Undefeated Americans
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
BATTLE OF BATAAN AND THE
DEATH MARCH
There was a lot of confusion in the Philippines the
day WWII broke out. Many of us had just
arrived aboard the President Coolidge
and were still in tents and unassigned.
News about Pearl Harbor spread fast.
Each man had been issued a rifle and was placed on alert. Clark Air Force Base, about seventy-five
miles to the north of Manila, was bombed and strafed by Japanese Zeros the
first day of the war. When the air raid
alarm sounded, the crew ran to their places to get them ready for flight, but
the Japanese Zeros came in and mowed them down. Many men lost their lives.
On December 9, 1941 we experienced our first air
raid in Manila. Twenty-four two-motor
bombers dropped their loads on aircraft facilities just outside Manila. Our anti-aircraft guns opened up. That night there was another Japanese air
raid on military targets around Manila.
Manila was declared an open city.
On December 10, a small number of Japanese troops
landed on the southern tip of Luzon Island.
A Philippine infantry detachment was sent down to combat them, and after
only a few hours of fighting, the Japanese surrendered. However, this was only a decoy because on
December 12, a Japanese convoy of more than eighty ships were sighted off the northern
Luzon coast.
It was at this time that Captain {?} Kelly, the
undisputed hero of the Philippine campaign, destroyed one of the Japanese
battleships. The next day, more than
100,000 Japanese troops landed on Luzon.
The 31st Infantry, the 45th Tank Battalion, the
Philippine constabulary and the field artillery engaged them in battle under
the command of General {?} King. The
Americans and Filipinos, however, were no match for the far superior Japanese
army. The Americans and Filipinos
retreated to the peninsula of Bataan and established a front line that held the
Japanese for four months.
The fighting on Bataan was fierce. There was action every day: patrol against
patrol, tank against tank, and artillery against artillery. Also, food was getting scarce. There was no rice, potatoes or meat. The only food left was horsemeat. Most of the men began to suffer from
malnutrition, diarrhea, and malaria.
Because of the diarrhea, many of the men spent a lot of time squatting
between their knees, certainly in no condition to fight the Japanese. Morale was low. We expected help from the Americans in Australia, but none
came. Actually, we were defeated before
the surrender.
On April 7, 1942 the Japanese began their attack
from land, sea and air. On April 8,
they broke through the front line, and on the 9th, Bataan
surrendered.
All outfits were ordered to stack rifles and
ammunition and to line up in formation when the Japanese came in. It would be impossible to describe the
defeatism, the depression of having to surrender. If only help had arrived.
How long would the war last? How
long would we be prisoners, and how would we be treated? These and other questions came to our
minds. Little did we realize that we
would be prisoners for the next three and one-half years and that fifty-seven
out of every 100 men would die in captivity.
All of us would come near to death.
We would be tortured, beaten, starved and humiliated. Many times we thought the dead were better
off than the living.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Each person during a lifetime encounters some
adverse experience, and each reacts in a different way. Some people ignore what happens, hoping that
it will go away. Others hide difficulty
inside but dwell on it until it eats them alive. Then, there are those who prefer to talk about hardships or write
about them so that those going through similar experiences can take hope or
help from what others have suffered.
Such is the case with Undefeated
Americans by Sherrod M. Flanders.
His three-and-a-half years as a Japanese prisoner-of-war during World
War II horrified the new high-school graduate as well as the reader who shares
his experience secondhand. This
fast-paced memoir takes the reader from Flanders’ brief tenure in the
Philippines through the Bataan Death March into the Japanese camp where these
boys deal with sand fleas and Shakespeare, snow and mud, rice and more rice,
and hunger and death. You will both
laugh and cry as you watch these children become men, and you will rejoice when
they are finally rescued at the end of the war. Although Pvt. Flanders is dead, his story is very much alive and
relevant for a nation again under siege.
About the Author
Sherrod M. Flanders, a native of South Georgia,
joined the Army Air Corps right out of high school. After completing training, he was sent to the Philippines in the
Pacific Theater. Shortly after the
attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese began their assault on the Philippines. Following the fall of the Bataan Peninsula
in the Philippines, he was captured and forced into the Death March of
Bataan. He was a prisoner of war for three
and one-half years.
At the completion of World War II, he was released
from Japan. He returned home and
attended Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
He then met and married his wife and together they had two children.
Sherrod died in December 1987 leaving behind an
important story to be told for himself and all of his fellow soldiers. As with many others of his time, he did not talk
about his experience. Instead, he chose
to write the story that could not be discussed.