Who won the Battle of Bataan?
Japan won. After three months on half rations, Luzon Force under Major General Edward King surrendered on 9 April 1942: by differing counts about 75,000 to 78,000 Filipino and American soldiers. Yet the stand wrecked the Japanese plan to take the Philippines in about 50 days.2
From January to April 1942, Filipino and American troops of the US Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) held the Bataan peninsula, the mountainous arm of Luzon that closes Manila Bay, against the Japanese 14th Army of Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma. Hungry and sick, they fought until 9 April, when Major General Edward King surrendered. The Bataan Death March followed.3
Background: War Plan Orange and the road to Bataan
The Philippines were struck in the opening days of the Pacific War that began with the attack on Pearl Harbor. The prewar ORANGE plan, in its final form WPO-3, told the garrison to delay an invader and fall back into Bataan to deny Japan Manila Bay; the official history records that the plan called for stocks there for 31,000, later 40,000, men for six months. General Douglas MacArthur had preferred to fight on the beaches, but after the Japanese landings at Lingayen Gulf on 22 December 1941 the old plan went back into effect on 23 December; the covering force at Layac Junction pulled back into the peninsula early on 7 January 1942, the day the defense of Bataan officially began.4
Louis Morton, author of the US Army official history, counts almost 80,000 troops and about 26,000 civilian refugees there; the journalist Jack Kelly gives 78,000 soldiers and more than 25,000 civilians. The men went on half rations almost at once.5
The armies and their commanders
MacArthur, on the fortress island of Corregidor, split Bataan between I Philippine Corps under Jonathan Wainwright in the west and II Philippine Corps under General Parker on Manila Bay. Most defenders were Filipinos: HISTORY counts 66,000 Filipinos among the 78,000 who later surrendered, and Kelly 66,000 among the 78,000 soldiers who withdrew into Bataan.6
Tokyo expected Homma to conquer the Philippines in about 50 days. Kelly gives the 14th Army 100,000 men, but the first attack on Bataan fell to the 65th Brigade, about 6,500 garrison troops whom their commander, Lieutenant General Akira Nara, called "absolutely unfit for combat duty", Morton writes. Unless another source is named, the dates and unit figures of the fighting below follow Morton's official history.7
January: the Abucay and Mauban lines
The main battle position ran about 20 miles from Abucay on Manila Bay across the slopes of Mount Natib to Mauban on the South China Sea, with the mountain splitting the two corps. The Japanese attacked on 9 January. Philippine Scouts and Philippine Army divisions held at Abucay against frontal and night assaults while Japanese units slipped through the jungle around Mount Natib, and on the west coast a roadblock cut the road behind the Mauban line.8
On 22 January both corps were ordered back to a reserve line along the Pilar to Bagac road, which they held by 26 January. The attackers paid too: the official history counts 1,472 combat casualties among the 6,651 men of the 65th Brigade by 24 January.9
The Points and the Pockets
From 23 January battalions of the Japanese 20th Infantry landed on headlands behind I Corps, at Longoskawayan, Quinauan, Anyasan and Silaiim Points. Improvised units and then Philippine Scouts with tanks met them, and by mid-February every beachhead had been destroyed; Morton's estimates for the four landings add up to about 1,800 Japanese lost. Some 1,000 men of the same regiment who broke through the line were trapped in jungle pockets, and only 377 got back to the Japanese lines on 15 February.10
On 8 February Homma broke off the offensive and asked for reinforcements. From 6 January to 1 March, Morton counts almost 7,000 Japanese battle casualties and 10,000 to 12,000 men sick with malaria, beriberi and dysentery.11
Hunger and disease
Morton estimates that the defenders' daily ration fell from about 2,000 calories a day in January to about 1,000 in March. The men ate their pack mules and, Morton records, the 250 horses of the 26th Cavalry. When quinine ran out, malaria spread, and thousands of sick and wounded filled two open-air hospitals. Many men lost up to 30 percent of their body weight, the USO notes.12
MacArthur promised in mid-January that help was on the way, but none came, Kelly writes, because Washington put Europe first. MacArthur left Corregidor by PT boat on 12 March by the official history's date, 11 March in Kelly's account; Wainwright took over all forces in the Philippines and King, on 21 March, Luzon Force on Bataan. Their roles are compared in the commanders of the Pacific War.13
April: the final Japanese offensive
Reinforced by the 4th Division, artillery and aircraft, Homma attacked on Good Friday, 3 April 1942, with almost 150 guns and mortars, Morton writes. The Japanese took the summit of Mount Samat on 5 April and broke through by 6 April; II Corps, worn out by hunger and fever, fell apart and fell back southwards along Manila Bay.14
Why did Bataan fall?
Bataan fell because its defenders were starved and sick before the final attack came. Stocks had been planned for a far smaller force, no relief could break the Japanese blockade, and malaria and hunger left only a fraction of the men fit to fight. When a reinforced Japanese army struck in April, the line could not hold.
The surrender of 9 April
On the night of 8 April King decided, on his own responsibility and against his orders, to surrender; Kelly quotes his fear that otherwise Bataan would be "the greatest slaughter in history". On 9 April he accepted unconditional surrender near Lamao. Counts differ: HISTORY gives 78,000 prisoners, 66,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans; the USO about 75,000; Morton puts King's force at 78,000.15
The Bataan Death March
The prisoners were marched north from Mariveles to San Fernando, about 65 miles (104 km) by the count of the official history and the US Army but 55 by HISTORY's; the US Army adds a train journey to Capas and a final walk of about 7 miles to Camp O'Donnell, in Tarlac province. Kelly gives the whole route as 75 miles. Food and water were scarce, and thousands died.16
Estimates vary. HISTORY gives at least 600 Americans and 5,000 Filipinos dead on the march, Kelly up to 750 Americans and perhaps 5,000 Filipinos, the USO and the US Army 7,000 to 10,000 and about 10,000 in all. HISTORY counts at least 1,000 Americans and 16,000 Filipinos dead in the camps; the USO, 26,000 of 50,000 Filipino prisoners dead by January 1943.17
The Filipino and American side
For the defenders Bataan was a lost battle, but a long one. Filipinos of the Philippine Army and Philippine Scouts fought beside American units, among them the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery, whose men the US Army's memorial march commemorates, and the Philippine state honors them together. MacArthur's return came later, in the campaign of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.18
The Japanese side
For Homma's 14th Army, Bataan was a costly victory that came months late and needed reinforcements. Kelly describes Homma as a pro-Western "poet general" whom superiors judged too slow and too lenient, and who lost his command after the surrender. After the war a US military commission convicted him over his troops' conduct, above all the Death March, and he was executed in 1946, on 3 April according to HISTORY.19
Memory and the battlefield today
In the Philippines, 9 April is Araw ng Kagitingan, the Day of Valor, marking the fall of Bataan. The president has led recent ceremonies at the Dambana ng Kagitingan, the Shrine of Valor on Mount Samat in Pilar; citing the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office, PTNI dates the building of its memorial cross to 1966 to 1970 and gives the cross a height of 92 meters.20
In the United States the Bataan Memorial Death March, a 26.2-mile course, is held each year at White Sands Missile Range; the US Army dates it to 1989 at New Mexico State University and to White Sands from 1992.21
From Japan came two official apologies. On 30 May 2009 Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki offered a "heartfelt apology" to the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, and on 13 September 2010 Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada apologized for the government to visiting former American prisoners.22
