The Battle of Bataan

Fought with obsolete and discarded equipment by an army mostly made up of untrained Filipinos, the Battle of Bataan has become one of the “forgotten” battles of World War II.
This book provides a complete history of the conflict by looking at the events which led up to the battle, with an overview of the American, Philippine and Japanese forces that fought on Bataan. Abandoned by their commander, Douglas MacArthur, and written off by their president, without an air force or navy to support them, for 90 days the Americans and Filipinos held out against not only the Japanese but the ravages of starvation and disease. In the end came the largest surrender in American military history. The book contains dozens of period and modern photographs and several maps.

Donald J. Young is a military historian, author and lecturer on the pre–Midway period of World War II in the Pacific. He is a retired educator living in Vista, California.

Donald J. Young
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 296
Bibliographic Info: 86 photos, 26 maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2009
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4180-8
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5372-6
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1
Military Organizations and Designations      3
Introduction      5

1. The Battle Is Joined      17
2. Counterattack and Withdrawal      45
3. Invasion from the Sea      75
4. The Battle for the Points Continues      106
5. The Battle of the Pockets      130
6. “We Spit on Our Hands and Waited”      151
7. Beginning of the End      182
8. No Gleam of Victory      189
9. Bataan’s Last Hours      222
10. “Bataan Has Fallen”      237

Appendix A
192nd and 194th Tank Battalions      261
Bataan Artillery and Antiaircraft      261
Bataan Engineers and Quartermaster      262
The Bataan Hospitals and the Medical Situations      267
Communications      271

Appendix B
Refugees      272
Troop Morale      272
The Weather and Its Effect      274

Chapter Notes      277
Bibliography      281
Index      285

• “a good account…extensive personal testimony…dramatic narrative”—Global War Studies
• “brings together all facets of the story…. Recommended”—Library Journal
• “an interesting synthesis of the ground-level combat…indispensable”—Choice
• “a good account of the battle, with excellent maps and some rarely-seen photographs, its primary contribution is the inclusion of extensive personal testimony from memoirs, and interviews. These individual accounts lend color and immediacy to an already dramatic narrative—Stanley L. Falk, Philippine war historian