Chapter 3: The Fall of the Philippines
When Japanese fighters and bombers struck at the Philippines, a few hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the engineers in those islands were building airfields and strengthening fortifications. Mobilization of engineer units of the Philippine Army was under way, and stocks of supplies and equipment were being increased. After the Japanese landed, the engineers strove to delay their advance by blocking roads and wrecking bridges. They strengthened Philippine defenses by erecting field fortifications, keeping open lines of communication, providing maps, and building in rear areas. Toward the end, the engineers became infantrymen. Determined effort and devoted service could not prevent the tragic outcome. Like the other defenders of the Philippines, the engineers were not prepared to withstand the Japanese forces.
Before World War II it had not been U.S. policy to maintain a strong force in the Philippines, and, apparently, the War Department had no plan for sending reinforcements if war broke out. War Plan ORANGE-3 (WPO-3), the Philippine Department’s defense plan being prepared in 1940, stipulated that if the American and the Filipino forces could not beat off an invasion at the beaches, they were to withdrew to Bataan Peninsula. (Map 5) There and on Corregidor they were to make a 6-month stand and thus deny the enemy access to Manila Bay. Although it was widely assumed that help would reach the beleaguered defenders within six months, WPO-3 made no mention of reinforcements from the United States.1
Late in 1940 the War Department’s policy regarding the Philippines began to change. Among the men responsible for modifying the War Department’s policy was Maj. Gen. George Grunert, who had become commander of the Philippine Department in June of that year. His insistent pleas for reinforcements at length led the War Department to make a beginning toward bolstering the islands’ defenses. Also influential was General Douglas MacArthur, since 1935 military adviser to the Philippine Government. In February 1941 he informed Marshall of his rather extensive plans for building up the military forces of the commonwealth. There was henceforth an increasing emphasis in Washington on strengthening the defenses of the islands. By the summer of 1941 the General Staff believed the Philippines might be reinforced to the
Philippine Islands
point of not only being able to hold off an invasion, but also, of deterring Japanese expansion southward. Perhaps a deciding factor in altering American policy was the successful development of the B–17 heavy bomber. Now for the first time the Army had a weapon which, if based in the Philippines, could deliver effective blows against the Japanese.2
In line with the new policy of strengthening the Philippines, President Roosevelt on 26 July 1941 established in the islands an overall command, United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE). Headed by General MacArthur, who had been recalled to active duty in the United States Army, the command included both the Philippine Department and the Philippine Army. MacArthur had in mind not merely holding Bataan Peninsula and Manila Bay. With an increasing number of B-17’s at his disposal and with a Philippine Army of some 125,000 men to be mobilized by the end of the year and an even larger force in prospect, he believed he could successfully defend the entire archipelago, provided he had time to complete his preparations. On October he asked permission to prepare a new war plan to replace WPO-3, and early in November Marshall told him to proceed. The outbreak of war one month later found MacArthur in the midst of revising his plans for defense.3
Preparations f or Defense
Plans and Appropriations
The decision to reinforce the Philippines placed a heavy load on the engineers. Col. Henry H. Stickney, an officer of long experience, who had become department engineer in May 1940, had only a small staff to supervise construction, supply, and map making. MacArthur had no engineer in USAFFE until October 1941, when Lt. Col. Hugh J. Casey arrived from the United States. Colonel Stickney thus directed the engineer effort during most of the prewar period. Construction was to be his first concern.
Earliest efforts were aimed at strengthening the harbor installations in Manila and Subic Bays. Guarding the entrance to Manila Bay were four fortified islands, Corregidor, Caballo, El Fraile, and Carabao. Guarding Subic Bay was Grande Island. Corregidor claimed the major share of attention. Construction there, begun in 1904, had continued until after World War I. The result was a maze of defensive works—tunnels, artillery batteries, communications centers, and shops. The island appeared to be impregnable against any probable naval attack, but little, if any, consideration had been given to defense against aerial bombardment. Corregidor’s fortifications were becoming obsolete and the same was true of the defenses of the other fortified islands. During the twenties and thirties appropriations for the fortified islands were pitifully meager.4 For
the fiscal years 1939-41 inclusive, funds allotted to the Army for harbor defense projects amounted to but $39,000 annually; in May 1939, however, the Navy transferred $500,000 to the Engineers for the construction of tunnels on Corregidor. With this money, Maj. Lloyd E. Mielenz, the engineer in charge of fortification work at the harbor defenses, built two-thirds of a mile of concrete-lined tunnel. By stretching the Navy funds he was also able to provide Panama mounts (makeshift concrete mountings that permitted the trail of a field gun to be swung in a full circle), access roads for the big guns, and other minor improvements.5
War Plan ORANGE-3 linked Bataan Peninsula with the fortified islands in the defense of Manila Bay. Except for a few roads and trails, most of Bataan was virtually a wilderness. On 25 July 1940 Grunert, after outlining for the General Staff what he considered to be the “minimum requirements for an efficient defense” of the peninsula, requested $1,939,000 for roads, docks, and bomb-proof storage. Marshall replied that it was against War Department policy to put money into large projects of this nature.6 Grunert nevertheless persisted, and in fact broadened his request to include $346,000 for the harbor defenses. He made little progress until early 1941, by which time the War Department’s attitude had begun to change. In March of that year Congress appropriated $946,000 and in June $3,688,000 for work on Bataan and Corregidor. In November 1940 Major Mielenz had recommended that an inter-service board be appointed “without delay to formulate a workable plan for modernizing the Harbor Defense protection against heavy shelling and aerial bombing.” The commanding general of the Harbor Defenses appointed the board at once, and by early May 1941 it had prepared plans calling for underground protection, gas proofing, and air conditioning. This program was to cost $3,500,000 and take three years to complete. In June, Grunert submitted the plan to the War Department, but he received no money until early October.7
Airfields, according to General Grunert, were the most vital element in the defense of the islands.8 In 1940 and early 1941 there were but two Army airfields in the Philippines—Nichols, just south
of Manila, and Clark, about 50 miles northwest of the capital. Nichols had the distinction of being the only military field in the islands with a paved runway. But this runway, like the turf strips at Clark, was too small to take B-17’s safely. Indeed, there was not a paved runway in the entire Philippines that could accommodate a fully loaded B-17.9 In October 1940 Grunert began to plan a network of modern military airfields. He envisioned 6 major fields—4 on Luzon and 2 on Mindanao—and a score of smaller ones dispersed throughout the islands. By July 1941 the War Department had obtained $2,773,000 for Grunert’s projects.10 MacArthur, after his appointment as Commanding General, USAFFE, insisted on an even larger sum. By October a total of $4,187,130 had been allotted for airfields in the Philippines, and MacArthur was calling for $5 million more. The War Department immediately allotted him three of the five million, and it promised him the rest in the near future.11 Part of the construction was to be carried out by the Civil Aeronautics Authority and the Philippine Commonwealth, but the bulk was assigned to the Engineer Department.
By 30 November 1941, $4,654,350 had been turned over to Colonel Stickney for construction of airfields. To help protect not only the airfields but the islands themselves against attack, an air warning service was needed. During the latter part of 1941 Stickney received $265,000 to build ten warning stations and an underground information center.12
Construction Gets Under Way
By early 1941, the growing program threatened to overwhelm the engineer department. Stickney appealed to OCE for help. On 28 April he wrote to General Kingman that the department engineer’s office had until recently been “a sleepy inactive place with two ... American civilian employees, and was able to transact its business in a few hours each morning. It was similar to all other offices in this headquarters. There were no funds available for new work and all duties were routine.” Now the situation had changed completely, and Stickney lacked the wherewithal to carry out a high-speed construction program. With but one regular officer to assist him, he considered personnel to be his “most crying need.” The several reservists who had recently arrived from the United States were not acquainted with local conditions and required time “to take hold.” Few American civilians were available and only limited use could be made of Filipinos. Stickney nevertheless succeeded in finding enough Reserve officers and civilian engineers to
form a skeleton organization in his office and in the field.13
The department engineer was anxious to get construction under way before the start of the rainy season, which, on western Luzon, where most of the work was to be undertaken, lasted from June to November. Unless started before the onset of the rains, construction would be almost impossible at some locations. Meanwhile, there was heavy pressure from General Grunert to get things done which everyone now felt “should have been done years ago.14
Formidable difficulties stood in Stickney’s way. Among them were his remoteness from the United States and the necessity of having to deal with a semi-independent government. Contractors were scarce as were skilled labor, materials, and equipment. The engineer effort and an $11.5 million dollar building program under the department quartermaster’s direction severely taxed the resources of the islands.15 Some of Stickney’s most serious difficulties arose from having to follow procedures designed for normal peacetime conditions. He was determined to overcome these obstacles, proposing “to do what is necessary ... even though the regulations may be temporarily violated.”16
Construction was in some instances held up by the long time required to obtain title to land. Although large projects such as those at Clark and Nichols were to be built on land already owned by the government, sites for many of the smaller jobs had to be acquired. Without the power to condemn, the department quartermaster was forced into protracted negotiations with land owners. Not until 21 October 1941 did MacArthur and President Manuel L. Quezon agree upon a procedure for breaking this bottleneck. Where few property holders were involved, titles were clear, and the land could be acquired at reasonable cost, USAFFE would continue to obtain land by direct negotiation; otherwise, the Philippine Government would expropriate the land. The agreement speeded up real estate transactions.17
Stickney did not have to look far for construction firms as there were only three in the islands with the equipment and experience necessary for doing work on a large scale within a reasonable time—the Benguet Consolidated Mining Company, Marsman and Company (also a mining firm); and the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific Company of Manila. The last was the only concern capable of building docks and erecting steel hangars. The two mining companies were specialists at tunneling but were not well equipped to handle airfield construction, though they volunteered to do this type of work in order to aid the defense effort. For less complicated projects Stickney could rely on Filipino contractors, who
generally had small staffs and little equipment. He could also hire workmen and organize a work force of his own. No troops were available. The only U.S. Army engineer unit in the islands in early 1941 was the understrength 14th Engineers (Philippine Scouts), a combat regiment of the Philippine Division, already engaged in improving tactical roads and trails on Bataan. In this situation, Stickney had to make the best use of the construction and engineering talent at his disposal.18
One obstacle to speed was the traditionally slow method of awarding lump-sum contracts by advertising for competitive bids. With so few large construction firms in the islands and with their capabilities quite well known to the department engineer, competitive bidding would cause needless delay. Besides, the tunnels the engineers were to construct on the fortified islands and Bataan were of a highly secret nature, the details of which it was not advisable to make public through advertising. Accordingly, on 2 May Stickney radioed to Washington asking authority to negotiate contracts. Under Secretary of War Patterson on 19 May directed the department engineer to use cost-plus-a-fixed-fee agreements. After Stickney wired back that he did not need to make fixed-fee contracts but urgently required authority to negotiate lump-sum and unit-price contracts, Washington on 13 June gave him that authority. Even though he could now negotiate, there still remained the time-consuming tasks of making estimates, preparing plans, and arriving at terms of agreement.19
Construction got under way slowly. During April and May, Stickney managed to start 4 projects, including Bataan Field in the southeastern part of the peninsula, a bombproof shelter for general headquarters at Fort McKinley, just south of Manila, and a runway at Nichols Field. June marked the beginning of work on a depot at San Juan del Monte, just east of Manila, and on already existing Kindley Field on Corregidor. Within the next three months the engineers broke ground for 16 projects, among them a dock on Bataan, 2 air warning stations, and 3 new airfields—Del Monte and Malabang on Mindanao and O’Donnell on Luzon. By the end of September construction was in progress at 26 jobs estimated to cost $1,500,000.20
Colonel Stickney had barely started to build when the southwestern monsoons began. For the next five months construction crews battled mud and torrential rains. Maj. Wendell W. Fertig, assigned to Bataan early in the summer, later recounted: “[The] rainy season was in full swing and the forest was a morass. ... Thousands of cubic yards of rock had been placed as surfacing on the secondary roads, but under the pounding of 10-wheel ammunition trucks, all vestiges of hard surfacing disappeared in a
sea of mud. Two tractors were kept busy hauling these monstrous trucks out of mud holes.” Transferred to Clark Field in August, Fertig remarked that construction had become a “nightmare.”21 Conditions were so bad at Nichols Field that the Air Corps suspended operations there in July.22 The engineers continued work on the runways at Nichols but with “25 percent efficiency.” The weather had a hampering effect on construction throughout western Luzon.23
At the outset the department engineer had little construction machinery. An inventory of 28 December 1940 listed the following items of power-driven equipment: 6 bulldozers, 2 shovels, 2 rock crushers, an earth auger, and a grader. Little help could be expected from the Philippine Government, for, in order to keep down unemployment, the commonwealth used practically no equipment. Few contractors in the islands had machinery, and delivery from the United States would take months. Stickney proposed to rent and buy locally as much equipment as he could and to order from the United States, although shipments from America would arrive too late “to be of much benefit this working season.” The Chief of Engineers refused to let him rent but gave him permission to negotiate purchases in the local market, and promised to send equipment from the States along with the first shipment of troops.24 Stickney hastened to buy the
few items of new and used equipment held by local dealers. He begged a few pieces from the Philippine Department of Public Works and borrowed from American commanders. Brig. Gen. Edward P. King, Jr., commanding Fort Stotsenburg, loaned two new 1½-ton trucks to the, O’Donnell project. “Without them,” wrote an Engineer officer, “it would have been impossible to begin construction ... [in an area] which could normally be reached only by horse-drawn units and then only during the dry season.” Notwithstanding cooperation of this sort, there was never enough machinery. Only by constant shifting of equipment from one location to another could Stickney keep all of his jobs moving.25
Efficient maintenance and repair of equipment were hard to come by. Most natives were unacquainted with machines, and the skilled mechanic was “nearly nonexistent.” Too often the Filipino was concerned primarily with the appearance of his equipment. Capt. Harry O. Fischer, area engineer at Clark Field, got hold of some tractors belonging to the commonwealth’s Bureau of Public Works, “which looked beautiful—freshly painted and shined.” “But, I found to my sorrow,” he wrote, “that Filipino maintenance went only skin deep—what they couldn’t see didn’t bother them. One D-8 [tractor] I got had had 7,000 operating hours and had
had nothing done to it. It sounded like a corn grinder.” There was, besides, virtually no local supply of spare parts. Almost all replacements had to be requisitioned from the United States and delivered over a 7,000-mile-long supply line. These were conditions the engineers could do little to correct.26
The islands produced many of the materials needed for construction, including lumber, slag, cement, lime, and aggregate. Local dealers stocked pumps and other common items of installed equipment. Access to these markets was at first restricted by regulations which forbade Stickney to purchase in amounts of more than $500 or to alter standard plans and specifications without consulting the Chief of Engineers. OCE lifted the first restriction in March and the second in May when Stickney made it known that shortages of steel would force him to build hangars of wood. Since time could not be spared for sending the new drawings back to the States for approval, General Schley gave Stickney authority to alter plans whenever necessary. The department engineer could now draw freely on the resources of the Philippines, but many of the supplies he most desperately needed still had to come from the United States. Though shipments of structural steel, steel siding, heavy cable, switchboards, and lighting equipment were anxiously awaited, months were to pass before any of these items would be received.27
