Film Review: Bataan (1943)
Hours after attacking the United States Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese carrier planes bombed the main bases of the American Far East Air Force in the Philippines. In the following days, the Japanese 14th Army commanded by Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma invaded Luzon, Mindanao, and several other islands in the Philippine Archipelago, effectively gaining air and land superiority over the area by cutting the line of communication from Australia and establishing a blockade against the U.S. Asiatic Fleet. After the fall of Manila in early January 1942, General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the United States Army Forces in the Far East, ordered the outnumbered Filipino and American troops to retreat into the mountainous and heavily forested Bataan Peninsula, on the western side of Luzon. Despite a lack of supplies, the refugee soldiers, led by Major General Edward P. King, fought the Japanese for three months, but ...
