I've been in touch with Donald Abbott (503rd RCT) on account of his article"E" CO ATTACK ON BATTERY MONJA.  I sometimes have trouble getting connected to the website but I did print out Abbott's great story of that unit's assault on Wheeler and Monja Points. It still grieves me that so many boys were lost over that "lost road" ending at Battery Monja. I had an e-mail from him and he told me, as you did, about how difficult or impossible it was for him to re-explore that battery and its environs. It wasn't quite clear to me just how far South Shore road extends now but I understand it don't go as far as it used to. 

The maps they had of that area don't agree with my recollection of how the points were named. There was no NO NAME POINT that I can remember. That one is what we all called Wheeler Point and it's where my fox hole was. That was my 'Casa Grande' and I knew every step to and from it in the dark - believe. I shit a brick or two in it straining my eyes out to sea looking for the Jap landing craft that never came. I think I had two bandoleer's of ammo, a couple of hand grenades, some pretty good sized rocks and my piss pot helment and that was about it. Battery Wheeler was right up the cliff over my head and fired a couple times right over the top of me - I thought - that's what it sounded like. Almost tore the legs off my trousers when it did. Whew! what a boom.

It looks like they called Monja Point, Wheeler. That don't make a lot of sense to me. If Battery Monja was in the point why couldn't they have just guessed that it would have been named Monja? We called the little rock off the end of it Monja Rock. Maybe when your up topside from Wheeler the only point you could probably see is Monja. Wheeler point might not be visable from there unless you were on the very edge of the cliffs. They went almost straight up from the edge of the road. There were some little dribblely springs leaking out of them there. Good place
to take a Whore's bath. 

Don Versaw

My name is Arthur M Wyatt.  I was deployed on Corregidor for over two months between Dec 87and  Jan 88 while with Naval Construction Battalion 74.  I was part of a 22 man unit sent from Subic Bay  to Corregidor to do repair work to the monument and facilities there. This included a new roof on the school house.

 There were around 300 people living on the Island along with 3 Philippine Navy personnel and several people at the small Inn there (though we saw no one staying there while we were there.)

  It seems from what I can gather from your site that it has changed a lot for the worse since I was there. It's a shame. It's sad to hear that they have built a convention center and God knows what else there  since I was there.  

It used to piss me off that all the other guys except one that I was there with did not appreciate where they were and the privilege it was to be actually "stationed" on Corregidor! I was in absolute awe of the place. The only thing that even comes close to the feeling I had there was to stand on the Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor and look down on the ship beneath knowing it was the tomb of 1200 sailors. 

I have great respect and admiration for the people who were there during the war. Many times I stood some where like the operating rooms in the old hospital and would almost go into a trance trying to imagine what it must have been like. I have been haunted by Corregidor ever since.

Photo (top) : We camped near the 'flame'. 

Photo (right) : Darn, didn't bring the M-1 Helmet!

Photo (bottom): Loading up, rather than landing at South Beach, Jan 1978.  

Thank you for keeping the memory of the Rock and the sacrifices made there alive.

Arthur M Wyatt

Robbie,

Regards,

Paul Whitman

Editor - Corregidor Then and Now

Dear Mr. Whitman,  

Sincerely, 

Mrs. Robbie Bowling

Robbie,

Sincerely, 

Robbie Bowling  

Regards

Paul Whitman

Sincerely, 

Robbie 

----o0o----

Paul,

After downing a Jap Zero at Clark Field, and fighting during the 192nd Tank Battalions withdrawal to Bataan, my Dad was captured on the Rock, and ironically, the first unit I served with in the Army was the 60th ADA, which was the former 60th CA. While serving on Okinawa, I took leave spending a week in the PI. I hired a car, followed the route of the Death March, then hired a "banka" which took me out to Corregidor. We landed on the North Dock, in fact the pictures of the wooden wharf and beached banka look exactly as I remember them. A very memorable and moving web site!

Sincerely,
Steve

Paul,

I also just got done reading your revisionist history of purple. I have been one, who has believed for years that Roosevelt knew of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. He was a smart enough man to know the potential danger of Adolf Hitler. I believe that he bullied Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor.

When you play hardball diplomacy, you do it from a position of strength, not weakness. 