Construction During the Latter Half of 1941
The arrival of U.S. Engineer units gave an impetus to the airfield construction program. First to come was the 809th Engineer Aviation Company, which, upon disembarking at Manila on 10 July, was assigned to Nichols Field. Well supplied with modern equipment, the 176 men of the 809th worked around the clock, operating their own machinery and serving as foremen of the 800 unskilled native laborers employed on the project. A second unit, the 803rd Engineer Aviation Battalion (less Company C), arrived from the United States on 23 October. Headquarters Company began extending the turf runways at Clark to transform this field into a huge base for B-17’s. Company A took over the project at O’Donnell, some twenty miles north of Clark, while Company B went to Del Carmen, near the base of Bataan Peninsula, where on 10 November it started construction of a complete airdrome estimated to cost $432,500. On 1 December the 809th became Company C of the 803rd. These engineer troops helped greatly to make key airfields operative at an early date.28
Construction gained added momentum after the arrival of Colonel Casey on 8
October. Having served in the. Philippines from 1937 to 1940 as assistant to General MacArthur, Casey was familiar with conditions in the islands. At the time of his appointment as Engineer, USAFFE, he was chief of the Design Section of the Construction Division, Office of The Quartermaster General. There he had worked under General Somervell and had had an opportunity to observe how construction could be pushed at high speed. Casey, losing no time in trying to find out where Stickney’s program stood, called for information on the status of major projects. On November Stickney submitted his first semi-monthly progress report, and from it Casey concluded that work would have to be greatly expedited. He urged Stickney to intensify pressure on contractors and suggested that certain jobs be switched from purchase and hire to contract. He induced the commonwealth’s Bureau of Public Works to undertake additional projects, and used all the influence he could muster to speed deliveries from the United States and to streamline procedures.29
Casey was especially concerned over the inadequate progress on the air warning stations. Reconnaissance parties led by Barney Clark, an American civil engineer who had spent many years in
the islands, had selected sites on Luzon and on nearby Mindoro and Lubang. Construction of two stations, one on Bataan and the other on the Bicol Peninsula, was begun in September, but at eight other locations nothing had as yet been done. Since many stations were in out-of-the-way places, the engineers had to build hard-surfaced access roads and strengthen many bridges before the detection units, each weighing over eight tons, could be hauled to the sites. On 15 November plans and specifications for eight of the stations were but 5 percent complete. Casey insisted that every effort be made to get these “high priority projects underway.” Of even greater concern to him was the underground chamber at Fort McKinley where the headquarters of the air warning service was to be located. This complicated tunneling job was not begun until 15 October. Casey suggested that Stickney bring pressure on the contractor, explaining that this tunnel was “a vital item of the entire Air Warning Service.”30
With the end of the southwestern monsoons, construction of airfields on western Luzon progressed rapidly. The soil of the Central Plains, composed largely of marine deposits, had admirable bearing qualities. Even without surfacing, the runways at Clark, O’Donnell, and Del Carmen could carry the heaviest aircraft then in use. Because the soil was porous, drainage was easily provided. As one engineer expressed it, Clark Field
had “vertical drainage.” Dust proved to be the major problem. The increasingly large numbers of planes arriving at Clark wore off the turf, with the result that such clouds of dust arose from the runways that the air was seldom clear unless a strong wind was blowing. At Del Carmen the dust was even thicker. There, as at Clark, the engineers had neither equipment nor material for hard surfacing. Nor did they have any calcium chloride, the chemical commonly used for dust control. Fertig, the area engineer at Del Carmen, recalling his tennis-playing days in Colorado, remembered that clay courts were often treated with water and beet sugar syrup to make them dust proof. He decided to experiment by applying to the runway a mixture of water and waste molasses from a nearby sugar refinery. War came before the experiment could be completed, but it was successfully carried out later on Bataan Field.31
Although plans for fields on the southern islands developed slowly, considerable work had been done by 15 November. Malabang, a small commercial airport on the southwest coast of Mindanao, was easily enlarged. Its runway, surfaced with fine volcanic cinders, was lengthened by the removal of a few coconut trees. Del Monte, located in the midst of the pineapple plantations of northern Mindanao, was originally nothing more than the fairway of a golf course. By removing a few rocks from a strip of land which extended out into the
Tagoloan River and by mowing the grass of a large neighboring meadow, natives quickly prepared two additional strips. Late in 1941 Del Monte was transformed into a second base for B-17’s. Zamboanga, the third large field, showed little progress. The War Department had insisted on the construction of a bomber base near the tip of Zamboanga Peninsula, where the only feasible site was in the rice paddies of that area. Local farmers would not give up their land willingly and the government resorted to expropriation. After the land was acquired on 3 November, the engineers drained the paddies, a task that consumed much valuable time. By mid-November runways at Malabang and Del Monte were in use, but construction at Zamboanga had not yet started.32
Meanwhile, work was under way on Corregidor, where Mielenz encountered difficulties similar to Stickney’s. His chief problem was to find contractors for the big modernization program; begun late, negotiations dragged on throughout the fall. Mielenz did manage to begin a number of smaller projects in the summer of 1941. At the height of the rainy season, convicts from Bilibid Prison in Manila laid four-and-one-half miles of cable six feet underground for the controlled
mine system. In July a construction crew began blasting additional space for the hospital in the great tunnel under Malinta Hill and enlarging five laterals to be used for storage. Other projects included construction of a bombproof command post, strengthening beach defenses, and sandbagging.33
General MacArthur found the progress of construction encouraging, and there was much to support his view. In October Stickney launched projects estimated to cost one-third of a million dollars at Nichols, Clark, and Fort McKinley. The following month he added nine jobs to the list of going projects; included were warehouses and docks on Bataan, an air warning station on Lubang Island, additional facilities at Clark, Bataan, Cabanatuan, and Nielson Fields, and the two new airbases, Del Carmen and Zamboanga. By late November Stickney had a program of $3,600,000 under way. Meanwhile, the Corps of Engineers of the Philippine Army was improving numerous military fields on Luzon, among them Tuguegarao, Aparri, and Legaspi; the Civil Aeronautics Authority was readying commercial fields for military use; and the Bureau of Aeronautics of the Philippine Government was building a considerable number of emergency landing strips throughout the islands. All told, about forty fields, ranging from large installations such as Clark and Nichols to mere strips for emergency landings, were being developed for military aircraft.34
Combat Engineers
Concurrently with the construction program, the Engineers prepared for combat. For many years successive department engineers had been at work on defense plans under War Plan ORANGE. Upon mobilization, the department engineer’s organization was to be expanded rapidly by the addition of reservists and civilians. Labor companies of Filipinos were to be formed, and full use was to be made of the employees of the commonwealth’s Bureau of Public Works. Should the enemy invade Luzon, demolitions were to retard his advance, and the engineers planned to put up road-blocks, mine highways, and destroy bridges. Especially marked for destruction were roads on the sides of precipitous mountains and long bridges over deep gorges and unfordable streams. In the department engineer’s office was a “demolition book” containing sketches of every bridge of any importance on Luzon, together with wiring diagrams and computations of the charges required for destruction. Some 400,000 pounds of TNT or the equivalent would be needed. If supplies of TNT were low, the engineers planned to draw on the stocks of dynamite held by mining companies, although dynamite was not as effective
Malinta Tunnel
for hasty demolitions. Mining engineers would be called upon to help destroy roads and bridges. Colonel Casey began to formulate a plan in line with MacArthur’s new strategy of defending the whole archipelago, but war prevented its completion.35
The one U.S. engineer combat unit in the islands, the 14th Engineers (Philippine Scouts), a part of the Philippine Division and commanded by Lt. Col. Harry A. Skerry, consisted in mid-1940 of 322 officers and men. While most of the officers were Americans, the enlisted men were Filipinos. When not training or on maneuvers, the 14th built military roads and bridges and cut trails through the jungles of Bataan. In January 1941, when the Scouts were authorized an increase from 6,500 to 12,000, the 14th was ordered to add 544 men to its roster. By late November the regiment had been expanded to include 938 officers and men. Most of the recruits came from the Baguio gold mining area and were old hands at construction.36
The mobilization of the Philippine Army, begun in September 1941, was expected to provide the great majority of the engineer units urgently needed by MacArthur. Shortly after Casey arrived, MacArthur ordered him to develop a force “equipped and trained to meet the heavy demands now required of the Engineers in modern warfare.” Each of the 12 Philippine Army divisions was to include an engineer combat battalion of 500 officers and men. Also to be organized were 3 engineer combat regiments, 6 separate battalions, 2 heavy ponton battalions, 3 topographic companies, and enough additional units to provide a complete engineer component for a Philippine Army of 160,000 men to be fully mobilized by October 1942. To accomplish this program would be no easy task. Casey had no engineer officer to assist him until 20 November, when Capt. Emilio Viardo of the Philippine Army was assigned. Occasionally officers and men from other arms and services helped out. Casey would have to try to build the force from a cadre with but limited training. Most Filipino officers did not have the necessary background to command technical units, and few American officers could be expected. The bulk of supplies and equipment would have to come from the United States.37
Engineer combat battalions of the Philippine Army mobilized with disappointing slowness. As late as December 1941 not a single battalion was completely manned and equipped, with actual strength closer to 400 men than to the authorized 500. Equipment consisted chiefly of hand tools, and there were not enough of these to go around. The Philippine Army as a whole was no better prepared than its engineers, a state of affairs that did not augur well for the future.38
To make matters worse, MacArthur’s
order to reduce the four regiments of the Philippine Division to three, in accordance with the War Department policy of converting square divisions to triangular, decreased the number of U.S. engineers. The conversion of the Philippine Division in early December reduced the 14th Engineers to a battalion. Despite protests by Casey, Stickney, and Skerry, several hundred officers and men of the regiment were transferred to other arms and services. Fortunately, the 14th was allowed to keep its equipment, which it later put to good use.39
By early December U.S. Army engineer troops in the Philippines numbered approximately 1,500, the combined strength of the 14th and 803rd Battalions. These units made up less than 5 percent of the total U.S. force. Estimates of the engineer strength of the Philippine Army are difficult to arrive at, because that army was never fully mobilized. When war broke out, the engineer component of the Philippine Army amounted to roughly 5 percent of the total, far below the 20 percent generally considered by engineer officers to be the ideal proportion. In the large force which MacArthur and Casey planned, development of engineer units was to receive high priority and the ratio of engineer troops was to approach the optimum.40
Supply
The task of providing engineer supplies and equipment for the growing U.S.-Filipino forces fell to Maj. Roscoe Bonham, Stickney’s supply officer. In January 1941 the Supply Division, in addition to Major Bonham, consisted of one enlisted man and two native clerks. The Philippine Engineer Depot, which Bonham also commanded, was run by half a dozen enlisted men and roughly 25 native employees. A vigorous program of recruitment produced good results. By December the Supply Division included 5 officers, 4 enlisted men, and 31 American and Filipino civilians; the depot was staffed by 3 officers, 18 enlisted men, and 90 civilians. Located in the Manila port area, the depot had been adequate in the past but was too small to hold the enormous quantities now required. Bonham succeeded in increasing facilities during the summer and fall by constructing a shop and several warehouses and sheds along the Pasig River. But despite his extraordinary efforts, he never succeeded in getting enough people or providing sufficient space.41
Bonham found it even more difficult to assemble stocks of engineer items than to find employees and build warehouses. He scoured the islands for steel, wire, hand tools, camouflage materials, explosives, and machinery. Importers, local
merchants, manufacturers, and mining companies all contributed to Bonham’s stores. No likely source escaped his attention. Learning that the Cadwallader-Gibson Lumber Company was to be liquidated, he quickly bought up its stock of one and a quarter million feet of lumber, paying 40 percent less than the current market price. Devising an “unorthodox plan” whereby he himself guaranteed payment, Bonham was able to import from India enough burlap to make more than half a million sandbags. Ingenuity notwithstanding, scientific instruments, mechanical equipment, and other special engineer items could not be procured in the Orient. These would have to come from the United States.42
Colonel Stickney asked the Chief of Engineers to send searchlights, bridging, and water purification units in addition to construction equipment for the troops. He also appealed for spare parts. General Schley promised to fill the requisitions as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, Bonham ordered equipment from American manufacturers through the Pacific Commercial Company of Manila. The U.S. defense program and lend-lease requirements took precedence over the needs of the Philippines, however, and consignments to the islands had a low priority. By 19 September Bonham had accumulated sufficient stocks of earth augurs, assault boats, and gas shovels to equip the U.S. troops at initial war strength. Nevertheless, his inventories showed great shortages of such basic items as explosives, searchlights, ponton bridges, water purification units, tractors, trailers, and gas-motored timber saws. Not until autumn did the War Department take decisive action to speed deliveries to the islands.43
Early in September MacArthur expressed dissatisfaction with the low priority assigned to the Philippines. Unless his orders for supplies and equipment were filled more promptly, he would be unable to put the Army on a war footing as rapidly as he considered necessary. Marshall, fully aware of the difficulties that faced MacArthur, agreed to give the Philippines highest priority. The engineers in the islands could now hope to get the troops, supplies, and equipment they so sorely needed. By mid-November a general service regiment—the 47th—was being readied for movement overseas, and equipment for two aviation battalions was en route. OCE was making an all-out effort to speed reinforcements. Encouraged by the Chief’s attempts to aid them, Casey, Stickney, and Mielenz sent back a huge requisition. They asked for 2 ,000 tons of construction materials and equipment costing $5 million dollars, but this request did not reach the Chief of Engineers until after Pearl Harbor.44
Construction Progress
By the first week of December construction was progressing satisfactorily, but the program was far short of accomplishment. Farthest advanced were Clark and Nichols. Yet several runways at these fields were still building. Bataan Field was 68 percent complete; Del Monte had one usable runway, and the construction of housing was just beginning; and 70 percent of the work on Malabang’s runway had been done. The remaining fields were far behind these. Other types of projects were also lagging. The Mariveles dock and the Limay wharf were nearing completion, but the important tunnels on Bataan had not yet been started. Progress on the air warning stations was slow; only two were operating—one at Nielson, the other at Iba. Contracts for the first items in the new program to modernize fortifications on Corregidor were still in process of negotiation. The engineers had succeeded in getting most of their projects under way, but much of the work of construction remained to be done.45
To some the prospect was not encouraging. Maj. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton, commanding the Far East Air Force (FEAF), pronounced the progress of airfield construction “disappointing.” He observed that work was proceeding more or less on a peacetime basis. It was difficult to change the age-old customs of the tropics. “The idea of an imminent war seemed far removed from the minds of most,” wrote Brereton in his diary under the date of 9 November.46 On the eve of the Japanese attack, Col. Francis M. Brady of FEAF described the outlook as “quite discouraging.” In a personal letter to Brig. Gen. Carl Spaatz, he stated: “Construction of airdromes is lagging due to lack of engineer personnel and inability to secure competent civilian assistance from among the Filipinos or local contractors. The dearth of equipment is also a serious factor.”47 The engineers were no better satisfied but offered no apologies. Considering the handicaps under which they labored, they felt their showing was a creditable one.
