April 9, 1942: The Battle of Bataan Ends

From December 7, 1941 through the spring of 1942 the armed forces of Japan enjoyed overwhelming success in not only locking up control over much of Southeast Asia and the Central and Southwest Pacific, but also defeating Allied military forces at nearly every turn. That said, this did not mean that, at times, these victories were not hard earned. To that end, one need look no further then the brutal three month Battle of Bataan fought by the Japanese invaders of the Phillipines against Filipino and American soldiers representing the final large scale organized resistance in the sprawling Phillipine island chain that Japan needed to take in order to secure citical supply lines from Southeast Asia.

Having effectively destroyed US airpower in the region early in December 1941, Japanese ground forces invaded the Phillipines in the days and weeks following the December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor; with the large scale landing of the Japanese 14th Army under Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma beginning just before Christmas. US and Filipino forces, led by General Douglas MacArthur, were unable to put up an effective defense. As such, MacArthur ordered up a withdrawal to Corregidor Island and the Bataan peninsula, with the latter projecting into Manila Bay, (where the former was located) just outside the capital city of Manila on the island of Luzon.

By early in January 1942 the retreat to Bataan and Corregidor had been completed, and the Allied forces dug in for a last stand. Homma's men would spend the next three months taking Bataan, which fell on April 9, 1942. Corregidor would finally be subjugated one month later.  With the fall of Bataan, Japanes forces took over 60,000 emaciated Filipino and 15,000 US prisoners of war, whom they would subject to the merciless 80 mile Bataan Death March that would see thousands die in one of the great war crimes against US and Allied forces during the war in the Pacific. This was on top of the approximately 30,000 dead and wounded US and Filipino forces suffered during the three month battle for Bataan (against Japanese casualties of roughly 19,000 men). Bataan and Corregidor would not be liberated from Japanese rule until February of 1945.