Beyond the Bataan Death March and Douglas MacArthur

Download or read book Beyond the Bataan Death March and Douglas MacArthur written by M. Martha Helak and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World War II ranks among the deadliest conflicts in history. The estimated number of casualties worldwide exceeded 60 million. The United States suffered military fatalities in excess of 400,000, and the Philippines, an archipelago in Southeast Asia and an American colony from 1898 to 1946, endured horrifying atrocities such as the Bataan Death March and the Christian Brothers Massacre at the venerable De La Salle College. By 1945, the cosmopolitan city of Manila, known as the "Pearl of the Orient," lay in ruins. Scholarship on WWII has focused mainly on the American or European experience. While there exists a large body of research on the major American players of WWII in the Pacific Theater--elites like General Douglas MacArthur and Franklin D. Roosevelt--there remains a void in the perspectives and experiences of Filipino natives and the foreign minorities (e.g., Japanese nationals, Jews, etc.) who resided in the Colony during the Japanese occupation from 1942-1945. This thesis addresses this breach, and makes the argument that the suffering Filipinos endured during the latter part of the Japanese occupation paralleled that of American troops in the region. The Philippine Commonwealth experienced greater hardships because of its status as a U.S. protectorate. Yet this conflict was not a "War of Annihilation," a thesis advanced in recent years by historian Thomas Zeiler and others; warfare escalated into annihilation only when Japanese defeat was imminent. This thesis will address the early years of the Japanese occupation and how events unfolded as the war progressed.