Except those high-ranking officers who had been informed of the breakdown of negotiations between the United States and Japan, few were aware of the seriousness of the situation and the imminence of war. A peaceful atmosphere still pervaded the islands. How remote war seemed is suggested by Col. Wendell W. Fertig’s description of an excursion on the last day of peace:–
Sunday, December 7th, dawned a perfect day for a picnic at Lake Taal. The four officers from our mess had already made arrangements for an old-fashioned steak fry. ... loading the outboard motor we set out for the lake. ... [The] entire day
was spent in lazy fishing and in enjoyment of the huge steaks prepared over a driftwood fire. The brilliant sunset illuminated the lake and we started home across the reddened waters.
The picnickers were awakened at 4:30 the next morning to the news that the Japanese had attacked Hawaii. “We stood by ... awaiting the inevitable blow. ... ,” wrote Fertig. “We could only hope that, in matching our puny weapons against the aggressor, somehow help would reach us before too late.”48
Withdrawal to Bataan and Corregidor
War came to the Philippines with overwhelming suddenness. On the morning of 8 December enemy planes appeared over the islands to bomb strategic targets. About noon Japanese bombers carried out devastating attacks on Iba and Clark Fields. So effective were these and succeeding raids on airfields that within a few days the striking power of the Far East Air Force was almost completely destroyed. On 10 December Japanese troops landed at Vigan on the northwestern coast of Luzon and near Aparri on the northern coast. Two days later a third force came ashore at Legaspi near the southeastern tip of the island. From these three points enemy troops began moving inland—their major objective, the nearby airfields. In the Visayan Islands and on Mindanao no landings of decisive or even critical importance were made until fairly late in the campaign.49 The story of the defense of the Philippines is thus almost entirely one of fighting on Luzon. It was here that the engineers had to make their greatest effort.
The engineers urgently required a large increase in troop strength, but because of Japan’s naval superiority, no more units could be expected from the United States, at least not in the near future. All that could be done to increase the number of men in the field was to speed mobilization of the combat battalions of the Philippine Army. Most retired and Reserve officers had already been ordered to active duty and the remaining few were called up immediately.50 Casey appealed to civilian engineers to serve with the Army. Many volunteered, with some being commissioned at once and others serving as civilians.51 American mining engineers, who came to be known as “Casey’s dynamiters,” were to be of inestimable value.52 “These men,” Casey wrote, “although they in general knew little of the military, were ideally qualified to perform all phases of engineer operations. They were of a pioneer type accustomed to doing crude engineer[ing] under great difficulties ... and capable of improvising and getting the work done.”53 Since the number of mining engineers was small, each man knew
most of the others either personally or by reputation. This simplified recruiting. Many of the mining engineers, moreover, brought with them their crews of loyal Filipino workmen.54
When war began, two Army ground forces were mobilizing on Luzon. North Luzon Force (NLF), commanded by Maj. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright, was responsible for the defense of the part of the island north of Manila. The part south and east of the capital was to be defended by South Luzon Force (SLF), commanded by Brig. Gen. George M. Parker, Jr. A third force, USAFFE Reserve, under the immediate command of General MacArthur, was to hold Manila and the area immediately to the north along the shore of Manila Bay. In USAFFE Reserve were the 14th engineers. The 803rd, under Stickney’s direction, was kept hard at work repairing bomb damage at Clark and Nichols and rushing Del Carmen and O’Donnell to completion. Each of the divisions in the North and South Luzon Forces had its engineer combat battalion. The first engineer units to see combat were the battalions with Wainwright’s North Luzon Force.55
Engineers With North Luzon Force
On 4 December, Colonel Skerry had turned the command on the 14th engineers over to Capt. Frederick G. Saint and left to take up his new duties as Engineer, North Luzon Force. When, on the following day, he reported to Wainwright’s headquarters at Fort Stotsenburg, he found he was the only engineer on the scene. On 7 December three enlisted men were loaned to him, and he was told he could expect an officer within a few weeks. Four divisional combat battalions were mobilizing, the th, 21st, 31st, and 71st. The 91st, also mobilizing, was attached to NLF but was not to be assigned until a week later. There were no force engineer units for work in rear areas; neither was there any equipment. For work behind the front lines Skerry was expected to make use of the divisional combat battalions, insofar as possible. In accordance with plans of long standing, he could also employ the district engineers of the commonwealth’s Bureau of Public Works.56
The engineers of NLF were to operate in an area some 275 miles long and 00 miles wide. In the north it was mountainous. On the west was a narrow coastal plain and in the east the mountains extended directly to the sea. The only passageway south through the northern ranges was the narrow Cagayan River valley. Southeast of Lingayen Gulf was an extensive level area, the Central Plains. About 40 miles wide and stretching 00 miles from the Gulf to Manila, the plains provided a natural avenue of approach to the Philippine capital. Northern Luzon had three principal rivers, the Cagayan flowing
northward through the mountains, the Agno following a westerly course and emptying into Lingayan Gulf, and the Pampanga cutting southwestward across the Central Plains to Manila Bay. Except in their upper reaches and in a few other places, these rivers were unfordable. Northern Luzon boasted a fairly good road net. Along the west coast from Lingayen Gulf to Bataan was a graveled highway capable of taking heavy military traffic during the dry season. An all-weather road, Highway 5, ran from Aparri through the Cagayan Valley and across the Central Plains to Manila. Another all-weather road, Highway 3, extended down the northwest coast to Lingayen Gulf and thence across the Central Plains to the capital. Northern Luzon was also served by the main line of the narrow-gauge Manila Railroad, which ran from Manila to San Fernando, La Union, on the coast north of Lingayen Gulf.57
On the day the Japanese landed at Vigan and Aparri, Casey ordered the destruction of roads, bridges, and ferries in the Cagayan Valley and the mountainous regions of northern Luzon. Skerry called upon the engineers of the Bureau of Public Works to do this job. No TNT was available, nor were there any tetryl caps or electrical cap exploders, but mining companies of the Baguio region had ample stocks of dynamite, and Skerry asked three of the largest to send him 180 tons. Within a few days shipments began to arrive. Lacking the
most powerful explosive and the best types of detonators, Skerry prescribed exceptionally large charges of dynamite and ordered the use of time fuses. One expert described this method as “plainly a matter of loading heavy charges of dynamite, sandbagging or tamping them as much as possible, and ... pray[ing] for a complete job of demolition.” Steel bridges with concrete floors proved especially difficult to destroy. In the confusion of the times, no use was made of the demolition book, so carefully prepared over the years. It remained in Stickney’s office in Manila, to be destroyed shortly before the capital was evacuated. By 9 December, the engineers had completed their demolitions in north central Luzon and had sealed off the region with roadblocks. The enemy advance southward from Aparri to the Central Plains would be difficult.58
A greater menace was the Japanese thrust along the coastal road southward from Vigan. On learning of the enemy landing, Casey had issued orders for large-scale demolitions between Vigan and San Fernando. Since no engineer units were available, he asked the Bureau of Public Works to take this assignment. By 1 6 December enemy troops had penetrated as far south as Tagudin, about twenty-five miles above San Fernando. That same day USAFFE received word that its orders for demolitions were not being carried out. Casey telephoned
Skerry at once, ordering him to blow the bridges to the north of San Fernando. The next morning Skerry made a hurried reconnaissance of advance positions and found that bridges south of Tagudin had already been destroyed. He saw, however, that the situation called for more engineers. On the afternoon of the 17th he visited the local district engineer to urge greater speed in the preparation of demolitions around San Fernando and the following day persuaded the manager of a nearby mine to lend him twelve foremen. Meanwhile, on orders from USAFFE, Skerry’s engineers destroyed the large concrete pier, the telephone exchange, and the oil and gasoline tanks at San Fernando. Although demolitions did not appreciably retard the Japanese advancing down the coast, they entered the city to find little of military value remaining.59
A major enemy landing at Lingayen Gulf appeared imminent. On 18 December Wainwright ordered Skerry to prepare for demolition the roads and bridges from Lingayen Gulf to as far south as the towns of Tarlac and Cabanatuan—an area about forty miles wide and sixty miles deep. Holding up enemy forces by demolitions on the Central Plains would be much more difficult than delaying them in the mountainous regions of the north. In the upper Central Plains, there were only two rivers that would be serious obstacles to an invader equipped for modern war—the Agno and the Tarlac. During the dry season even these were fordable at certain points. Because the land was flat, there were few good sites for roadblocks. Tanks could easily traverse the dry rice paddies of the almost treeless Central Plains.60
Given this terrain, Skerry prepared a plan of defense in depth, making use of the only important obstacles in the entire region—the natural barriers of the rivers. Under his direction, the engineers of the Philippine Army and employees of the Bureau of Public Works set out to prepare all major highway bridges from the Agno to Tarlac and Cabanatuan for instant demolition. Casey furnished groups of miners under the command of Lt. Col. Narciso L. Manzano (Philippine Scouts) to help with this work. Colonel Manzano and his miners were temporarily attached to North Luzon Force. Casey’s office also sent a special detail—a second lieutenant and three miners—to NLF to help Skerry prepare the large railroad bridges for destruction. Small spans and culverts in the area were to be taken care of by the rearmost divisions if and when Wainwright’s force withdrew through the Central Plains.61
A serious weakness in the defense was the lack of antitank mines. On 18 December Casey asked the USAFFE ordnance officer to order 70,000 from the United States. Meanwhile, Bonham, using designs supplied by Casey, furnished makeshift mines. Consisting of a wooden box about ten inches on a side, with approximately five pounds of dynamite,
a flashlight battery, and a detonator, each mine was put together and placed by the troops. Bonham could not supply enough materials to mine extensive areas. The most the engineers could hope for was that an enemy tank would occasionally blunder into a mine field. Skerry’s success in delaying the enemy would have to depend mainly on the destruction of bridges.62
Fears of a landing at Lingayen Gulf proved well founded. On 22 December a large Japanese force came ashore between Bauang and Damortis. The enemy troops were too numerous to be beaten back by the few NLF units near the gulf, and reinforcements were not available. Hopes of defeating the enemy at the beaches vanished. On the night of 23 December, General MacArthur declared War Plan ORANGE-3 in effect. Wainwright would withdraw southward and attempt to hold back Japanese forces coming down from the gulf long enough to enable South Luzon Force to fall back through Manila, cross the Pampanga, and continue on to Bataan. NLF was to carry out its withdrawal in five phases, designated D1, D2, D3, D4, and D5. Making his first stand midway between Lingayen Gulf and the Agno, Wainwright would retire to four successive positions, the last of which, D5, stretched from the town of Bamban on the west to Sibul Springs at the foot of the mountains on the east. This was the critical line. It had to be held until South Luzon Force was safely across the Pampanga.63
Because there were few planes left to interfere with the enemy’s progress and because the untrained Philippine troops could not withstand the powerful Japanese onslaughts, Wainwright had to rely heavily on his engineers. It was they who had to keep open roads and bridges ahead of the retreating columns—not an easy task in view of the Japanese supremacy in the air. It was the engineers, too, who had to prepare all bridges for demolition and assure their destruction after friendly troops had passed over.
