Correction

Dr. Jose Javier, a veteran of Bataan, has written an article correcting what appeared as a misstatement in my article on Bataan Day entitled "A Glorious Failure". Dr. Javier is quite correct, and I wish to thank him for the correction.

In my article I had said that the Bataan defense was doomed to failure from the start but that instead of surrendering much earlier, they held out for four months. Dr. Javier is quite correct that gives a wrong impressions. Perhaps a better statement would be something like this:

The retreat to Bataan was (as Dr. Javier says) a strategic move to give time for reinforcements to come from the United States. The men in Bataan did not know that those reinforcements would never come, and therefore, without their realizing it, their gallant defense of Bataan was doomed from the start.

As it was, the four-month defense of Bataan achieved one great advantage. It seriously delayed the Japanese time-table and allowed Singapore to hold out longer.

Incidentally, while we are on this topic, there is a poignant detail in Quezon’s autobiography in which he describes how he, in the cramped quarters of the Malinta Tunnel in Corregidor, realized that American reinforcements would never arrive. It was the announcement of President Roosevelt that "the freedom of the Philippines would be redeemed." Redeemed? Not preserved? Not protected? It would first have to be lost and later regained?

That is really what I meant when I said that the heroic defense of Bataan was doomed to fail from the start. With almost nothing prepared, with no adequate supplies of ammunition or food or medicines, with no protection from the air and with no hope for reinforcements, what chance was there for success?

I do not think anybody would deny that Bataan was a failure. After all, it ended in surrender, and what is surrender but an admission of failure?

The point of my article was that, although a failure, the Bataan defense was a glorious failure, as glorious as other famous failures in history: like Thermopylae or Tirad Pass.

Or the sinking of the Titanic, when they made every attempt to save the women and the children, and the men went down with the ship with the band playing "Nearer my God to Thee."

Those were glorious failures. Bataan belongs in their category. A military failure but a triumph of the spirit.