CLICK TO VISIT THE PREVIOUS PAGE   CLICK TO CLOSE THIS PAGECLICK TO VISIT NEXT PAGE IN THIS SERIES

A Japanese artillery piece on Bataan pounds Corregidor, April 1942.

.
At nightfall on 5 May Colonel Gempachi Sato assembled his Left Flank Force at Limay on the Bataan Peninsula. The gathered troops "sang softly the high thin haunting melody of 'Prayer in the Dawn,'" and then climbed into 19 landing craft for the assault. The landing craft varied in size, the smallest carrying 30 men and the largest 170. More important, five tanks of the 7th Tank Regiment were also embarked in two landing craft. The landing craft and barges approached Corregidor in a three-line formation with expected landfall at 2300, shortly before the rise of the moon.

At 2240 the artillery shelling concentrated on the north shore beach defenses in the 1st Battalion sector. At 2300, supplies of food and water were just reaching the beach positions when landing boats were reported offshore. A second artillery concentration pounded the beach defenses for 6-7 minutes. The shelling was particularly intense, ending with phosphorous shells. Three to four minutes of silence followed the last shell when word reached Beecher at battalion headquarters that seven Japanese landing craft were nearing the beach. The initial Japanese landing of 790 men of the reinforced 1st Battalion, 61st Infantry was headed for the beaches from Infantry Point to North Point.

Photo courtesy of Dr. Diosdado M. Yap