Four of Wainwright’s five engineer combat battalions participated in the withdrawal—the 11th, 21st, 71st, and 91st. The 31st had gone with its division to help guard the western coast just above Bataan and on 14 December had been removed from NLF control. Wainwright decided to keep the 11th, 21st, and 71st Battalions with their divisions until they reached San Fernando, Pampanga. Then each battalion, less one company, was to be detached to maintain the roads leading into Bataan.
By Christmas Eve, Wainwright’s forces were retreating toward the D2 position, located along the southern bank of the Agno. The engineers had been at work here for more than a week. Anticipating bottlenecks when the heavy traffic from the north reached the bridges at Bayambang and Carmen, Skerry had put men from the Bureau of Public Works to work building two bridges of palm
logs at Wawa and Urbiztondo. Charges had been placed on all the bridges over the Agno. When the Japanese bombed the big highway bridge at Carmen on 23 December, some of the charges exploded, dropping the southernmost span to the river bed. Wainwright, alarmed because most of his tanks were still north of the river, ordered immediate repair. The 91st engineers, under constant enemy air attack, built a temporary span within 24 hours.64 After the last of the American and Philippine troops had crossed the river, the engineers demolished all the bridges along the 50-mile front. Wainwright’s forces had reached the south bank of the Agno and temporary safety.65
During most of the ensuing withdrawal, the front-line engineer battalions were kept intact. They moved in a definite pattern: on completing an assignment in a given area, a unit leap-frogged over the one behind it and continued working farther to the rear. These battalions, with other covering forces, prepared and executed demolitions and put in roadblocks near the front. To the rear, all important demolitions, whether of bridges and roads or of equipment and supplies, were carried out by engineers under Skerry’s command. Much of this work was done by the 9 1st Engineers. On 21 December the entire battalion was placed under Skerry, and, except for one company which later returned to its division, remained with him throughout the withdrawal. Still farther to the rear, other engineers readied roads and bridges for destruction. When War Plan ORANGE-3 went into effect, Wainwright ordered Skerry to prepare demolitions and erect obstacles in the territory south of Tarlac and Cabanatuan. In the large new area, stretching southeast toward Manila and southward to Bataan, mining engineers and district engineers of the Bureau of Public Works again rendered valuable service.66
As NLF withdrew farther south, the engineers made ready to blow up every bridge in the path of the Japanese. Skerry personally directed the placing of the charges at the critical highway bridges across the Tarlac and the Bamban Rivers and over the Pampanga at Cabanatuan, Arayat, and Candaba. The special detail of miners, with the aid of troops, prepared the spans on the Manila Railroad, taking special care with the great bridge at Bamban. At all the large bridges on the highways and the railroad the engineers managed to place their charges well ahead of time.67
Groups of miners, getting the innumerable smaller spans ready for destruction, had to work rapidly, for they had much to do and time was short. W. L. McCandlish, a demolitions expert who had arrived in the islands shortly before the outbreak of war, worked with a small group under Manzano which operated north of San Fernando, Pampanga. McCandlish’s
description of the group’s activities furnishes an example of how such parties operated. While fighting was going on at Tarlac, about twenty-five miles to the north, McCandlish and his men prepared the bridge at Angeles. After placing the charges, the blasting cap, and six feet of fuse, they arranged to have three Scouts stationed at the south end of the bridge to guard against premature detonation, and then moved southward. Between Angeles and Mexico, they found only small timber structures. They drenched these with fuel oil and directed the troops stationed as guards to ignite them when the order was issued by the proper divisional staff officer. At Mexico, McCandlish and his miners found a 30-foot concrete bridge over a deep gorge. At both sides of the north and south abutments they dug pits six feet deep, and in each of the four holes they placed 150 pounds of dynamite, attaching a cap and a fuse three feet long. They then instructed the detachment at the bridge how to fire the charges, cautioning the men that it would take only two minutes for the fuses to burn through to the blasting caps.68
Inexperienced Filipino engineers left to blow up bridges found it difficult to determine when to set the charges off. They frequently could not ascertain whether all friendly forces had crossed, for the Philippine infantrymen very often did not arrive at the right place at the right time. Sometimes the engineers could not find the divisional staff officer who was to notify them when to
light the fuses. An engineer would then have to take upon himself the responsibility of destroying the bridge. Sometimes officers, with but incomplete knowledge of the tactical situation, ordered demolitions too soon. Occasionally, Filipino engineers grew panicky and set the charges off without waiting for any orders at all. The foot soldier who found himself stranded on the wrong side of a wrecked span might somehow manage to get across and rejoin his outfit, but to the tanker, a prematurely blown bridge could spell disaster.. Since tanks operated under USAFFE control, the engineers made special efforts to get information on their movements but were not always successful. One tank commander, Col. Ernest B. Miller, concluded that he would have to place his own men at each bridge over which his tanks must pass, “with orders to shoot anyone who attempted to blow it without our authority.” On at least one occasion Miller’s tankers had to rebuild a bridge before they could move south. Colonel Skerry pointed out that demolition at the proper time was his greatest problem by far. As a rule, the engineers tried to keep a bridge intact until strong enemy action on the far bank made destruction imperative, but the fact remained that some bridges were blown too soon.69
In these tense days the engineers were called upon not only to destroy but also
Colonel Fertig (photograph taken in 1953)
to build. On 18 December MacArthur directed Stickney to prepare temporary landing fields for the “large reinforcements of airplanes” expected from the United States. These fields were first to be developed for pursuit craft and later to be enlarged for bombers. Every likely site was to be turned to use. Ordered to move to Bataan, the companies of the 803rd Aviation Battalion built a number of fields while on their way to their new location. On 21 December, Company A left O’Donnell for Dinalupihan, near the base of Bataan Peninsula, where it put in three emergency strips in as many days and then began work on revetments. On Christmas Day, headquarters company left Clark to loin Company A. Four days later, both moved south to Orani to build another strip there. Company B, meanwhile, having finished one runway at Del Carmen, moved on to construct two bomber strips at Hermosa and Pilar on Bataan’s eastern coast. Company C left Nichols and went to the tip of Bataan to push work on Bataan and Cabcaben fields. Filipino civilians helped greatly in the preparation of these fields. Under the direction of Colonel Fertig, who in October had been appointed chief of Stickney’s Construction Division, thousands worked to improve existing runways and rough out additional fighter strips. The engineers provided the fields, but there were few planes to use them. Most of the newly constructed strips were soon to be overrun by the enemy.70
The situation confronting Wainwright grew progressively more serious. Six days after their landing at Lingayen Gulf, the Japanese reached the D4 line, and on the night of 30 December Wainwright ordered a withdrawal to the D5 position. That the retreat from Lingayen Gulf had been a planned and orderly withdrawal was owing in no small measure to the demolitions of the engineers.71 With Wainwright’s men now making a determined effort to hold, much depended upon the speed with which the troops of South Luzon Force
could clear the bridges over the Pampanga at Calumpit on their way to Bataan.72
Engineers With South Luzon Force
When war broke out, South Luzon Force was mobilizing in the mountainous country below Manila. An engineer organization had barely begun to take form. Arriving at headquarters at Fort McKinley on 8 December, Capt. William C. Chenoweth, the engineer, SLF, found he had a staff consisting of two enlisted men from the 14th Engineers. Force engineers were entirely lacking, nor were any divisional engineers available for work behind the front lines; the only battalions in SLF, the 41st and 51st, could not be spared by their divisions. Chenoweth quickly mobilized the employees of the Bureau of Public Works. Within a few days after the first enemy landings on Luzon, he had 2,000 men at work stockpiling materials to be used in repairing roads and rebuilding bomb-damaged bridges.73
With the landing at Legaspi on 12 December, much of southern Luzon was in danger of being overrun by the enemy. About 250 miles southeast of Manila, Legaspi was connected with the capital by a good highway and the main line of the Manila Railroad. The only obstacles in the way of the advancing Japanese were the numerous ravines, gorges, and isthmuses of the long and narrow Bicol Peninsula. Because of its length and the small number of troops at his disposal, MacArthur had decided not to defend the peninsula. He relied chiefly upon the engineers to impede the enemy’s advance toward the capital.74
Upon learning of the landing, General Parker ordered an engineer detachment to the peninsula, and a group from the 5 st Engineer Battalion, under the command of 2nd Lt. Robert C. Silhavy, left at once to destroy highway and railroad bridges. The Japanese rushed small motorized units forward in an attempt to head off demolition parties. On 17 December, while placing charges on the railroad bridge near Ragay, 75 miles northwest of Legaspi, Silhavy and his men were fired on by a Japanese patrol. The engineers returned the fire and proceeded with their work. After demolishing the bridge, they took up positions on the near bank of the gorge and soon thereafter the Japanese retired. This was the first encounter with enemy ground forces on southern Luzon. Silhavy and his men continued demolition work on the peninsula until ordered to move to Bataan.75
On 14 December Casey directed the district engineers to destroy the bridges and “critical road cuts and fills” on the main highway running along the length of the peninsula. Their work in wrecking many highway bridges and roads greatly hampered the enemy’s progress
toward Manila. Casey, meanwhile, instructed the Manila Railroad to prepare to dynamite its principal bridges. The president of the railroad, Mr. Jose Paez, on 16 December told Casey that he had ordered all rolling stock and materials moved toward the capital. His crews had already pulled spikes out of thirty kilometers of track. Stocks of gasoline and oil which could not be hauled northward were being burned or dumped into the sea. He agreed to destroy all bridges and promised to give special attention to the destruction of spans over deep gorges. These pledges were in large part fulfilled. By the 17th the piers of the bridges at Libmanan and Banga Caves had been partly wrecked, the trusses dropped about three feet, and the ties and rails thrown into the river. The destruction of the 150-foot center span of the bridge across the gorge at Del Gallego effectively ended all rail traffic between Legaspi and Manila for months to come.76
Lack of coordination between the Manila Railroad and South Luzon Force increased the difficulties of evacuating supplies. Around 14 December, before any trains could be moved out of the peninsula, the bridges at Malicbuy and Pagbilao, both west of the Bicol Peninsula, were blown on orders of a tactical commander of South Luzon Force. Casey ordered the bridges rebuilt at once. Since they had not been seriously damaged, reconstruction was completed in thirty-six hours. On the 16th a wreck southeast of Manila damaged three cars and tore up a section of track. Casey attributed the accident to “interference by the local military authorities with railroad operation.” Seeking an end to mishaps of this sort, he arranged a meeting between officials of the railroad and officers of SLF. Better timing in the destruction of vital bridges and improved scheduling of trains resulted.77
With but few mining engineers in his part of the island, Chenoweth had to rely heavily on men from the Bureau of Public Works. McCandlish, who made several inspection trips in southern Luzon, reported that in many instances demolitions were not expertly handled. On the eastern Luzon coast, for example, he happened upon a district engineer and a group of Filipino workmen who were preparing to destroy a section of road near the mouth of the Tignuan River. The road ran along the side of a steep cliff about 500 feet above the river. The men were digging holes two feet deep in the road and loading each of them with two cartridges of dynamite. McCandlish considered these measures entirely inadequate. A tunnel with crosscuts blasted out of the cliff and loaded with three or four tons of dynamite “would have taken out the road, brought down the cliff, and stopped all transportation for a considerable period.” With little experience in complicated demolitions work, and lacking the time for adequate planning and preparation, district engineers nevertheless carried out hundreds of small jobs successfully.78
A Japanese landing on 24 December at Atimonan, at the base of the Bicol Peninsula, threatened to cut off all troops to the east. The day before, MacArthur had decided to withdraw to Bataan. The rapid movement of SLF northward was doubly urgent. The only troops east of Atimonan by the 24th were two reinforced infantry companies and several detachments of the 5 1st Engineers. These were recalled at once. On 28 December, MacArthur informed SLF of Wainwright’s precarious position and urged greater speed in the movement to Bataan. He directed SLF to cross the vital Calumpit bridges not later than 0600 of New Year’s Day.79
As SLF withdrew across southern Luzon, the engineers destroyed highway and railroad bridges. They dynamited steel and stone structures and soaked wooden spans with fuel oil and burned them. Rolling stock, food, automobiles, trucks, and gasoline were evacuated or destroyed. Brig. Gen. Albert M. Jones, in command of SLF during its withdrawal to Bataan, stated that demolitions in southern Luzon were so effective that if so ordered his troops could have held back the enemy for a much longer time.80
Last Days of the Withdrawal
With both SLF and NLF troops converging on Calumpit, much depended on the effectiveness of demolitions in the
vital area between the D5 line and Manila. Many small groups were at work here. One party of fifteen miners with Colonel Manzano helped clear fields of fire and erect barbed wire entanglements along the D5 line. Thousands of civilians, recruited by the mayor of San Fernando and the district engineer, aided in this work. After helping to strengthen Wainwright’s positions, Manzano and his men moved southward to the region between the Pampanga River and Manila to prepare bridges for demolition. Engineers from Stickney’s office placed charges along roads and railroads leading to the capital. Colonel Casey organized several parties who were to destroy important installations in and near Manila.81
Of all the bridges being prepared for destruction, those at Calumpit were to furnish the most exacting test of the engineers’ skill in demolitions. The Pampanga, 500 feet wide and 16 feet deep at this point, was spanned by two bridges, one carrying Highway 3, and the other the main line of the Manila Railroad. Charges for blasting the great steel and concrete spans had to be figured and laid with exceeding care. Because SLF and some units of NLF were still east of the river, the greatest precaution had to be taken not only against premature blowing but also to insure setting off the charges at precisely the right time.82 The story of the engineers’ work at Calumpit is one of the most dramatic of the Philippine campaign.
