JAPAN TAKES THE PHILIPPINES: ATTACKS, FIGHTING, MACARTHUR, CORREGIDOR

WORLD WAR II AND THE PHILIPPINES

Bombing of Cavite Navy Yard

The Philippines were suddenly thrust into war on December 8, 1941 (December 7, U.S. time), when Japan attacked without warning. The defending Philippine and United States troops were under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, who had been recalled to active duty in the United States Army earlier in the year and was designated commander of the United States Armed Forces in the Asia-Pacific region. The aircraft of his command were destroyed; the naval forces were ordered to leave; and because of the circumstances in the Pacific region, reinforcement and resupply of his ground forces were impossible. Under the pressure of superior numbers, the defending forces withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula and to the island of Corregidor at the entrance to Manila Bay. Manila was declared an open city to prevent its destruction. [Source: Library of Congress *]

Japanese troops invaded the islands in multiple locations and launched a pincer movement on Manila. MacArthur's scattered defense forces (approximately 80,000 troops, eighty percent of whom were Filipino). On the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island, MacArthur's forces entrenched themselves and attempted to hold out until reinforcements arrived. In the meantime, they guarded the entrance to Manila Bay and prevented the Japanese from accessing that important harbor. However, no reinforcements showed up. The Japanese occupied Manila on January 2, 1942. On March 11, MacArthur left for Australia after being ordered out by President Roosevelt, and Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright assumed command. [Source: Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed., Columbia University Press]

The Philippine defense continued until the final surrender of United States-Philippine forces on the Bataan Peninsula in April 1942 and on Corregidor in May. Most of the 80,000 prisoners of war captured by the Japanese at Bataan were forced to undertake the infamous "Death March" to a prison camp 105 kilometers to the north. It is estimated that as many as 10,000 men, weakened by disease and malnutrition and treated harshly by their captors, died before reaching their destination. Quezon and Osmeña had accompanied the troops to Corregidor and later left for the United States, where they set up a government in exile. MacArthur was ordered to Australia, where he started to plan for a return to the Philippines. *

By some estimates over 1.1 million Filipinos were killed during World War II. This is out of a wartime population of 17 million. "Every Filipino family was hurt by the war on a very personal level," one sociologist told the New York Times.

Japanese Attack of the Philippines

Japanese tank crew

Japan launched its surprise attack on the Philippines, on December 8th, 1942. just ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor when Japanese bombed the Philippines.Using planes based in Formosa (Taiwan), the Japanese bombed Clark Field in the first thrust of their invasion. Half of the U.S. Army's Far East aircraft, including scores of B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, were destroyed on the ground as they were at Pearl Harbor. Initial aerial bombardment was followed by landings of ground troops both north and south of Manila. With the American air forces incapacitated, the Japanese were able to invade by land.

According to Lonely Planet: “ When Japan bombed Hawaii's Pearl Harbor in 1941, other forces attacked Clark Field, where General Douglas MacArthur was caught napping, despite many hours' warning. Within two days, Japanese troops landed at Vigan in North Luzon, eventually driving the allied Filipino and US troops to the Bataan Peninsula, opposite newly occupied Manila. From here, soldiers and civilians alike faced not only relentless bombardment but also hunger, disease and disillusionment.” [Source: Lonely Planet]

Describing the first day attack in Manila, Carlson Romulu wrote: "We hadn't long to wait after Pearl Harbor. The next day I stood on the balcony of the Herald building and saw the first enemy planes cut down through the skies like great aerial bolos. Fifty-four Japanese sky monsters, flashing silver in the bright noonday sun, were flying two magnificently formed Vs. Above the scream of the sirens the church bells solemnly announced the noon hour....Unprotected and unprepared, Manila lay under the enemy planes, The capital had stopped moving. Trams were frozen in their tracks. Cars and carromatas, drawn by skinny ponies, were pulled obediently against the kerbs. There was no sign of panic---everybody was watching the planes."

Approximately 7000 miles separated the Philippines from the west coast of the United States. Hawaii was only 2000 miles closer. Supplying or coming to the rescue of the Philippines during a Japanese attack was difficult to say the least, the Filipino defense was something called War Plan Orange which called for U.S. troops to withdraw to Bataan peninsula and Corregidor during an invasion.

