Having fought gallantly for four months, weak, starving, sick, exposed to the burning heat of the Philippines, roughly 60,000 Filipino troops and 11,000 – 15,000 men from the United States surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942 on the peninsula of Bataan. A fate that would claim 5,000-10,000 Filipino soldiers and about 650 American lives along the march. The numbers vary due to the inability to get an accurate count of how many actually were captured at the largest surrender of American forces since the Civil War, coupled with those soldiers who were able to escape. While the numbers might differ, the manner in which the brutal slaughter of Prisoners of War occurred is documented and remembered on April 9, 1942 as the worst, most egregious, displays of inhumanity in the Pacific Theater during WWII.
Bataan Park, Bremerton WA
Araw ng Kagitingan, Day of Valor, is currently celebrated with prayers and laying of wreaths at statues and plaques across America and in the Philippines commentating the thousands of souls lost to a hostile enemy. Manila was first attacked on December 8th 1941, with the international date line that was December 7th, 1941, in U.S. time, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor. Outnumbered, with ill preparation by General McArthur, the country of the Philippines was the last to surrender to the Japanese in Asia with the fall of Corregidor on May 6, 1942. [Read more…] about The Bataan Death March
In the fall of 1941, a young U.S. Navy Ensign, Richard McNees, had time on his hands while he waited at the San Diego Naval Base to be shipped to Hawaii for duty. Originally from Salem, Oregon, then Washington State, Dick had just completed his training at the navy’s boot camp in Great Lakes, situated in northern Chicago. Restless, he spent his three weeks back on the West Coast reading navy regulations on how to handle top secret information. Boredom was directing his future.
Being a Sunday, at 7:00 a.m. the morning of December 7, 1941, most of the sailors were still in bed. Dick and three others were in the mess hall enjoying their breakfast as the duty officers were returning from their scouting missions in their PBY’s. They had canvased the southern portion of the island and were back to give their reports. The first two pilots sauntered in, relaxed, it had been a beautiful sunrise with the ghost of the full moon suspended over the Pali Mountains. But then the third scout arrived breathless. Ensign Bill Tanner, commander of a PBY, had patrolled the shore to the north of Pearl Harbor and spotted a submerged submarine. He dropped a depth charge which brought the sub to the surface, and radioed in his findings. (Later it would be discovered that the USS Ward, patrolling nearby, received the transmission and sunk the Japanese Ko-hyoteki class two-man midget submarine as it was attempting to enter Pearl Harbor.)
As a fighter pilot, Dick led formations in several battles. He survived the battles of Midway, Tinian, Le Shima, (now Lejima), Iwo Jima, where his brother was going ashore as a navy seal, and Okinawa, to mention a few. His career spanned 35 years and he flew over 40 different types of planes.