On 27 December McCandlish, together
with other experts from Casey’s office and a company of soldiers, began preliminary tasks. They first turned their attention to the highway bridge, breaking holes through the concrete deck directly over the piers. Blowing the north abutment would be easy, since at its base was a recess three feet deep in which a half ton of dynamite could be loaded and tamped with sandbags and boulders. While one group of soldiers packed charges in the holes on the highway bridge, another placed explosives under the railroad bridge. Japanese planes dropped several bombs, but apparently made no determined efforts to destroy the bridges. Still, even near misses were dangerous to the heavily loaded structures. During one raid, a bomb hit a sugar warehouse near the south end of the highway bridge; another landed in the river only fifty yards downstream. At first, air raid warnings delayed the work, but as the men gained confidence, they continued to pack dynamite and fill sandbags, heedless of the wailing sirens.83
When Skerry inspected the bridges on 30 December, he found that heavier charges would be required at the lower panel points to insure complete destruction. The highway bridge needed additional dynamite on its concrete deck. Intending. to take no chances, he prescribed an extra ton for each of the two structures and ordered an alternate system of firing for the deck charges on the highway bridge. Inspecting the bridges again on the morning of the 31st, he noted that more dynamite had been placed at the critical panel points and covered with sandbags. Before leaving, Skerry instructed his men to lay still more explosives across the decks of the structures after all traffic had passed over. The bridges would then be ready.84
By the early morning hours of New Year’s Day SLF and NLF had cleared the bridges. A flank guard which had been stationed at Plaridel, some seven miles to the southeast, crossed over between 0430 and 0500. All U.S. and Filipino forces were now safely across the Pampanga—all except Manzano and his men, who were somewhere between Manila and Calumpit. Skerry asked Wainwright to delay the destruction of the bridges as long as possible in order to give Manzano’s party time to get across. Wainwright agreed to wait until 0600, even though he felt the situation was becoming more and more serious. Dawn was beginning to break, and rifle fire was increasing on the south bank of the Pampanga. Enemy patrols were getting close to the river. “In weighing the tactical importance of blowing the bridges and making the ... unfordable Pampanga a real obstacle,” wrote Skerry, “against waiting for a small group, that ... could withdraw to Bataan by other routes, ... [there could be] but one answer. ...” Wainwright directed Skerry to blow the bridges. At 0600, the engineer went to the men waiting at the two abutments and instructed them to fire the highway bridge at 0615, the railroad bridge immediately thereafter. Wainwright and the members of his staff took cover, and
the engineers lit the fuses. After a few minutes the huge charges went off with a tremendous roar and the spans fell into the river. The broad Pampanga lay in the path of the enemy.85
As the Japanese columns neared Manila, the engineers touched off large-scale demolitions in and around the city. Preparations for denying the enemy everything of military value had been under way for more than a week. Industrial plants, radio stations, warehouses and shops of the Manila Railroad, Nichols and Nielson Fields, and Fort McKinley were to be wrecked. Supplies which could not be moved to Bataan were to be destroyed, all except food, the loss of which would inflict greater hardship on the Filipinos than on the Japanese. Casey was especially anxious to leave no oil, since the enemy’s stocks were extremely limited. He had therefore made elaborate plans for setting on fire the large oil tank farm in the Pandacan district. Roads and bridges within Manila were to be left intact. On 30 December the work of destruction began. On that day and the next, the city was dotted with fires and rocked by explosions, as the engineers put into effect their scorched earth policy.86
Demolition engineers were among the last to leave the city. One of the many to remain behind was Earle Bedford, before the war a civilian engineer in the islands, and now in charge of demolition work south and east of Manila in the provinces of Cavite, Batangas, Laguna,
and Rizal. Casey had instructed Bedford to stay in Manila as long as possible to destroy any military equipment he could find, and to make his way to Bataan by whatever means he could command. Bedford and his men destroyed three large bridges and many small ones south of the city. They wrecked the piers at Wawa. While mining bridges, they noticed about twenty-seven native houseboats and barges moored in the tidal waters of the rivers. Bedford succeeded in burning four in the Imus River, but the strenuous objections of the owners stopped him from setting the rest on fire. On New Year’s Day he and his crew of Filipinos destroyed quantities of abandoned supplies at Fort McKinley. With another American civilian he went to Pandacan to ignite any remaining supplies of gasoline and oil. The two men found three tanks still intact but surrounded by moats of burning oil. Unable to get near enough to place explosives against the valves, they used rifle fire to perforate the center tank and then ran to escape the ensuing explosion. On 2 January, the day the Japanese occupied the capital, Bedford arranged to leave for Bataan by boat. But while on his way to a rendezvous with two of his Filipino foremen in Intramuros, the old walled city of Manila, he was picked up by the Japanese and interned at Santo Tomas University for the duration of the occupation. Many who stayed behind shared Bedford’s fate, but others managed to escape, some finding small boats to take them across the Bay. Among those eluding the enemy were Manzano and his men, who, after destroying six bridges just north of the city, made their way to
Bataan by walking across country and slipping through the Japanese lines at night.87
Meanwhile, American and Philippine forces were completing their withdrawal to Bataan. After clearing the bottleneck at San Fernando, troops of NLF and SLF withdrew southwestward. The rearmost units passed through Layac Junction, at the entrance to the peninsula, in the early morning of 6 January. Here was the last bridge over which the troops had to pass. Before destroying the bridge, Captain Chanco asked the officer commanding the covering force of tanks whether his last tank was across. He replied it was, Skerry later recalled, “taking the usual position for a military oath and swearing by all that was holy all his tanks had crossed. The enemy was not immediately at hand, so a delay was ordered. Suddenly from out of the darkness one of his own tanks came rumbling along!”88 When the last tank had crossed, Chanco destroyed the bridge. The withdrawal to Bataan was complete.
Bataan
The Philippine campaign, so far a war of movement, was henceforth to be a war of position. The defenders of Bataan were to undergo one of the most protracted sieges of World War II. How long they could hold out would depend to a considerable extent on the strength of their fortified positions. One of the oldest arts of the military engineer is the construction of field-works, and here was a situation requiring all his skill and experience. Lines had to be drawn that would give the weak American and Filipino forces the greatest advantage. Positions had to be made as strong as possible and given the utmost support. As they dug in, the beleaguered troops were conscious of their desperate situation but were sustained by the hope that help would come before an overwhelming attack or attrition forced them to surrender.
The terrain was on the side of the defenders. About twenty-five miles long and twenty miles wide, rugged, jungled Bataan provided many areas where a small force could hold off a superior one. (Map 6) Down the center of the peninsula ran a steep mountain range, with two prominent peaks, Mount Natib in the north and Mount Bataan in the south. The deep jungles of western Bataan, especially, favored the stationary defender rather than the attacker. Here trails afforded the principal means of communication. During the day the oppressive heat made travel through the forests exhausting. Nights were cool, but the dense vegetation reduced visibility almost to zero; even when the moon was full, movement was almost impossible except along well-worn trails. Less primitive was the eastern half of Bataan. Along the coast were several towns, among them Limay, Orion, and Pilar, soon to figure prominently in the fighting. While the many rice paddies would furnish the defenders with good fields of fire, there were fewer strong positions than in the western half of the peninsula. Bataan had two roads suitable for vehicular traffic. One, a single-
Map 6: Bataan, 1942
lane coastal highway, ran south along the eastern shore to Mariveles at the tip, crossed over to the western side, and extended north as far as Moron. The other stretched across the middle of the peninsula from Bagac to Pilar.89
Early in January, Casey and Stickney went to Bataan to help organize the defenses, setting up their offices at “Little Baguio,” high on the southern slopes of the Mariveles Mountains. As Engineer, USAFFE, Colonel Casey was to supervise all engineer activities during the siege. By early January he had eight officers to assist him. Five remained with their chief on Bataan; three were sent to MacArthur’s headquarters on Corregidor. As service command engineer, Colonel Stickney was to be responsible for work in the rear areas, including all construction. A week after war began, Washington had ordered the duties of the constructing quartermaster in the islands transferred to the department engineer.