The besieged U.S.-Filipino army on Bataan finally crumbled on April 9, 1942. Wainwright continued to fight from Corregidor with a garrison of about 11,000 men, but he was overwhelmed on May 6, 1942. Following his surrender, the Japanese forced all remaining defending units in the islands to surrender by threatening to use the captured Bataan and Corregidor troops as hostages. However, many individual soldiers refused to surrender, and guerrilla resistance organized and coordinated by U.S. and Philippine army officers continued throughout the Japanese occupation.

Japan and the U.S. Before the Attack of the Philippines

For the Japanese, the Philippines was not so much an objective in its own right but a stepping stone for its conquest of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. The Philippines was a US commonwealth at the time war started that was promised independence in 1946.

By the late 1920s and early 1930s, mounting population and economic pressures pushed Japan toward expansion. This drive led to full-scale war with China in 1937. When that conflict stalled by 1941, Japanese leaders adopted a “southern strategy” aimed at securing the raw materials and markets of Southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies. The United States had offered limited aid to China, but after Japan occupied French Indochina in July 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt imposed a trade embargo. Japan now faced a stark choice: restore relations with the United States or seize the resources it needed by force. Negotiations failed, and from Tokyo’s perspective, war appeared increasingly unavoidable. [Source: Dictionary of American History, Gale Group Inc., 2003]

The strategic location of the Philippines heightened tensions. Control of the islands would enable the United States to block shipments of essential raw materials from the East Indies to Japan. To secure those supplies, Japanese planners concluded that the Philippines would also have to be taken—making conflict with the United States even more likely.

The United States had been in the Philippines for than 40 years and had plenty of time to prepare defenses on the strategic islands but didn’t. The threat of a Japanese attack had been present for some time yet the 24,000 Americans under MacArthur’s command had only just began to train the Filipino forces. Steve Wadel, a West Point historian, told Smithsonian magazine, “What happened at Bataan was an underestimation of the enemy. We were training Filipinos for what appeared to be a coming war, and yet they were cut off from our stores of weapons and provisions, which filed warehouses in Manila, Under these conditions, collapse becomes a matter of time.”

Gen. Douglas MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur was in the Philippines at the time of the attack. Incredibly headstrong, egotistical and arrogant, he served in three major wars (World War I, World War II and the Korean War) and had an a major impact and stirred up trouble in each one. As the lord of Japan after World War II he was regarded as “senior to everyone but God.” He is one of the most controversial of all American generals. [Source: Geoffrey C. Ward, National Geographic, March 1992]

MacArthur was born January 26, 1880 in Fort Dodge, Arkansas. His father was a Civil War and Spanish-American War hero and the military governor of the Philippines under U.S. President William McKinley. MacArthur’s mother was so determined that her son be a success that she took out a room at West Point so she could make sure the light was on in her son's room, showing that was studying. At West Point MacArthur graduated number one in his class with a grade of 98.15. Only two cadets were reputed to have had higher scores; one of them was Robert E. Lee.

In 1914, MacArthur took part in a mission in Mexico in which he said he killed seven men. He was denied the Medal of Honor because he could offer "no incontestable proof." In World War I, MacArthur was the chief of staff of the France-based Rainbow Division. On the front lines he refused to wear a helmet or a gas mask but wore a soft cap along with a cigarette holder and a four-foot woolen muffler knitted by his mother. Once, a shell exploded in the courtyard of a chateau where he was dining. Remaining seated, while all his guests hit the floor, MacArthur said, "All of Germany can not make a shell that will kill MacArthur. Sit down again, gentlemen, with me." By the end of World War I, the 38-year-old MacArthur had become a colonel, the head of the Rainbow Division, and earned seven Silver Stars for bravery, four other U.S. medals and 19 honors from Allied nations.

MacArthur had a reputation for fearlessness. He walked among bursting shells and artillery fire in war zones like it was nothing. He told Patton, when he flinched after an explosion, "Don't worry major. You never hear the one that gets you." MacArthur wasn't very popular among both officers and enlisted men because he was regarded as a seef-serving, publicity hound who blamed mistakes on subordinates while grabbing the glory for himself for successes, making sure his face and corncob pipe were in the newspapers under the headlines of important victories. Once MacArthur told a commander to capture a key town "or don't come back alive." When the commander achieved the objective and was heralded in the press for it, MacArthur threatened to reduce his rank and send him home.

