World War II began for the United States with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, followed by the invasion of the Philippine Islands the next day. Unlike the rapid capture of Hong Kong, Wake Island and Singapore, the war in the Philippines lasted for seven months before the unprepared American and Filipino forces—cut off from supplies and fighting with obsolete equipment and without air or naval support—were overwhelmed.
Drawing on diaries and personal accounts, this book chronicles forgotten actions in the fall of the Philippines through the recollections of American servicemen. The author covers the 90 day perseverance of Bataan’s tiny air force, the first PT boat raid of the war, the last U.S. horse cavalry charge in history, a lone U.S. submarine’s attack on a Japanese invasion fleet, the deliberate bombing of Bataan’s main field hospital by the Japanese, the difficult and uneasy surrender of Bataan, Corregidor’s doomed resistance and the surrender of the Southern Islands of the archipelago.

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 (6 x 9)
Pages: 220
Bibliographic Info: 3 maps, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2015
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9820-8
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2047-3
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents

Introduction  1
1. “Never even got into the air”  3
2. The Philippines, December 10, 1941: “Where are our fighters?”  14
3. Moon Under Lingayen  30
4. When America Needed Heroes: Wheless and Wagner, December 10–16  38
5. The USS Canopus  48
6. A Scary Christmas But a Happy New Year: The Philippines, December 1941  58
7. The Last and the First: Bataan, January 18, 1942  65
8. The First Battle for Bataan: January 18, 1942  75
9. “Think what we could have done with sixty!”  84
10. Biggest Day for the Bataan Air Force: March 3, 1942  91
11. Japanese Blitzkrieg: April 3, 1942  98
12. The Deliberate Bombing of Bataan Hospital No. 1  107
13. The Fighting General of Bataan  119
14. Honorable But Not Easy: The Surrender of Bataan  133
15. “P-40 Something”: The Last of the Tomahawks  146
16. Corregidor Fights Back: May 6, 1942  154
17. “You will, repeat, will surrender”  191
Chapter Notes  203
Bibliography  207
Index  209