"The Bastards of Bataan"

[VeeVee]

I agree... got to hand it to him. He did the right thing.

[johnbryan]

Nov 19, 2008 12:04:45 GMT -5 oklahoma said:

the cold, brutal fact remains that after dec 7, 1941 the japanese ruled the pacific ocean. our pacific fleet was in a shambles except for the carriers and they were outnumbered. by the time we fought our way back to the PI our forces there would have been overrun and most taken prisoner and the remainder fighting in the hills as guerillas. things played out eventually probably about as they would have if we had moved sooner. it just took longer. as for the quality of the philippine troops (not the excellent scouts), the native troops who made it down to bataan after the retreat from lingayan had to be a tough lot. the sheep had been separated from the goats. the filipinos who stood on the abucay line in january 1942 were people who could be depended on. they could have bailed out up on the luzon central plain, but stayed to fight on bataan. i cant see how anyone could question their performance from january 1942 onward. no need to go into the performance of the scouts. best soldiers, possibly, in the entire pacific, certainly the best, by far, in the philippines.

Agreed. No matter how you cut it, there was no way that the USAFFE forces on Luzon could be relieved before 1944 at the earliest, even if the full power of the 1941 Atlantic and Pacific Fleets could somehow be brought to bear in the Pacific. It would still be a matter of too little, too late.

[johnbryan]

You know, it has been surmised that the USAFFE forces overall resistance in the Philippines threw off the Japanese Pacific Ocean timetable of conquest by several months. I don't know if it would have been possible, but if I had been General George Marshal, I would have sent even more US reinforcements of both men and material to the PI even sooner than was called for.

[oklahoma]

i have read or heard it said that if the japanese had at their disposal just a regiment or two more at kokoda pass in new guinea later in 1942 that port morseby might have been taken. maybe, just maybe, those missing regiments were still licking their wounds up on bataan and corregidor. the resistance in the philippines, after we knew help would not arrive, had to have messed up the japanese and their fine tuned assault schedule and timetable for advances southeast toward the lifeline from california to australia. aint hindsight wonderful??

[rickthelibrarian]

The reinforcements being sent to the Philippines were similiar, in one way to the U.S. Air Force's Strategic Air Command during the post WWII period: They were supposed to be a deterrent. When the Japanese called their bluff (and had the Russians done the same with SAC after WWII) they were a failure.

Increased manpower and supplies would have only drawn out the campaign, not changed the outcome. As VeeVee said, even with a considerable part of the U.S. Navy supporting them, the Marines nearly lost Guadalcanal. The Philippines were (relatively speaking) in Japan's "back yard".

I take a back seat to no one on the valor of the U.S. and Philippine forces who fought and suffered on Bataan and other places in the Philippines in 1941-42. However, they were dealt a poor hand and had to pay the cosequences.