MacArthur's Military Career Before and After World War II

MacArthur's mother used her connections to further her son's career. She help get him promoted in 1918 to brigadier general, without the recommendation of the nations top general Pershing, and become the youngest ever commandant of West Point. In 1922, MacArthur married a woman in her 30s who had just rejected Pershing's proposal.

In 1930, MacArthur became the U.S. Army chief of staff under U.S. President Herbert Hoover. At that time he was known for sometimes wearing a kimono while in his office. In 1932, at the height of the Depression, about 25,000 unemployed veterans descended on Washington demanding a "bonus" for past services. Even though the U.S. president had ordered that the veterans be left alone, MacArthur ordered soldiers to use force to disperse the protest and then called a press country in which he bragged he had saved the U.S. from a revolution.

After making quite a name for himself in Japan and Korea after World War II MacArthur returned to the United States in 1951. In 1952, he became head of a large corporation and was the keynote speaker at the Republican national convention. MacArthur was mentioned as a Republican presidential candidate in 1944, 1948 and 1952 but the movements never panned out. MacArthur died in Washington D.C. on April 5, 1964. He was buried in the MacArthur Memorial, at Norfolk, Virginia.

MacArthur in the Philippines

MacArthur, who had recently been named commander of the U.S. forces in the Far East, reacted too late during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in December, 1941. He had enough time to order the B-17 bombers and P-40 fighters at Clark and Iba airfields into the air before Japanese planes arrived but failed to do so. On this issue MacArthur was quick to pass blame onto his subordinates. MacArthur believed that Japanese near-sightedness kept them from being good pilots, which is one reason why he didn't take precautions to move his planes from the Philippines before the Japanese attacks. After the attack he believed the Japanese planes were flown by white mercenaries. MacArthur was criticized for failing to strengthen his troops and for denying permission for U.S. bombers to raid Japanese bases in Formosa in the hours after Pearl Harbor. As senior commanding officer, he was responsible for the debacle in the Philippines. MacArthur escaped official reprimand because of friends in high places.

In 1922, when he was 42, MacArthur was stationed in the Philippines as commander of the Manila district. He believed he received the post from General Pershing because MacArthur was having an affair with Pershing's former mistress. When MacArthur returned to Washington he brought with him a Filipina mistress, nicknamed "Dimples," whom he installed at a Washington Hotel. She soon grew tired of her isolation and began having affairs to amuse herself. She eventually settled in California after MacArthur paid her $15,000 to keep quiet. [Source: Geoffrey C. Ward, National Geographic, March 1992]

In 1935, General Douglas MacArthur came to the Philippines at the invitation of Manual Quezon, the man who became the Philippines’ first president in 1945. In 1937, MacArthur retired from the army but continued his work in the Philippines. Quezon gave him the rank of Field Marshall and helped set him up in a seven-room penthouse at the Manila Hotel. On his trip to the Philippines MacArthur met Jean Fairbanks, whom he later married and had a son with.

In July 1941, under the advise of Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, Roosevelt appointed MacArthur as the commander of the Far east. MacArthur thought that War Plan Orange was rubbish. He drew up plans to put together a 400,000 man army, “set up to dispel any invader.” When the Japanese invasion came the Philippines army was woefully unprepared. Most soldiers had never held a rifle let alone fired one.

Fighting During the Japanese Invasion of the Philippines

The Philippines was the site of some of the most important battles in World War II. Between December 10 and 24, 50,000 Japanese landed on northern and southern Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. About 43,000 of them landed at Lingayen Gulf, northwest of Manila, in southern Luzon and quickly advanced on Manila.

With the American air force out of action, the Japanese army faced little opposition. The Filipino army was quickly overrun and the U.S. army was forced to fall back on War Plan Orange. American soldiers were well positioned on Luzon but MacArthur failed to provide them with adequate supplies and thousands needlessly died of malaria, dysentery and hunger.Within a couple of weeks the Japanese had captured most of Luzon. Fearing encirclement MacArthur abandoned Manila and ordered a retreat to the Bataan Peninsula and the island of Corregidor, 30 miles away from Manila.

