Sixty-six years ago this week, Major General Edward King, U.S. Army, set off on a bitter mission. Wearing the best uniform he could muster, King and a small entourage headed north along the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines, searching for Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma, commander of the Japanese 14th Army.
For more than three months, Homma's forces had been advancing slowly south, pushing U.S. and Filipino forces into an ever-shrinking section of the rugged peninsula. Now, the battle was drawing to a close. With food and medical supplies exhausted--and many of his soldiers sick or injured--King carried the white flag of surrender. Further resistance would be futile, he decided, and likely result in the wholesale slaughter of the troops that remained.
After being strafed by Japanese fighters as they drove north, King and his party finally reached Japanese lines. On the morning of 9 April 1942, the American general discussed terms of surrender to Homma's subordinate, Maj. Gen. Kameichiro Nagano. Several hours of negotiations ensued; at their conclusion, King agreed to the Japanese terms, and ordered his surviving soldiers--75,000 Filipinos and Americans--to lay down their arms.
General King, a Georgia lawyer-turned-artillery officer and the son of Confederate veterans, fully understood the irony and humiliation of his actions. Not only did the Bataan surrender represent the largest capitulation in U.S. military history; it came on the 77th anniversary of Robert E. Lee's surrender to U. S. Grant at Appomattox.
For more than three months, Homma's forces had been advancing slowly south, pushing U.S. and Filipino forces into an ever-shrinking section of the rugged peninsula. Now, the battle was drawing to a close. With food and medical supplies exhausted--and many of his soldiers sick or injured--King carried the white flag of surrender. Further resistance would be futile, he decided, and likely result in the wholesale slaughter of the troops that remained.
After being strafed by Japanese fighters as they drove north, King and his party finally reached Japanese lines. On the morning of 9 April 1942, the American general discussed terms of surrender to Homma's subordinate, Maj. Gen. Kameichiro Nagano. Several hours of negotiations ensued; at their conclusion, King agreed to the Japanese terms, and ordered his surviving soldiers--75,000 Filipinos and Americans--to lay down their arms.
General King, a Georgia lawyer-turned-artillery officer and the son of Confederate veterans, fully understood the irony and humiliation of his actions. Not only did the Bataan surrender represent the largest capitulation in U.S. military history; it came on the 77th anniversary of Robert E. Lee's surrender to U. S. Grant at Appomattox.
Eight decades after King's surrender, the decision remains controversial--at least from the perspective of his superiors. Both General Douglas MacArthur (who was evacuated from the Philippines days earlier) and President Roosevelt had issued "no surrender" orders. King, realizing that further resistance was futile--and would result in even more American casualties --ignored their directives and surrendered, hoping to save as many of his men as possible.
Of course, General King had no way of knowing the horrors they would face in captivity, including the Bataan Death March (which claimed the lives of at least 1,000 Americans and 5,000 Filipinos); brutal conditions in Japanese POW camps (where thousands more perished) and for a unlucky few, transport to the enemy homeland on "hell ships" with little food, water or ventilation. Some of the ships were torpedoed by U.S. submarines, which had no way of knowing that their fellow Americans were being held below decks.
When he emerged from a Japanese POW camp, King expected to be court-martialed for failing to obey a direct order. Instead, he was treated as a hero--and deservedly so. As we noted four years ago, the surrender on Bataan was a product of false expectations and poor leadership. Any hope of reinforcing the Philippines ended with the debacle of Pearl Harbor, though MacArthur kept telling his troops that help was on the way.
His defensive strategy was equally flawed; initial attempts to stop the Japanese invasion on the landing beaches were repulsed by the enemy, and as Allied troops fell back in disarray, they were almost cut off before reaching defensive positions on Bataan, where they continued to resist, despite dwindling stocks of fuel, ammunition and food, and diseases that ran rampant through the ranks.
Make no mistake: Douglas MacArthur remains one of the greatest generals in our nation's history. Later in the war, his brilliant use of maneuver warfare resulted in dramatic advances towards Tokyo, without the the heavy casualties that accompanied some of our "island-hopping" campaigns in the Central Pacific. But the months after Japan invaded the Philippines were hardy his finest hour. MacArthur played a poor hand badly, leaving General King to make the only decision he could on that morning in April, seventy years ago.
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As we noted four years ago, MacArthur's legendary ego also influenced events on Bataan, before and after the surrender. Not only did "Dugout Doug" issue his no-surrender directive, he also opposed efforts to award the Medal of Honor to Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, who succeeded him as Allied commander in the Philippines. Wainwright eventually received the honor, but only after his liberation from a Japanese prison camp.
By comparison, Genreal King never received any decoration or recognition for his gallantry, though he was widely admired and revered by his troops. MacArthur refused to speak with him after the war, and even Wainwright questioned his judgment. But in recent years, military historians have begun to reassess King's record on Bataan, concluding that he did as much as he could to slow the Japanese advance, and by surrendering his command, he preserved the lives of thousands of allied soldiers. Eight decades later, many believe that Ned King deserves the Medal of Honor as well. That includes many of the survivors of the Bataan campaign, who understand the courage of King's decision.
