Bad times at Bataan

DelanceyPlace.com has a selection from The Most Dangerous Man in America by Mark Perry:

In the very first months of America's involvement in World War Two, the small combined US and Philippine military force defending the Philippines was trapped on the peninsula of Bataan before being overwhelmed by the Japanese and surrendering. This led to the infamous Bataan Death March by US and Philippine prisoners. Eleven thousand Americans entered Japanese captivity in the Philippines, the largest number of American soldiers to be taken prisoner since the Civil War.
At 0700 on the morning of 9 April 1942, General Jonathan Wainwright directed his staff to broadcast on Radio Freedom the news of Bataan's surrender. 'Bataan has fallen,' the announcer said. 'The Philippine-American troops on this war-ravaged and bloodstained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody but unbowed, they have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the enemy.' They continued to hold out, but it would only do so for another thirty days, as Japanese commander Masaharu Homma launched an all-out attack, with thousands of his soldiers storming the beaches.
After a courageous defense, waged for another three weeks, Wainwright surrendered the Corregidor garrison on 6 May. He met directly with Homma, seated opposite him on the porch of a home in southern Bataan, where a Japanese escort had deposited him. Gaunt (he was over six feet tall but weighed only 160 pounds) and wearing simple khaki, Wainwright refused to surrender all American forces on the other islands of the Philippines, despite Homma's insistence. But, two days later, his own command now surrounded, Wainwright relented. In addition to agreeing to an 'unconditional surrender', Wainwright was forced to announce its terms by radio from Manila. While humiliated, Wainwright believed that had he not followed the Japanese instructions, the eleven thousand-plus men who were still on  the island would have been executed.
The sheer tenacity of the American defense was certainly a part of the reason why, within twenty-four hours of Bataan's surrender the month before, a brutal retribution was carried out against the surviving Americans and their Filipino allies.
The Bataan Death March, one of the most shameful episodes in Japanese history, began on the afternoon of 12 April, as 75,000 American and Filipino soldiers (the exact numbers are uncertain) were forcibly walked from Bataan northward to Balanga (a distance of twenty-five miles) and then north again to San Fernando, another thirty-one miles. The march started with the summary execution of between 350 and 400 Filipinos, some dispatched by sword-wielding Japanese officers. In the days ahead, those who collapsed during the march were executed, and those who were overcome by exhaustion were driven over by Japanese trucks. Bayoneting of weak soldiers was common; executions by a single bullet to the back of the skull were an hourly occurrence. The Americans and Filipinos were forced to drink stagnant water from puddles or roadside buffalo wallows. Of the seventy-eight thousand who made the march, between seven thousand and ten thousand Filipinos died or were murdered, as were between five hundred and seven hundred Americans.
One of those who marched was Harold K. Johnson, who would later become Army chief of staff. 'I saw my first Jap atrocity that first morning,' he later remembered. 'Not far off, in a field, a Filipino was on his knees pleading with a Jap officer. You could see the man's arms in the air, imploring the soldiers to spare his life. The Jap laughed and shot him through the chest.' The Americans were forbidden to get out of line to find water, so some tried to sneak away. If caught, they were killed. Those who couldn't walk were put on trucks in a journey to an assembly point where they were thrown by the side of the road. A young American, Major Henry Lee, survived the march, but not the war. He was interred at Babanacyuan Prison Camp, where, for two years, he speared fish for food, adding frogs from nearby swamps to his meals. He was eventually transferred to Cabanatuan Camp, and then, in October of 1944, he was moved to Bilibad Prison in Manila, a fetid, dank, and overcrowded dungeon. In December of 1944, Lee and more than fifteen hundred other Americans were packed into the Oryoku Maru, a 'hell ship' bound for Formosa. Lee was killed when the ship was sunk by American bombers in Formosa Harbor on 9 January 1945.

Rico says that Homma (photo) was tried as a war criminal and executed by firing squad by Filipino and American forces on 3 April 1946 outside Manila....