA v. Homma, 2463–64, 2581–82, 2666–74, 2686–89, 3076–79; Wada, Affidavit/Statement, 1–6; Wada, interview, 2000; Yoshikata Kawane, Affidavit/Statement, 1–5; Falk, Bataan, 35–42; Falk, “Bataan Death March,” 28–46; Homma, “Statement on the Charge,” 1–11; Bateman, interview with Achille Tisdelle, 12; Uji, Affidavit/Statement, 1–3.
48. Simmons, Hell Revisited, 19–20.
49. Gordon, Horyo, 96; Gordon, interview, 1999.
50. We interviewed more than 100 men who made the death march. More than 70 said they got something—rice, tea, salt, hard biscuits, water—at Balanga or Orani.
51. FitzPatrick, Hike into the Sun, 66.
52. Locke, Kobe House P.O.W., 32.
53. Miller, Bataan Uncensored, 223.
54. Sneddon, Zero Ward, 28.
55. Poweleit, USAFFE, 54.
56. FitzPatrick, Hike into the Sun, 67; Hunt, Behind Japanese Lines, 31.
57. Tenney My Hitch in Hell, 56.
58. Gordon, Horyo, 96.
59. Dyess, Dyess Story, 85–86.
60. Bank, Back from the Living Dead, 20; Levering, Horror Trek, 73; FitzPatrick, Hike into the Sun, 71; Sneddon, Zero Ward, 27; Tenney, My Hitch in Hell, 57.
61. Sneddon, Zero Ward, 24.
62. Ibid., 26.
63. Miller, Bataan Uncensored, 233, 220; Tenney, My Hitch in Hell, 47, 56–57; Levering, Horror Trek, 69; Connor, Japanese Extermination Camps, 40.
64. What follows is drawn from interviews with Guillermo Almario, Natividad Almario, Lorenzo Capistrano, Juanita Caraguy, Milagros Cortez, Juana Diaz, Jaluria Galina, Candido Gallardo, Bartolome Gana, Amado Guevarra, Ismael Guzon, Migel Layug, Ciriaco Manahan, Faustino Perez, Edilberto Sadural, and Marcelo Tuazon, 2000.
65. In Philippine society, no shame was greater than to be known as walang-habag, someone “without pity.”
66. FitzPatrick, Hike into the Sun, 68–72.
67. Richard Gordon’s story is drawn from an extensive interview with the authors and his memoir, Horyo.
68. Zoeth Skinner’s story is drawn from interviews and correspondence, 1999–2005.
69. Poweleit, USAFFE, 56.
70. Felix, “Massacre of the 91st Division”; Ramirez, interview with Felix; USA v. Homma, 1010–57; Ongpauco, They Refused to Die, 90–102.
71. Nagai, interview, 2000.
72. There is no confirmed figure on the number of men who were executed at the Pantingan River on April 12 and 13. The incident is mentioned in passing in the proceedings of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals, but no one was ever prosecuted for it. The incident seems to have been considered just another part of the death march.
73. Isamu Murakami, interview, 2000.
74. Takesada Shigeta, interview and correspondence, 2000–2004.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1. Collier, Notebooks, 52–53.
2. Olson, O’Donnell, 44. In late April 1942, John Olson was named camp adjutant, and he kept an official diary, as well as filling out the daily strength reports. No other individual is likely to have such an overview. We used his monograph liberally throughout this chapter, vetting, where possible, his facts and figures.
3. Ibid., 41–46.
4. King delivered such remarks often in O’Donnell whenever a group of men gathered around him. In their memoirs, journals, and diaries, scores of men quoted and paraphrased him. Each account is slightly different. We have tried to verify the most oft-repeated phrases and have ordered them for coherence.