Stickney immediately took over construction as well as repairs and utilities work in and around Manila, but elsewhere on Luzon the confused tactical situation prevented the transfer. On 28 December Stickney assumed direction of all construction on Bataan and Corregidor. He had succeeded in augmenting his staff considerably since the beginning of the defense build-up and now had forty officers. His organization was divided into three sections: Construction, under Fertig; Supply, under Bonham; and Defense Works on the Fortified Islands, under Mielenz.90
When the Filipino troops moving down from the north reached Bataan, all the detached units of combat engineers were once more with their divisions. The 1st, 31st, and 91st Battalions moved to the western half of the peninsula, becoming part of General Wainwright’s command, now redesignated I Corps. The 11th, 31st, 41st, and 51st Battalions became part of II Corps, formerly SLF, which, under General Parker, was to defend the eastern half of Bataan. The 2nd and 7 1st Battalions went first to the service command area; the 71st was later transferred to I Corps, the 2nd to II Corps. Skerry as Engineer, I Corps, and Chenoweth as Engineer, II Corps, set to work immediately to help ready front-line positions.91
The Main Battle Position
The main battle position, along which Wainwright and Parker would first attempt to hold, extended from Mauban on the west to Mabatang on the east, a distance of about 18 miles. At the center of the line were two precipitous mountains, Mount Natib and Mount Silanganan, covered with jungle, which, it was believed, the enemy would be able to penetrate only with the greatest difficulty. Extensive field fortifications were therefore to be prepared only on the eastern and western portions of the line and were to extend about 5 miles inland from the coast on either side of the peninsula. The position had one obvious weakness. The almost impassable interior made communication between the two corps extremely difficult. Casey believed there was still another drawback. On 2 January he pointed out that between Mauban and Moron, 3 miles to the northwest, lay an excellent beach which would invite a Japanese flank attack. He recommended that the line be anchored at Moron, and that the Mauban line be used as a switch position. The line remained at Mauban, but MacArthur took steps to strengthen the beach, posting a company of infantry and a troop of cavalry at Moron and along the shore to the south to guard against an amphibious landing.92
During these first days of strenuous effort to prepare the main battle position
before the Japanese could strike, the engineer combat battalions were not only developing roads and trails, laying mines, and building gun emplacements but were also clearing fields of fire, digging foxholes, and stringing barbed wire. Inspecting his portion of the line during the first week of January, Skerry found the work but half complete and noted a number of deficiencies. The outpost line of resistance had good fields of fire, but too much of the scarce barbed wire had been placed here. Along the main line of resistance, foxholes were too close to the wire. The regimental reserve line, while well located, was badly in need of the wire which had been used so lavishly on the outpost line. Skerry concluded that engineer troops were not being used to best advantage. He asked division commanders to take their engineers off such jobs as digging foxholes, which should be done by infantry, and put them to building roads and trails. He also arranged to have the engineers work with the infantry in stringing wire. Chenoweth reported troubles, too, but of another variety. The troops “were green and could see no reason for digging foxholes, clearing fields of fire, or laying barbed wire.” They expended “no great amount of energy ... in digging themselves in.” The 41st engineers were attempting to build roads across rice paddies, but “as fast as ... [they] would dry out a rice field someone else would turn in the water.” Yet, despite many difficulties, the lines along the II Corps front were fairly well fortified when the Japanese attacked on 9 January. In the I Corps sector, fortifications were less elaborate, but there, because of
the difficult terrain, an enemy attack was less likely to succeed.93
Skerry was plagued by a shortage of engineer troops, but Chenoweth was more fortunate. During the last days of December a number of mining engineers had made their way to the east coast of Bataan. About 500 troops who had become separated from their units were also in the II Corps area. Most of the soldiers were stragglers, or survivors of a ship that had sunk after hitting a mine in Manila Bay. On 29 December these men were organized into the 301st Engineer Combat Regiment (Philippine Army), which on 13 February was split into two battalions, the 20 st and the 202nd. The miners were commissioned as officers. Assigned to Chenoweth, these new engineer troops erected field fortifications, prepared tank traps, and laid mines. In time they became some of the best road builders on Bataan.94
After the Japanese assaults began, the engineers continued to strengthen the lines. Visiting I Corps positions in mid-January, Casey observed that Skerry’s men had felled trees and placed antitank mines and timber piles in front of the main line of resistance. He found infantrymen stringing an additional twenty-five tons of wire on the defense lines and along the shore of the South China Sea. The troops were also constructing underwater obstacles south to
Eman Point. Moving on to the II Corps area, he noted that wire had been placed not only on the main line of resistance but also around sectors down to platoons. Many makeshift mines were in place, and the 11th Division had strung wire along the beach. Chenoweth had built about fifty dummy gun positions of stove pipe and bamboo, and was using small charges of dynamite to simulate the firing of cannon. These dummies were proving effective in drawing enemy fire. While defenses were fairly good at both ends of the line, the Japanese, displaying an unexpected skill in jungle warfare, had begun to penetrate the dense forests on the slopes of Mount Natib and Mount Silanganan.95
The Reserve Battle Position
By 22 January, Japanese pressure on I Corps was heavy, and the enemy’s penetration of the left flank of II Corps was threatening to envelop Parker’s divisions. On that day MacArthur ordered Wainwright and Parker to fall back to the reserve battle position, eight miles to the rear. The withdrawal was to begin on the 23rd and be completed by the 26th. Both corps would take over defense of the service command area so that their responsibilities would extend to the tip of Bataan. The reserve line, stretching a distance of about fourteen miles from Bagac on the South China Sea to Orion on Manila Bay, had been selected many years before in accordance with the requirements of War Plan ORANGE-3. The withdrawal would put both corps on less mountainous ground and greatly shorten the extent of the beaches and headlands which the troops of I Corps would have to defend against seaborne attack. The reserve position was to be the final one. When the Japanese broke through it, the battle for Bataan would be over.96
The withdrawal was not altogether advantageous. Casey, now a brigadier general, pointed out the many disadvantages that would plague the defenders. The original line, while longer than the reserve line, was better organized and better wired, and it had good fields of fire and artillery positions. Withdrawal to the narrow waist of Bataan would shorten the line but would crowd the defenders into an area about fifteen miles square. Pilar airfield, the 8-inch guns at Bagac, and part of the road between Pilar and Bagac would be lost. Bataan Field would come under long-range artillery fire. Worst of all, almost nothing had been done on the preparation of the reserve battle position. But enemy pressure forced the decision to withdraw, a decision that was “timely and necessary even if more than regrettable.”97
When Skerry had inspected the reserve battle position in the I Corps area in early January, he found that, except for one stretch of wire at Bagac and another at the center of the peninsula, the defense lines had not even been marked on the
ground. The eastern sector of the line was, at that time, not much better prepared. The 14th engineers, sent to the II Corps area in late December, were the only troops to work steadily on the line. Other units, both engineer and infantry, came and went in rapid succession. Outfits were ordered to the area only to be pulled out after a short stay and sent into combat. In mid-January two companies of the 30 1st and 600 additional Filipino soldiers, most of them airmen, were rushed down to the reserve position. But time was fast running out. When MacArthur withdrew from the first line, much still remained to be done on the second.98
On reaching the reserve position, every available man, combat engineer and infantryman alike, was put to strengthening the new line. All the work of digging foxholes, stringing wire, laying mines, and hacking out underbrush had to be repeated. Tools were now fewer and materials more scarce. Much of the wire expended on the first line could not be reclaimed; many picks, axes, and bolos had been broken or lost. When the men of the 41st Combat Battalion fell back from the original battle line, they left everything behind, including 1,700 shovels and 140 rolls of barbed wire. Bayonets, mess kits, and tin cans, which had sometimes served as entrenching tools on the first battle position, were used even more extensively on the second. The engineers of both corps toiled long and hard to build fortifications, occasionally working well in front of the outposts without any covering forces. By the end of the month Casey found positions in the II Corps “relatively well organized.” The I Corps sector, where jungles restricted fields of fire, was, in his opinion, the weaker one. He pointed out, however, that a concentrated enemy drive could penetrate either position. He therefore stressed the need for a strong mobile reserve which could be rushed to any point along the front. “If our strength is all tied down,” he warned, “it is bound to fail.”99
There was no lateral communication between the two corps except by the roundabout coastal highway. The front lines cut across the Pilar–Bagac road in such a way that the central portion was held by the Japanese. Troops in the center of the peninsula were isolated. An attempt to carry in supplies to them on pack mules met with little success, and some companies had nearly exhausted their food and ammunition before roads could be cut through. Engineer units in II Corps alone built over 00 kilometers of roads. But the most important and difficult task of all was that of building a road to parallel the Pilar–Bagac highway. The new route cut through the jungles on the northern slopes of the Mariveles Mountains and across river valleys with vertical drops of as much as 2,000 feet. This project was assigned to the 14th engineers. Having but five dozers of their own, they borrowed an angledozer and a tractor from Chenoweth and two graders from the 803rd. Beginning the job on 5
February, the 14th completed it two weeks later, one day ahead of schedule.100
Often the combat engineers had to fight as infantry. On 2 February, when Brig. Gen. Clifford Bluemel, the commander of the 31 st Infantry Division, launched a counterattack to prevent an enemy breakthrough in the II Corps area, he took his engineer battalion from reserve to make the assault. The men crossed the defense lines and advanced toward the enemy but soon encountered strong opposition. Infantrymen were sent in to support the engineers, and by sundown the attackers were directly in front of the Japanese position. The next morning engineers and infantrymen again moved forward, this time without meeting any resistance. Under the cover of darkness, the enemy had withdrawn. Frequently engineers became involved in combat when the positions they were fortifying came under attack. One hundred and eighty men of the 51st Battalion worked on the outpost line from 26 January to 8 February. They had no machine guns and but three automatic rifles. Ten percent of the men were sick with malaria and dysentery, yet they helped beat off three attacks and suffered 25 percent casualties. Recalling these grueling times, Skerry wrote, “The problem we had was to stave off pursuit by the enemy after the crushing of the main battle position and to organize and occupy the reserve battle position … I doubt if ... any staff engineer in the I Philippine Corps got over two hours sleep a night. Some nights none.101
Field manuals had little to say about the defense of positions in the jungle terrain. Most of their space was devoted to the conduct of operations in country like that of western Europe. Although defensive warfare in the jungle was in many ways similar to that in other types of terrain, Skerry noted certain essential differences. The dense vegetation of Bataan limited visibility to from 10 to 00 yards. In order to provide themselves with fields of fire and with passageways through the jungle, the troops had to cut out trees and underbrush, but they had to be careful not to clear so much that their positions could be spotted from the air. Positions to be mutually supporting had to be closer together than in open, rolling terrain. If units were not to be isolated, the regimental reserve line had to be nearer the main line of resistance. Patrols had to be constantly on the lookout for infiltration parties. It was highly advisable to have the main line of resistance continuous and to have it wired throughout in order to conceal the location of the mutually supporting areas and to prevent infiltration. At all times, maximum camouflage was essential.102
With the stabilization of the line between Orion and Bagac, the struggle became a test of American and Filipino endurance. Japanese naval and air
supremacy precluded sending in any sizable reinforcements. Occasionally a few small boats and planes from the southern Philippines managed to slip through the blockade. The Japanese had the upper hand and could either settle down to await the inevitable collapse or by fighting hasten the end. The defenders, still hoping for help from the outside, could only try to stretch their meager supplies as far as possible and supplement them by every available means.
Supplies
When the siege began, the engineers were among the best supplied troops on Bataan. Their depot near Mariveles and their advance dump in the center of the peninsula were well stocked with dynamite, caps and fuses, roofing, and food. “We have so much gasoline and fuel,” wrote Fertig, “that we need not bother the Quartermaster for some time.” Much of the credit for the enviable position of the engineers was owing to Bonham. As soon as War Plan ORANGE-3 went into effect, he and his transportation officer, Capt. Harold T. Gewald, took prompt and vigorous action to get supplies to Bataan. USAFFE had issued instructions that food was to be given first priority. Bonham and Gewald, disregarding priorities, organized their own transportation system. They shipped stocks to the peninsula by rail and truck. In Manila they pressed into service two tugs and a number of barges and lighters which were used to carry supplies to Bataan and Corregidor. In the last few days a number of barges were towed out into the bay and anchored or tied to piling. Later the engineer launch Night Hawk combed the bay and found all of them with most of their cargoes still on board. By January, 10,800 tons of supplies had been moved out of Manila. Engineer officers gave Bonham high praise, Mielenz, for example, affirming that Bonham had gotten “the jump on all the other services.”103
But even with the transfer of thousands of tons of supplies, the situation was critical. Among the items in short supply were barbed wire, burlap bags, axes, bolos, picks, and shovels, as well as construction items such as bitumen, cement, steel pipe, acetylene, and oxygen. Most of the materials and tools needed in field fortification were scarce, and there was far too little construction equipment. When the siege began, the 803rd Battalion and the 14th Battalion were fairly well equipped, but the engineer battalions of the Philippine Army had only a few bulldozers and no graders, shovels, rollers, or electrical equipment.104
Shortages of supplies and equipment were in part the result of changes in tactical plans. In July 1941 the department engineer had asked for authority to establish a base depot in southern Bataan, but permission was not granted. After MacArthur decided to try to hold the enemy at the beaches, Stickney and Bonham had to give up their project for
sending supplies to the peninsula and get ready, instead, to disperse them throughout the islands. In November they opened a second depot in Manila and another on the island of Cebu, and shortly after the outbreak of war they started up two more depots on Luzon, one at Tarlac and one at Los Banos. Not until WPO-3 went into effect were they permitted to move large quantities to Bataan. In the confusion of the hurried withdrawal, vital supplies were lost. Stocks at some of the advanced depots had to be destroyed or left behind. On the way to Bataan, Filipino soldiers abandoned much of their equipment and supplies. Colonel Mielenz later commented that “many supplies could have been saved and the troops finally retreating into Bataan would have been much more adequately provided for” had War Plan ORANGE not been temporarily discarded.105
Determined to increase their stores, the engineers set out to salvage everything of use on Bataan. Groups dispatched by Bonham to scour the peninsula stripped the fences of barbed wire and took nails, roofing, lumber, and machinery from bombed-out buildings and sunken barges. One of Bonham’s parties found 6,500 feet of pipe, six transformers, and four motor boats at Orion. Another raised 00 tons of barbed wire from the waters off Cabcaben. Learning that 150 tons of wire had gone to the bottom off Corregidor, the engineers hastened to retrieve it. Among the more important finds was a sawmill, which Chenoweth located early in January near the Pilar-Bagac road. Stickney dismantled the mill and moved it to Mariveles, where, reassembled and operated by civilians under the supervision of Bonham’s Supply Division, it was producing lumber before the end of the month. By March it was supplying 25,000 board feet daily. The 803rd moved rice mills from the vicinity of Orion and Pilar to lower Bataan. Though none of the men had ever seen a rice mill, they succeeded in setting up four. Three were turned over to the quartermaster in late January, the fourth in early February. After the mills went into production, the engineers were called upon to keep them in running order.106
What they did not have and could not find, the engineers undertook to make. One of their specialties was a mat, 3 feet wide and from 5 to 12 feet long, woven of wire, bamboo, and vines. These mats were used as temporary revetments. Rolled into cylinders and filled with earth, they could also be used in place of sandbags. Another improvisation was the hand grenade or “Casey Cookie” made of a hollow joint of bamboo some six inches long and three inches in diameter. Containing half a stick of dynamite and tightly packed with 2½-inch nails, broken glass, or sharp stones, the bamboo container had its open end sealed with concrete through which protruded
a 3-inch fuse. Stickney produced these weapons in sizable quantities. By 15 February he was turning out 500 a day and by the end of the month, 10,000 had been made. At times the grenades were highly successful, but many failed to explode. Bonham meanwhile continued to manufacture mines, producing not only the antitank mine but also a smaller one to be used against personnel. Running short of seasoned lumber, he had to use green timber, which warped in the heat and sometimes set the charges off accidentally. On one occasion, the engineers substituted submarine depth charges, brought over from Corregidor, for mines.107
Maps
Even to provide the army with maps, the engineers had to resort to expedients. When the war began, they had on hand two series of topographic maps. The first, based on surveys made between 1911 and 1914, covered most of Luzon at a scale of an inch to the mile. The second, based on surveys made in 1934 and 1935, covered important tactical areas on that island, such as Cavite and Bataan, at a scale of two inches to the mile. Also available was a trail map of Bataan, prepared by the 14th Engineers in 1939. The Engineer maps were not the only ones on hand. Over the years, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey had developed two series, one covering the entire archipelago, the other, the major islands. After the switch to War Plan ORANGE-3, plans to continue map production in Manila had to be quickly revised. Stickney ordered as many maps and as much reproduction equipment as possible transferred to Corregidor by midnight of 31 December. One of the four barges loaded with maps, plates, and equipment sank in Manila Bay, and another disappeared; the remaining two reached Corregidor in heavy seas, their cargoes lost or badly damaged.108
Without presses and with few plates, Stickney had to devise some way of making maps for the combat units. He put Maj. Clarence F. Maynard, formerly of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey office in Manila, in charge of map production. Gathering together the pieces of equipment that had survived the voyage from Manila, Maynard rigged up a small reproduction plant in one of the plotting rooms of a gun battery on Corregidor. Here he produced prints and tracings of the Engineer and Geodetic Survey maps. Stickney sent a couple of men to Bataan to turn out copies of the trail map on a gelatin duplicator. The sketch maps were amended from time to time to show the latest information on roads and trails. Although a scarcity of paper limited production, most requests were met. On March Casey reported that “map supply stocks continue adequate for requirements.”
