Recognizing the Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor
Floor Speech
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Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, we must never forget the ``first to fire'' troops from the United States and the Philippines who bravely defended Bataan, Corregidor, and other critical locations throughout the Pacific theater in the early months of World War II before enduring some of the most harrowing prisoners of war experiences in history.
Their combat experiences began hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on December 7, 1941. Imperial Japanese forces launched coordinated attacks throughout Asia, striking Malaya, Thailand, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the American Territories of Guam, Midway, Wake Island, Howland Island, and the Commonwealth of the Philippines.
By December 22, 1941, the American Territories of Guam and Wake Island were surrendered to Imperial Japan. The Commonwealth of the Philippines was under a full-scale invasion.
By March 10, 1942, the U.S. Asiatic Fleet was destroyed, and U.S. Army Forces on Java in the Dutch East Indies were surrendered, and General Douglas MacArthur was evacuated from Corregidor to Australia.
By June 9, 1942, all of the Philippines was surrendered. The Japanese occupied the Alaskan islands of Kiska and Attu. Japanese forces threw three captured American aviators from the Battle of Midway into the sea.
Only in the Philippine Islands did U.S. Armed Forces under the command of the United States Army Forces Far East--USAFFE--wage a prolonged, 6-month resistance to Imperial Japan's invasion in contrast to other Allied encounters with Japan throughout Southeast Asia.
In the Philippines, the ``first to fire'' at the Japanese invaders on December 8, 1941, were the New Mexico National Guardsmen from the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery (AA) regiments, who were stationed at Fort Stotsenburg north of Manila with the mission of protecting Clark Field.
With the activation of War Plan Orange (WPO-3) on December 24, 1941, USAFFE forces on the island of Luzon in the Philippines withdrew into the Bataan Peninsula to defend Manila Bay and await for reinforcements, which were never to come.
The withdrawal was covered by 26th Cavalry Regiment (Philippine Scouts) and the Provisional Tank Group commanded by Brigadier General James R. N. Weaver that was composed of the 192nd GHQ Light Tank Battalion made up of Company A from Janesville, WI, Company B from Maywood, IL, Company C from Port Clinton, OH, and Company D from Harrodsburg, KY, and the GHQ 194th Light Tank Battalion made up of Company A from Brainerd, MN, Company B from Saint Joseph, MO, and Company C from Salinas, CA, and the 17th Ordnance Company (Armored).
On January 16, 1942, when Troop G of the 26th Cavalry encountered Japanese forces at an escape route to Bataan, Lieutenant Edwin P. Ramsey ordered the last cavalry charge in American history.
For the next 4 months, an estimated 12,000 American troops, 76,000 Filipino troops, and 20,000 Filipino civilians endured siege conditions marked by hunger, disease, and confusion with dwindling and antiquated war materiel.
The Japan's successful command of the air and sea in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific combined with Washington and London's ``Europe First'' strategy foreclosed sending reinforcements and supplies to the besieged islands in the Pacific.
Despite the combat prowess, dedication, and pure heroism of the American and Filipino troops on Bataan, Commanding General Edward B. King understood his seriously degraded force could not continue. He surrendered the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942.
With surrender, thousands of troops and civilians were assembled at the Port of Mariveles at the tip of Bataan for a 65-mile merciless march in the tropical sun up the peninsula to a train station at San Fernando where they were packed standing into small unventilated boxcars for the 24 miles to Capas. From there, the survivors were forced to march 6 miles to Camp O'Donnell, a makeshift POW camp with only one source of water.
This forced trek came to be known as the Bataan Death March as it was marked by the Japanese capturers' conscious cruelty of withholding food, water, and medicine, for looting and murder, and for inflicting capricious abuse and torture upon defenseless prisoners.
For the next month, the Japanese under the command of General Masaharu Homma unleashed a continual air and artillery assault on the fortress islands of Corregidor (Ft. Mills), Ft. Frank, Ft. Hughes, and Ft. Drum in Manila Bay.
After Japanese forces breached beach defenses on Corregidor, Commanding General Jonathan Wainwright surrendered Corregidor and its associated islands on May 6, 1942.
General Homma refused to accept the surrender and kept the men and women held on the islands in Manila Bay as hostages until he received assurance on June 9, 1942, that all the USAFFE troops throughout the Philippines had surrendered.
On June 7, 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army occupied the Aleutian Island of Attu, capturing the population of 42 Unangax (Aleut) and two American citizens, one of whom was executed and the other taken to Japan with the Alaska Natives as prisoners of war.
Included in the surrenders in the Philippines were female nurses of U.S. Army, Navy, Philippine Army, and civilian volunteers who became the first large group of American women in combat and, alongside the five Navy nurses surrendered on Guam in December 1941, comprised the first group of American military women taken captive and imprisoned by an enemy.
Between January of 1942 and December of 1944, thousands of prisoners of war from the United States who had survived the surrenders throughout the Pacific were shipped in unmarked transports, known as ``hellships'' for forced labor, often with private companies, throughout the Japanese Empire.
By the war's end, more than 12,000 Americans had died in squalid POW camps, in the fetid holds of the ``hellships,'' or in forced labor camps owned by Japanese companies where they were denied food, water, sanitation, clothing, and medical care. As a result, the death rate for American POWs of Japan was 40 percent. Less than half of the men of New Mexico Coast Artillery and the members of the 192nd and 194th Provisional Tank Battalions returned home after the war.
Surviving as a POW of Japan and returning home was the beginning of new battles: finding acceptance in society and living with serious mental and physical ailments that the Veterans Administration was unprepared to address, resulting in death rates that were more than twice those of the comparably aged White male population of the time.
The veterans of the early defensive battles in the Pacific represented all States, Tribes, and Territories of the United States, a diversity of ethnicities and religions embodying the American spirit of perseverance, faith, and optimism.
President Ronald Reagan first proclaimed National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day in 1988, which was established to coincide with April 9, the anniversary of the surrender of Bataan and the start of the Bataan Death March.
The U.S. Navy has honored the service and heroism of the veterans of early battles in the Pacific by naming several ships after the 1942 fighting in the Philippines and other places in the Pacific, including one still in service, the USS Bataan (LHD-5), homeported in Norfolk, VA; as well as the now decommissioned USS Corregidor (CVE-58); USS Antrim (FFG-20); USS Bangust (DE-739), USS Baron (DE-739), USS Elrod (FFG-55), and USS Rooks (DD-804).
It is time to recognize the Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor: ordinary men and women who found uncommon courage in extraordinary circumstances to fight the impossible and endure the unimaginable for freedom from tyranny and oppression.
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