MacArthur's Futile Campaign

For the American people, the fall of the Phillipines in 1942 evoked neither the shock of Pearl Harbor nor the defiance of The Alamo's fight to the last man. Bataaan and Corregidor, while not forgotten, were overtaken by the swift currents of other World War II battles, as Americans found new losses to lament and growing victories to celebrate. Survivors of The Philippines Campaign quietly languished in squalid prison or war camps, or in the case of the few who avoided capture, struck at the Japanese in unpublicized guerilla raids.