The siege of Bataan begins

On 7 January 1942 the defence of the Bataan peninsula formally began. That day the last covering units, which had held off the Japanese at Layac the day before, came down into their positions on the peninsula, and General Douglas MacArthur divided his forces into two corps. “I am on my main battle position awaiting general attack,” he reported to Washington that day. Some 80,000 American and Filipino soldiers and 26,000 civilian refugees found themselves on a strip of land about 40 kilometres long, cut off from the rest of Luzon and from the sea, with food for a few weeks. Over the next three months the peninsula became the longest-held Allied position during the Japanese offensive in the Pacific, and a symbol long remembered in the United States. In January the defenders beat off the first attack, but they had to abandon their first line of defence and fall back to the second.

The peninsula

Bataan juts out into the sea between Subic Bay and Manila Bay like a thumb pointing at the shore of Cavite province. Off its tip lies the island of Corregidor, the fortress guarding the entrance to the bay, where MacArthur’s headquarters was housed in the Malinta Tunnel. At its base the peninsula is about 30 kilometres wide. It is covered by jungle, cut by deep ravines and streams, and dominated by two extinct volcanoes: Natib in the north, rising to almost 1,300 metres, and the Mariveles massif in the south. Only two roads were passable for motor vehicles: one running along the east and west coasts, and a lateral road from Pilar to Bagac crossing the saddle between the two massifs. Such terrain favoured the defence, and the dense vegetation hid positions from the air, which the Japanese controlled completely.

The defence of Bataan had for years been written into the American plan WPO-3. It provided for the forces on Luzon to withdraw into the peninsula and hold out there until a relieving fleet arrived, for roughly six months. Only after the Japanese landing in Lingayen Gulf did MacArthur, who had earlier wanted to defend the whole of the Philippines, return to this plan on 23 December. The withdrawal succeeded. Instead of cutting the road to the peninsula, the Japanese made for the capital and took Manila on 2 January. On the night of 5–6 January the last divisions crossed the bridge over the Culo River at Layac, which was blown behind them, and on 6 January the covering force fought the advancing Japanese there all day before withdrawing into the peninsula that night.

The Abucay–Mauban line

The first line, designated the main battle position, ran for about 32 kilometres from Mabatang on Manila Bay, north of the small town of Abucay, across the slopes of Natib to Mauban on the South China Sea. The eastern sector was held by Brigadier General George Parker’s II Corps, about 25,000 men: four divisions of the Philippine Army – the 11th, 21st, 41st and 51st – and the 57th Infantry Regiment of the Philippine Scouts, Filipinos serving in the regular US Army. The western sector was defended by Major General Jonathan Wainwright’s I Corps, about 22,500 men in three Filipino divisions and the 26th Cavalry Regiment of the Philippine Scouts. A second line was being prepared a dozen or so kilometres to the rear along the Pilar–Bagac road, and in reserve stood the Philippine Division, the only American division in the islands, and a tank battalion. At the southern tip of the peninsula Brigadier General Allen McBride commanded the Service Command Area, where airmen without aircraft, sailors without ships, Filipino constabulary and marines had been gathered.

The line had a fundamental flaw. The two corps were separated by the Natib massif, wild and steep, which the command believed to be impassable. In reality it was impossible to maintain contact between the corps or mutual support across it. The line was chosen because time had to be gained to prepare the second one and as much ground as possible had to be held.

Hunger from the first day

The most dangerous problem was the lack of food. Plan WPO-3 had envisaged stockpiling supplies on Bataan for 43,000 men for six months, but MacArthur, while preparing to defend the beaches, had distributed them to units on the plain. In the few days of the withdrawal as much as possible was moved into the peninsula. Huge quantities of rice were left behind in warehouses on the plain; according to the American official history, about 4,500 tons were lost at the government depot at Cabanatuan alone, because Commonwealth regulations forbade moving rice between provinces and permission came too late. An inventory of 3 January showed that there was food on Bataan for thirty days for a hundred thousand people, and rice for only twenty days. On 5 January MacArthur approved putting the soldiers and civilians on Bataan and Corregidor on half rations, about 2,000 calories a day, for men who were digging trenches and fighting in tropical heat for as much as twenty hours a day.