For a small area such as Bataan, these primitive methods were satisfactory. Had it been necessary for the defenders to hold a larger area, the story might have been a different one.109
Construction in Rear Areas
Fertig, as Stickney’s construction officer, carried heavy responsibilities, confronted as he was with the job of completing a number of tasks proposed or started before the war. The little work that remained to be done on the Mariveles dock and the Limay wharf was quickly accomplished, and the big tunnels near Mariveles were soon under construction. Four thousand linear feet of underground storage space was provided during the siege. Fertig kept the quarry at Mariveles going at full blast while Bonham operated a ferry service to transport rock to Corregidor. As the numbers of sick and wounded mounted, construction and maintenance of hospitals, a function recently taken over from the quartermaster, became increasingly important. Roads and airfields, however, claimed the major share of Fertig’s effort.110
Engineers of the 803rd and civilians prepared airfields for the planes that were still expected. They continued to widen and lengthen the runways at the three remaining fields—Bataan, Mariveles, and Cabcaben, the quarry near Mariveles supplying rock for surfacing.
At first progress was fair, largely because the 803rd still had much of its heavy equipment, but later, as enemy raids took their toll of men and machinery, the pace slowed. Dwindling supplies of gasoline restricted the use of equipment so that much of the rock had to be crushed by hand. Plans to extend runways to 6,000 feet seemed more and more impractical. Soon after the siege began there was but one plane left for each field. And no more were to come.111
Roads were more vital than airfields to the defense. The coastal highway was the chief supply artery for both corps. The stretch between Pilar and Orion, the only paved section, had been torn up by heavy traffic during the withdrawal. South of Orion, the road consisted largely of base rock intended as a foundation for paving, while along the west coast from Mariveles to Bagac, the surface was soft dirt. The 803rd Aviation Battalion devoted much of its energies to this all-important coastal highway. The men spread gravel over practically the whole length of the road in the service command area. They widened stretches on the west coast and constructed alternate bridges. After air attacks, they filled in bomb craters so that the flow of supplies to the front would not be interrupted.112 The 71st Engineer Battalion with its attached labor companies maintained the west coast road north of the service command
area and placed crushed rock on part of it.
In most of their undertakings, the engineers were aided by Filipino civilians. Thousands had fled to Bataan before the advancing Japanese. Many Filipinos were reluctant to leave their families and go to Army projects, which were likely to be bombed; nevertheless, the engineers persuaded hundreds to work for them. At one time Stickney had about 500 on various jobs, and several hundred more were employed in the I Corps area. Short rations, cramped quarters, and frequent bombings led to a steady deterioration in morale, and many natives were unwilling to stay on the job. The engineers offered such inducements as blankets, transportation, and more food. When the ration was increased from two ounces of rice and one-eighth loaf of bread per man per day to nine ounces of rice, two ounces of bread, and some fish, morale improved noticeably. Despite efforts to better the workmen’s lot, the high rate of turnover in the labor force continued.113
Exposed to constant bombings and frequent artillery fire, the engineers in the rear areas on occasion also had to fight. In mid-January, Company A of the 803rd began working on the west road and putting in gun emplacements along the coast. On 23 January, the Japanese made a surprise landing at Quinauan Point, and after scaling the rocky cliffs, managed to work their way through the jungle to within 00 yards of the coastal road. On the 25th, Company A was ordered to help repulse the enemy, and of the 90 engineers who took part in the fight, nine were killed and 38 wounded. According to the company commander, the high casualty rate resulted mainly from the failure of the bamboo grenades to explode and the impossibility of getting cross fire on the enemy. Driven back down the cliffs, the Japanese took refuge in caves and ravines. When assaults by infantrymen and shelling by a small gunboat failed to dislodge them, Wainwright sent Skerry with a platoon of the 71st Battalion to blast them out. The engineers lowered 50-pound boxes of dynamite with time fuses over the edge of the cliff to the mouths of the caves. After a sergeant was killed while letting down one of the boxes, the engineers tried another method. They threw grenades consisting of four sticks of dynamite with a 30-second time fuse into the ravines at the base of the cliff from where the Japanese were firing. The enemy, numbering about 50, retreated into a large cave. The engineers again lowered dynamite, and “blew the place to pieces.”114 The few survivors were mopped up later.
The End of Resistance
In mid-February, a calm descended over the battlefields of Bataan. The
Japanese guns were silent, and there were few planes overhead. American and Filipino patrols sometimes moved as far north as the original battle position without encountering hostile troops. Many officers, among them General Bluemel, talked of reestablishing the Mabatang–Mauban line. The enemy was merely biding his time. Early in February the Japanese commander had decided to pull back his forces, tighten the blockade, and prepare an offensive aimed at overwhelming the weakened defenders. The pause in battle gave MacArthur’s men time to throw up new defenses against the assaults, which would inevitably come.
The engineers now had an unhoped-for opportunity to strengthen positions all along the line. In the II Corps area, they dammed the Pilar River, creating a barrier against enemy tanks, and inined roads leading to the river crossings. To provide additional fields of fire, they dynamited or cut out extensive thickets of bamboo. Along the front lines, they constructed more than 1,150 yards of double apron fence. Along the water’s edge near Limay, they burned houses to get better fields of fire on the beach. Meanwhile, they pushed work on roads and trails. In the I Corps area, they strung additional barbed wire, connected foxholes by trenches, and flooded rice paddies in front of defensive positions. They built log and earth dams across the Bagac, the Tuol, and the Tiis Rivers. During February, they cleared 875,000 square yards of underbrush from the densely wooded bluffs along the South China Sea and the jungles near the front. Early in March, Casey found some of the front-line positions “outstandingly excellent,” others “reasonably well prepared.”115
As the strain of the siege began to tell on the defenders, the psychological unpreparedness and lack of training of the Filipino engineers, as of the Philippine Army as a whole, became more and more apparent. Many of the soldiers, recently inducted into the Army, had little understanding of the issues of the conflict. The language barrier alone was nearly insurmountable, for 75 percent of the men understood almost no English. Nor was there one native tongue; eight major dialects existed. Efforts to form this polyglot army into an effective fighting force had not begun until shortly before the outbreak of war. Upon induction, most of the combat engineers had been assigned to help the Quartermaster Corps build camps. Not until November was a training program for engineer enlisted men started. Some inductees were taught how to use hand tools and pioneer equipment and to build field fortifications and bridges. A month before the war, twelve hundred engineer officers began training; the Japanese invasion abruptly terminated the program. The preparation of the Filipino engineer was at best rudimentary.116
Performance in battle reflected the lack of training. Many defense lines were poorly prepared and carelessly maintained. Trenches were sometimes
so close to the barbed wire that the enemy could easily toss grenades into the ranks of the defenders. Along the shores of Manila Bay, wire strung too far out in the water was beaten down by waves, and no one took the trouble to replace it. The Eilipino soldier frequently dug his foxhole behind a mound of earth or a clump of bamboo, which gave him a sense of security but prevented him from firing directly at the approaching enemy. Often he did not appreciate the importance of gazing fire; in many cases, he placed his machine gun on a slope, and his fire thus went over the heads of the advancing Japanese.117 When Chenoweth asked one platoon commander why his men had their foxholes at the top of a hill instead of at the bottom where they could have delivered grazing fire, the officer replied that “he had placed them up high where they could retreat faster.”118
In an effort to teach the Filipinos the bare essentials of combat engineering, Casey, Skerry, and Chenoweth launched an intensive training program. Officers of the 14th and the 803rd were assigned to the combat battalions to give instruction in the proper use of tools and equipment, placing machine guns, and preparing beach defenses. These instructors found themselves in a difficult position. Without command authority, they were frequently held responsible for the performance of their units. Toward the end of February, as the tactical situation worsened, MacArthur ordered the combat engineers to train to fight as infantry, and during the second week of March, training was begun in both camps. Little could be done at this late date, for “fight and learn” was now the chief, if not the only, method of training. Philippine engineers showed some progress, and American officers reported that on the whole the Filipino engineer, despite his inadequate preparation, performed well when ably led. But basic weaknesses in training could not be overcome.119
A number of division commanders, American and Filipino alike, apparently did not understand how to employ their engineer units properly. They frequently required them to do guard duty, bury the dead, transport rations for other units, or serve as infantry even though infantry units were available. Chenoweth relates that “an entire infantry division was found sitting quietly in bivouac” while its half-strength engineer battalion “was stringing barbed wire and digging foxholes for the entire division.” Some division commanders would not permit their battalion engineers to make adverse reports to Chenoweth and Skerry. Brig. Gen. Vincente Lim of the 41st Division told 1st Lt. Henry Harris, an instructor assigned to the engineer battalion, that anything wrong would be reported to him, the general, and not to
the corps engineer. “General Lim,” one of Casey’s assistants stated, “is determined that no reports of deficiencies in his division will get to higher headquarters but he does not take steps to correct his deficiencies. He considers his division his kingdom and does not intend for anyone to interfere with him.” Casey and members of his staff as well as Skerry and Chenoweth had to make repeated and time-consuming inspections of the Philippine engineer combat battalions and front-line positions to check on the progress of engineer work. As a rule, division commanders were cooperative and tried to follow suggestions for improving defenses and for using their engineers properly, but all this required much time and effort on the part of top-ranking engineer officers.120
During the first week of March, Casey, inspecting the front-line positions, noted many weaknesses. There was still no mobile reserve; practically all the troops were spread “in a continuously occupied trench line clear across the front.” Casey again saw no need for occupying every foot of ground, since natural strongpoints, well organized and mutually supporting, could control many yards. The men thus released could be formed into a reserve. The handiwork of the amateur Filipino soldier was still in evidence—Casey’s listing of mistakes in the organization of positions filled half a dozen pages. But, he reassured MacArthur, not everything was wrong; much good work had been done and the troops were determined to hold. Skerry, who accompanied the Engineer, USAFFE, on part of his tour of the I Corps area, was less optimistic. He observed that the men were tired, hungry, and sick and that their supplies of barbed wire and entrenching tools were extremely low. As Casey and Skerry moved from unit to unit, they explained how positions might be improved but refrained from making any adverse criticism, “knowing full well that morale and a determination to fight it out ... [were] of paramount importance.”121
Casey had visited the front for the last time. When MacArthur, acting on orders from President Roosevelt, left Corregidor on 12 March for Australia, he took with him seventeen members of his staff, among them Casey. On 21 March U.S. Forces in the Philippines, (USFIP), under General Wainwright, replaced USAFFE as the command in the islands. Colonel Stickney henceforth served as Wainwright’s engineer and as staff engineer to Maj. Gen. Edward P. King, who was in charge of Luzon Force. Bonham became service command engineer under Brig. Gen. Allan C. McBride and at the same time served as engineer supply officer for USFIP in Colonel Stickney’s office. The engineer organization in the field, not affected by the changes in the high command, remained as before, with Skerry and Chenoweth continuing as engineers of I Corps and II Corps, respectively.122
The situation of the engineers, like that of the other defenders, was almost hopeless. Supplies of many critical items were nearly exhausted. Early in March the remaining stocks of burlap were given to the troops for use as blankets. On 9 March I Corps received its last issue of barbed wire. Spare parts could be obtained only from equipment turned in for salvage. The critical shortage of gasoline deadlined so much of the machinery that construction work had to be drastically curtailed. Toward the end of the month Chenoweth estimated the effectiveness of his engineers as 10 percent of normal.123
The lull in the fighting came to an end during the second week of March. Skirmishes along the outpost line became more frequent. Enemy artillery opened up and aerial bombings increased. On 3 April the Japanese launched their offensive, directing their heaviest blows against II Corps. The next morning the 14th and the 803rd Battalions were ordered to stop work and assemble for combat. On 6 April the 51st Engineer Battalion was overrun as the entire line was hurled back. Parker then took the 201st and the 202nd from reserve and committed them as infantry. Maj. Harry O. Eischer, commander of the 201st, later recalled that the enemy planes “had a field day. The jungle was so thick we could not see them and they proceeded to fly 300 or 400 feet off the ground ... and drop bombs on us. The number of casualties was terrific. ... We were practically dead ... from fatigue, hunger, and dysentery. ... We were so tired that the idea that the Japs finally had us didn’t bother us a bit.” The 201st and the 202nd disintegrated, and on the morning of 8 April, in a last effort to stem the Japanese advance, the 803rd and the 4th were thrown into the battle. The aviation battalion moved toward its position, but finding no units on either of its flanks, retreated southward. The 4th took its assigned position across one of the trails and hastily erected a roadblock. Enemy tanks, moving south, were stopped by the obstacle, unable to advance further without infantry support. The engineers had no weapons for knocking out the tanks, and later in the day the 14th was ordered to withdraw. The end was now only a question of time, perhaps a matter of hours.124
