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 knew that he was fighting a first-rate U.S. General. "Skinny" Wainwright's father had fought alongside Douglas MacArthurs father 40 years ago in the Islands; his Navy grandfather had died on his ship in the Civil War; he himself had seen long service in the Philippines. Against this opponent, Yamashita moved with ponderous ceremony.
In the two weeks of comparative quiet before & after MacArthur's departure, General Yamashita had undoubtedly regrouped his forces. He had also moved some 240-mm. (about 9½ in.) guns into position somewhere along the edges of Manila Bay. They were the biggest guns yet used by the Jap in Luzon, and they began blasting at the fortress of Corregidor, where General Wainwright makes his headquarters.
Corregidor got one of its worst poundings of the war. Yamashita may have imagined that General Wainwright was softened up enough for a different approach. On U.S. positions, his aviators dropped cans, tied with red ribbons, bearing identical notes. The notes were addressed "To His Excellency, Major General Jonathan Wainwright:
"We have the honor to address you in accordance with Bushido— the code of the Japanese warrior. It will be regarded [remembered] that some time ago a note advising honorable surrender was sent to the Commander in Chief of your fighting forces. To this no reply has been received.
". . . Your Excellency: You have already fought to the best of your ability. What dishonor is there in following the example of the defenders of Hong Kong, Singapore, and The Netherlands East Indies. . . .
"Your Excellency: your duty has been performed. Accept our sincere advice and save the lives of those officers and men under your command. International law would be strictly adhered to. . . . We call upon you to consider this proposition. . . . If a reply to this advisory note is not received . . . by noon March 22, 1942, we shall consider ourselves at liberty to take any action whatsoever."
West Pointer Wainwright knows all about Bushido, all about the treatment the Jap has already given to U.S. prisoners, particularly Filipinos. He gave the note the answer it deserved: he ignored it. Along the front the firing grew. . . .
To the south, on the big island of Mindanao, where the Jap had grabbed the fine port of Davao, other U.S. soldiers, fierce Moro scouts under American officers, swooped down on a Jap force near storied Zamboanga and gave the invader fits. This was not surprising. The U.S. still controls all of the island except its southern edge.
The U.S. also holds the important islands of Cebu, Negros and Panay in the Visayan Sea.