DISCUSSING SURRENDER TERMS with Colonel Nakayama. Facing forward, left to right, Col. Everett C.Williams, Maj. Gen. Edward P. King, Jr., Maj. Wade Cothran, and Maj. Achille C. Tisdelle.

Having made his decision, General King called his staff to his tent at midnight to tell them what he had determined to do and why. At the outset he made it clear that he had not called the meeting to ask for the advice or opinion of his assistants. The "ignominious decision," he explained, was entirely his and he did not wish anyone else to be "saddled with any part of the responsibility." "I have not communicated with General Wainwright," he declared, "because I do not want him to be compelled to assume any part of the responsibility." Further resistance, he felt, would only be an unnecessary and useless waste of life. "Already our hospital, which is filled to capacity and directly in the line of hostile approach, is within range of enemy light artillery. We have no further means of organized resistance."

Though the decision to surrender could not have surprised the staff, it "hit with an awful bang and a terrible wallop." Everyone had hoped for a happier ending to the grim tragedy of Bataan, and when General King walked out of the meeting "there was not a dry eye present."

There was much to do in the next few hours to accomplish the orderly surrender of so large and disorganized a force: all units had to be notified of the decision and given precise instructions; selected individuals and units had to be sent to Corregidor; and everything of military value had to be destroyed. The first task was to establish contact with the Japanese and reach agreement on the terms of the surrender. Col. E. C. Williams and Maj. Marshall H. Hurt, Jr., both bachelors, volunteered to go forward under a white flag to request an interview for General King with the Japanese commander. Arrangements for their departure were quickly made. They would time their journey so as to arrive at the front lines at daylight, just as the destruction of equipment was being completed.

As though nature had conspired to add to the confusion, an earthquake of serious proportions shook the peninsula "like a leaf" at about 2130.²⁴ About an hour later the Navy started to destroy its installations at Mariveles. "Pursuant to orders from General Wainwright," Captain Hoeffel informed the Navy Department, "am destroying and sinking Dewey Drydock, Canopus, Napa, Bittern tonight."²⁵ Soon the rumble of explosions could be heard from Mariveles while flames shot high above the town, lighting up the sky for miles around. The climax came when the Canopus blew up with a tremendous roar: "She seemed," wrote an observer, "to leap out of the water in a sheet of flame and then drop back down heavily like something with all the life gone out of it."²⁶

The Navy's fireworks were but the prelude to the larger demolitions that were to follow when the Army's ammunition was destroyed. Though stored in the congested area adjacent to General Hospital No. 1, the engineer and quartermaster depots, and Luzon Force and II Corps headquarters, the TNT and ammunition had to be destroyed where they were. There was no time to move them to a safer place and hardly time to transfer the hospital patients away from the danger area. In the dumps were hundreds of thousands of rounds of small-arms ammunition and artillery shells of all calibers. Powder trains were laid to the separate piles of ammunition, and shells of larger caliber were set off by rifle fire.

Destruction began shortly after 2100 and at 0200 the first TNT warehouses went up with an explosion that fairly rocked the area. Then followed a most magnificent display of fireworks. Several million dollars worth of explosives and ammunition filled the sky "with bursting shells, colored lights, and sprays of rainbow colors. . . . Never did a 4th of July display equal it in noise, lights, colors or cost."²⁷ After the explosion shell fragments of all sizes fell like hail and men in the vicinity took refuge in their foxholes. The headquarters building at King's command post, a flimsy structure about 200 by 20 feet, was knocked over by the blast and the furniture was scattered in all directions. When morning came the men were surprised to note that all overhead cover was gone. "It is miraculous," wrote one officer, "that we came through this."

The nurses were more fortunate. Most of them did escape but only after harrowing experiences. Given thirty minutes to make ready for the journey, the nurses were cautioned to take with them only what they could carry. They boarded trucks in the darkness and made their way south at a snail's pace along the congested East Road. The group from General Hospital No. 2 was held up by the explosions from the ammunition dump which went up just as the convoy reached the road adjacent to the storage area. These nurses almost failed to get through. The barge left without them shortly before daylight and it was only through the "vim, vigor, and swearing" of General Funk that a motor boat was sent from Corregidor to carry them across the North Channel. They left the Mariveles dock after daylight and despite the bombs and bullets from a lone Japanese plane reached Corregidor in safety.

It was about 0900 when King, in his last clean uniform, went forward to meet General Nagano. He felt, he said later, like General Lee who on the same day seventy-seven years earlier, just before his meeting with Grant at Appomatox, had remarked: "Then there is nothing left to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths."⁴¹ With King when he left his command post were his two aides, Majors Wade Cothran and Tisdelle; his operations officer, Colonel Collier; and Major Hurt, who was to guide them to the meeting place.

