The Return

2021 ◽  
pp. 221-243
Author(s):  
Steven Casey

MacArthur finally returned to the Philippines in October 1944, accompanied by fifty-eight correspondents—the largest number to join a Pacific invasion at that stage of the war. Initially, the campaign to retake the island of Luzon did not go well, but a combination of MacArthur’s optimistic communiqués and a major naval victory in the Battle of Leyte Gulf ensured that his return contributed to Roosevelt’s reelection victory a month later. After the invasion of Leyte in January 1945 led first to the liberation of the camps containing Bataan death march survivors and then to the bloody slaughter during the battle for Manila, the home front’s animosity toward Japan hardened.

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Steven Casey

For the first two years of the war, the government was extremely reluctant to release information about the atrocities being committed by the Japanese. Officials warned returning civilian internees not to speak to the press about the conditions they had faced as Japanese prisoners. The Office of Censorship applauded the media’s restraint in covering the execution of American airmen captured after the Doolittle raid. And even when Ed Dyess escaped from the Philippines with details about the Bataan death march, senior officials prevented his story from being told. The Chicago Tribune, which paid Dyess $21,000, lobbied hard for a policy change, to no avail. Only after Dyess’s tragic death in a plane crash at the end of 1943, followed by a threat to have a friendly legislator read his story into the Congressional Record, did the government finally lift the veil on this dimension of the Pacific War.


2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 215-234
Author(s):  
Jan Thompson

AbstractThe television and radio documentary "The Tragedy of Bataan" uses extensive interviews with survivors to bring the 1942 Bataan Death March to life for contemporary viewers. The filmmaker, whose father was a POW in the Philippines, describes the process of gathering the interviews and putting them together into a compelling story. She describes the film strategy of having the men and women involved tell the story in their own words, with no historians or experts on camera; explains how a documentary film differs from a written monograph; and explores the constraints set by television and by the television audience. Allowing these participants and eye-witnesses to tell the story conveys their perceptions of the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army, of General Douglas MacArthur, and of the suffering, the humor, and the heroism of the common American soldiers.


2002 ◽  
Vol 17 (S2) ◽  
pp. S27
Author(s):  
Teodoro Javier Herbosa

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