With the fall of Bataan imminent, the engineers, in accordance with plans previously formulated, prepared to destroy all supplies and equipment that could not be moved to Corregidor. By 7 April preparations were complete. On the evening of the 8th General King ordered the work of destruction to begin. The engineer depot at Mariveles was set on fire. Tons of dynamite were detonated, and vehicles were burned or pushed into the sea, each of the combat battalions wrecking its own equipment. During the early morning hours of 9 April, a few engineers of the service command, among them Stickney, Bonham, and Fertig, escaped to Corregidor on the Night Hawk
and other craft. With the surrender of all forces on Bataan later that day, the engineers still on the peninsula became prisoners of war. The long siege was over.125
Corregidor and the End of the Campaign
To the men on Bataan, Fort Mills on Corregidor seemed a place of security. The elaborate fortifications, many big guns, and subterranean chambers appeared to justify the name, Gibraltar of the East. The power plant, water system, cold storage plant, and sizable stocks of munitions and supplies gave a measure of self-sufficiency. But life on the island, though not so perilous as on Bataan, was still precarious. Four miles long and one and one-half miles across at its widest point, Corregidor offered an excellent target. Its importance as the key to Manila Bay insured repeated bombings. Only by going underground could its garrison be safe. Largest of the tunnels was Malinta, which the engineers had blasted out of the rocky hill in the center of the island many years before. Its main east-west passage, 825 feet long and 50 feet wide, and its fifty-odd lateral tunnels, each about 150 feet long, housed the headquarters, repair shops, and the hospital, and provided space for large quantities of supplies. But all the men on the island could not remain in Malinta. The guns, the power plant, the water reservoirs, and indeed most of the facilities needed to maintain Corregidor as an effective bastion, were above ground. Keeping utilities in operation, maintaining the island’s 62 miles of roads and trails and its 13 miles of electric railway, and providing additional tunnels and shelters were the responsibility of the engineers.126
Just before the war began, Colonel Mielenz and his assistants were attempting to get the projects for modernizing Corregidor under way. The contractor and his crews were on the scene, but no formal agreement had yet been signed. Most of the requisitions for supplies and equipment sent to the United States months before were still unfilled. Except for the construction machinery brought over by the contractor, items of equipment on the island were few. On hearing the news of Pearl Harbor, Mielenz suspended negotiations, hired the contractor’s men as temporary civil servants, and forced into high gear a program previously estimated to take three years to complete. Some of the workmen were soon building bombproof shelters at gun batteries, while others were placing baffle walls and sandbags in front of the doors and windows of the power and cold storage plants. Still others were at work on Malinta Tunnel, where they began laying a concrete floor in the hospital, installing a temporary ventilating system, and putting sandbags at the east and west entrances.127
For three weeks the Japanese ignored the island. On 29 December, a few
days after MacArthur moved to Corregidor, enemy planes made the first of a series of attacks which continued until 6 January. Almost all buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged. Power lines were knocked out, pipelines damaged, water tanks demolished. Large sections of road were obliterated and the electric railway was wrecked. In the huge fires that swept the island, great quantities of supplies were lost, including large amounts of construction materials. When the smoke had cleared, the engineers began removing the wreckage and strengthening the island to withstand further attacks.128
Even while the raids were in progress, Mielenz was making frantic efforts to repair the damage. As soon as the all clear sounded, crews went out to patch roads and mend power, sewage, and water lines. Fixing the roads, most of which were surfaced with gravel, was comparatively easy, since bulldozers could quickly fill in craters and smooth out churned-up sections. The few stretches of concrete were more difficult to repair, but detours could be readily provided. Road gangs worked all through the night until raids at dawn forced them to take shelter. The plumbers, electricians, and mechanics who had formed the small peacetime maintenance staff were unable to cope with the extensive damage to utilities. The electric railway was ruined beyond repair. Electric cable was scarce and only the most vital power lines could be maintained. The sewage system was so badly damaged that field latrines had to be used. The restoration of water lines was difficult and time consuming; not until 14 January were the troops again permitted to use fresh water for washing clothes or bathing.129
Saturation bombing demonstrated the defects of some of the existing tunnels and shelters and brought home the need for increased passive protection. During the raids several of the shallower tunnels collapsed and a number of bomb-proof shelters turned out to be death traps. Many of the shelters built before the war were covered with 4 feet of concrete, topped by 8 feet of earth. Bombs penetrated the earth and exploded when they hit the concrete. The soil served as tamping and forced the blast downward. When the troops manning the gun batteries and beach defenses began digging tunnels and building bomb-proofs for their own protection, the engineers furnished technical advice. Mielenz directed that no new tunnels were to be constructed unless the rock cover was at least 50 feet thick. He also adopted a type of bombproof with a layer of concrete covered with rubble to act as a burster course. Meanwhile, he pushed projects to protect installations above ground and to make Malinta Tunnel safer and more livable. The engineers put covers of reinforced concrete over the large gasoline tank and the telephone exchange. Neither installation was ever damaged. In Malinta, they installed stand-by water and power systems and completed a sewage system
for the hospital. They placed additional sandbags inside the tunnel entrances to deflect the burst of bombs landing behind the protective wall of bags previously stacked outside. Almost until the end, the men on Corregidor continued building shelters and providing cover. Between 8 December and 10 April they blasted about two miles of tunnel.130
Keeping the island supplied with water was one of Mielenz’ chief concerns. Eighteen wells normally furnished some 675,000 gallons a day, while eight reservoirs held about six million gallons. Wells and reservoirs were scattered in such a manner that it was hardly likely that they would all be hit in one raid. Nevertheless, by 20 January four reservoirs had been knocked out. To replace them, the engineers installed temporary tanks and a stand-by pumping system was also provided. Usually enemy bombings damaged only the pipelines. To prevent the loss of large quantities of water from broken lines, the engineers posted guards at the reservoirs with orders to close the valves when the air raid sirens sounded. On g March Mielenz reported that 6,642,251 gallons were in storage. Except for occasional shortages, the supply of water was adequate until the last few days before the surrender.131
In January Casey pressed for the improvement of Kindley Field and the construction of five splinter-proof, camouflaged plane pens. Located on the eastern end of the island, Kindley was rocky and muddy, and could be used only for emergency landings. Stickney had started work on the runway in early 1941, but shortages of equipment and personnel had hampered progress. Little had been done before the war, except to extend the runway from 2,100 to 2,400 feet. Since Mielenz could spare no men for work on Kindley, volunteers from the air force in mid-January were given the job of building revetments of sandbags but accomplished little. Casey was at length able to get Company A of the 803rd assigned to the project, and on 4 February the unit moved to Corregidor, but it had been so badly mauled in the fighting at Quinauan Point that it was no longer an effective organization. Poorly equipped and subjected to repeated aerial and artillery bombardment, it constructed the five revetments but could do little to improve the runway.132
Calls for engineer assistance came from every quarter. Each branch and service had its special construction projects and its urgent need for repairs. The troops building fortifications and shelters required expert direction. Engineers and skilled workmen had to be spread thinner and thinner. Mielenz urged that every man who could be spared be assigned to engineer projects; even so, many jobs went begging. Dynamite, lumber, and crushed rock were sent
from Bataan, but replenishing many of the supplies was almost impossible. In an effort to do first things first, Mielenz tried to hold to a system of priorities, but he was not completely successful. The wishes of high-ranking officers sometimes took precedence over priorities.133
Late in January the Japanese moved artillery to Cavite Province on the southern shore of Manila Bay and on 6 February began a prolonged bombardment of the fortified islands. The smaller forts bore the brunt of the shelling. Fort Frank, on Carabao Island, nearest the coast of Luzon, suffered the greatest number of hits. Here the engineers partially casemated several guns and strengthened beach defenses but attempted no tunneling. North of Carabao was El Fraile Island, on which the engineers had built Fort Drum, a thick-walled concrete fort resembling a battleship. When the war began, the fort’s dilapidated power plant was being overhauled under the direction of a Mr. Williams of Manila. With the occupation of the city by the Japanese, Williams remained on the island and was mainly responsible for the fact that Fort Drum was never without power. Although the Japanese placed heavy concentrations on the fort, they failed to silence its 14-inch guns. Closest to Corregidor was Caballo, on which Fort Hughes was located. This island was too small to be easily hit by enemy aircraft, but it offered a worthwhile target to the artillery emplaced across the bay. Troops and civilians worked on a tunnel, bombproofed the
water storage tanks, and placed wire along the beaches. For forty-four days the guns on the islands answered the enemy bombardment. When the Japanese lifted their fire on 22 March, the forts still commanded the bay. That they had withstood the intense shelling was due to the courage of their defenders, to the fact that utilities were kept in operation, and to the strength of the forts themselves.134
Corregidor, rather than the smaller islands, was the enemy’s ultimate objective. Working against heavy odds, the engineers tried to check the deterioration of utilities and roads and to strengthen the fortress against the day when it would have to stand alone. Because a number of tunnel entrances were directly in the line of the projectiles coming from Cavite, the engineers relocated some of the entrances and provided baffle walls for the rest. Power lines and water pipes, broken repeatedly by shells and bombs, kept maintenance crews busy. The refrigeration plant required constant attention. When the cold storage room was damaged by a bomb, the engineers immediately undertook to restore it. Much of the ammonia and tubing they needed was salvaged from wrecked ships off the shores of Bataan and Corregidor. A new steel roof was almost finished at the time of the surrender. The defenders meanwhile kept up the continual round of piling sandbags, erecting baffle walls, propping up structures, and covering observation and command posts.135
After the fall of Bataan, Corregidor received a still more merciless pounding. The Japanese moved artillery to the heights of the Mariveles Mountains and raked the island with fire. Air attacks mounted in fury. On 29 April, the emperor’s birthday, air and artillery bombardments reached their height. During the first week in May, the island shook from incessant shelling and bombing. The engineers found it impossible to repair the damage. Artillery and aerial bombardments were so intense that work in the open was impossible day or night. Roads could no longer be kept free of obstructions. Many broken power and water lines could not be repaired. Company A of the 803rd, still struggling with the runway of Kindley Field, was subjected to almost continuous bombing. By the end of April the company commander and 18 men had been killed. In the last days four engineer officers were given the hazardous assignment of acting as observers for the artillery. Two lost their lives. 1st Lt. Hersel E. Philippe, one of Mielenz’ assistants, was killed while serving as a spotter on the western part of the island, and Captain Gewald was burned to death on top of Malinta Hill.136
Early in April the southern Philippines came under attack. Except for the small force which had come ashore on Mindanao on 20 December, no enemy troops had landed in the southern islands during the first four months of the war. The combat engineers of the Visayan-Mindanao force, the 61st, 81st, and mist Battalions, had erected fortifications and prepared roads and bridges for demolition. Men from Stickney’s office had readied many airfields with the help of contractors and civilian laborers. The Japanese assaults began on 10 April with a landing on Cebu, and within a week the enemy was in control of the coastal areas. On 16 April the Japanese invaded Panay; four days later organized resistance ceased. On the 29th they made a major landing on Mindanao’s western coast and on 3 May another on the northern coast. The defenders were quickly overwhelmed. With the seizure of these three islands, the Japanese controlled the southern Philippines. Only the islands in Manila Bay still resisted the enemy.137
The landing of Japanese troops on the eastern end of Corregidor on the night of 5 May and their advance toward Malinta Tunnel the next morning convinced Wainwright that continuation of the suicidal struggle could serve no useful purpose. With the surrender on 6 May of the remaining USFIP forces on Corregidor and the southern Philippine Islands, all organized engineer operations came to an end. Except for a few who escaped, the men on Corregidor were sent to prisoner of war camps in the Philippines, and many were later transferred to camps in Japan and Manchuria. Most of the engineers of the Visayan-Mindanao force eluded the enemy by retreating into the almost inaccessible
mountainous regions of the southern islands.138
Within a few months guerrilla warfare began. One of the leaders was Colonel Fertig, who left Corregidor by plane on 29 April for Mindanao, where he helped organize the guerrilla forces. By 1943 he had 45,000 men under his command. Destruction of roads and bridges by Fertig’s guerrillas made Japanese overland transport almost impossible. Colonel Manzano made his way to Manila and established an intelligence network. Information gathered by his agents was sent to Fertig on Mindanao and from there to General MacArthur’s headquarters in Australia. The guerrillas were still harassing the enemy when American troops returned to the Philippines late in 1944.139