First, he transferred the Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor against the advice of his admirals, then he sent half the fleet to the Atlantic. What lay in Pearl Harbor was not a deterrent to Japanese aggression, but a big carrot, a great target of opportunity. What he may not have known, was that Kimmel and Short did not know what was happening because they did not have access to the intercepts. He may have assumed that they were on full alert. Of course, they were not and after the magnitude of the attack became clear, the (un)official cover-up began. 

Poor Kimmel and Short were made scapegoats to protect the President's hide. On December 8th, Congress declared war on Japan. Roosevelt knew that Congress had no reason to declare war on Germany. He would have been hard pressed to convince Congress to do so. In one of the most idiotic decisions in history, Adolf Hitler, against the advice of all of his generals, took care of Roosevelt's dilemma, by declaring war against the United States. One could imagine how the European war would have turned out without the United States.

What is far more inexcusable, is MacArthur's stupidity in the Philippines. A full six hours after Pearl Harbor, the entire Far East Air Force was caught on the ground at Clark Field. This terrible disaster sealed the fate of every American soldier in the PI. I am also not a fan of MacArthur's (as you can tell). 

The disaster on Bataan was one his making. Had he declared War Plan Orange in effect on December 8th, there would have almost a month to stockpile food, medical supplies and ammunition etc on the peninsula. In reality, the quartermasters were only given 48 hours. Such is the disaster that happened in the Philippines. 

Kenneth L. Schneider
E-Mail: [email protected]

Ken,

Editor CT/N

Paul,

After reading the MacArthur section and seeing in the first line his "not unreasonable belief that the US government would send massive reinforcements to him." I had to write in the effort to point out a few facts that are rarely, if ever, discussed.

1) The Navy foresaw a war with Japan as early as 1897, and started planning for the possibility that year. Planning at this point was limited to academic discussions.   Immediately after the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-05 the navy based war plans on the premise that the Japanese would attack without warning or declaration of war, as they had with the Russian fleet. War Plan Orange, as it was informally known, was escalated into full time staff work.

2) War Plan Orange staffers had severe limitations on what any American fleet could attempt at the outbreak of hostilities in the Pacific. Peacetime budgetary constraints dictated that no substantial naval forces would be available to deploy outside the Aleutian-Hawaii-Panama Triangle in the first year of war without leaving these areas completely undefended. They then had to choose which areas could be defended and which could not. Unfortunately, the Philippines were far outside the defendable area.

Navy planners were under considerable pressure to find a way to defend the Philippines at an outbreak of war. The best they could do was design a relief expedition to these islands a few months after the initial attack; this was known as the "Through Ticket". This plan, however, had to be abandoned when enough officers pointed out it would amount to a suicide mission.

The Navy did not conceal any of this from the Army.  Quite the contrary, MacArthur was keenly aware of all this long before December 1941. His defensive plans relied on strong land and air forces to defeat any invasion force, using large amounts of supplies stockpiled in the Manila area. (Most of these supplies were captured by the Japanese.)

This plan ignored two critical facts of island warfare:

First, that no defensive forces can successfully hold an island without without naval support;

Second, that high level bombers were essentially useless against warships. One bombardier described it as "like trying to drop a marble on a scared mouse"Not until General Kenney took over the 5^th Air Force and perfected mast-level cannon and bombing attacks with medium bombers were the Army Air Forces effective ship killers.

Many people have insisted the navy (what was left of it) should have headed straight to Manila to relieve the forces on Bataan and Corregidor. (Japanese carriers outnumbered ours 10 to 3 at this time). It is ironic that if this had been done, the same people would have been asking what moron Admiral would send the only surviving forces in the Pacific to certain destruction, leaving Australia and Hawaii completely defenseless against invasion. Military leaders had, and have, the duty and responsibility to look at all the facts and consider the big picture, which could not possibly have been bleaker in the early months of 1942. As it turned out, we lost most of our surviving naval forces (3 carriers and Lord knows how many cruisers, destroyers and other ships) stopping the Japanese advance through the Southwest Pacific to Australia. By November of 1942, only one operational carrier was available in the entire Pacific.

It is my hope that this discussion will not be construed as MacArthur bashing. I believe he was an extraordinary leader who, like every other human, made some mistakes. But to portray him as being callously abandoned by the Navy is just wrong.

Frank Asturias
Previously Boatswain’s Mate 1^st Class
Special Warfare Group One, USNR
25 March 2000