The second scourge came from the jungle. Bataan was one of the worst areas for malaria in the Philippines, and stocks of quinine were dwindling fast, as were mosquito nets, which had been in short supply from the start. Dysentery and malnutrition were soon joined by vitamin-deficiency diseases. In January the soldiers were still eating from the stocks brought in during the withdrawal, but by February they had begun to slaughter the cavalry’s horses and mules.

The first attack

On the Japanese side command of the operation was taken by Lieutenant General Akira Nara, commander of the 65th Brigade, which had come from Taiwan and landed in Lingayen Gulf on 1 January. Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma was convinced that he faced only about 25,000 demoralised soldiers and planned a pursuit rather than an assault. His best unit, the 48th Division, and most of his aircraft were getting ready to leave for Java. For the attack Nara was given his own brigade, some 6,500 conscripts with a month’s training, reinforced by the experienced 9th Infantry Regiment of the 16th Division, tanks and heavy artillery.

At 3 p.m. on 9 January the Japanese artillery opened fire on II Corps’ positions and the infantry moved forward along the east coast. The American artillery replied so heavily that Nara quickly realised he was not chasing broken remnants. The next day, 10 January, MacArthur visited Bataan for the first and only time. He crossed from Corregidor to Mariveles in a motor torpedo boat and toured the headquarters of Parker and Wainwright, and when the latter offered to show him the 155 mm guns, he replied: “I don’t want to see them. I want to hear them.” That same day Japanese aircraft dropped over the defenders’ lines a letter from Homma to MacArthur. The Japanese commander wrote that the defenders were doomed, that they had already cut their rations by half and that their honour had been saved, and he called on them to surrender. The answer was heavier artillery fire.

The heaviest fighting was on the right flank, where the 57th Infantry Regiment was defending the coast road. On the night of 11–12 January Japanese troops of the 141st Infantry Regiment attacked its positions on the Calaguiman River in waves, straight into the barbed wire and machine-gun fire. On 12 January Lieutenant Alexander Nininger, a West Point graduate of the previous year, killed several Japanese in hand-to-hand fighting while retaking lost trenches, and was himself killed. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, one of the first Americans to receive it in this war. At Abucay the Scouts held the line, and by 15 January the attack along the coast no longer threatened the eastern flank.

Across the slopes of Natib

The Japanese, however, found a weak spot where it was least expected. Colonel Susumu Takechi’s 9th Infantry Regiment made its way through the jungle on the slopes of Natib and struck the left flank of II Corps, held by the Filipino 51st Division, which had been weakened by its long withdrawal from southern Luzon. On 16 January the division’s counter-attack collapsed and it left its positions in disorder. On 15 January MacArthur had ordered a message to be read to the troops. “Help is on the way from the United States,” it began; thousands of troops and hundreds of aircraft were being dispatched, they had to hold out until the reinforcements arrived, and no further retreat was possible. Washington was not sending any such reinforcements and could not have sent them. The soldiers learned this only weeks later, and the words about help being on its way later became a bitter catchphrase among the defenders.

On 17 January MacArthur reported to Washington that the food situation was becoming serious. The reserve – the American 31st Infantry Regiment and the 45th Infantry Regiment of the Philippine Scouts – was sent to the left flank of II Corps, but their counter-attacks, delivered piecemeal, in the jungle and without good communications, recovered only part of the ground. Meanwhile Takechi’s troops pressed on to the south-east, into the rear of the line, and on 21 January appeared in the valley of the Abo-Abo River near Guitol.

In the west the attack went much the same way. On 13 January Homma judged that the attack on II Corps was not going well and reinforced the west coast. He formed the Kimura Detachment, some 5,000 men under Major General Naoki Kimura, and placed it directly under army headquarters. A battalion of the 20th Infantry Regiment slipped through the mountainous, supposedly impassable country where the line met the Natib massif and outflanked I Corps. On 21 January the Japanese set up a roadblock on the west road behind the Mauban line, cutting Wainwright’s main force off from its supplies. For several days counter-attacks failed to break it.

