Battle of Wheeler Point

[Jungle Fox]

Subject: The Battle at Wheeler Point - Some Figures

The fact that a battle took place across this peaceful road is entirely lost on most of Corregidor visitors.

The bloody night battle for Wheeler Point on 19 February was fought entirely by about 60 men. The C47's lifted off from Mindoro with 143 men but by 18 February, D Company's strength was 108 men having lost, one way or another, 35 men after two days on the Rock. Many of the absent paratroopers would fight another day.

The losses:
[1] one man in 4th Platoon refused to jump
[2] 25 men were injured badly enough to be held in the 503rd regimental dispensary in Topside barracks
[3] 2 men, F. Keller and C.C. Martin [2nd Platoon] were jumped too soon and landed in Crockett Ravine and for reasons not entirely clear, were left there
[4] Delane was killed at Battery Wheeler
[5] 6 men were wounded in the 1st Platoon's assault on Battery Wheeler assault and kept at the dispensary.

143 less 35 equals 108.

The 108 men were hastily and badly deployed merely because darkness fell and no movement was allowed by the men were trained to fire at anything moving at night, You moved at peril to your life. The 3rd platoon, was completely out of the fight never firing a shot in anger. The 2nd platoon atop Battery Cheney was, except foe Schmiddle's rifle squad, never in the fight. The machine gun section was on the battery but so badly placed they could not bring their guns to bear. The 1st platoon had one rifle squad [Nagy] protecting the company's rear on a ridge west of the trail and above it. They too never fired a single round.

The effective strength then was
[1] Company HQ 9 men
[2] 1st Platoon with two squads or about 20 men
[3] 2nd Platoon with 1 squad or 9 men
[4] 4th Platoon with 20 men totaling about 60 men involved in the defense.

Endo's force numbered about 500 marines. The 60 men had 16 men killed and 23 wounded. They killed an estimated 200 to 300 enemy in a small area in less than four or five hours with their rifles. They did it themselves with neither artillery or machine gun fire to help them.

Battles, particularly night battles, are chaotic and the Wheeler Point bloodletting was fought entirely in the dark. The attackers can't really see clearly where the defenders are nor the defenders the attackers and for this reason, as we shall see, nearly half of D Company took no part in it. The main battlefield was Cheney Trail a roadway built for heavy vehicles. Lieutenant Endo probably had 500 men attacking on the trail but rather than stubbornly pressing the attack on Cheney Trail, had he turned 200 yards east of the Wheeler Point, a simple maneuver he could easily do, he could have walked to his Topside objective without a shot being fired. But night battles are difficult even for well equipped, well trained marines. His only thought was attacking on a narrow front and as long as he persisted in this foolish tactic he could never bring his vastly superior force to bear. He merely launched attack after attack by small groups that were killed piecemeal by D Company's rifles.

Jungle Fox

[Deleted]

My father was in HQ company, a machine gunner I think by then. Do you have knowledge of any others who survived? Dad is 89 now and is still having nightmares about this battle and the one at Silay, Negros where he was wounded in a mortar attack. Is there anyone out there who connects with this? You'll know him by my ID on here

Chet Bailor

[EXO]

Chet,

At 89, your father may well be the remaining (known) survivor of the battle at Wheeler Point. The last surviving trooper I knew of at Wheeler Point was John Lindgren ("Jungle Fox") who is no longer with us. Tony Sierra, who spoke to us about the "morning after" seems to have disappeared from the internet.

I do not have access to the remaining lists of troopers of the 503d PRCT Association of WWII Inc., which is the only Regimental association for the surviving troopers of WWII. I understand that Frank O'Neill is now heading the Association.

Chet Nycum, of G Company, is active on the internet, and was in Negros - but I don't think he made it all the war up to Silay. Steve Foster followed his father's war, and Steve and I have visited Silay together. Bill Calhoun, who writes prolifically of the 503d, is still around.

[Chet Bailor]

Thanks for the response, EXO. I knew it wouldn't be easy to find someone. If the rest of the guys who made it through suffered the same kind of damage, they have since left us. And I also know that to make it through you had to be one tough SOB and Dad (Art) is still here so I'll remain hopeful.


Kind respects,
Chet Bailor

[oozlefinch]

This isn't a reply as much as it is a question. A few nights ago I awoke in the middle of the night and started thinking about Corregidor and, specifically, Battery Monja. I'm well aware of the attempts to take the tunnel complex on Feb. 22 & 23; however, I can't recall reading anywhere that the tunnel complex was ever actually taken! Can someone point me in the right direction?

[Registrar]

The tunnel was never taken, despite another attack by amphibious landing vehicles. The Japanese remained as an amorphous presence in the general area, careful not to present a group sufficiently large to be attacked, moving at night and sleeping by day. The battery thus became somewhat unique, an impregnable defensive facility that was never overcome - until the New Year's Day twenty surrendered in 1946.

[oozlefinch]

Thanx. I had a sneaking suspicion that was the story. I'll bet MacArthur never knew that, or he would have ordered it taken.

