Bataan is a peninsula on the north of the mouth of Manila Bay in the Philippines. An army that controls this peninsula controls access to the bay. The peninsula is mountainous and jungle-clad, with only two decent roads in 1941, making it ideal for defense. As a result, prewar contingency plans called for the U.S. forces in the Philippines to retreat into Bataan in the event of war and prepare to withstand a siege.
MacArthur convinced the War Department that his Philippine troops could repel the enemy at the beach, and he received permission to change the war plan accordingly. When the Japanese destroyed most of MacArthur's air power at Clark Field the first day of the war, MacArthur was forced to fall back on the original plan and retreat into Bataan. However, the changing plans meant that inadequate food, ammunition, and other supplies were stockpiled in the peninsula, so that the America and Filipino troops defending Bataan were starving by the time the Japanese forced them to surrender.
With the Japanese' own logistics on the verge of collapse, the starving Allied prisoners would likely have had a hard time even if the Japanese had treated them correctly. The Japanese did not. The forced march of the Allied prisoners to their prison camps was marked by such brutality that it became known to history as the Bataan Death March. Though this atrocity was not comparable in scope to the rape of Nanking or the slave labor camps on the Bangkok-Moulmein railway construction route, it is probably the Japanese atrocity most familiar to Americans today.
Bataan Campaign.
A skillful holding action by North
Luzon Force was successful in holding the roads into Bataan long
enough for the other Allied
units on Luzon to reach the peninsula and join the defense. This was
due in part to a misapprehension by Homma, the Japanese commander,
that the Allied defense would be centered around Manila. By 9 January
1942 Homma had regrouped and launched an attack against Bataan
defenses. This succeeded in breaking through the main Allied defense
line by 26 January, but at a great cost in Japanese casualties.
Homma called for reinforcements while continuing to
probe the Allied lines. On the night of 22-23 January 1942 the Japanese
landed in battalion strength from barges at points on the southwest
coast of Bataan. Additional reinforcements landed on 26-27 January and
1-2 February, but thereafter American PT boats and improvised
patrol boats ("Mickey Mouse battleships") blocked further reinforcement
by barge, and the Japanese beachheads were eliminated in the Battle of
the Points.
On 3 April 1942 Homma launched a second major offensive against the starved and weakened Allies, which broke the second defense line almost at once and forced the Allied commander on Bataan, King, to surrender on 9 April 1942.
References
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia (c) 2006, 2008 by Kent G. Budge. Index
