When Things Go Awry: Command Responsibility, Death Marches, and Unforeseeable Circumstances

Although the events of the past year are in many ways unprecedented, they have resulted in circumstances that are common throughout history. The rise of a global pandemic has led to suffering in many forms, political powers shifting, militant coups rising, and countries facing protests as civil unrest becomes more prevalent. In these uncertain times, political leaders and the role of militaries have been even more scrutinized, revealing flaws that might have remained undetected if it was not for circumstances going awry. These current events have caused us to reflect upon incidents of the past when commanders have faced the uncertainty of how to complete their mission. History is wrought with instances in which the commander, despite having a “Plan B,” still fails to succeed in his role, thus resulting in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary lives lost. Specifically, this article focuses on three death marches—The Long Walk of the Navajo, The Bataan Death March, and Holocaust Death Marches—and the international law of command responsibility. In comparing and contrasting these three historic events through the lens of this law, we analyze the imposition of a commander’s criminal liability when unexpected events occur and he or she is called upon to make difficult decisions. In doing so, we also provide a historical backdrop of each commander’s ethical, moral, and tactical decisions, allowing us to explore what else could have been done, and who should be held liable for the actions of the commander’s soldiers. Ultimately, we call on national leaders and military commanders alike to evaluate our uncomfortable contemporary reality, look back in history, and ask themselves one question: am I truly prepared to make the right decisions when things go wrong?

The Return

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.

Atrocities

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.

"To Sympathize and Exploit": Filipinos, Americans, and the Bataan Death March

The Bataan Death March of 1942 has entered historical consciousness as one of the ultimate measures of Japanese wartime barbarity. At a level bound up with deference to the veterans who experienced such hardship, a compelling reality emerges: Helpless Americans marched under the watchful eyes and cruel bayonets of the Japanese oppressor, and the Filipinos, in despair over the defeat of their defenders, wept in sympathy as they watched. The pattern reinforces pleasing notions of a benevolent colonial relation, the "good war" against a barbarous enemy, and loyal allies enlisted in a righteous cause. Yet thousands of men, women, and children of three nationalities and various classes participated in the complex drama that came to represent the Death March. Their complexity demands an interpretation that goes beyond the simplicity of "oppressor – victim – sympathetic observer." This article finds another story which does not replace the first but which includes American racism and colonial support for Filipino elites, and Filipino divisiveness, poverty, resentment, and Death March exploitation of American weakness and need.

Making "The Tragedy of Bataan": The Bataan Death March through the Lens of a Filmmaker

The 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.