Our Trip: March 2017

This year's adventure was planned around this one event.

The fall of Bataan ended all organized opposition by the U.S. Army Forces Far East to the invading Japanese forces on Luzon in the northern Philippines. The island bastion of Corregidor was the remaining obstacle to the 14th Japanese Imperial Army of Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma. The Japanese had to take Corregidor; as long as the island remained in American hands, they would be denied the use of Manila Bay, the finest natural harbor in the Far East.

Within 24 hours from the attack on Pearl Harbor, the defenders on Corregidor got their first taste of aerial bombardment. On March 12, when it was decided that Corregidor was going to fall, under cover of darkness, Gen. MacArthur was evacuated from Corregidor, using four PT boats bound for Mindanao, from where he was eventually flown to Australia.

Despite incessant Japanese aerial, naval and artillery bombardment, from December through April, the garrison on Corregidor, consisting mainly of the 4th Marine Regiment and combined units from the US Navy, the Army and Filipino soldiers, resisted valiantly, inflicting heavy enemy losses in men and aircraft.

The defenders were living on about 30 ounces of food per day. Drinking water was distributed only twice per day, but the constant bombing and shelling often interrupted the distribution of rations. When the bombardment killed the mules in the Cavalry, the men would drag the carcasses down to the mess hall and they would be cooked. The continued lack of proper diet created problems for the Corregidor garrison, as men weakened and lacked reliable night vision. From Cebu, seven private maritime ships under orders from the army, loaded with a supply of food, sailed towards Corregidor. Of the seven ships, only one reached the island, the MV Princessa commanded by 3rd Lieutenant Zosimo Cruz (USAFFE).

Japanese bombing and shelling continued with unrelenting ferocity. Japanese aircraft flew 614 missions, dropping 1,701 bombs totaling some 365 tons of explosive. It was estimated that on May 4 alone, more than 16,000 shells hit Corregidor.

The final blow to the defenders came at about 09:30, on May 5, 1942, when three Japanese tanks landed and went into action. The men around Denver Battery withdrew to the ruins of a concrete trench a few yards away from the entrance to Malinta tunnel, just as Japanese artillery delivered a heavy barrage. Particularly fearful of the dire consequences should the Japanese capture the tunnel, where 1,000 helpless wounded men lay, and realizing that the defenses outside Malinta tunnel could not hold out much longer, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainright expected further Japanese landings that night. He also decided to sacrifice one more day of freedom in exchange for several thousand lives.

In a radio message to President Franklin Roosevelt, Wainwright said, "There is a limit of human endurance, and that point has long been passed." Howard burned the 4th Regiment's and national colors to prevent their capture by the enemy. Wainwright finally surrendered the Corregidor garrison at about 1:30 p.m. on May 6, 1942, with two officers sent forward with a white flag to carry his surrender message to the Japanese.

Corregidor's defeat marked the fall of the Philippines and Asia, but Imperial Japan's timetable for the conquest of Australia and the rest of the Pacific was severely upset. Its advance was ultimately checked at the battle for New Guinea, and at Guadalcanal, the turning point in the Pacific War.

The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war from Saisaih Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, where the prisoners were loaded onto trains. The total distance marched depended where the soldiers began, between 60 to 70 miles.

During the march, prisoners received little food or water, and many died. Prisoners were subjected to severe physical abuse, including being beaten and tortured. On the march, the “sun treatment” was a common form of torture. Prisoners were forced to sit in sweltering direct sunlight, without helmets or other head covering. Anyone who asked for water was shot dead. Some men were told to strip naked or sit within sight of fresh, cool water. Trucks drove over some of those who fell or succumbed to fatigue, and "cleanup crews" put to death those too weak to continue, though some trucks picked up some of those too fatigued to continue. Some marchers were randomly stabbed by bayonets or beaten. The Death March was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime.[14]

Once the surviving prisoners arrived in Balanga, the overcrowded conditions and poor hygiene caused dysentery and other diseases to spread rapidly. The Japanese did not provide the prisoners with medical care, so U.S. medical personnel tended to the sick and wounded with few or no supplies. Upon arrival at the San Fernando railhead, prisoners were stuffed into sweltering, brutally hot metal box cars for the one-hour trip to Capas, in 110 °F degree heat. At least 100 prisoners were pushed into each of the trains' unventilated boxcars. The trains had no sanitation facilities, and disease continued to take a heavy toll on the prisoners. According to Staff Sargent Alf Larson:

The train consisted of six or seven World War I-era boxcars. …
They packed us in the cars like sardines,

so tight you couldn’t sit down. Then they shut the door.
If you passed out, you couldn’t fall down.

If someone had to go to the toilet, you went right
there where you were. It was close to summer

and the weather was hot and humid,
hotter than Billy Blazes! We were on the train
from early morning to

late afternoon without getting out.
People died in the railroad cars.

Upon arrival at the Capas train station, they were forced to walk the final 9 miles to Camp O'Donnell. Even after arriving at Camp O'Donnell, the survivors of the march continued to die at rates of up to several hundred per day, which amounted to a death toll of as many as 20,000 Filipino and American deaths. Most of the dead were buried in mass graves that the Japanese had dug behind the barbed wire surrounding the compound. Of the estimated 80,000 POWs at the march, only 54,000 made it to Camp O'Donnell.