Most American and Filipino soldiers fled to the densely-forested, mountainous Bataan Peninsula where they were cut off from Corregidor but fought bravely despite being unprepared and undersupplied until April 9 when, exhausted and disease-ridden, they surrendered. One survivor later told Smithsonian magazine, “We had lots of weapons, but we didn’t have any ammunition.” Their last stand took place on Mount Samat, where American and Filipino forces had concentrated and were subject to a fierce artillery barrage from the Japanese followed by an attack from infantry men and tanks. It was said blood was spilled on every rock. Thousand of dead were buried in unmarked graves.

In the Philippines, while the Americans and Filipinos were holding off the Japanese at Bataan, President Quezon had twenty tons of the treasury's gold bullion and silver pesos loaded on the submarine USSTrout and taken to Australia. Another 350 tons of silver pesos, worth more than Php15 million (almost $8 million), was dumped in the waters off southern Corregidor in May 1942 and several million dollars in paper currency were burned after the serial numbers were noted and radioed to Washington. [Source: Charlie Avila's Marcos Chronology Report, bibliotecapleyades.net]

Fighting at Corregidor

The battle at Corregidor was the only place that Allies put up a fierce resistance during Japan's initial sweep through the Philippines and Southeast Asia. A force of 12,000 Americans and 40,000 Filipinos, lacking air support and cut from supplies and reinforcements, held off a superior and better-equipped Japanese invasion force for six months before MacArthur escaped to Australia. It is estimated that 100,000 Filipinos were killed. Supplies promised the men at Corregidor never arrived. On the matter, Secretary of war Henry Stimson said privately "There are times when men have to die."

Corregidor was a fortress on a tadpole-shaped island in Manila Bay also called Corregidor. It was as much as network of tunnels as it was a fortress. Inaugurated by the Spanish and later built up the Americans, it consisted of two major underground passageways: the Malinta tunnel which contained MaCarthur's headquarters and 1000-bed hospital; and the Navy Command Tunnel. Some 13,000 people were holed up Corregidor and several thousand more were at three smaller fortresses in Manila Bay. [Source: William Graves, National Geographic, July 1986]

Describing the first week of fighting, journalist William Graves, who was 14 a at the time, wrote: "I don't think anybody on Corregidor will ever go to hell, because we had our share today...We could see [Japanese] planes being thrown around when the shells exploded. One plane was hit and it broke formation...After that we got into the car and got down the tunnel. A little while later the bombing started topside. They were using a bunch of dive bombers and down in the tunnel we felt big vibrations. The raid ended about 2:15 and during the whole time they were bringing in the wounded and dying. One fellow they carried in [had] no feet, just bloody stumps. The wounded guys are the worst part of war. Almost 50 percent of the injuries have been limbs blown off by shrapnel. 16 guys died after they got here and they're all out in the hall. One guy was a friend of mine. Just before the raid he offered to take me for a ride in his little Crosmobile." [Source: William Graves, National Geographic, July 1986]

he Japanese lost one third of their soldiers on the landing of Corregidor due to heavy equipment that dragged them underwater and unpredictable currents that brought them in range of the U.S.'s seven- ton cannons that hurled 1,000 pound projectiles eight miles in any direction.

The Japanese bombed Corregidor for five months. By the time they were finished the entire island was pockmarked with bomb craters: an average of one every square 25 yards. Shelling often went all day. "Shells have an eerie scream or whistle," Graves wrote, "but if you hear the whistle it means the shell has gone by and it won't hit you...This firing is not so effective. It is merely a nuisance. It has only killed one and wounded four so far." Once a donkey was hit. "Dinner the next afternoon was a unique occasion," Graves wrote later, "featuring tough but unmistakably fresh meat."

Surrender at Corredigor

MacArthur's Escape and the Last Stand at Corregidor

On March 11, 1942, after holding out for nearly three months, MacArthur left Corregidor while ordering the men that stayed behind to fight. MacArthur maneuvered through a Japanese blockade in a PT boat during his escape. One general described MacArthur choice to escape from Corregidor in a PT boat instead of a submarine as "a stroke of genius." Before he left he took a gift of a half million dollars from the president of the Philippines. Dwight D. Eisenhower received a similar offer but refused the money "explaining that it was against army regulations."

