Return to the Rock

Bataan and Corregidor were names which had been branded on the memory of the U.S. The gallant garrisons of the peninsula and "the Rock" had been lost, with Lieut. General Jonathan M. ("Skinny") Wainwright, because the U.S. had tried to do too much with too little. Last week, while one of his armies (the Sixth) fought the cornered Japs in southern Manila, General MacArthur had ample force to swing another of his armies (the Eighth) down Bataan and across the four-mile channel to the Rock. Wainwright and his men were not yet fully avenged, but the sweetness of revenge to come was in the air.

As the week began, the 24th and 38th Divisions of long-faced Major General Charles P. Hall's XI Corps were probing down the coasts of Bataan. The plan was plain, but the Japs could do nothing about it. Hall's men made faster progress by far than had Lieut. General Masaharu Homma's arrogant legions in 1942; one after another, the natural defense lines were passed.

By Sea. Then the rest of the plan began to unfold. Cruisers and destroyers stood off the mouth of Manila Bay, battering Corregidor's guns into sullen silence. From Olongapo, recently captured naval station in Bataan's northwest corner, minesweepers dashed in under the threatening shadow of Corregidor and swept a channel into Mariveles harbor, at the southern tip of Bataan. Landing craft followed them. The first wave got off lightly; the next waves were less fortunate. But the Japs were disorganized. Within a few hours a junction was made near Lamao with the 1st Infantry Regiment. Bataan was sealed off.

By Air. The attack on Corregidor came literally out of the blue. One half of the 503rd Parachute Regiment boarded its planes on Mindoro Island. As their transports sailed over the 1/2-sq.-mi. head of pollywog-shaped Corregidor, the paratroopers jumped in ten-man teams, one at a time, for almost two hours. Most came down on "Topside," the western plateau of the fortress islet, but some were carried by the wind over the cliffs into South Channel, where PT boats scurried to pick them up. The sky troopers took most of Corregidor's remaining guns from the rear.

Meanwhile, landing craft from Mariveles nosed around Corregidor to the south shore. As the assault waves charged up the beach of San Jose Bay, the Japs were trapped between airborne and seaborne forces. Jap resistance was as tough as usual, but there were not enough Japs to stem the rush.

The Beast at Bay. The clearing of Manila Bay would open a great supply base for MacArthur's operations. But while the fighting continued, Manila was a city in torment.

Radioed TIME Correspondent William P. Gray: "This city's misery goes on & on. Two weeks after the 1st Cavalry raced into Santo Tomas, it shudders almost constantly under the convulsive roaring of our Long Toms [155-mm. rifles] shelling the Japs inside Manila and close on its outskirts. Liberation has cost a price which only so precious a thing as freedom could justify, yet I have found no Filipino unwilling to pay it.

"Several thousand Japs are still fighting back from the old walled city, the Intramuros. Their commander has chosen annihilation, in answer to a demand that he surrender to save the lives of uncounted thousands of Filipino civilians there. One completely authenticated atrocity story is reported by American officers. From an observation post they watched while the Japs tied a naked, teen-age Filipino girl to a post in front of an archway, to keep our artillery from shelling the archway, which they used for troop movements.

"Day & night the shelling goes on. How many hundreds or thousands of civilians already have died by fire or shelling outside Intramuros, nobody knows. Hundreds of city blocks are burned and flattened. Many unburned buildings are pocked or shattered by gunfire."

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