General Nagano, who spoke no English, opened the meeting by explaining through an interpreter that he was not authorized to make any arrangements himself but that he had notified General Homma an American officer was seeking a meeting to discuss terms for the cessation of hostilities. A representative from 14th Army headquarters, he told King, would arrive very soon. A few minutes later a shiny Cadillac drew up at the building before which the envoys were waiting

and Colonel Nakayama, the 14th Army senior operations officer, emerged, accompanied by an interpreter. General King rose to greet him, but Nakayama ignored him and took a seat at the head of the table. King resumed his seat at the opposite end, erect with his hands forward in front of him. "I never saw him look more like a soldier," wrote his aide, "than in this hour of defeat."

Nakayama had come to the meeting without any specific instructions about accepting a surrender or the terms under which a surrender would be acceptable. Apparently there was no thought in Homma's mind of a negotiated settlement. He believed that the American envoy was a representative from General Wainwright and had sent Nakayama to represent him since he was unwilling to meet with any person of lesser rank.

The discussion got off to a bad start when Colonel Nakayama, fixing his glance on General King, asked: "You are General Wainwright?" When King said he was not and identified himself, Nakayama asked where Wainwright was and why he had not come. The general replied that he did not speak for the commander of all forces in the Philippines but for his own command alone. He was then told that he would have to get Wainwright and that the Japanese could not accept any surrender without him. Again King declared that he represented only the forces on Bataan and that he could not get Wainwright. The Japanese were apparently insisting on a clarification of King's relation to Wainwright in order to avoid having to accept the piecemeal surrender of Wainwright's forces.

General King finally persuaded Nakayama to consider his terms. He explained that his forces were no longer fighting units and that he was seeking an arrangement to prevent further bloodshed. He asked for an armistice and requested that air bombardment be stopped at once. Nakayama rejected both the request for an immediate armistice and the cessation of air bombardment, explaining that the pilots had missions until noon and that the bombardment could not be halted until then. King then asked that his troops be permitted to march out of Bataan under their own officers and that the sick, wounded, and exhausted men be allowed to ride in the vehicles he had saved for this purpose. He promised to deliver his men at any time to any place designated by General Homma. Repeatedly he asked for assurance that the American and Filipino troops would be treated as prisoners of war under the provisions of the Geneva Convention.

To all these proposals Nakayama turned a deaf ear. The only basis on which he would consider negotiations for the cessation of hostilities, he asserted, was one which included the surrender of all forces in the Philippines. "It is absolutely impossible for me," he told King flatly, "to consider negotiations ... in any limited area." If the forces on Bataan wished to surrender they would have to do so by unit, "voluntarily and unconditionally." Apparently General King understood this to mean that Nakayama would accept his unconditional surrender. Realizing that his position was hopeless and that every minute delayed meant the death of more of his men, General King finally agreed at about 1230 to surrender unconditionally. Nakayama then asked for the general's saber, but King explained he had left it behind in Manila at the outbreak of war. After a brief flurry of excitement, Nakayama agreed to accept a pistol instead and the general laid it on the table. His fellow officers did the same, and the group passed into captivity.

No effort was made by either side to make the surrender a matter of record with a signed statement. General King believed then and later that though he had not secured agreement to any of the terms he had requested he had formally surrendered his entire force to Homma's representative. The Japanese view did not grant even that much. As Nakayama later explained: "The surrender . . . was accomplished by the voluntary and unconditional surrender of each individual or each unit. The negotiations for the cessation of hostilities failed."⁴⁹ King's surrender, therefore, was interpreted as the surrender of a single individual to the Japanese commander in the area, General Nagano, and not the surrender of an organized military force to the supreme enemy commander. He, Colonel Williams, and the two aides were kept in custody by the Japanese as a guarantee that there would be no further resistance. Though they were not so informed, they were, in fact, hostages and not prisoners of war.

Colonel Collier and Major Hurt, accompanied by a Japanese officer, were sent back to headquarters to pass on the news of the surrender to General Funk. On the way, they were to inform all troops along the road and along the adjoining trails to march to the East Road, stack arms, and await further instructions. Orders for the final disposition of the troops would come from Homma. Meanwhile, by agreement with Nagano, the Japanese forces along the east coast would advance only as far as the Cabcaben airfield.

The battle for Bataan was ended; the fighting was over. The men who had survived the long ordeal could feel justly proud of their accomplishment. For three months they had held off the Japanese, only to be overwhelmed finally by disease and starvation. In a very real sense theirs had been "a true medical defeat," the inevitable outcome of a campaign of attrition, of "consumption without replenishment." Each man had done his best and none need feel shame.