<Begin Segment 9>

TI: And then what happened? So after they took out your tanks, then...

BB: We, well... have you ever been to the Philippines?

TI: No.

BB: Philippines is mountainous, very mountainous, so we're underneath a ridge, and we're in coconut groves. Right behind us, about a mile away, this ridge was being held by the Philippine army, and they were, and they had a field artillery unit there. Well, the day of combat they disappeared, they were gone. So here we are, and our first sergeant and the headquarters' outfit, they had a couple of half-tracks, they took off to go to Manila. So I'm left there with two trucks and the company clerk, the cooks and myself were alone, and so we had to strike a tent and load it up in our trucks, and we took off to Manila to follow, to go wherever they were going, to follow. And, of course, we ran into roadblocks, the Filipinos, but they, we got through those all right. And we got to Manila and then we were told to go forward, and they were going into Bataan at the time. But we weren't allowed to go to Bataan yet, so we went, we were parked in the river delta down there, below the bridge. They had a bridge called the Calumpet Bridge, that was away from the mainland in the Bataan, Bataan peninsula. And I ended up with my two trucks with the headquarters from the battalion, Colonel Miller. And we both saw all the trucks cross on the bridge. There were about twenty or thirty trucks, they were all empty, not a single thing on 'em. Kind of a lack of command authority somewhere.

TI: Because what should have, what should have been in the trucks going across the bridge?

BB: They should have had men, should have had supplies, should have had food and ammunition on 'em and gasoline. My truck had clothing in one truck, and the other truck had ammo, it had jerry cans full of gas and water.

TI: So why would those empty trucks be going across the bridge without supplies? Just to get out of there?

BB: They were going to Bataan, they were ordered to go. They didn't load up with any supplies, empty.

TI: Was that an indication of how...

BB: How stupid some people are. [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] Or how quickly they wanted to just leave. Okay. So you're with the colonel, Colonel Miller, you said.

BB: Well, eventually, he joined his own unit, the rest of the unit, and here we have a unit where two platoons of our tank company and the rest of the battalion going to Lingayen Gulf, where the Japanese really landed, the big, the big landing. That's where the main war was. And they ended up fighting and finally moved into Bataan. And our tank company was the last outfit to go into Bataan. I think A Company was the last one the enter -- no, C Company was the last to enter.

TI: And then what happened after you were in there?

BB: Well, they had, well, they had combat all the time. I don't think originally the Japanese army didn't think too much would happen in the Philippines. They thought it would be a minor conflict and it'd be over in a couple, maybe a couple weeks or so. And it ended up at, the first force was practically annihilated.

TI: The first Japanese force?

BB: First Japanese force.

TI: 'Cause they weren't anticipating --

BB: Not very many survivors out of that.

TI: So they were anticipating the, the --

BB: They backed it up --

TI: -- the buildup of U.S. troops.

BB: -- with an entire army, Japanese army. See, by that time, they had all the, all the Japanese army from China was, was breaking out of there, and they were invading different islands and whatnot, so they had quite an army that attacked the Philippines after that.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.