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The Battle of Bataan, fought 7 January – 9 April 1942, represented the most intense phase of Imperial Japan's invasion of the Philippines during World War II. In January 1942, forces of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy invaded Luzon along with several islands in the Philippine Archipelago after the bombing of the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. The commander-in-chief of all Filipino and American forces in the islands, General Douglas MacArthur, consolidated all of his Luzon-based units on the Bataan Peninsula to fight against the Japanese invaders. By this time, the Japanese controlled nearly all of Southeast Asia. The Bataan peninsula and the island of Corregidor were the only remaining Allied strongholds in the region. Despite a lack of supplies, Filipino (many were U.S. Nationals) and American forces managed to fight the Japanese for three months, engaging them initially in a fighting retreat southward. As the combined Filipino and American forces made a last stand, the delay cost the Japanese valuable time and prohibited immediate victory across the Pacific. The surrender at Bataan was the largest in American and Filipino military histories, and was the largest United States surrender since the American Civil War's Battle of Harper's Ferry.〔Robertson, p. 606.〕 Soon afterwards, Filipino and American (including Filipino-American) prisoners of war were forced into the Bataan Death March.〔William L. O'Neill, ''A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II'', p 115 ISBN 0-02-923678-9〕 ==Background== The capture of the Philippine Islands was crucial to Japan's effort to control the Southwest Pacific, seize the resource-rich Dutch East Indies, and protect its Southeast Asian flank. After Japanese carrier planes attacked the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941 (8 December, Manila time), Taiwan-based aircraft, within seven hours, pounded the main bases of the American Far East Air Force at Clark Field in Pampanga, Iba Field in Zambales, Nichols Field near Manila, and the headquarters of the United States Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines, at Cavite. Many American planes were caught on the ground and summarily destroyed. In one day, the Japanese had gained air superiority over the Philippine Islands. This forced the U.S. Asiatic Fleet to withdraw its surface ships from its naval base in Cavite and retreat southwards, leaving only the submarine force to resist the Japanese. From 8 to 10 December, scattered resistance by ground troops and remaining American air and naval forces failed to stop preliminary landings to seize airfields at Batan Island, Aparri, and Vigan City. Army air force B-17s, often with a minimal or no fighter escort, attacked Japanese ships offloading at Gonzaga and the Vigan landings on Luzon. Submarines of the Asiatic Fleet were also assigned to the effort. In one last coordinated action by the Far East Air Force, U.S. planes damaged two Japanese transports, the flagship ''Nagato'', a destroyer, and sank one minesweeper. These air attacks and naval actions, however, did not significantly delay the Japanese assault. These small-scale landings preceded the main assault on 22 December 1941, at Lingayen Gulf in Pangasinan and Lamon Bay, Tayabas, by the 14th Japanese Imperial Army, led by Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma. By effectively neutralizing U.S. air and naval power in the Philippines, the Japanese gained supremacy that isolated the Philippines from reinforcement and resupply, and provided itself with both airfields for support of its invasion forces and staging bases for further operations in the Netherlands East Indies. 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」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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