My Dad served in WWII in the Pacific Theater. The events in the Philippines after Pearl Harbor were so significant to the outcome WWII and so discussed at home when I was a kid that the chance to visit Corregidor and Bataan was something I could not pass up.
The Bataan Peninsula, as seen from 2 1/2 miles across the mouth of Manila Bay, on the Rock of Corregidor from where MacArthur said, “I shall return.” This end of the peninsula is where the Bataan Death March started.
Statue of Douglas MacArthur at Lorcha Dock where he boarded the PT boat.
This long barrel shore battery gun had a range of 17 miles
One of four mortars at the Battery Way emplacement. It fired 750 lb. shells onto the Japanese on the peninsula after Bataan fell.
Lt. General Jonathan “Skinny” Wainright’s men destroyed the guns before surrendering on May 6th, 1942.
The official Pacific WWII Memorial is on Corregidor. Singapore was proposed, but the Philippines held out against the Japanese for 147 days, three times the Japanese invasion timetable. That forced a diversion of 150,000 troops intended to invade Australia. Since Singapore fell much more quickly, the Philippines got the Memorial.
There is an aperture in the top of the dome of the memorial, above an altar. The sun shines directly on the altar, at exactly 12:00 noon, only one day a year: on May 6th, the 147th day after the Japanese invasion.
Tomorrow: Boracay Island in the Philippines for SCUBA and
snorkel
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