This collection of images shows how US warships, and, in particular,
submarines helped sustain the garrison.
Singapore and Hong Kong had fallen to the forces of Imperial Japan,
Thailand and Burma had been invaded and islands across the Pacific
captured. But one place, one tiny island fortress garrisoned by a few
thousand hungry and exhausted men, refused to be beaten. That island
fortress was Corregidor which guarded the entrance to Manila Bay and
controlled all sea-borne access to Manila Harbor. At a time when every
news bulletin was one of Japanese success, Corregidor shone as the only
beacon of hope in the darkness of defeat.
The Japanese 14th Army of Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma, threw
everything it had at Corregidor, officially named Fort Mills. But deep
within the island's rocky heart, a tunnel had been excavated into
Malinta Hill and there the US troops, marine, naval and army, endured
the terrible onslaught. At their head was General Douglas MacArthur who
became a national hero with his resolute determination never to
surrender, until ordered to evacuate to Australia to avoid such a senior
officer being captured by the enemy. Bur with his departure, the rest of
the garrison knew that there was no possibility of relief. They would
have to fight on until the bitter end, whatever form that might take.
That end came in May 1942. The defenders were reduced to virtually
starvation rations with many of them wounded. Consequently, when, on 5
May the Japanese mounted a powerful amphibious assault, the weakened
garrison could defy the enemy no longer. Corregidor, the 'Gibraltar of
the East', finally fell to the invaders.
Those invaders were to become the invaded when MacArthur returned in
January 1945. For three weeks, US aircraft, warships and artillery
hammered the Japanese positions on Corregidor. Then, on 16 February, the
Americans landed on the island. It took MacArthur's men ten days to hunt
down the last of the Japanese, after many had chosen to commit suicide
rather than surrender, but Corregidor was at last back in Allied
hands.
In this unique collection of images, the full story Corregidor's part in
the Second World War is dramatically revealed. The ships, the aircraft,
the guns, the fortifications and the men themselves, are shown here,
portraying the harsh, almost unendurable, realities of war.
