Description

U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS – DEPARTMENT ENGINEER, PHILIPPINE DEPARTMENT.

Manila: Bureau of Coast and Geodetic Survey, [1937]; with Wartime Japanese Manuscript Additions dating from the End of January/Beginning of February 1942.

 

During the WWII Invasion of the Philippines, or the Fall of the Philippines (December 8, 1941 to May 8, 1942), Japan launched a stealth juggernaut against the U.S.-ruled islands. The Philippines were defended by the US Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), which was comprised of 100,000 Filipino and 20,000 American troops, commanded by the legendary General Douglas MacArthur. The Japanese Air Force quickly destroyed all Allied airpower in the Philippines, while the local American fleet withdrew to Java, so leaving the USAFFE outmatched against the landings of Japan’s 14th Army (consisting of 130,000 troops) commanded by General Masaharu Homma. Expressing total confidence in Japan’s blitzkrieg tactics (with would simultaneously prove so successful in Hong Kong, Malaya and Indonesia), Homma’s superiors gave him a 50-day deadline to conquer the entire Philippines.

MacArthur, knowing that there was no possibility that USAFFE could possibly defeat the Japanese onslaught, decided to mount a fighting retreat to the Bataan Peninsula. The peninsula was chosen as it was a strategically located natural fortress. Dominated by steep jungle-covered volcanic slopes, it hosted numerous USAFFE bases and weapons and food supply caches. Along with the adjacent island fortress of Corregidor, Bataan guarded the mouth of Manila Harbour, such that possession of the peninsula essentially rendered the Philippine capital landlocked.

The Americans hoped that by holding up in Bataan they could tie down Homma’s forces, while rendering Manila Harbour useless. It was hoped (naively, as it would be revealed) that they could hang on long enough to for USAFFE to be relieved by an Allied rescue force, while simultaneously hampering the Japanese progress in overall war, so allowing the Allies to maintain a foothold in New Guinea, as a buffer to protect Australia.

USAFFE gradually retreated towards the Bataan Peninsula from their posts in Luzon, under heavily Japanese pressure. MacArthur ordered Manila to be abandoned without a fight, so that the capital would not be destroyed, with the Japanese taking possession of the city on January 7, 1942.

After holding, and then abounding, a series of temporary defensive lines north of Bataan, McArthur ordered his forces to hold firm at what become known as the Bagac-Orion Line. The line was named after the towns at the termini of the 25-mile-long position, which ran from the shores of the South China Sea (Bagac) across the peninsula to Manila Bay (Orion). The choice was strategically sound, as the terrain rose steeply up from plains along the coasts, while the midpoint crossed the incredibly rugged northern foothills of the Marivales Volcano, lands which were considered by many to be impassible. The position of the line allowed USAFFE concentrate all its resources on the highlands, forcing the Japanese to literally fight an uphill battle. The American-Filipinos consolidated their positions along the Bagac-Orion Line by January 27, 1942.

The Japanese immediately moved to pressure USAFFE along both the eastern and western ends of the Bagac-Orion Line. Japanese forces led by General Naoki Kimura, with 1 division and 1 battalion, pressed along the western (Bagac) side, while General Akira Nara, commanding 3 divisions and 1 battalion, attacked from the eastern (Orion) side.

While MacArthur’s men held an advantageous position, they had limited ammunition and only 2 months of food rations, while the Japanese had total control of the air and an unlimited flow of supplies. While making a stand at Bataan would certainly mess-up Homma’s calendar, USAFFE’s ability to hold off the Japanese was finite.

It is worth noting that even before the American-Filipinos settled along the Bagac-Orion Line, the Japanese began to test their control of southern Bataan, by employing some diversionary raids. At what was called the Battle of the Points (January 23 – February 12, 1942), two Japanese units of 1,200 and 2,000 troops sailed down to land at both Quinauan Point and Longoskawayan Point, which were located at the southwestern shore of the peninsula. The American-Filipinos eventually crushed both these forces, which proved to be more of a distraction to the Japanese, as it detracted from their main efforts further north.

Also, at what became known as the Battle of the Pockets (January 28 to February 15, 1942), the Japanese broke through the American-Filipino positions in the interior along the western side of the Bagac-Orion line. The Japanese made some progress, but their forces were eventually trapped in two pockets, surrounded by USAFFE troops. The Allies eventually annihilated most of these forces, with only 377 Japanese troops escaping back to the safely of their own lines.

Aside from these distractions, for seven weeks thereafter, the Japanese and Allied positions along the Bagac-Orion Line remained largely static, creating a stalemate that greatly angered Tokyo, as it severely upset Japan’s grand war schedule. However, the deadlock was not primarily due any errors on Homma’s part, but rather to the fact that the Japanese had decided to redeploy a sizable part of his force at key time, leaving him underpowered to effectively ‘finish the job’.

