VMBATFAL

This article, from the EX-POW BULLETIN, April 1993, was provided by Monty Montgomery, POW, 7th Materiel, 19th BG.

The author M Villarin served as a Philippine Army 2nd Lt on Bataan. After the war he joined the American Army. A retired L/COL in the USAR, Vilarin is a life member of American Ex-Prisoners of War. He is author of the book, “We Remember Bataan and Corregidor”. For book orders contact him at P.O. Box 5614, Long Beach, CA, 90805-0614 . DL 03-30-94

April 9, 1942, is a sad day to remember. It all started at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a day which will live in infamy. The attack on Pearl Harbor triggered the war in the Pacific which lasted three and a half years.

Within hours after Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes attacked Clark Field in the Philippines and destroyed half of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's Air Corps on the ground. Then followed the devastation of Cavite Navy Yard and Nichols Field. These raids left the United States Army Forces in the Far Fast under MacArthur with hardly any air or naval Support.

The American garrison in the Islands consisted of only 19,000 troops, plus 12,000 Philippine Scouts and their 685 American officers who were a part of the regular United States Army. The Philippines being an American colony, some 100,000 Philippine Army troops were sworn into the USAFFE by Presidential Proclamation. The war in the Philippines sealed the fate of these American and Filipino troops. It was the most humiliating defeat in American military history when Maj. Gen. Edward King surrendered his 78,000 Bataan troops, including 12,000 Americans, to the enemy. We lost the first round of the war in the Philippines. General MacArthur, his Chief of Staff Brig. Gen. Richard Sutherland, and the Chief of the Far Fact Air Force Maj. Gen. Lewis Brereton, drew bitter criticism for their apparent lack of foresight and indecision in the Clark Field catastrophe. Brereton said that if he had been authorized to carry out a B-17 attack on Formosa earlier, his bombers would not have been caught on the ground. Sutherland's account was that the bombing mission could not be authorized without first sending a photo reconnaissance mission to Formosa

Retrospectively, General MacArthur made a postwar statement to the effect that "our fighters...to protect our bombers in the Formosa attack...did not have the necessary radius of action. An attack would have been doomed to failure." This statement, made four years after the war, was rather perplexing.

Apparently, MacArthur forgot that he had authorized a bombing mission at 1100 hours on December 8, 1941 (Manila time), shorty after authorizing a photo mission at 1010 hours. When the Japanese attacked at 1230 hours, the three bombers assigned the photo mission were still on the ground at Clark Field. So why would MacArthur authorize a bombing mission since, according to his postwar statement, he did not have enough fighter planes to support the B-17s? And why would he authorize a bombing mission at 1100 hours since his photo reconnaissance mission of three bombers, authorized to leave at 1010 hours, had not even returned from Formosa, let alone left Clark Field when the Japanese planes attacked at 1230 hours?

A furious Gen. Henry Arnold, the Air Corps Chief, wondered "how in hell" could an experienced airman like Brereton have been caught with his planes down nine hours after Pearl Harbor. L. Edgar Whitcomb, a B-17 navigator from Clark Field, author of Escape From Corregidor and later governor of Indiana, said, "Our generals and leaders committed one of the greatest errors possible to military men -- that of letting themselves betaken by surprise."

The Japanese began landing at two places north and south of Manila for the purpose of converging on the capital city where they thought that General MacArthur's headquarters was located. They were wrong. MacArthur and his troops had already made a retrograde movement into the Bataan peninsula for a last ditch stand. Layac junction in northern Bataan had to be held to enable the defenders to establish their first Main Line of Resistance along the Abucay-Mauban line. A superior enemy force drove the defenders to that MLR. It was during an action at Culis on January 6, 1942, that a Philippine Scout sergeant, Jose Calugas, earned the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The battle of Abucay began on January 9, when the enemy launched a heavy artillery barrage on the Manila Bay side, but the Scouts from the 57th Infantry (PS) stopped the Japanese dead in their tracks. The 57th was the fightingest unit on Bataan, its members having earned one Medal of Honor (Lt. Alexander Nininger, a West Pointer), ten Distinguished Service Crosses and forty Silver Stars. Another Scout officer from the 45th Infantry (PS), Lt. Willibald Bianchi, also won his Medal of Honor.

When Bataan fell, some 2,000 managed to escape to Corregidor, including the nurses. The siege of the Rock lasted nearly a month. Rather than having to witness the massacre of 13,000 defenders and 78 nurses, General Wainwright had no choice but to surrender Corregidor on May 6, 1942. The gallant stand of the defenders of Bataan and Corregidor disrupted by four months the enemy's timetable of conquest of the Southwest Pacific.

The crack Philippines Division of the United States Army consisted of three well-trained, seasoned regiments, namely the American 31st Infantry, 45th Infantry (PS) and 57th Infantry (PS). Most of the Philippine Army divisions consisted of ill-equipped and inadequately trained reservists. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, who took over from MacArthur, wrote: “The Philippine Army units were doomed before they started to fight That they lasted as long as they did is a stirring and touching tribute to their gallantry and fortitude."

The mission to defend the western coast of Bataan was given to the first Regular Division, PA, under Brig. Gen. Fidel Segundo, a Filipino West Pointer, and Troop G, 26th Cavalry (PS). On January 15, a powerful enemy task force engaged the defenders in a savage horde and occupied Morong. L. Edwin Ramsey and his Scout troopers were ordered to retake Morong, which they did, for which Ramsey earned his first Silver Star.

