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December 2, 1957Jungle Takes OverAbandoned CorregidorMuteB1MonumentAmerican HeroismCORREXJIDOR ISLAND (INS)—Corregidor!America cried ita glory 16 years ago. Now the great rock slumbers at the mouth of Manila Bay, a lonely orphan of history.It is a deceptively massive island. Somewhere under the young, aggressive jungle, for example, a 72-hole golf coursehas disappeared.These hand.some links were the pleasure of American and Filipino officers who later were to stand as the first great symbol of gallantry against the Japanese in World War Two,Those manicured greens, those fairways so tenderly kept, ironically helped Japanese howitzers in Bataan and guns in Cavite’s hills zero in on ill-hidden U. S. gun emplacements, ammo bunkers, hospitals and the barracks of 13,000 beleagured defenders.The jungle has crept in everywheae, tenderly, like a soft gauze to cover the wounds of thousands oi tons of bombsand more than 100,000 Japanese shellings that rained from Dec. 8, 1941, until surrender on May'6, 1942.There are prospects now, 16 years after Corregidor made its fight, that it may be cleaned up (500 gnats stomp the hills), a memorial raised and tourist “attractions readied.You can visit the erstwhile Gibraltar f Asia now only at the invitation of the courteous Philippine Army, which use.s General MacArthur’s famedMaltina tunnel to store ammunition.Ten or 20 visit the island each week, mostly relatives of men who died. They make sad pilgrimages.There aren’t, it seems, many who remember much about Corregidor except relatives.“Do you know anything about Corregidor?” a teen-age American ’ .sailor at nearby Sangley Point was asked.“Sure—there was some fighting there after Pearl Harbor.”A young Filipino girl was more certain:“A lot of Americans died there to help us, but there weren’t enough to win.”Corregidor so dominates Manila Bay’s entrance that for seven centuries before the Americans fortified it in 1908, Chinese pirates, Spanish militia and Dutch sailors used it..\dmiral Dewey seized it for the United States on May 6,1898. Forty-four years later, to the day. General Wainwright ordered a white flag run up and it fell to General Momma’s Japanese imperial forces. Mac-.^rthur by then had been ordered to go to Australia—to fight another day.What happened was that .America was totally unprepared for a Japanese attack by land.It is shocking to see some of Corregidor’s big lO-and-12 inch Coast Artillery rifles rusting as they were left 16 years ago, pointing out to the open sea— unable to rotate and bear on Bataan or Cavite where the enemy was. Shades of British stupidity in Singapore, the French hidden in their Maginot line.The siege of Corregidor had started shortly after Pearl Harbor was attacked 4,000 miles away—it was Dec. 8, 1941, in the far east—picked up in earnest late in Decemberwhen U. S. and Filipino troops were boxed on nearby Bataan, and became unbearable by early May.Filipino scouts, American sailors, U. S. marines and sol-! diers all died or surrendered, outgunned, wnthout water, almost no food.W’hat you see on Corregidor is the ghost of their glory. Massive “topside barracks” is^ ‘'•'unted shell, Kilbourne’s’ “golden stairs” have not*heard.iOOtstep for a decade, the great hospital of Corregidor stands like a tomb amidst jungle trees already 15 feet tall.A Bataan-Corregidor shrine commission appointed by President Eisenhower, together wdth. the Philippine government, is, planning to “restore” the island at possibly a cost of three million dollars.But many who have been to; the rock claim that it should be left as is—let Battery Hearn and Battery Grubbs and “mile-long barracks” be—for as they stand in the silence of the emerald jungle they speak in monumental tones.There is not much point trying to “lure” people to Corregidor with parks and statues and hot dog stands. It would be I like putting a roller coaster at Verdun or Valley Forge.r 1 aib'uCldcr19armat:th
Newspaper Details
Albuquerque Journal
Albuquerque, New Mexico, US
Mon, Dec 02, 1957
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
University O.
NM, USA 01 Aug 2018
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