16 February 1945 A.D. BATAAN, PHILIPPINES: Recaptured by GEN MacArthur and 8th Army
16 February 1945 A.D. BATAAN, PHILIPPINES: Recaptured by GEN MacArthur and 8th
Army
Editors.
“Bataan recaptured.” History.com. N.d.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bataan-recaptured. Accessed 14 Feb 2015.
Bataan
recaptured
On this day, the Bataan
Peninsula in the Philippines is occupied by American troops, almost three years
after the devastating and infamous Bataan Death March.
On April 3, 1942, the Japanese
infantry staged a major offensive against Allied troops in Bataan, the
peninsula guarding Manila Bay of the Philippine Islands. The invasion of the
Japanese 14th Army, led by Gen. Masaharu Homma, had already forced Gen. Douglas
MacArthur's troops from Manila, the
Philippine capital, into Bataan. By March, after MacArthur had left for
Australia on President Roosevelt's orders and was replaced by Maj. Gen. Edward
P. King Jr., the American Luzon Force and its Filipino allies were half-starved
and suffering from malnutrition, malaria, beriberi, dysentery, and hookworm.
Homma, helped by
reinforcements and an increase in artillery and aircraft activity, took
advantage of the U.S. and Filipinos' weakened condition to launch another major
offensive, which resulted in Admiral King's surrender on April 9. The largest
contingent of U.S. soldiers ever to surrender was taken captive by the
Japanese. The prisoners, both Filipino and American, were at once led 55 miles
from Mariveles, on the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula, to San Fernando.
The torturous journey became known as the "Bataan Death March." At
least 600 Americans and 5,000 Filipinos died because of the extreme brutality
of their captors, who starved, beat, kicked, and bayoneted those too weak to
walk. Survivors were taken by rail from San Fernando to prisoner of war camps,
where another 16,000 Filipinos and at least 1,000 Americans died from disease,
mistreatment, and starvation.
America avenged its defeat in
the Philippines generally, and Bataan specifically, with the invasion of Leyte
Island in October 1944. General MacArthur, who in 1942 had famously promised to
return to the Philippines, made good on his word. With the help of the U.S.
Navy, which succeeded in destroying the Japanese fleet and left Japanese
garrisons on the Philippine Islands without reinforcements, the Army defeated
adamantine Japanese resistance. In January 1945, MacArthur was given control of
all American land forces in the Pacific. On January 9, 1945, U.S. forces sealed
off the Bataan Peninsula in the north; on February 16, the 8th Army occupied
the southern tip of Bataan, as MacArthur drew closer to Manila and the complete
recapture of the Philippines.
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