The final offensive on Bataan

At nine in the morning on 3 April 1942 artillery thundered on the Bataan Peninsula. Two American observation officers on the summit of Mount Samat counted nineteen batteries of heavy guns and eight to ten batteries of mortars in front of them. From ten until three in the afternoon, with one half-hour pause, some 150 guns and mortars (other sources speak of nearly two hundred) pounded a narrow sector of the front at the foot of the mountain, while Japanese bombers circled overhead. Many of the defenders compared the fire to the barrages of the First World War. It was Good Friday, and for the Japanese the anniversary of the death of the legendary Emperor Jimmu. The 14th Army of Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma was opening an offensive intended to end the siege that had lasted since January. Within six days it broke the defenders’ resistance so completely that on 9 April the Luzon Force ceased to exist.

An army of hunger and malaria

It is often said that on 2 April more than 24,000 sick and starving American and Filipino soldiers were trapped on Bataan. This figure needs correcting. There were many more men on the peninsula: according to Louis Morton’s American official history, Major General Edward King’s Luzon Force numbered some 79,500 soldiers at the end of March. Three-quarters of them were soldiers of the Philippine Army, 8,000 were Philippine Scouts – Filipinos serving in the regular US Army – and 12,500 were Americans. The Luzon Force also employed about 6,000 civilians and fed 20,000 Filipino refugees. Almost all of them, however, were sick and hungry. The figure of about 24,000 appears in some accounts as the number of sick and wounded in hospitals and aid stations in the last days of the fighting. Morton writes of 12,000 patients in the two field hospitals on the night of 8–9 April, and quite apart from them most of the soldiers in the line were sick.

Since January the defenders had been living on half rations, and in practice on much less. In March a soldier received food providing about 1,000 calories a day, and from 22 March the daily ration weighed less than 400 grams. Worse than hunger was malaria. At the beginning of March the prophylactic quinine ran out, and from then on it was given only to the seriously ill. In the first week of March five hundred men a day were being admitted to hospital with malaria, and by the end of the month nearly a thousand; according to the doctors, 75–80 per cent of the soldiers in the front-line units were sick. On top of this came dysentery, beriberi and scurvy. For all their February victories, which had bled the 14th Army white, by the beginning of April the defenders were an army that could barely stand. Doctors wrote of a “mental and physical exhaustion” that could no longer be separated from disease.

The defensive line ran where the defenders had fallen back to in January: along the Pilar–Bagac road, from Orion on Manila Bay to Bagac on the South China Sea, some 21 kilometres in all. The eastern half was held by General George Parker’s II Corps (about 28,000 men), the western half by General Albert Jones’s I Corps (32,600). The weakest point was Sector D on the left wing of II Corps, at the foot of Mount Samat, which rose to about 600 metres and dominated the whole battlefield. It was defended by Brigadier General Maxon Lough with two Filipino divisions: Brigadier General Mateo Capinpin’s 21st and Brigadier General Vicente Lim’s 41st. The Luzon Force reserve consisted of the Philippine Division, the only regular division on the peninsula, with the American 31st Infantry Regiment and the 57th Regiment of Philippine Scouts, and the tanks of the Provisional Tank Group. But even these units were worn out: when the 31st Infantry set out for the front on 3 April, it had to leave behind about a third of its men for evacuation to hospital, and the fitness of the rest was rated at half at best.

Homma gathers his forces

The Japanese were suffering too. At the end of February, according to its own chief of staff, the 14th Army had about 3,000 combat-fit infantrymen on Bataan, and between January and the end of March some 13,000 Japanese soldiers had been admitted to hospital with malaria, dysentery and beriberi. Tokyo, disappointed by Homma’s slowness, replaced his chief of staff and several staff officers, but also sent him reinforcements. By 15 March Lieutenant General Kenzō Kitano’s 4th Division had arrived on Luzon from Shanghai; it numbered about 11,000 men and was regarded by Homma himself as the worst-equipped division in the Japanese army. On 26 February a detachment of the 21st Division under Major General Kameichirō Nagano, some 4,000 strong, had landed. Lieutenant General Akira Nara’s 65th Brigade and the 16th Division each received several thousand replacements. Heavy artillery arrived from Hong Kong under Lieutenant General Kishio Kitajima, together with observation balloons and sixty twin-engined bombers from Malaya, which landed at Clark Field on 16 March.

The plan, ready on 22 March, assumed that there were about 40,000 defenders and that they were holding three successive lines: at Samat, at Mount Limay and at Mariveles at the tip of the peninsula. Homma, whose illusions in January and February had cost him dearly, this time reckoned on a month of fighting: a week to take Samat, two weeks to break the Limay line and a week to clear the peninsula. The main blow was to be struck by the 4th Division against the centre of Sector D, supported by the 65th Brigade to the west, along the valley of the Pantingan River. Nagano’s detachment covered the eastern flank, and from 31 March the 16th Division staged a feint attack against I Corps.

