The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [204]
Bataan’s American and Filipino troops threw back Japanese attacks, including amphibious assaults on the western beaches; however, they continued falling back. Starving and ragged men fought while suffering from malaria and constant gnawing hunger. Food rations diminished to one thousand calories per day. Japanese artillery pounded the men, enemy aircraft bombed and strafed their positions, and to all this Allied soldiers possessed no effective answer. MacArthur kept demanding help from Washington, but after the defeat at Pearl Harbor no help was possible. The US Navy was just holding on around Australia, and the destruction of MacArthur’s air force doomed ships trying to gain access to Bataan, except occasional submarines and PT boats. The defenders fought on until May 8, 1942 when Wainwright surrendered the last of his emaciated command on Corregidor. The Philippines had fallen.
MacArthur missed the surrender because he was in Australia demanding that Wainwright fight on. Escaping by PT boat on February 22, 1942, along with the president of the Philippines, he then went by aircraft to the comforts of Australia. After Wainwright surrendered MacArthur demanded he be court-martialed. President Franklin Roosevelt had appointed MacArthur as the US Army’s commander for the Pacific Theater of War. The starving dying men he left behind would never understand Roosevelt’s decision.[264]
After the surrender of the Filipino and American forces the Japanese subjected the men to the vilest murder and torture. Japanese soldiers thought surrender was dishonorable, and quitting proved you were not a soldier. Few of the more than eighty thousand American and Filipino prisoners of war would return. Over twelve thousand died in the Bataan Death March alone. Meanwhile, from Australia, MacArthur avowed to the press corps, “I shall return . . .”[265]
While the conquest of Bataan and Singapore continued, Japan also pushed a rapid advance through the South Pacific. Sea control was critical, thus, a combined Allied force of American, British, Dutch, and Australian (ABDA) ships under Admiral Doorman (Dutch navy) attacked the Japanese at the Battle of the Java Sea on February 27, 1942. The small fleet was making a last gasp attempt to slow the Japanese juggernaut. Due to poor coordination among the Allied ships, and excellent tactical control by the Japanese commanders, a smaller Japanese force annihilated the ABDA force.[266] ABDA lost 5 cruisers, 5 destroyers, and 2,300 sailors. The disaster is right up there with Pearl Harbor. Japan lost four loaded transports. By May 1942, the Japanese fleet of eleven battleships, ten aircraft carriers, eighteen heavy cruisers, and twenty-eight light cruisers plus numerous destroyers had campaigned from Pearl Harbor to the Indian Ocean without the loss of a single major ship. Along the way they destroyed or damaged every battleship in the US Pacific fleet, damaged the US Far East squadron at the Philippians, annihilated the ABDA naval force, chased the Royal Navy from the southern seas, and forced the Australian navy back to its home waters. Total victory sailed with Japan. The only forces left in the Pacific that threatened them were the three US aircraft carriers that Japan missed at Pearl Harbor.
Admiral Yamamoto, Japan’s chief of naval operations, was lobbying for an effort in the Central Pacific to lure the US carrier fleet out to its destruction in a decisive action. He knew the United States would out produce Japan in a long war so he thought it a necessity to destroy