Withdrawal to the Orion–Bagac line

On 22 January General Richard Sutherland, MacArthur’s chief of staff, toured Bataan and advised withdrawal. MacArthur issued the order the same evening. Over three successive nights, from 23 to 26 January, both corps fell back to the second line along the Pilar–Bagac road, from Orion on Manila Bay to Bagac on the South China Sea. The artillery and services went first, then the infantry, and the covering force last. According to eyewitnesses, the men of the 31st Infantry Regiment who left their trenches in the early hours of 25 January looked like “walking dead”, unshaven, in tattered uniforms and with vacant stares. Wainwright’s men from the cut-off part of the front had to abandon their artillery and make their way out along the beaches. By the morning of 26 January the troops had occupied the new line, shorter and better prepared than the first. MacArthur declared that he would not leave it: with its occupation, he said, all possibility of manoeuvre was at an end, and he intended to fight to complete destruction.

The Battle of the Points

Meanwhile the Japanese tried to outflank the defenders from the sea. On the night of 22–23 January, on Kimura’s orders, the 2nd Battalion of the 20th Infantry Regiment set off in barges along the west coast to land behind the lines of I Corps and cut the west road. In the darkness and under fire from a motor torpedo boat the battalion became scattered. About 300 men landed on Longoskawayan and Lapay Points, only a few kilometres from Mariveles, and about 600 on Quinauan Point, halfway to Bagac. The two groups, unaware of each other, were stuck on wooded cliffs.

They were first opposed by men who had never been infantry: the sailors of Commander Francis Bridget’s naval battalion in uniforms dyed with coffee, airmen, military police and Filipino constabulary. They shot and moved clumsily, but they did not let the Japanese break out of the points. When they could not manage, they were supported by the 12-inch mortars of Battery Geary on Corregidor, and finally by a battalion of the 57th Infantry of the Philippine Scouts, which cleared Longoskawayan by 29 January. On Quinauan the fighting lasted until 8 February, and the attempts to reinforce the landing, made on 26 and 27 January and in early February, merely gave the Japanese further isolated footholds on Anyasan and Silaiim Points. The fighting, known as the Battle of the Points, ended on 13 February. In it Kimura lost two battalions, of which only a few dozen men were evacuated. Homma spoke of a battalion that had “vanished without trace”.

On land, the Japanese, not knowing exactly where the new line ran, broke into it at the junction between divisions of I Corps, where pockets formed on 28 and 29 January. Eliminating them dragged on until mid-February.

Place in the war

The January fighting proved that Bataan would not fall within a few days, as Homma had assumed. By 1 March the 14th Army had lost almost 7,000 men killed and wounded, and another 10,000–12,000 were sick with malaria, dysentery and beriberi. On 8 February Homma halted the attack, pulled his troops back and asked Tokyo for reinforcements. Emperor Hirohito, worried by the drawn-out campaign, had already pressed the Chief of the General Staff, Hajime Sugiyama, twice in January. For Americans, who in the first weeks of the war had heard of nothing but defeats, from Pearl Harbor to Wake and Malaya, the defence of Bataan was the first good news. The press made MacArthur a national hero. Roosevelt made the defenders no illusory promises: in his State of the Union address of 6 January he admitted that it was “bitter” not to be able to land “a million men from a thousand ships” in the Philippines, and assured them only that the brave Filipino people would be freed from Japanese imperialism.

The victory, however, was only a postponement. Supply convoys got no further than Australia, and the blockade was broken only by individual ships and submarines. Rations were cut further, in March to roughly a thousand calories. On 11 March, on Roosevelt’s orders, MacArthur left Corregidor for Australia. In March Homma received reinforcements, and on 3 April he attacked the starving and sick defenders. On 9 April 1942 General Edward King surrendered on Bataan. Some 76,000 men went into captivity, the largest surrender in the history of the US Army, and thousands of prisoners died on the Death March to Camp O’Donnell. Corregidor held out until 6 May. The siege of Bataan, though it ended in defeat, delayed the conquest of the Philippines by roughly four months and tied down the 14th Army, but it did not halt the Japanese offensive in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, to which Tokyo had committed its best forces.