Ever War: ...and Nobody Gives a Damn, Part I

With the passing of each day, the living memories slowly flicker out. Soon there will be no one left who remembers the time when madness first gripped our country. How else but madness can one explain why we abandoned fellow democracies in their time of greatest need and left one of our own armies stranded at the mercy of a pitiless enemy. How else but madness can one explain why the American people would put their faith in a socialist politicians who led us to stripping our defenses while waiting to be attacked.

On May 6th 1942, the last bastion of freedom in East Asia, Corregidor, the Rock, fell after a five month siege and final assault. Below is the audio link of the final transmission from these doomed men.

I have listened repeatedly to the final haunting broadcasts. A young American of 17 was there. He sits almost daily at the USS Alabama moored at Mobile. He is bedecked in military dress uniform and offers the sale of his book—Hells Guest.

It is an excellent evenings read as he relays his eyewitness account of the Japanese storming the PI. Years of suffering and almost daily brutality did not defeat him.

He is a sprightly old gent, eager for you to learn of his story, and of those brutalized and hacked and starved such that few ever could come home, and of a country that abandon them to great peril while claiming that help was over the horizon.

Hope you enjoy it, and learn what danger lurks in international affairs.

Hells Guest Col. Glenn D Frazier

The loss of the Philippines was a greater disaster than Pearl Harbor, for in six months the ships were raised and soon back in action. The Philippines, however took thousands of lives to recover. All thanks the the govt., who, from 1926-1940 had written off the Philippines in Plan Orange. That plan called for the troops there to fall back from Manila to the Bataan peninsula and hole up until the fleet arrived.

Then in the late '40s, the govt. was persuaded that we could hold those islands, which would act as a deterrent to Japan. The thinking was the a fleet of B-17s (the super bomber in their eyes) would be able to bomb Japan's cities to ruins and that the Japs, knowing that, would hold off. No one expected that half of the bombers would be caught on the ground and destroyed SIX HOURS after Pearl Harbor was attacked.

Then when the Japs invaded, MacArthur decided not to pull back but fight them on the beaches. He was consistently outflanked and had to retreat pell-mell to Bataan, leaving priceless food supplies behind, which would have saved many lives on Bataan. (At the end, rations were a half cup of rice and canned salmon twice a day.) Nothing was ever done to fortify Bataan to prepare for Plan Orange, but the troops still put up one Helluva fight. See "Bataan, Our Last Ditch" by John W. Whitman for a definitive read on that hopeless fight.

During and after the war, what is called "The Pearl Harbor Syndrome" took over and all efforts were made to crucify Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short, while nothing was done about MacArthur's screw-ups. Many, behind the scenes, thought he should have been court-martialed, but we needed a hero in those dark days (let alone cover up the disastrous policy shift) and Mac came out smelling like a rose.

In 1944, some patriotic envelopes were printed as a reminder to the people of the sacrifice made there:

(Strobing survived the prison camp and the war. HERE's his obit.)

Thank you for your valuable comments and interesting images.

Part II of “...and Nobody Gives a Damn” will address the prewar planning failures and the command collapse once hostilities began.

Even though your assessment of MacArthur is quite damning, evidence suggests that he deserves an even harsher verdict. While MacArthur is responsible for over committing our forces in the Philippines, he appears to have suffered some sort of nervous breakdown immediately after the Pearl Harbor attacks. When the Japanese commenced their attack, he was uncommunicative and failed to coordinate the complex active defense that he was largely responsible for devising.

It would be an honor to meet this man.

Here is a link to his book:

http://hellsguest.com/

It is a shame that I did not hear about him sooner. I took the family on a charter fishing trip out of Biloxi over Spring Break. It would have been nice to make the drive to Mobile to meet him.

The history of our lack of preparedness is quickly being rewritten. The socialists have long term plans and democratic citizens have short term memories. One thing that I tried to stress is the great amount of effort they put into distorting history. Once people like Colonel Frazier pass on so to will the correct history of those events.

Harsher indeed - I didn't want to clog up my first post. I have read of the "breakdown" theory but believe John Costello (Days of Infamy) had a better take. MacArthur so identified with the Philippines and was thick with Quezon that when Pearl harbor was attacked, they both foolishly thought that the Philippines could stay neutral - hence the indecision. Gen. Brereton, in command of the air force there wanted to execute long-standing plans to bomb Formosa with his B-17s but Mac held off and only finally agreed to a "reconnaissance mission" (we had already done that)- and nothing was ever done. (Brereton deserves heat for not dispersing the bombers to other islands, although some of the backup airfields couldn't handle the B-17s. That and failure to send up covering fighters sealed the Philippine's doom.)

Hours later the Japs surprised our air force on the ground, parked wingtip-to-wingtip a la Pearl Harbor and eliminated our air cover, with predictable results. The Japanese pilots all thought they were going on a suicide mission as they figured the Americans would be waiting for them because of the advance warning given by the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were astounded when they met little or no opposition.

On top of all the strategic errors, a sleazy element surfaced when MacArthur accepted a $500,000 "gift" from Quezon just before they left for Australia. MacArthur then had the gall to bill the Philippine govt. for $35,000 "expenses". He took that money and, in the midst of the retreat, instructed his broker to invest it in some stock - ending up a millionaire after the war.

A good article on that whole mess is HERE.

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