However, the truth was that the American-Filipino situation was dire. While their positions were holding, they were running low on ammunition, food and medicine. In many cases, their men were barely able to fulfil their duties due to tiredness and malnourishment.

It was obvious that USAFFE’s days were numbered, such that on March 11, 1942, on President Roosevelt’s orders, MacArthur made a daring escape from the Philippines, headed for Australia. Once there, he broadcast his famous “I Shall Return” speech, promising to someday comeback to liberate the entire Philippines.

The inevitable finally happened, when on April 3, 1942, the Japanese decisively broke the American-Filipino lines, capturing the strategic heights of Mount Samat, a prominent subsidiary peak of the Marivales Volcano. The 79,000 USAFFE troops tried in vain to contain the onslaught, but by April 9 it was obvious that the gig was up and the commander of USAFFE on the Bataan Peninsula, General Edward P. King, surrendered to the Japanese. Bataan had fallen.

The Allies only remaining foothold in the Philippines was thus the island bastion of Corregidor, the ‘Gibraltar of the East’, located just off the southeastern coast of the Bataan Peninsula. Here USAFFE forces held out until the it was stormed by the Japanese at the Battle of Corregidor (5–6 May 1942). General Jonathan M. Wainwright, MacArthur’s unlucky successor as the commander of USAFFE, was compelled to unconditionally surrender his men to the Japanese. While he hoped that they would be protected by the terms of the Geneva Convention – he was sadly mistaken.

While the American-Filipino forces were vanquished and all the Philippines was placed under brutal Japanese occupation, the heroic stand at Bataan was not in vain. It saw that Japan took 99 days, and not the planned 50, to conquer he Philippines. This delay had severe ramifications, as it ensured that the Japanese could not lockdown the ultra-strategic island of Guadalcanal, off New Guinea, such that Australia was safe from invasion. This allowed the Allies to fight their successful Guadalcanal Campaign (August 7, 1942 – February 9, 1943), starting the long process of taking the offensive from Japan.

However, the approximately 75,000 USAFFE troops (60,000 Filipinos and 15,000 Americans) taken as POWs by the Japanese were to suffer terribly for their heroism. They were forced to walk 65 miles (105 km) from southern Bataan northwards to their intended internment camps. In what became known as the Bataan Death March (April 9-17, 1942), these men were brutally mistraced and starved, such that it is estimated that somewhere between 5,000 and 18,000 did not survive the ordeal.

The Map in Focus

This is an extraordinary and unique example of an otherwise incredibly rare, monumental map of the Bataan Peninsula, created by the Philippine Department of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and published in Manila by the Bureau of Coast and Geodetic Survey. Issued in 1937, in the run-up to World War II, it is marked as ‘Secret’ and would have been made in only a tiny print run, restricted for use by only a handful of senior American military officers and political figures. By far and away the most accurate and detailed rendering of the all-important Bataan Peninsula’s topography, it was imbued with immense strategic significance and would have been used as a ‘Headquarters Map’, to be pinned on the wall or spread out upon a giant table at meetings at HQ, as the focal point of command conferences.

Importantly, the present example is a ‘captured’ map, as upon the Japanese Invasion of the Philippines it was acquired by the Imperial Japanese Army and used in the field by senior Japanese commanders in their efforts to realize the Fall of Bataan (1942). It features extensive manuscript additions in a Japanese hand that precisely record both Japanese and American-Filipino troop positions as they were at the end of January/beginning of February 1942 along the entire extent of the Bagac-Orion Line, as well as the Japanese incursions during the Battle of the Points and the Battle of the Pockets. The map would have been a precious resource for the Japanese, as it dramatically exceeded the cartographic virtues of anything else they possessed. Thus, a map specifically made by the Americans to defend the Bataan Peninsula, the Philippines’s most strategic place, was used to attack it.

The printed map is an exceedingly sophisticated topographical survey, which at the large scale of 1:3,680, captures the extremely rugged and complex nature the slopes of the Marivales Volcano complex that dominates the landscape of the peninsula, with dense curves of contour lines depicting the rise of the peak to its great caldera. Numerous rivers, which form deep ravines as they cascade in down the volcanic slopes, are all charted and labelled, while the rice paddies and plantations occupy the flatlands along the coasts to the north. The craggy coastlines are precisely delineated, with the innumerable bays, coves and headlands labelled. The few roads that snake along the edges of the volcanic slopes, heading down to the naval base of Marivales, at the southern end of the peninsula, are charted, while the map provides the outlines of towns, as well as the locations of military facilities and navigational beacons. A small inset map, in the lower right margin, shows the area of the map’s coverage within the greater geographical context, revealing Bataan’s strategic role in guarding Manila Bay.

