BATAAN DEATH MARCH

After Japan conquered the Philippines in WWII, its army inflicted one of the war’s worst atrocities on Allied POWs

- MIGUEL MIRANDA

Four terrible months of combat and privation left the defeated sick with misery. Their commanders lied to them by insisting help would arrive, but it never did. These were the Americans and Filipinos who used to be part of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), and they once boasted airfields crowded with planes, intimidating tank columns, and loyal if poorly trained conscripts who always followed orders. It was an overseas army trained and led by Americans but committed to defending the Philippine Commonwealth. But the USAFFE failed to halt the Japanese invasion of Luzon from 8 December onward.

In a last bid to hold out against the enemy General Douglas MacArthur, long past his prime and emotionally invested in the Philippines, ordered the initiation of War Plan Orange (WPO3), which meant a phased retreat to the Bataan Peninsula that guarded the entrance to Manila Bay. The capital Manila was declared an “open city” to spare its population from siege. Instead, the Japanese 14th Army under Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma routed the Allies in Central Luzon and took Manila with ease. Come the new year the 14th Army concentrated its efforts on Bataan, where around 80,000 Allied troops were now trapped. In its plans to hold out until reinforcements from Australia and Hawaii arrived the Bataan landmass was split into two sectors, each held by a corps-sized formation. General Edward P King was on the ground organising layers of defences that repulsed Japanese attacks on land and sea until March.