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How many of the more or less half a million Filipinos who are 60
years old and older get a lump in their throats when remembering the
Fall of Bataan on April 9, 1942?
The Battle of Bataan between the Japanese Empire
and the United States—and the Commonwealth of the
Philippines—was a defining event. Japan had to capture the
Philippines to control the Southwest Pacific, put Indonesia (then
called the Dutch East Indies) under its control and become supreme
throughout Southeast Asia flank.
Following the simultaneous Japanese air attack
on Pearl Harbor and US bases in the Philippines, Guam and Wake
Island, and attacks on British bases in Hong Kong, Singapore and
Malaya, the Japanese assault in the Philippines had secured Manila
for the Empire in January. As Japanese forces made more landings and
captured more provinces, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, at the head of the
United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), then activated
the plan to defend only Bataan and Corregidor indefinitely until
reinforcements and new materiel deliveries would turn the tide of
war.
Even this plan had to be given up. For the
Japanese forces were not only better equipped, their fighting men
were better-trained and more devoutly committed to win—or die for
country and their emperor-god. The bulk of the US forces were young
Filipinos, most of whom were ROTC boys and new recruits.
As the Japanese advance to Bataan and Corregidor
seemed unstoppable, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt invited
President Manuel Quezon to set up the Philippine Commonwealth
government in exile in the United States. He and and the other
officials of the Philippine government took the perilous journey to
America through the Visayas, Mindanao and then Australia.
Not too long after, Gen. MacArthur himself had
to leave. On the night of March 12 with several USAFFE staff
officers he left Corregidor for Mindanao. In Australia, MacArthur
broadcast his famous “I Shall Return” speech. Left in command of
the remnant of the USAFFE—which on March22 was called the United
States Forces in the Philippines (USFIP)—was Lt. Gen. Jonathan
Wainwright IV.
Meanwhile, the Japanese Empire had to pour in
more men and materiel to complete its capture of Bataan and
Corregidor.
On April 3, 100 Japanese aircraft bombed the
whole Orion-Bagac line without letup. Three hundred artillery pieces
bombarded the line for six hours and made the US-Philippine
fortification in Mt. Samat a living hell. Then, the Japanese 4th
Division and 65th Brigade’s thousands of infantry men and hundreds
of tanks pushed on until they virtually pulverized the American and
Filipino defense at Mt. Samat on April 6.
By April 8, with the entire Allied defense
demolished, the senior US commander in Bataan, Maj. Gen. Edward P.
Kinag, sent surrender feelers to the Japanese.
On the morning of April 9, 1942, after hours of
negotiation between Gen. King and Maj. Gen. Kameichiro Nagano, the
emaciated, wounded, battle-weary American and Filipino defenders
surrendered to the Empire of the Rising Sun.
Bataan has fallen
How many would be moved if they heard the voice
of Lt. Norman Reyes reading this message on April 9, 1942 from
Malinta Tunnel in Corregidor.
Listen, and imagine the crackle and hiss of
short wave frequency bursts:
Good evening, everyone everywhere. This is the
Voice of Freedom broadcasting from somewhere in the Philippines.
Bataan has fallen. The Philippine-American
troops on this war-ravaged and bloodstained peninsula have laid down
their arms. With heads bloody but unbowed, they have yielded to the
superior force and numbers of the enemy.
The world will long remember the epic struggle
that Filipino and American soldiers put up in the jungle fastness
and along the rugged coast of Bataan. They have stood up
uncomplaining under the constant and grueling fire of the enemy for
more than three months. Besieged on land and blockaded by sea, cut
off from all sources of help in the Philippines and in America, the
intrepid fighters have done all that human endurance could bear.
For what sustained them through all these months
of incessant battle was a force that was more than merely physical.
It was the force of an unconquerable faith—something in the heart
and soul that physical hardship and adversity could not destroy! It
was the thought of native land and all that it holds most dear, the
thought of freedom and dignity and pride in these most priceless of
all our human prerogatives.
The adversary, in the pride of his power and
triumph, will credit our troops with nothing less than the courage
and fortitude that his own troops have shown in battle. Our men have
fought a brave and bitterly contested struggle. All the world will
testify to the most superhuman endurance with which they stood up
until the last in the face of overwhelming odds. But the decision
had to come. Men fighting under the banner of unshakable faith are
made of something more than flesh, but they are not made of
impervious steel. The flesh must yield at last, endurance melts
away, and the end of the battle must come. Bataan has fallen, but
the spirit that made it stand—a beacon to all the liberty-loving
peoples of the world—cannot fall!
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