By all accounts MacArthur's performance at the Philippines was a disaster. He never received an official reprimand for his failure to free his men on Bataan, which MacArthur only visited once during the retreat, but was instead called the "Lion of Luzon" by one newspaper.

After MacArthur's departure, U.S. and Filipino forces held on for a few weeks at Corregidor but they were weakened from malaria and the decision to share their food with civilians. To save food the people at Corregidor ate only two meals a day, and often these consisted of only Vienna sausages and sauerkraut. To keep their spirits up rumors were circulated about hundred-mile-long convoys coming to their rescue. Graves and his family escaped from the fortress on a converted yacht that delivered them to a submarine waiting in Manila Bay, which took them to Freemantle Australia.

On May 6, 1942, Corregidor was overrun by Japanese. The Battle of Corregidor was not at total loss. It slowed the Japanese "timetable of conquest" and gave the Allies precious weeks to organize their forces and prevent, among other things, a sweep into Australia. MacArthur told the people of the Philippines from Australia, "I shall return." The men that remained in Corregidor were taken prisoner by the Japanese and sent north of Manila to the Japanese-run prisons at Cabanatuan. They generally had it less bad than the soldiers on Bataan. They had better food and living conditions and lower rates of malaria and other disease than those that endured the Bataan Death March.

Ordered to maintain a 'holding action', MacArthur's other abandoned troops soon fell to the Japanese with the unconditional surrender of around 76, 000 people - 66, 000 of them Filipinos. Those still able to walk began the 120 kilometers 'Bataan death march' from Bataan to San Fernando, and on to prison camps in Capas, Tarlac. As many as 20, 000 people died along the way and another 25, 000 died while imprisoned. This event is honoured with the annual Araw ng Kagitingan (Bataan Day) public holiday on 9 April.

Bataan Death March

The Bataan Death March refers to the forced march in April, 1942 of captured American and Filipino soldiers for 65 miles across the Bataan Peninsula from the seaside town of Mariveles to San Fernando, where they were loaded on railroad cars and carried 24 miles to Capas and forced to march eight miles more to a prison at Camp O'Donnell, a former Filipino Army training base, on Palpanga Province. [Source: Donovan Webster, Smithsonian magazine, March 2004]

On April 9, 70,000 Allied soldiers (including 14,000 Americans and the rest mostly Filipinos) under the command of Maj. Gen. Edward P. King turned themselves in to Japan as prisoners of war. The next day they were “registered” and divided into groups of 100 to 200 and started on their forced march. Most of those who took part in the march were soldiers that remained in the Philippines after the loss of the Bataan peninsula and Corregidor.

The march lasted for six days and was conducted in sweltering heat. The prisoners were beaten and deprived of food and water. The men were already very weak before the march began from fighting four months in the jungle with little food. Many were suffering from malaria and other diseases. At least 11,000 Americans and Filipinos died of disease, heat stroke, brutally and lack of food and water on the march. Some who collapsed from exhaustion were bayoneted on the spot.

On the first day the prisoners walked all day and well into the night from Mariveeks to Balanga and were given some water and allowed to rest. In San Fernando the survivors were loaded onto old boxcars, manufactured in the 1910s, for the four-hour, 24-mile ride to the town of Capas. Dozens died from suffocation in crowed, oven-like box cars. One survivor told the Washington Post , “If you died there you couldn’t even fall to floor” because the cars were so packed. The Bataan Death March does not get a lot of coverage in the United States in part because it was a tragic defeat rather than a heroic victory and the men who endured the hardship for all intents and purposes had been abandoned to their fate.

Image Sources: National Archives of the United States; Wikimedia Commons; Gensuikan;

Text Sources: National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, The Guardian, Yomiuri Shimbun, The New Yorker, Lonely Planet Guides, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wikipedia, BBC, “Eyewitness to History “, edited by John Carey ( Avon Books, 1987), Compton’s Encyclopedia, “History of Warfare “ by John Keegan, Vintage Books, Eyewitness to History.com, “The Good War An Oral History of World War II” by Studs Terkel, Hamish Hamilton, 1985, BBC’s People’s War website and various books and other publications.

Last updated February 2026