[Registrar]

Only in your universe. In ours, MacArthur left a significant number of Japanese behind, and chasing half a dozen holdouts was of no interest. The movement south to attack Mindanao after capturing the northern Philippines, which largely occurred behind his back, was probably motivated by his general promise to return to ALL the people of the Philippines as soon as possible, not just to those in Luzon. The instigation of the reconquest of portions of Borneo was prompted by the Australians, the Dutch and the English who also had "diplomatic considerations" south of the Philippines.

There is a study of "stragglers" from New Guinea, at ajrp.awm.gov.au/AJRP/remember.nsf/Web-Printer/86A1D818D91407E0CA256A99001D9F13?OpenDocument

There is also a listing of "stragglers" at www.wanpela.com/holdouts/list.html

What appears to be common to both is that those who continued to wield military force over the local inhabitants had to be dealt with, and those who evaded confrontation were bypassed.

The misuse of the 503d PRCT in Negros, which was a necessary campaign (lumber was still an important strategic requirement) I deliver at Eigelberger's doorstep. The tactics, and logistics, would have been different under Kruger.

Incidentally, I have original correspondence involving the Corregidor stragglers, touching upon the 'how & why' they survived.

[fireball]

The AWM (Australian War Memorial) link makes interesting reading but when I come across a statement that (when talking about Japanese public perception of the post war stragglers ) "These negative attitudes were fostered partly by Occupation (US) propaganda on, for example, the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in the Philippines...." It devalues the whole article as I wonder about the naivety or agenda of the author. Talking about the AWM, there is a very moving display size photograph of an Australian prisoner kneeling before execution - his crime being a soldier fighting in a war.

[Registrar]

By 1950, the attitudes that arrived in Japan with MacArthur in 1945 were refocused by Washington's re-evaluation of the world scene (dealing with global communism, and the outbreak of hostilities in Korea). MacArthur may have been in charge of Japan, but by 1950, Washington had decided to take the command on his approach to Japan, and turned it in another direction. The programs, approaches and attitudes of the US occupation were thus significantly modified. In many respects, the US policies were turned on their head from what they had been in 1945-1946. Thus, you can see a shift in the way that the US was dealing with Japan, and its war criminals. Gone was the "Japan as former belligerent" approach, to be replaced as "Japan a bastion of anti-communism in the Far East."

Australia, which did not subscribe entirely to the new American foreign policy, took a different path - or rather, it stayed closer to the 1945 one. Essentially, the breaking out of the war in Korea did not change its opinion concerning issues of Japanese Imperial Militarism, the prosecution of its aggressive war in China, its war guilt, the involvement of the Zaibatsu, and war crimes, to anywhere near the degree that the US did. It's attitude in dealing with Japanese war criminals remained very much in the punitive phase. Thus the fundamental approach of the US and Australia to these Japanese issues began to differ significantly. War criminals held by the US were released, but the Australian war trials continued. There is a particularly good article, written from the Japanese point of view by a Japanese author, concerning the Australian Trials of Class B and C Japanese War Crime Suspects, 1945-1951.

"The article examines the legal issues arising from the Australian trials of Class B and C Japanese war crime suspects that took place between 1945 and 1951, with a view to discerning the various considerations at play in the question of ‘victors’justice’. It begins by canvassing the background of the Australian trials, and then turns to consider the procedural and substantive legal issues that surfaced. It is shown that, in many respects, the Australian trials did not meet the international standards of justice that we have become accustomed to today — mainly due to the inadequacies of the war crimes legislation in place at the time. Nevertheless, it is concluded that the ‘victors’ justice’ question unhelpfully frames these inadequacies as ones motivated by revenge, which does not accord with the conduct, for the most part, of the officers of the military tribunal, and the manner in which they interpreted and applied the war crimes legislation and legal precedent. Instead, this article argues in favour of a more beneficial approach to drawing upon the experiences of the Australian trials, one that goes beyond the confines of the assumptions inherent in the question of ‘victors’ justice’." (I have quoted from its Abstract.)

Thus you are right in seeing the differing approaches, but there is much more. The more history you read, though, the more you should look to the extent to which governments (and the intelligentsia that support them with a view to earning a good living) are actively behind efforts to manipulate the memes of history so as to best reflect and accord the political views of their paymasters. These can, and do, become the roots of revisionism.

There is actually a name to describe this, namely the "Rashomon Effect." Named after the 1950 Japanese film Rashomon, where the accounts of a crime involving four individuals is described in four mutually contradictory ways, it describes how contradictory interpretations of identical events can become the means by which different nations transmit their views of history.

The US government has for decades demanded that US military personnel be tried in the US, under US law, for crimes committed overseas. “Status of forces” agreements between the US and other nations generally include such provisions. A fair amount of American objection to the concept of an International Criminal Court may be traced to the possibility that US politicians and soldiers might be prosecuted for modern day war crimes and human rights abuses.