With the onset of heavier-than-air flight, it was only a matter of time before warfare incorporated the new adjunct into its far-flung assemblage. World War One saw America late to the scene with forces unprepared for what lay ahead in the battlefields of France and Belgium. One of the men helping bridge the wide gulf to the new industrial levels the Great War brought about was Edward Steichen.
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The spire of the Capas National Shrine rises 240 feet into the air above the hot, humid plains of central Luzon. There is lots of symbolism included in the site. Three parts of the towering spire represent the peoples of the Philippines, the United States and … Japan. Covering 54 hectares – 130 acres – over half of the grounds have been planted with 31,000 trees representing the 25,000 Filipinos and 6,000 Americans who perished here at Camp O’Donnell following the end of the Bataan Death March in 1942. The park was named a national shrine by President Cory Aquino in 1991 with the tower was added in 2003 with a memorial wall behind with the names of those known to have perished here at the camp.
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The last post described the Dambana ng Kagitingan – Shrine of Valor – standing atop Mount Samat on the eastern side of the Bataan Peninsula. While most monuments tend to reward victory, sometimes more can be learned in defeat. Most of the defenders here on Bataan were Filipino. Most of those who died here, on the Death March and in the initial stages of the Japanese prison camps were Filipinos. With the surrender on 9 April 1942, the Army of the Philippine Commonwealth ended. It would not be resurrected again until the nation gained independence in 1946. At that time, it transformed into the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Many of the leaders of the new Forces saw prior service in the army of the Commonwealth.
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Visitors to the Philippines enjoy a day’s outing, boating across Manila Bay to see the old guns of Corregidor. Off the regular path lies an even more important monument atop a mountain in the southern region of the Bataan Peninsula – the National Shrine of Mount Samat – Dambana ng Katingnan (Shrine of Valor).
Bataan, the sight of the worst defeat suffered by American forces in history. 78,000 men – the vast majority Filipinos new to soldiering – surrendered after a campaign of just over four months. As bad as the long battle against the enemy, the harsh jungle environment, malnutrition and disease was, another type of battle would fall upon the men afterwards, the battle to survive.
A two-part post with the first dealing mostly with the Shrine, the campaign and US Army units remembered here at Mount Samat. The second post will cover the Philippine Army divisions honored here. It is important to remember as hard as it was for American units to suffer on Bataan, Corregidor and throughout the islands, the Filipinos were forced to take the suffering to another level, both with the Commonwealth Army and the civilian population, as a whole.
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On the island of Corregidor at the entrance to Manila Bay, American coastal defense came to a high point in the big gun defense theory of protecting vital areas of a homeland. Using some of the biggest guns in the American arsenal, the defenders held off the enemy for over five months. The end came swiftly though, flaws in the system exposed terribly. Capitulation meant the garrison force marched on to the horrors of Japanese prison camps. With the fall of the island fortress, the theory of coastal defense would slowly re-evolve.
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During the early battles in the southwestern Pacific, most of the defenders against Japanese aggressions were Filipino. Among the graves and the Walls of the Missing, you will find many of their names. In this post, some of the stories of the Philippine Scouts, a truly unique unit of the American Army, come forward.
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Over 36,000 names cover the Walls of the Missing at Manila ABMC Cemetery. The men unaccounted for during World War 2 all over the southwestern Pacific. Most serving on ships sunk at sea or planes never coming home. There are plenty of others, bodies never found in the jungles of the Solomons, New Guinea, the Philippines, Burma or other locations.
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Surrounded by skyscraping condominium towers on the former site of the Fort McKinley, grass fields festooned with thousands of white granite crosses mark the largest American military cemetery outside of the United States. The Manila American Battle Monuments Commission – ABMC – Cemetery holds the remains of 17.097 men who died mostly in the World War 2 fighting in New Guinea and the Philippines. The names of another 36,286 men whose remains never discovered inscribed on The Tablets of the Missing place on limestone piers within two hemicycles separated by a small chapel atop a small hill. The quiet is out of place in the frenetic world of Bonifacio Global City outside of the cemetery walls.
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It is easy to forget which ruins are from which war as you wander about in the Julian Alps. Many trails have beginnings in one of the World Wars or in the events preceding or suceeding. Many mule tracks still hiked on built by either Italian or Austro-Hungarian military engineers. Vršic Pass became a main road only during the First War. The cost of hundreds of Russian prisoners of war dying during in its construction by some ten thousand POWs. The Julians were set to become Italy’s new “natural borders” with the east.
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The post cemetery for Vancouver Barracks became established in 1857. The Army maintained the cemetery until recently. In 2020, the cemetery became part of the National Cemetery Administration – Department of Veterans Affairs – renamed the Vancouver Barracks National Cemetery.
Fort Vancouver was built in 1824 to serve as a central hub of business for the Hudson Bay Company in the Oregon Country. The company had its way in the region until the late 1830’s when American settlers began to arrive. Attempts by the company to meet this influx with colonists of their own came to naught and the Oregon Treaty of 1846 set the border far to the north at the 49th parallel. The fort, left deep in American territory though the company continued its operations. However, those operations became more unprofitable and difficult as more and more settlers came into the picture.
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