Recalls Colonel Ramsey: "It was in the battle of Morong where I had the dubious pleasure of having led the last mounted horse cavalry charge of the United States Army. We then withdrew behind the Pilar-Bagac line. Thereafter our horses were eaten by the troops in Bataan ." (Ramsey, after escaping from the Death March, eventually won the DSC and his second Silver Star as commander of Ramsey's 40,000 Filipino guerrillas operating effectively in central Luzon during three years of Japanese occupation.)

Stymied in their efforts to break through the Pilar-Bagac MLR, the Japanese tried another strategy by landing 900 men at Caibobo Point on the west coast to isolate the defenders at Bagac. Without navigation charts and due to darkness, 600 men landed instead at Quinauan Point and 300 at Longoskawayan Point on January 23. The enemy then sent 200 men to reinforce the bridgehead at Quinauan but they landed instead at Anyasan Point on January 21. By February 13, all 800 Japanese at the Quinauan-Anyasan encounters were killed while the USAFFE casualties were 210 killed and 316 wounded.

At Longoskawayan Point the Navy Battalion of 380 sailors without ships, including a company of Marines, was being clobbered by machine gun and sniper fire when the Scouts from the 57th Infantry (PS) came to their rescue. War correspondent Clark Lee wrote: "When the Scouts got up to the front lines they slapped the exhausted Americans on the back and said, `We'll take over now, Joe.' "By January 28, all 300 Japanese were wiped out and the casualties among the sailors, Marines and Scouts were 22 dead and 66 wounded. The Battle of the Points was one of the bloodiest on Bataan.

U.S. and P.A. Air Corps personnel who fought as infantrymen, American tanks, elements from the P.A. and Philippine Constabulary, crewmen from Navy auxiliary vessels firing at the entrenched enemy and coast artillerymen from Corregidor, besides the Navy Battalion -- all had their share in helping the Scouts eliminate the enemy from the Points.

The Americans and the Philippine Constabulary, and those of us from the P.A., had a high regard for the elite Philippine Scouts. In a 1947 article in the Armored Cavalry Journal, Col. William Chandler, 26th Cavalry (PS), wrote: "...the men were extremely proud of their unit and intensely loyal to the United States and to the American officers under whom they served...The superb discipline of these Scouts who went calmly about their business under a hail of fragmentation bombs and strafing was a source of inspiration and pride to every American officer in the regiment."

Col. Ernest Miller, commander of the 194th Tank Battalion, wrote: "Fighting was bloody in the Abucay area. The highest tribute I can pay to the Philippine Scouts is that I have never seen nor do I ever expect to see, any better or braver soldiers than the Scouts...Many wounded Scouts were brought to the rear. Not once did I hear one whimper of Pain or an utterance of complaint...These were the Scouts who also loved and believed in America...

Gen. Masaharu Homma's invading forces were living off the land. Our rations on Bataan were cut to two meals a day and consisted mostly of "lugao" (rice gruel). The reassurance given to us by General MacArthur on January 15 that "Help (was) on the way" didn't amount to a hill of beans. No ships were arriving and all hope of getting reinforcements from the United States vanished into thin air. The Philippines had been written off. The crucial event came during the Holy Week in April when Homma unleashed his fury on the defenders with everything he had. The starving, sick and demoralized USAFFE troops began retreating in chaos to the south.

General King wanted to avoid further bloodshed. With a starvation diet of two meals a day, and his troops suffering from malaria and dysentery, not to mention the constant air bombardments and shellings, King's surrender of Bataan was inevitable. To the Japanese, being taken prisoner was a disgrace to the military and to the family. They told us in no uncertain terms, "You surrendered. You deserve no mercy." That's why on the march from Bataan to an unknown destination, they subjected the Fil-American POWs to the most unimaginable forms of atrocities. It was to be known later as the infamous Bataan Death March, where an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 prisoners died from disease, starvation and beatings. Estimates by U.S. historians of the Americans who died on this march varied from 650 to 2,330.

The Japanese would not allow the prisoners to get water from streams or from artesian wells along the road. The guards warned us to stay away from those who could barely march. It was survival of the fittest. Those who were lagging behind or could not make it were clubbed, bayoneted or shot. Examples of atrocities:

From Brownell Cole of Valley City, ND: "A woman about eight months pregnant threw some coconut candy into the group. One of the guards went back and bayoneted her right into the side and you could hear her scream for a mile along the road"

From Harold Kurvers of S. Paul, MN: "We got clobbered every time we broke line to get some sugar cane or water. The Filipinos would come running to us with rice and water in containers and the Japanese would swing and shoot at them. The Filipinos can't be praised enough for how they tried to help."

From Joe Wengronowitz of Waseca, MN: "I walked by a rice straw stack which had been set afire and saw a Filipino farmer and his wife tied to a stake in front of the fire, apparently for trying to help the marching POWs with food."

A P.A. officer reported to Medical Officer Capt. Alvin Poweleit of Covington, KY, that a guard had bayoneted several prisoners as they broke ranks to relieve themselves.

From Cliff Omtvedt of Eau Claire, WI: "I was a very sick man in Hospital #2 when Bataan fell. I remember one Filipino officer there who had an American wife. She was the only female American patient there. This woman was brutally raped within hearing distance of my bed by three Japanese soldiers."

Of the 78,000 troops who surrendered on Bataan, only 54,000 POWs, including 9,300 Americans, reached the notorious Camp O'Donnell prison camp where some 29,000 Filipinos and 2,000 Americans died from starvation, disease and beatings. This will remain etched in the memory of those of us who survived. For these war crimes and other atrocities committed during the liberation of Manila in January 1945, Generals Masaharu Homma and Tomoyuki Yamashita were tried, convicted and executed in Manila.