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The Battle for the Recapture of Bataan from 31 January to 21 February 1945, by US forces and Allied Filipino guerrillas from the Japanese, part of the campaign for the liberation of the Philippines, was waged to secure the western shore of Manila Bay to enable the use of its harbor and open new supply lines for American troops engaged in the crucial battle for the liberation of Manila. The Bataan peninsula's recapture also avenged the surrender of the defunct United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) to invading Japanese forces in 9 April 1942. ==Background== The rapid advance of US forces heading towards Manila had strained the capability of their supply lines at Lingayen Gulf, which had so ably supplemented their push south on the capital, almost to breaking point. While the capture of Manila was significant for both military and psychological reasons, the seizure of Manila Bay was crucial from a logistical point of view. Its harbor was in American hands but would remain unused until the Bataan peninsula and the island of Corregidor in the west was secured. General Douglas MacArthur bestowed on Lieutenant General Walter Krueger's Sixth Army, the task to seize Bataan, and later Corregidor. The US XI Corps, fresh from the Leyte Campaign, under Major General Charles P. Hall, augmented Sixth Army. Comprising the 38th Infantry Division commanded by Maj. Gen. Henry L.L. Jones and Colonel Aubrey "Red" S. Newman's 34th Infantry, 24th Infantry Division, the XI Corps was to land on the Zambales coast some twenty-five miles (40 km) northwest of Bataan, drive rapidly east across the base of the peninsula, and then sweep south, clearing Bataan, including its eastern coast. But American intelligence had badly overestimated the enemy strength on Bataan, thinking that the Japanese had a full division on the peninsula. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the commander of Japanese forces in the Philippines, had decided that defending Manila Bay was well beyond the capabilities of his forces, thus only some 4,000 Japanese troops of Maj. Gen. Rikichi Tsukada's ''Kembu Group'', which had been dispersed to now captured Mindoro, Corregidor and Southern Luzon were left to oppose the Americans. The principal unit was the Nagayoshi Detachment under Col. Nagayoshi Sanonebu. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Bataan (1945)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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