The genesis of the present map was the Military Survey of Luzon (1906 – 1917), an ambitious project whereby the newly established Philippine Department of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers endeavoured to systematically and scientifically map all Luzon to the scale of 1:63,360. The projects, which took 11 years, resulted in 62 connecting maps that gave complete coverage of the island.

The ancestor mapping of the present work spans parts of two sheets of the Military Survey of Luzon; please see these links, courtesy of the Hamilton Library, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa:

Sheet 26:
Military Survey of Luzon, Sheet 26, 1910-1916

Sheet 31:
Military Survey of Luzon, Sheet 31, 1908-1913

However, while the original mapping of the Military Survey of Luzon was highly impressive and resulted in maps of that were fantastically useful for strategic and operation military planning, it eventually became clear that mapping of a greater scale and precision was still required for certain strategically critical parts of Luzon. Moreover, the Philippines’s physical geography is highly dynamic, as population growth and natural events (typhoons, volcanic eruptions, etc.) continually altered the landscape. Consequently, the Military Survey of Luzon was continued with the aim of producing ultra-high scale mapping that would be useful for tactical use at the most fundamental level (i.e., reliably guiding platoons in the often mountainous, jungle-covered landscape).

While making an ultra-high scale map of the Bataan Peninsula was a top priority of the U.S. Army, the awesomely rugged nature of the terrain ensured that the endeavour took many years of brutally challenging survey missions. The bulk of this ambitious mandate was undertaken by teams consisting of the Engineers of the Philippine Department and the 14th Engineers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who managed to complete their advanced trigonometrical surveys of the entire Bataan Peninsula between 1922 and 1927. Over the succeeding decade small expeditions of engineers were dispatched to fine-tune the survey, improving detail and accuracy.

While the present map is undated, its time of publications can reliably be seen as having occurred in the second half of 1937. It is recorded that “The mapping operations of the Department Engineer’s Office included …the preparation of tracing of a map and relief map of Bataan…” (Annual Report Covering Military Activities of the Corps of Engineers for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1937, p. 6). This “relief map of Bataan” is clearly the same as the present work, and so it seems that it was not completed and published until sometime later in 1937, twenty years after the conclusion of the original Military Survey of Luzon, and four years before the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.

In the centre of the lower margin, the map is marked as ‘SECRET / By Authority of the Commanding General Philippine Department / J.K. Bales. A.C. of S. G-2.’. G-2 refers to the military intelligence staff of the U.S. Army at the Divisional Level and above, in this case the unit responsible for military intelligence in the Philippines, then headed by Major J.K. Bales, a Texan who had long been stationed in Manila. This line was imbued with great legal authority, in that it mandated that the dissemination of all examples of the map was to be closely controlled by the responsible parties, on pain of severe penalties, with distribution limited to senior U.S. military officers and civilian leaders with the highest security clearance, and then only on a ‘need to know’ basis. To maintain this security, further to the left, in the lower margin, there reads ‘Copy No. –’, indicating that each example of the map was to have be hand-numbered and presumably ‘signed out’ by the requesting officer, with the implied obligation of its return to HQ once it was no longer required. The fact that the present example of the map is not numbered suggests that it was never formally signed out or distributed.

A ‘Captured Map’ used by the Japanese Command during the Fall of Bataan

The present example of the U.S. Army Engineer’s ‘SECRET’ printed masterplan of the Bataan Peninsula was acquired by the command of the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippines at some point before the Battle of Bataan (January 7 – April 9, 1942). This comes in the context of the fact that despite the best efforts of the Allies, Axis forces often managed to acquire examples of many top secret British and American maps early in the war. For example, in North Africa, the General Erwin Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox’ somehow succeeded in acquiring an almost complete set of the best secret British maps of Libya and Egypt, granting him intelligence that he used to great effect.

In the Far Eastern context, even before war broke out between Japan and the Allies, Japan employed spies to acquire the best secret British and American military maps. While the details of these clandestine operations are largely unknown, it was true that a Japanese consular official or secret agent would pay a treasonous Allied opportunist a huge sum for a map such as the present work. Moreover, during the Japanese invasion of Luzon, the USAFFE’s strategic retreat to the Bataan Peninsula was at times chaotic and while all examples of the present map should have been secured or destroyed in advance of the Japanese takeover of former U.S. Army bases, it is possible that in the rush, someone foolishly left an example of the map, which the Japanese then effortlessly picked up. Indeed, the Japanese always scoured the enemy military facilitates they conquered to find valuable documents and maps, and it is well known that on many cases they found precious material. How and exactly when the Japanese acquired the present secret map of Bataan is a fascinating matter of conjecture.

