Bataan Death March (compressed).mov

Invasion of the Philippine Islands
7 Dec 1941 - 5 May 1942

On Bataan, the American soldiers felt they were abandoned by their own government to fight a war on their own. "We are the battling bastards of Bataan," they mocked, "no papa, no mama, no Uncle Sam." Nevertheless, they fought valiantly. "They asked no quarter and they gave none.... They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stank. And I loved them", noted MacArthur.

US and Filipino troops fought on fiercely, forcing Homma to pause his offensive on 8 Feb 1942 and request for additional reinforcements, which was approved two days later, and troops of the Japanese 4th Division from Shanghai, China slowly trickled in. The fresh troops, helped the dwindling US-Filipino morale, began to have an effect. From mid-Mar, Japanese artillery and aircraft began to bombard Corregidor daily. On 9 Apr, General Edward King of the US II Corps surrendered all troops on the Bataan Peninsula.
Atrocities started even before all of the Philippine Islands were taken. United States Marine officer Lieutenant Michael Dobervich, a prisoner of war in the Philippine Islands, remembered his treatment.

We drove along through the very congested road (Dobervich was forced to drive a captured US truck). We saw the beginning of the looting, bayoneting, face slapping.... It was hard to take. The stragglers were either bayoneted or shot.... Americans from general to private had to salute every and any Jap or suffer a blow with the rifle or a slap.... I arrived at camp on 11 April 1942.... [We had to] stand for sixteen hours in the terrific heat.... I saw several soldiers come back from a working party that were dead.... I had ten of my men die in my presence coming back from working parties, too sick and beyond recovery.... At this particular burial they piled about thirty bodies into one large pit.... Before the covering started, one of the dead bodies began to move; it was a feeble effort... to raise its head. The Jap guard ordered this Marine of mine to strike the head with a shovel. He hesitated and that enraged the guard so that the bayonet was thrust at him, so he was forced to obey. Lieutenant Dobervich would put it, "words cannot describe the conditions (of the camp)". Dobervich's experience was part of the Bataan Death March, a sixty mile march forced upon captured Filipino and American soldiers. 2,330 Americans and somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 Filipinos died during the march up the peninsula, and thousands more in the camps such as the one Dobervich was kept in.

1030 hours on 6 May, Wainwright surrendered at Corregidor. The last US troops in the Philippine Islands surrendered on Mindanao on 12 May, and organized resistance in the islands would soon wane.
http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=46
Contributor: C. Peter Chen

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