The defenders knew what was coming. In March Homma dropped over Bataan, in beer cans, a letter to Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, since 21 March commander of all forces in the Philippines, calling on him to make an “honourable surrender” as Hong Kong, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies had done. There was no reply. On 24 March Filipino soldiers found on the body of a Japanese officer an order for reconnaissance in the Mount Samat area, which revealed the general intention of the attack. From that same day Japanese aircraft bombed and strafed the defenders’ lines all day long, unopposed. At the end of March bombs fell on Field Hospital No. 1 at Little Baguio. On 2 April, when all the units were in their jumping-off positions, Japanese radio publicly announced a “general offensive on Bataan”. On the eve of the attack Homma noted: “There is no reason why this attack should not succeed.”

Good Friday

At 3 p.m. on 3 April, as the fire lifted to targets further back, the infantry moved forward with the tanks of the 7th Tank Regiment. The blow struck men stunned by five hours of shelling, blinded by smoke and literally burned out of their foxholes by fires in the dry bamboo thickets and cane grass. The 42nd and 43rd Regiments of the 41st Division fell apart before they had even seen the enemy. Soldiers fled south in crowds, many without their weapons, and one officer recorded that men he ordered back to the line “stared at him dully” and walked on. The 41st Division ceased to exist as a fighting formation. Only the 41st Regiment on the left wing withdrew in good order. Major General Kureo Taniguchi’s column of the 4th Division crossed the Tiawir River and broke the left battalion of the 21st Infantry from Capinpin’s division, men “shaken by continuous shelling and bombing, weakened by dysentery, malaria and malnutrition”, as Morton wrote. By evening the Japanese had advanced a kilometre – more than their boldest plans had foreseen.

Parker sent his only reserve into the gap: some six hundred men of the Filipino 33rd Infantry, many of whom had just risen from hospital beds. Homma, encouraged by his success, ordered the attack to continue without a pause. On 4 April the bombardment was repeated, and so was the picture of the first day: the remnants of the 42nd and 43rd Regiments, gathered with difficulty during the night by American instructors, fled at the first salvoes, while Taniguchi’s tanks reached the Pilar–Bagac road and outflanked the 21st Division. By evening the whole main line of Sector D was in Japanese hands. General King gave Parker the American 31st Infantry, the unit most carefully husbanded throughout the campaign, and the 45th Regiment of Philippine Scouts from I Corps. That day Douglas MacArthur, in Australia for a month by then, sent Wainwright instructions that in the last resort he was not to surrender but to strike out from Bataan against the Japanese base at Olongapo and break through into the interior of Luzon.

The fall of Mount Samat

5 April was Easter Sunday. As chaplains held services in the jungle at dawn, praying among other things for “deliverance from the power of the enemy”, shells and bombs began to fall again. At 10 a.m. the 4th Division attacked in two columns. Taniguchi’s main thrust on the eastern slopes of Samat, along Trail 4, met surprisingly stiff resistance from the 21st Division, supported by the guns of the 41st Field Artillery on the southern slopes of the mountain. A Japanese officer later called it “the fiercest fighting of the second Bataan campaign”. At the same time, however, Colonel Gempachi Sato’s second column advanced unhindered along the western slopes, overwhelmed the only platoon defending the summit and at 12.50 p.m. took the top of Samat. The gunners had to destroy their equipment and push their guns off the rocks. Deprived of support, the 21st Division began to fall back at around 3.30 p.m. Towards evening the Japanese burst into the division’s command post, and General Capinpin, cut off from his staff, was taken prisoner.

In three days the Japanese had accomplished a task for which they had allowed a week. They had broken the line, routed two Filipino divisions and taken the mountain from which the whole of eastern Bataan could be seen as far as Manila Bay. Wainwright, who came over to the peninsula from Corregidor on 5 April, approved a plan for a counter-attack the following day – “with misgivings as to the outcome”, as he himself admitted.

6 April: the counter-attack that failed

The plan was for the units of Sector D to advance north along three trails at dawn on 6 April and regain the reserve line. The American 31st Infantry, now only about 800 strong and most of them in poor condition, could not even reach its start line, which the Japanese had occupied during the night; after hours of fighting it was ordered onto the defensive. The 33rd Infantry, surrounded in the valley of the Catmon River, waited for help that never came. The only success was won in the west by the Scouts of the 45th Regiment: they advanced more than two kilometres along Trail 29, knocking out a Japanese position with their last few mortar rounds.

Meanwhile Nara’s 65th Brigade scattered the remnants of the 42nd and 43rd Regiments and at noon took the junction of Trails 6 and 8, where the Sector D command post stood. Lough, with the 41st and 45th Regiments, was cut off from II Corps, and the two corps were separated. In the east the 37th Infantry Regiment, with tanks, came in behind Brigadier General Clifford Bluemel’s Sector C and forced the 51st Combat Team to withdraw. In the afternoon Parker ordered a withdrawal behind the San Vicente River. That evening Wainwright reported to MacArthur that the enemy had driven 6.5 kilometres deep, taken Samat and routed three Filipino divisions. The only good news was that rations had been doubled from Corregidor’s stocks: from 5 April a soldier received about 770 grams of food a day. It was already too late.

