Surrender and Evacuation
Homma was a graduate of the Military Academy of the Japanese Imperial Army (1907) and of the Army General Staff College (1915). During World War I he was an observer with the British forces in France, and in 1925 he served as Japanese resident officer in India. In 1930 Homma was appointed military attaché in London. In 1939 he commanded Japanese forces at Tientsin, China, when the Japanese army blockaded the foreign concession there.
In December 1941, a few days after the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor, Homma, then a lieutenant general, led the Japanese invasion of the Philippine Islands. Although it was commonly supposed that Homma had been superseded by General Tomoyuki Yamashita after the campaign bogged down at Bataan and Corregidor, subsequent evidence suggested that Homma held the supreme command throughout the campaign. He also directed the mopping-up actions against stray U.S. and Filipino forces in the Visayas and Mindanao areas.
Gen. Masaharu Homma (left), commander of the Japanese invasion, comes ashore on Luzon in December 1942.
He was demoted when the fierce resistance at Bataan forced him to stop in February and call for reinforcements. Placed in charge of moving prisoners to Camp O’Donnell. As many as 11,000 of the POWs died on the Death March as a result of the cruelty and inhumanity of their guards. The survivors' suffering did not end -- over twice as many POWs died in the first two months of imprisonment at Camp O'Donnell as did on the Death March. Thousands later died of malnourishment, disease, exhaustion, physical abuse, or were executed in this and other Japanese POW camps. Even more died on the so-called "hell ships." Packed into Japanese freighters, they were transported to Japan and China to work for the Japanese war industry. Locked in the holds, most drowned when Allied submarines and aircraft sank these ships. In fact, only one-third of Bataan's defenders survived the war.
American prisoners on burial detail at Camp O'Donnell, the terminus of the Bataan Death March, 1942.
Negligent?
Homma was considered a brilliant theoretician. His weakness was delegating authority and overseeing the practicalities of his command. Perhaps it was that weakness that allowed his subordinates to brutalize Americans and Filipinos while Homma publicly pronounced that POWs would be treated kindly and fairly. Perhaps he was negligent of duty. He is, however, the commanding officer over the "Bataan Death March."
Extensive Barbarism
Throughout the Pacific theater, the Japanese treated POWs and civilians barbarically. Survivors of camps in Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Burma and Laos all reported experiencing tremendous cruelty, torture, disease and starvation. It is an astounding fact that while POWs died at a rate of 1.2% in Germany, they died at a rate of 37% across the Pacific.
Former POW Richard Beck remembered:
"It's a very sinking feeling to know that you are going to be abused for a long period of time, and that's exactly what it was, it was a long period of abuse -- starvation, beatings... Some people were shot for no reason at all, so you never knew how to assess the situation, whether you should try to lead a low profile. It was a case of never knowing how to cope."