My great uncle was there and I went to this Memorial March in honor of him.

George (Czecho) D. Vanture - Prisoner of War Record

Held in PW Camp #1 near Cabanatuan, Luzon, Phillipines

George D. Vanture was a Lieutenant Colonel or Lieutenant Commander in the Army during World War II. George was captured by Imperial Japan while serving in the Philippine Islands, and was sent to PW Camp #1 near Cabanatuan, Luzon, Phillipines where 3,213 other American POWs were held. George's capture was first reported to the International Committee of the Red Cross on May 7, 1942, and the last report was made on January 9, 1945. Based on these two reports, George was imprisoned for at least 978 days (2 years and ~9 months), one of the longest durations of captivity recorded. After surviving the attack on the Oryoko Maru, George died in the sinking of the Enoura Maru on January 9, 1945.

The Death Camps

Camp O'Donnell

O’Donnell got its name from a family of early Spanish settlers in the late 1800’s. The first act by the captors, after the commandant’s address, was to shake down every officer and enlisted prisoner. If any possessions remained after the Death March, all prisoners were stripped of their blankets, pencils, pens, lighters, knives, surgical equipment, paper, and tobacco products. Almost everything of value was taken from the prisoners, leaving them with nothing but their canteens and mess kits.

CAMP CABANATUAN

In order to completely segregate Americans from their Filipino comrades, the Japanese began transferring the Americans to the three Cabanatuan prison camps in late May 1942. There were three camps at Cabanatuan numbered 1, 2, and 3.

The Cabanatuan “hospital” was first opened in June 1942 under the command of Col. James Gillespie. At the hospital there were 30 wards (made to hold 40 soldiers each), often holding up to 100 patients. In each ward were upper and lower decks made of bamboo slats. Each patient was allotted a two-by–six-foot space. The seriously ill were kept on the lower deck. Fenced off from the hospital was a quarantined area containing about ten wards, called the dysentery section. Within the dysentery section was a building missed when the wards were numbered. Later, it was called the “zero” ward, due to the fact that a prisoner had “zero” chance of leaving it alive, serving as a place to put seriously ill or dying patients.

The American prisoners had been severely warned upon entering any prison camp that an attempt to escape would result in death by firing squad. Despite the warnings, a handful of escape attempts from Cabanatuan occurred in the early days of incarceration. If the escapees were captured they were usually tortured and shot to death while other POWs were forced to look on. To prevent any more escape attempts, the Japanese captors initiated what were called “Shooting Squads” or “Blood Brothers.” Each POW was assigned to a group of ten. If anyone in that group escaped, the other nine would be shot.

During the first eight months of camp in Cabanatuan, deaths totaled approximately 2,400. Some 30 to 50 skeletons, covered by leathery skin, were buried in common graves each day. The Japanese issued documents certifying that each death was caused by malaria, beriberi, pellagra, diphtheria, in fact, anything but the real cause – starvation and malnutrition. Death hit the youngest men the hardest. Of the men who died during July 1942 at Camp No. 1, 85 percent were under 30. Ten percent of the enlisted men died, compared with only 4 percent of the officers. Due to conditions at Cabanatuan, most of the prisoners welcomed the transport to Japan, hoping for better conditions. Little could they imagine what lay ahead.

Hell Ships

With U.S. forces about to retake the islands in late 1944, the Japanese began moving Jacobs and thousands of other POWs to locations closer to Japan. To do so, Japanese troops herded them by the hundreds into the holds of merchant ships that also carried supplies and weapons.

The prisoners had been so crowded in these other holds that they couldn't even get air to breathe. They went crazy, cut and bit each other through the arms and legs and sucked their blood. In order to keep from being murdered, many had to climb the ladders and were promptly shot by guards. Between twenty and thirty prisoners had died of suffocation or were murdered during the night.

If that was not bad enough, the merchant ship was a target for U.S. planes and submarines, whose crews did not know they were also loaded with American and Allied POWs. In mid-December 1944, they attacked and sank the Oryoku Maru.

Enoura Maru was a Japanese passenger cargo ship used by the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II as a troop transport and prisoner of war (POW) transport ship. On 9 January 1945, while docked at Takao and loaded with Allied prisoners of war including many from the sunken Ōryoku Maru, it was attacked by Allied aircraft resulting in the deaths of approximately 400 Allied POWs

In Death on the Hellships: Prisoners at Sea in the Pacific War, Gregory Michno estimates that more than 126,000 Allied prisoners of war were transported in 156 voyages on 134 Japanese merchant ships. More than 21,000 Americans were killed or injured from "friendly fire" from American submarines or planes as a result of being POWs on what the survivors called "hell ships."

There is beauty surrounding the base, White Plains Missile Site.

There were many activities leading up to the march. One of those was to listen to talks given by some of the survivors. This is Ben Skarden, he is 99 years old, turning 100 on Bastille Day! An incredibly impressive man who after this horrific ordeal, became a professor at Clemson University.

Skardon is an alumnus of Clemson University, which he attended as a cadet from 1935 to 1938 when it was an all-male military school. He returned to Clemson after the war and became an English professor, was named an Alumni Master Teacher in 1977 and taught until his retirement in 1985.

He still is proud of this country of ours and chokes up when he hears the National Anthem.