JAPANESE FORCES BEGAN AN ASSAULT ON THE UNITED STATES AND FILIPINO TROOPS.

 JAPANESE FORCES BEGAN AN ASSAULT ON THE UNITED STATES AND FILIPINO TROOPS.

 This date, April 3, in 1942, Japanese forces began an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.

And, same date, in 1946, Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma was executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March.

[Photo: A burial detail of Filipino and prisoners of war uses improvised litters to carry fallen comrades at Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, 1942, following the Bataan Death March.]

The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war from Saisaih Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, where the prisoners were loaded onto trains. The transfer began on April 9, 1942, after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II. 

The total distance marched from Mariveles to San Fernando and from the Capas Train Station to Camp O'Donnell is variously reported by differing sources as between 60 and 70 miles. 

Differing sources also report widely differing prisoner of war casualties prior to reaching Camp O'Donnell: from 5,000 to 18,000 Filipino deaths and 500 to 650 American deaths during the march. The march was characterized by severe physical abuse and wanton killings, and was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime.

Masaharu Homma (November 27, 1887 – April 3, 1946) was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Homma commanded the Japanese 14th Army which invaded the Philippines and perpetrated the Bataan Death March. After the war, Homma was convicted of war crimes relating to the actions of troops under his direct command and executed by firing squad on April 3, 1946.

Homma was born on Sado Island, in the Sea of Japan off Niigata Prefecture. He graduated in the 14th class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1907, and in the 27th class of the Army Staff College in 1915. In 1917 he was attached to the East Lancashire Regiment, and in 1918 served with the British Expeditionary Force in France, being awarded the Military Cross.

From 1930 to 1932, Homma was again sent as a military attaché to the United Kingdom, where his proficiency in the English language was useful. He was also assigned to be part of the Japanese delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1932 and served with the Press Section of the Army Ministry from 1932 to 1933.

In 1937, Homma was appointed aide-de-camp to Prince Chichibu, a brother of Emperor Shōwa. With him, he made a diplomatic tour in Europe which ended in Germany. There he attended the Nuremberg rally and met Adolf Hitler, with whom the prince tried to boost relations.

With the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Homma was appointed commander of the IJA 27th Division in China from 1938 to 1940 and directed the blockade of the foreign concessions in Tientsin, where he led the negotiations with the British. After the fall of Nanking, he declared publicly that "unless peace is achieved immediately it will be disastrous." He was promoted to lieutenant general in July 1938.

With the start of the Pacific War, Homma was named commander of the 43,110-man IJA 14th Army and tasked with the invasion of the Philippines. He ordered his troops to treat the Filipinos not as enemies but as friends, and respect their customs and religion.

 In one instance, on his approach to Manila, Homma stopped his columns and ordered the men to clean up and tighten formations, knowing that unkempt soldiers are more likely to loot and rape.

His approach towards Filipino civilians earned him the enmity of his superior, General Count Hisaichi Terauchi, commander of the Southern Army, who sent adverse reports about Homma to Tokyo from his headquarters in Saigon. 

There was also a growing subversion within Homma's command by a small group of insubordinates, under the influence of Colonel Tsuji Masanobu. In Homma's name, they sent out secret orders against his policies, including ordering the execution of Filipino Chief Justice José Abad Santos and attempted execution of former Speaker of the House of Representatives Manuel Roxas, which Homma found out about in time to stop.

Worried about the stalled offensive in Luzon, Hirohito pressed Army Chief of Staff Hajime Sugiyama twice in January 1942 to increase troop strength and launch a quick knockout on Bataan. Following these orders, Sugiyama put pressure on Homma to renew his attacks. The resulting Battle of Bataan commencing in January 1942, was one of the most intense in the campaign. 

The prisoners and refugees had to be moved north to get them out of the way of Homma’s final assault on Corregidor, but there was simply not enough mechanized transport to move the masses of wounded, sick, and weakened remainder of troops.

The deteriorating relationship between Homma and Sugiyama led to the removal of Homma from command shortly after the fall of Corregidor, and he was thereafter commander of the 14th Army in name only. 

The first atrocity, attributed to Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, occurred when approximately 350 to 400 Filipino officers and NCOs under his supervision were summarily executed near the Pantingan river after they had surrendered. 

Colonel Tsuji, acting against General Homma's wishes that the prisoners be transferred peacefully, had issued clandestine orders to Japanese officers to summarily execute all American “captives.”

During the march, prisoners received little food or water, and many died. Prisoners were subjected to severe physical abuse, including being beaten and tortured. On the march, the “sun treatment” was a common form of torture. Prisoners were forced to sit in sweltering direct sunlight, without helmets or other head covering. 

Anyone who asked for water was shot dead. Some men were told to strip naked or sit within sight of fresh, cool water. Trucks drove over some of those who fell or succumbed to fatigue, and "cleanup crews" put to death those too weak to continue. Some marchers were randomly stabbed by bayonets.

The Imperial General Headquarters regarded Homma as not aggressive enough in war, and too lenient with the Filipino people in peace, and he was subsequently forced into retirement in August 1943. Homma retired from the military and lived in semi-seclusion in Japan until the end of the war.

After the surrender of Japan in September 1945, the American occupation authorities arrested Homma and extradited him to the Philippines where he was tried by an American tribunal on 48 counts of violating international rules of war relating to the atrocities committed by troops under his command during the Bataan Death March.

It is not clear whether Homma ordered the atrocities that occurred during the march, but it is clear that his lack of administrative expertise and his inability to adequately delegate authority and control his men helped to enable the atrocities. After American-Filipino forces surrendered the Bataan Peninsula, Homma turned the logistics of handling the estimated 25,000 prisoners to Major-General Yoshitake Kawane.

 Homma publicly stated that the POWs would be treated fairly. A plan was formulated, approved by Homma, to transport and march the prisoners to Camp O'Donnell. However, the plan was severely flawed, as the American and Filipino POWs were starving, were weak with malaria, and numbered not 25,000 but 76,000 men, far more than any Japanese plan had anticipated.

At his trial, Homma also claimed that he was so preoccupied with the plans for the Corregidor assault that he had forgotten about the prisoners’ treatment, believing that his officers were properly handling the matter. He claimed that he did not learn of the atrocity until after the war, even though his headquarters were only 500 feet from the route of the march.

On February 11, 1946, Homma was convicted of all counts and sentenced, “...to be shot to death with musketry." Homma was executed by firing squad by American forces on April 3, 1946, outside Manila.

General Douglas MacArthur in his review of the case wrote, "If this defendant does not deserve his judicial fate, none in jurisdictional history ever did. There can be no greater, more heinous or more dangerous crime than the mass destruction, under guise of military authority or military necessity, of helpless men incapable of further contribution to war effort. A failure of law process to punish such acts of criminal enormity would threaten the very fabric of world society."

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