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Remembering the 75th Anniversary of the Bataan Death March and Maj. Clarence H. White

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 shocked the nation, and jolted the United States into World War II. U.S. forces posted in the Philippines had little time to prepare for war. The Japanese attacks began hours after Pearl Harbor, putting Allied forces in a defensive, disadvantaged position.

Within a matter of months, more than 70,000 Americans and Filipinos would endure unimaginable cruelty with the 65-mile Bataan Death March. Those who survived then faced deplorable conditions in prisoner of war (POW) camps.  Many endured further suffering on “hell ships” while being transported to Manchuria or Japan. The reward for the survivors of the Bataan Death March proved to be continued suffering.

One of the men on the death march was Maj. Clarence H. White, a physician with the Army’s 31st Infantry Medical Corps. He had been posted in the Philippines since 1939, and his wife and young daughter had lived there with him. As the political situation shifted, the U.S. military began evacuating family members out of the Philippines in early 1941. Nancy Kragh remembers standing on Pier 7 in Manila preparing to board the USS Washington with Chrystal, her pregnant mother, and saying good-bye to her dad. “My first childhood memory was leaving my father,” said Nancy. 

After Pearl Harbor, the American and Filipino forces in country did not have the resources nor personnel to successfully repel the enemy. American and Filipino troops withdrew to the Bataan peninsula by January 1942[1] with hopes of holding out. But Japanese forces had destroyed significant portions of America’s air and naval power in the region, making resupply nearly impossible. In the face of Japanese attacks, the Americans and Filipinos were gradually forced to fall back further down the peninsula.

Rations had already been halved, and by mid-February troops were receiving significantly less than the standard half ration. By late March, the available rations were barely enough to sustain life. Some men had lost 15-25 pounds in three months, and others ate monkey, snake, iguana—anything that could supplement their extreme hunger.[2]  American military leadership knew forces could not withstand the Japanese assault for much longer. Throughout this time, Maj. White served in a crude field hospital, attempting to care for the soldiers as best he could considering the circumstances.

By April 9, after months of combat, the weakened Allied forces on Bataan under the command of Maj. Gen Edward P. King, Jr. had little choice but to surrender to the Japanese.[3]

Lt. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright , Commander of U.S. Forces in the Philippines at the time of the fall of Bataan, later reflected on the events. Wainwright understood that General King “was on the ground and confronted by a situation in which he had either to surrender or have his people killed piecemeal. This would most certainly have happened to him within two or three days.”[4] The surrender had been months in the making. From the outset, extreme rationing and disease weakened the American and Philippine forces. Nonetheless, the defense of the Bataan Peninsula was heroic and hard fought. The remaining American position in the Philippines, on Corregidor Island,  would hold out for another month before falling to the Japanese.

After General King’s surrender, more than 70,000 American and Filipino troops became Japanese prisoners of war.  Soon the Japanese began to march them up the peninsula. Denied food and water in the blistering heat and humidity of the tropical island, prisoners who straggled along the route were shot or bayoneted by Japanese guards.[5]“Around the middle of the second day, people began to collapse,” said Jim Bollich, a survivor of the march who was attached to the 27th Bombardment Group at the time. “Once anybody collapsed, the Japanese immediately killed them.”[6] After walking for days, the prisoners came to San Fernando, where the Japanese loaded them onto cramped, sweltering train cars that took them to Capas, where again they were forced to march.

When they reached Camp O’Donnell conditions were no better. Originally a Philippine Army camp designed to house 10,000 men, more than 60,000 survivors of the march had to cram into the limited shelter available. Due to heat, the lack of sanitation systems, limited medical care, and limited water and food, disease was rampant throughout the camp, with estimates of 400 prisoners dying each day.[7]  By the summer of 1942, the American prisoners, including White, were moved to another prison camp, at Cabanatuan. As a doctor, he tried to care for his fellow sick prisoners, but with few medical supplies little could be done to help men suffering from starvation, malaria, dysentery or beriberi.

In early 1942, the Japanese began transporting POWs back to the home islands and other territories to serve in slave labor camps. When the United States invaded the Philippines in October 1944, the Japanese shipped north the prisoners that they could. Members of the Medical Corps were left behind to care for the sick and dying men, who were not fit to work. It wasn’t until December 1944 that White was slated to be transported to Japan on one of the last "hell ships."  He had survived for nearly three years in conditions not suitable for human beings, but the odds of his continuing survival decreased with transport on a "hell ship."

Brought to Pier 7 in Manila, the same place he said good-bye to his wife and daughter nearly four years earlier, White boarded a “hell ship,” the Oryoko Maru. With extreme temperatures in the hold space, no water and practically no ventilation, many men did not survive the night. (Survivor estimates vary, but most agree that at least 20 POWs[8]  died during the first night aboard.) These hellish conditions only worsened when American planes bombed and strafed the Oryoko Maru – which was not marked as a POW vessel –  before it sank near Subic Bay.  White barely survived. He managed to make it ashore only to be placed on another “hell ship,” the Enoura Maru, which was subsequently attacked while docked at Takao Harbor, Formosa (Taiwan) in January 1945.  White suffered shrapnel wounds and bled to death on the deck of the ship over the course of 48 hours.  Although close to Japanese hospitals onshore, no medical help other than basic first aid was offered. It’s estimated that more than 21,000 Americans were killed or injured by friendly fire on these “hell ships.” [9]

In April 1945 Chrystal received the telegram reporting his death. Nancy remembers that day. “We were living in an apartment with a big window facing the street. I remember her looking out the window, two men walking up the sidewalk, and her collapsing in the chair.” Understanding what happened was not easy for Nancy because her mother had always talked about when “Daddy comes home.” For Christmas and birthdays, her mother would buy gifts for the girls, place them in the mail, and make it appear that they had been sent from their father. The girls would receive these special gifts—believing his return was imminent.

While White is officially listed on the Walls of the Missing at Manila American Cemetery, Nancy believes her father’s remains are interred in an unknown, comingled burial site at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. It’s estimated that only one third of those who surrendered on Bataan in April 1942 survived the war. While there are no official figures of those who died during the Bataan Death March, thousands of prisoners, the majority of them Filipino, lost their lives. Nancy, who is involved with the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society (ADBCMS), has made it her mission “to get the story out and make sure it doesn’t die with my generation.”  

Special thanks to Nancy Kragh for sharing her father’s story.

Editor’s Note: Due to the nature of the death march, the POW camps, and the “hell ships,” precise record-keeping was impossible at the time. Because the statistics vary based on the source, we intentionally use rounded numbers, and estimates on the lower end of the range.  POWs made their best effort to record what they could considering the circumstances.