BATTLE OF THE PHILIPPINES: Excellency, a Few Notes . . .

Along the 15-mile front on Bataan Peninsula, Japanese patrols came to life again. From Bagac on the China Sea to Pilar on Manila Bay, the line burst into chattering uproar.

MacArthur was gone to a higher command. The Japanese General Homma, licked to a standstill and dead by his own hand, was a handful of ashes in a bedizened shrine. His successor, pot-bellied General Tomoyuki Yamashita, conqueror of Malaya, faced a classic U.S. cavalryman: lean, dashing Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who had been promoted to Lieutenant General to fill Douglas MacArthur's man-size shoes.

Yamashita...

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