A lot have discussed the impossibility of reinforcing PI due to time constraints. Suppose on 1 September 1939, the Sec’y of War decides that eventually we are going to get into a shooting war. Not full mobilization but more of a “Be Prepared” scenerio. Could (and would) PI have been fortified to withstand the eventual Japanese attack on 7 December 1941?
I took a tour of Fort Santiago in Manila. The Spanish had built a prison there, but stopped using it once they discovered it tended to flood and drown the prisoners.
The Japanese used Fort Santiago as a prison… for the exact same reason. :eek:
@Saint Cad. Sure, given a couple of years the Philippines could have been made much more defensible. There was a limit on what could have been done without an active mobilization. But in real history USAFFE wasn’t created until the end of July '41. By then it was too late. But make the exact same decision in Sept. '39, and McArthur could have his 12 Philippine divisions actually trained and equipped. That would have made it a much tougher nut to crack. The Japanese could probably still eventually capture Luzon, but they would have had to throw everything at it, and either delay Malay, Burma, and the Dutch Indies six months or cancel some of them entirely.
americans staged the first genocide in the 20th century in the philippines. their own estimates of filipino deaths (mostly unarmed civilians) was 100,000 to 200,000 while filipino historians add the effects of famine, disease and dislocation and put it to a cool 1 million. but the americans won the territory fair and square and had no choice but to put down a nagging rebellion. the number of deaths just mystifies is all.
the public school system is the americans’ lasting legacy in the philippines, something the spaniards pointedly avoided for more than 300 years. ever wondered why filipinos are so good in english?
oh the japanese were nasty oftentimes but the garrisons also included chinese and korean conscripts. so-called collaborators profited but many of them were just pacifists who saw no point in opposing the regime. the japanese appointed the incumbent chief justice to be the president instead of assigning a japanese governor-general. and they interrogated all captured filipino army officers for possible inclusion into the japanese army.
so the japanese meant well on the whole. control systems were just weak. and one can’t eliminate the a-hole factor at the front lines.
The Japanese did NOT mean well on whole!
Their so-called "Greater East Asia Co-Propsperity Sphere was nothing but a sham
so cynical it was not even meant to decieve.
All of the Asian people under Japanese rule were subject to brutal homicidal exploitation
little if any better than what the Nazis were meting out in Eastern Europe.
Furthermore, Japanese control systems were stronger than anyone’s, including the Germans:
pre-1945 Japanese obedience and deference to authority may have had no equal in human history,
and no atrocity would ever have been commited if forbidden by authority.
It should be noted that in 1941, Hawaii wasn’t a state either, but merely a territory so attacking the Phillipines wouldn’t be dramatically different.
Hawaii was dramatically different in geographical location and degree of assimilation,
having been a prominent missionary target, a commercial development project, and a
virtual protectorate for decades before before there was any American presence in the PI.
then what’s the point in fostering self-governance among filipinos even at time of war? what was the point in trying to teach filipino school children japanese?
there was no gassing in the philippines.
wrong, wrong and most appallingly wrong.
don’t waste anyone’s time with cites. 
<P>
The figure 100,000 is not completley implausible, but I would still like to see it sourced.
However, the word genocide is the one of the most grossly misused in modern histroical parlance,
and it is grossly misuded here. Properly speaking it refers to intent to kill an entire ethnic group,
and applies only to such rare, extreme atrocities as the Roman destruction of Carthage, and the
Nazis’ attempted murder of all European Jewry.
Furthermore, the figure 1,000,000 deaths is ludicrous unless you want to believe the Filipinos
suffered almost as many deaths as the entire British Empire did in World I.
One of the most baleful agandas of the modern revisionist school of history is to paint Western
depredation on non-Westerners as being much worse than there is any reason to believe was.
Thereby more Congolese are supposed to have died ~1880&ff than Soviets killed in WW2,
and more American Indians were supposed to have died ~1500&ff than the entire population
of Latin americ ca. 1850. Things were bad enough without subjecting the numbers to promiscuous exaggeration.
The Japanese did NOT foster self-government among any of their subject
peoples 1894-1945, and it obviously comes in handy if your servants can
speak your language, not that I believe the Japanese diverted many resources
to the Filipino education.
“Brutal homicidal exploitation in Eastern Europe” did not include the outright genocide
faced by the Jews. You do know that over 2,000,000 gentile Poles died, didn’t you?
Also over 20 million citizens of the USSR, most of them not in battle. Wiki is as good
as any for citation.
The Japaense were foridden to surrender, and the common soldiers delivered: more Germans
surrendered at Stalingrad alone (~90,000)than Japanese in all theaters 1941-45. See Wiki for citation.
not every japanese garrison was encircled in bittler cold with no chance of relief or even escape. the person who killed the 350,000 soldiers of the sixth army was field marshall von manstein who sent von paulus the message that he must stand, even while he still had the option to pull back. by the time von paulus surrendered, the sixth was down to the number you mentioned but von manstein’s plan at least worked. he was able to prevent the complete collapse of the entire southern front.
there were japanese soldiers who surrendered. droves of them before and after the emperor’s speech.
Wow… you really need to brush up on your Japanese history.
Tarawa? Iwo Jima? Okinawa? Chance of escape? Nope.
It was Hitler and not Von Mantein who made all those decisions and gave all those orders.
BTW Paulus was not a “Von”.
Even when who had the option to pull back? The only possibly saving option was for Paulus
to disobey Hitler’s orders and attempt to break out and join up with Von Mantein’s relief column.
What is the point?
Von Mantein might have been Germany’s best fighting general of the war, and he won the last German
Eastern Front victory at Kharkov in the winter of 1943. But that has nothing to do with relative fanatacism.
I own the book Russia at War by Guardian reporter Alexander Werth who spent the
war in the USSR. Soviet Marshall Zhukov was one of the few who had fought against
both Germans and Japanese and he is quoted by Werth as saying the Germans
“lacked the Japanese’ true fanatacism”.
No, not before the speech.
And once the Emperor authorized surrender it was no longer disgraceful, and
conditions were completely changed.
Great contribution, junior, tell me something about it.
Then look up bushido and tell me more.
You cannot give the Americans credit for the Philippines’ eventual independence considering they went to war to keep them from it in the first place.