Battle of Bataan 1941-1942
There are many good histories of Bataan available, including several websites. Colonel Ernest Miller, the commander of the 194th Tank Battalion, wrote his account (Bataan Uncensored) immediately after the war, which I just read. Edna Binkowski is a wealth of information and provides tours of the peninsula.
Initially, the Filipino and American armies moved north to counter the December, 1941 invasion, but did not have sufficient strength to cover the wide central plain.
Bataan was a good point for withdrawal since it is mountainous and easier to defend. Plus it supported Corregidor and the defense of Manila Bay. The plan was to hold out here long enough for the U.S. Navy to arrive. They undoubtedly could have held out much longer if more of the stockpiled food had be shipped to Bataan as planned. As it was, the 60,000 Filipinos and the 10,000 Americans held out for four months. The Japanese had to send another invasion force to provide enough reinforcements to succeed.
According to Col. Miller, this second invasion force had been intended for Australia. He wrote that once they realized that their stubborn defense helped save Australia, it lifted their spirits tremendously. He added that from the Japanese point of view, it would have been better if they had just left the Filipinos and Americans to wither away in Bataan, just like the Americans later did with the island-hopping strategy that left large segments of Japanese forces isolated and ineffective. However, according to Miller, the Japanese couldn’t tolerate the idea that they couldn’t defeat this group, since it involved losing too much face. So they rerouted the Australian invasion force, which Miller thought was “the biggest Japanese mistake of the war.”
The Filipinos and Americans marched north from Bataan to San Fernando, where they shifted to box cars to bring them to the concentration camp in Capas. The cramped, filthy conditions in the box cars with the doors shut tight caused many additional deaths.
The stone memorial in Capas shows the number who died on the route. For all of the Japanese claims of Pan-Asia Co-Prosperity and the universal brotherhood of Asians against the white imperialists, they treated Filipinos worse than they did Americans (just as they did with the Chinese and Koreans).
After the first camp in Capas, the Americans were sent to Cabanatuan and later most were shipped to Japan . The ship that Uncle Warren and several other Brainerd guys were on was bombed by American planes and sunk in Subic Bay and they swam ashore around here. The Hell Ship Memorial is in Subic. The location of Tarlac is also highlighted above, the place where Uncle Warren describes Christmas Eve on a box car and Filipinos coming out of church to toss them food.
In 1944, about 500 or so still remained in Cabanatuan and were rescued when the U.S. Army landed in Lingayan Bay, as depicted in The Great Raid.
This is a photo of my Dad in 1944 someplace in the Philippines. He was part of the 13th Air Force and the liberation army that came up from the south, from the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. I still have his foot locker, which has the names Mindinao, Leyte, Mindoro, and Manila painted on it. After the war, he returned to Brainerd, joined the Guard, and became a Captain in the 194th Tank Battalion.