Critically, the present map is rendered as a unique and valuable artifact from the frontlines of the Fall of Bataan, as it features copious manuscript annotations, in a Japanese hand, executed sometime during the end of January/beginning of February 1942. The annotations show a highly sophisticated and detailed overview of both the Japanese (in red crayon) and ESAFFE (in blue crayon) positions at that time. The map’s annotations were clearly added at the direct behest of a very senior Japanese commander, due to both the superlative quality of the information it records (which would be available only to those with top security clearance), as well as the value of the underlying ‘captured’ map itself. It was clearly employed as a ‘Headquarters Map’ by the Japanese at the 1942 Battle of Bataan. As the manuscript additions are particularly detailed with regards to the state of play in the western sector of the conflict, this suggests that the map may have been used at General Kimura’s HQ, which controlled the Japanese operations on that side of the Bataan Peninsula.

Specifically, the manuscript annotations show the opposing Japanese-American positions that form the Bagac-Orion Line, running across the neck of the peninsula, with the vertical red line running down from the battle zone seemingly marking the dividing line between the command sectors of Generals Kimura and Nara. As the map was primarily to be used for ‘opposition research’, its coverage of the American positions is far more detailed than that of the Japanese emplacements. The map labels the locations of the various Japanese and American-Filipino divisions and regiments by their number (indicating that the Japanese map user had an exact understanding of the force they were fighting), while the innumerable USAFFE forward redoubts and rearguard battle positions are marked, with this intelligence in part gained by Japanese aerial reconnaissance (as they had complete control of the skies). The locations of the American-Filipino positions seem to be shown with a high degree of confidence, despite the rugged terrain and dense jungle cover, while conjectural positions are accompanied by a question mark.

Interestingly, the dating of the manuscript additions can be discerned by the fact that it shows the offensive Japanese strikes of the both the Battle of the Points (January 23 – February 12, 1942) and the Battle of the Pockets (January 27 – February 17, 1942) are they were still ongoing (i.e., before USAFFE forces snuffed them out). Specifically, in the southwest of the peninsula, in reference the Battle of the Points, the Japanese beachhead by Quinauan Point is shown as having been secured by the 2nd Battalion, 20th Infantry. Then, regarding the Battle of the Pockets, in the northwest, the manuscript additions show the Japanese 33rd and 20th Infantry’s (short-lived) breaching of the USAFFE lines, along the American-Filipino positions that opposed (and soon extinguished) them. Thus, the manuscript additions show the last burst of movement along and across the Bagac-Orion Line, in advance of the stalemate that would prevail until the early days of April, when the Japanese definitively overpowered USAFFE towards the complete conquest of the Bataan Peninsula.

A Note on Rarity

The present map is naturally a unique artifact, owing to the wartime manuscript additions. However, the underlying printed map is exceedingly rare. We cannot locate any other examples of the map and are aware of only a couple of vague references to a “relief map of Bataan” from records or recollections of the period. The extreme rarity of the map is not surprising, as it would have been issued in only a tiny print run for restricted use at the highest level. Examples would have been destroyed, both accidentally and intentionally during the war, while the survival rate of all such maps is exceedingly low.

Legacy

General MacArthur was true to his word – he did return to liberate the Philippines, during what was called the Philippines Campaign (October 20, 1944 to August 15, 1945). During this brutal contest, the reconquest of the Bataan Peninsula was of paramount importance, and it was there that some of the most ferocious fighting of the entire campaign occurred.
Not surprisingly, examples of the present map of Bataan were used by the U.S. High Command during the campaign. Twenty years ago, an American veteran who served in Washington, D.C. in 1944-5 recalled that:
“The control center at the White House was called the Map Room, formerly Lincoln’s study. The officer in charge was Lieutenant Commander Robert Montgomery who had been a movie star. At the time the Battle of Bataan was being fought. There was a relief map of Bataan on the wall, and each time I’d go up, the line of map pins would be squeezed down toward Corregidor…”. (William P. Sheffield (Interviewee); Evelyn M. Cherpak (Interviewer), Oral History Program / World War II Navy Veterans / William P. Sheffield (Newport, R.I.: Navy War College, 2005, p. 7).

The mentioned “relief map of Bataan” was almost certainly an example of the present work, used as a Headquarters Map at the highest level, in Roosevelt’s White House no less!

References: N/A – no other examples traced.