5. King, Affidavit/Statement, 1–2.
6. Determining the number of Americans and Filipinos living and dead on Bataan, then later in O’Donnell and the other prisoner venues, is at best to make an estimate. Records either were not kept or were lost or reconstructed long after the war. The figures we used are from Ned King’s 1946 “Report of Operations,” which he compiled in prison camp and assembled from the recollections of his senior staff; Collier’s Notebooks (written in 1943 in prison camp); Jonathan Wainwright’s Diaries and General Wainwright’s Story; Colonel Nicoll Galbraith’s “Diaries” (also written in prison camp); and material from the judge advocate general’s office. In January 1942 at the start of the battle, there were approximately 12,000 Americans on Bataan. At surrender on April 9, there were approximately 9,700 Americans; 2,300 had been killed or were wounded and missing. The overall strength of the American-Filipino force on Bataan on April 2 was 78,100; at the tip of the peninsula, 26,000 Filipino civilians were in refugee camps. Sometime before surrender, roughly 2,000 men (300 Americans, the rest Filipinos) and a handful of American nurses found their way across the bay to Corregidor. That left some 76,000 military personnel on Bataan—the number at surrender and the number that, in theory, started the death march. Approximately 500 Americans and perhaps as many as 2,500 Filipinos were killed or died on the death march or in the boxcars from San Fernando. In the end, O’Donnell held 9,270 Americans and either 45,000 (King, Affidavit/Statement, 7) or 47,000 Filipinos (IMTFE, “JAG Report No. 75,” 12,597). No one can say for sure what happened to the 15,000 to 17,000 Filipinos who were on Bataan but not in O’Donnell. Some were killed on the field of battle, some deserted during the fighting, and a large number are believed to have slipped into the bush at surrender and passed themselves off as civilians.
7. Poweleit, USAFFE, 63–66.
8. Collier, Notebooks, 47.
9. Stewart, Give Us This Day, 63.
10. Scott, interview, 2000.
11. Poweleit, USAFFE, 65–68.
12. John Aldrich, interview, 1999.
13. Browe, “O’Donnell,” 53.
14. Poweleit, USAFFE, 67–70.
15. Brain, Soldier of Bataan, 35–36.
16. Gene Jacobsen, interview, 2000.
17. Skinner, interview, 1999.
18. Des Pres, Survivor, 6–9; Darwin, Descent of Man, 619.
19. Gordon, interview, 1999.
20. “No ideas but in things” is borrowed from William Carlos Williams, “A Sort of Song,” The Collected Poems, vol. 2, 55. Williams, of course, was talking about metaphor rather than staying in the moment.
21. Poweleit, USAFFE, 69–70.
22. Morton, Fall of the Philippines, 546.
23. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, 122–23.
24. MacArthur, Reminiscences, 146.
25. Cooper, “Army Medicine Department Activities,” 108.
&
nbsp; 26. Musselman, Affidavit/Statement, 3–4.
27. O’Leary, interview, 1999.
28. Olson, O’Donnell, 186–87.
29. Here we expand and amplify the notions that Terrence Des Pres puts forward in The Survivor, 5–16, namely, that “in ordinary times, to protect the living, aid the sick and bury the dead” are the most “elementary . . . of human” activities. And survival, Des Pres discovered, “depends on staying human.”
30. Stewart, Give Us This Day, 62–64.
31. Scott, interview, 2000.
32. Aldrich, interview, 1999.
‘A FINAL DETERMINATION’
1. “April was . . .” is a nod to the beginning of T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”; All headlines taken from the Billings Gazette, April 4–11, 1942.
CHAPTER NINE
1. Louis Kolger, interview, 2000.
2. Conrad, “Heart of Darkness,” in The Complete Short Fiction of Joseph Conrad, vol. 3, 12.
3. Preston Hubbard, interview, 2000. See Hubbard, Apocalypse Undone, for additional details.
4. Ken Calvit, interview, 1999.
5. Scott, interviews, 1999–2001.
6. All quotations from Ashton here and following in this section come from his account of his experiences at Tayabas Road in Bataan Diary, 215–221. His hand-drawn map on page 221 is remarkably accurate. Using that crude chart, we were able to eliminate one river after another along the old Route 1G until we finally found the site, later confirmed by former Filipino guerrillas still living near the Basiad.
7. Steve Kramerich, interview, 1999.
8. Ashton, Bataan Diary, 219. Parts of his account of giving lethal injections—the only parts we used—were supported by at least two men who were among the final group of 108 prisoners leaving Tayabas Road on July 28, 1942.
9. Hayes, “Notebook,” book I, 42.
10. Shearer, “Shearer’s Journal,” 22.
CHAPTER TEN
1. Sartin, “Report of Activities,” 22.
2. Hayes, “Notebook,” book I, 5.
3. Patton, “Account of Captivity,” 99–101.
4. Hayes, “Notebook,” book I, 42.
5. Smith, Prisoner of the Emperor, 61.
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