7 and 8 April: collapse

On 7 April the line on the San Vicente fell apart before it had been properly established. That day Japanese aircraft flew 169 sorties and dropped some hundred tons of bombs on the rear areas of II Corps alone. Several bombs again hit Field Hospital No. 1: 73 men were killed and more than a hundred wounded. Nagano’s detachment crossed the river at 7.30 a.m., the Filipino regiments on the right wing fled in panic, and at 10.30 a.m. Colonel Haruji Morita’s 8th Infantry Regiment forced the river. By early afternoon the San Vicente line had ceased to exist. Bluemel, by then the only general in the front line, tried rifle in hand to stop the fleeing men. The 26th Cavalry Regiment of Philippine Scouts, long since without its horses, held the Japanese for several hours at the junction of Trails 2 and 46 and paid dearly for it. In the evening Bluemel concluded that he could not hold a line on the Mamala River, and during the night he withdrew to the Alangan River.

That same day Wainwright ordered King to attack eastwards from I Corps with the Filipino 11th Division in order to link up with II Corps. Jones replied that his starving soldiers could not even get through the gorge of the Pantingan River, and that preparing an attack would take at least eighteen hours. King held back the order and instructed I Corps to fall back in stages behind the Binuangan River. In the evening he sent his chief of staff, Brigadier General Arnold Funk, to Corregidor with the message that the fall of Bataan was imminent. Wainwright, bound by orders from Roosevelt and MacArthur forbidding surrender, replied that Bataan must be held and that the Luzon Force was to counter-attack. Funk left him with tears in his eyes. Homma, for his part, could see that the offensive for which he had allowed a month was almost won after five days, and at small cost: by 7 April the 4th Division had lost 150 killed and 250 wounded, the 65th Brigade 77 killed and 152 wounded. He ordered the advance to continue towards Cabcaben at the south-eastern tip of the peninsula.

By 8 April the line on the Alangan was a line in name only. Bluemel had 1,360 men in three regiments and a battalion; of the American 31st Infantry 150 soldiers remained, of the 57th Scouts 500, of the 26th Cavalry 300. One officer wrote that the only way to stay awake was to stand up. Before noon Japanese aircraft dropped incendiary bombs on the positions and set the grass alight, and the Filipino soldiers on the right wing fled at every air attack until, at around 3 p.m., before a single Japanese infantryman had appeared, their sector stood empty. In the afternoon Morita’s 8th Regiment attacked the engineers and cavalrymen with tanks. At 6.30 p.m. Bluemel ordered a withdrawal to the Lamao River. The roads south were choked with crowds of unarmed soldiers and refugees, and Japanese airmen strafed them unopposed. In the evening King ordered the anti-aircraft gunners to destroy their guns and occupy, as infantry, the hills north of Cabcaben airfield. This was the last line between the Japanese and the hospitals, depots and landing stage at Mariveles.

The order for a final attack

Under 8 April chronologies record that the American forces were “preparing for a final offensive”. Such an order was indeed given, but no one was in a position to carry it out. That day Wainwright reported to Washington that even his best regiments were “capable only of a short advance, after which they are completely exhausted”, and to MacArthur, “with deep regret”, that the troops on Bataan were “fast folding up” and were so weakened by malnutrition that they had “no power of resistance left”. Nevertheless, having received no change in his orders, at 11.30 p.m. he passed MacArthur’s instruction on to King: I Corps was to attack north towards Olongapo on Subic Bay. MacArthur hoped that the supplies captured there would allow the fight to be carried into central Luzon, and that if the attempt failed some of the soldiers would break through into the mountains and take up guerrilla warfare.

The order reached Luzon Force headquarters at the moment of greatest chaos. The food had run out apart from a single issue of half rations, the Chemical Warfare Service was pouring its stocks into the bay, and at Mariveles the navy had begun destroying its installations. King telephoned Jones, who replied that his corps was in retreat and that an attack under any conditions was impossible. King accepted this without argument and took upon himself the responsibility for not carrying out the order. The last offensive of the Luzon Force never began. In any case King had already decided earlier, at about 11 p.m., after conferring with his chief of staff and his operations officer, to send emissaries to the Japanese – against his orders and without consulting Wainwright.

Place in the war

The April offensive was one of the swiftest decisions of the first phase of the Pacific War. The army which in January and February had halted the Japanese and forced Homma to ask for reinforcements fell apart in less than a week. American historians agree that it was defeated not by the enemy’s numerical superiority but by hunger and disease: Morton writes that the men on Bataan had been beaten a week before the first shot was fired, and that the whole defence was a “medical failure”, the inevitable result of a campaign in which everything was used up and nothing replaced. Japanese superiority in the air and in artillery did the rest.

On the morning of 9 April 1942 General King surrendered. Some 75,000–78,000 soldiers went into captivity, and for thousands of them the march to the prison camps ended in death on the Bataan Death March. Only Corregidor still held out; the Japanese began shelling it from southern Bataan and took it on 6 May 1942. Homma had won his victory, but several months later than planned, and Tokyo considered him too slow: in August he lost his command, and after the war he stood trial before an American military tribunal in Manila. For Americans and Filipinos Bataan became a symbol of endurance in a hopeless situation, and 9 April is commemorated in the Philippines as the Day of Valour.