AMERICAN GENERALS IN CAPTIVITY, July 1942. Seated, left to right: Generals Moore, King, and Wainwright; two Japanese officers; Generals Parker and Jones. Standing, left to right: Japanese messenger; Generals Lough, Funk, Weaver, Brougher, Beebe, Bluemel, Drake, McBride, and Pierce; Colonel Hoffman (interpreter); and two Japanese soldiers.

After General Homma's departure, Wainwright offered his unconditional surrender to Colonel Nakayama, who had remained behind to take the Americans back to Corregidor. He agreed also to send one of his officers to Mindanao in a Japanese plane to persuade Sharp to surrender. "But in the back of my mind," he explained later, "was the strong hope that some way would still be found to avert the surrender of all forces."

Colonel Nakayama refused to accept Wainwright's proposal and told him he would have to wait until he reached Corregidor. Homma's instructions, he explained, authorized only the commander of the Japanese forces on Corregidor to accept the surrender. He then took the Americans back to Cabcaben by car and thence by boat to Corregidor, where they arrived late in the evening of 6 May.

The trip across the channel had been a long and stormy one, but not long enough for Wainwright to find a way out of his dilemma. MacArthur, he knew, expected Sharp's force to continue the fight as guerrillas and to keep alive resistance on Mindanao. He had done his best to achieve this aim, and Sharp was now free to conduct guerrilla operations. "But each time I thought of continued organized resistance on Mindanao," Wainwright recalled, "I thought, too, of the perilous position of close to 11,000 men and the wounded and nurses and civilians on Corregidor." The lives of these men and women might well be the price of Sharp's freedom.

The dilemma in which Wainwright found himself might perhaps have been avoided had the organization which MacArthur established for the Philippines before his departure from Corregidor been retained. At that time, it will be remembered, he had established four forces: the Visayan Force, the Mindanao Force, the Luzon Force, and the Harbor Defenses. It was his intention then to exercise command over these forces from his headquarters in Australia through his deputy, General Beebe, on Corregidor. The War Department had changed this arrangement, and placed Wainwright in command of all forces in the Philippines.

At the time this decision was made, the reasons for overruling MacArthur and establishing the directing headquarters for operations in the Philippines on Corregidor had seemed compelling in Washington. But if there had been no such headquarters, the Japanese would have had no alternative but to accept the surrender of each force when it was defeated on the field of battle. It is difficult to imagine on what basis they could have insisted that General MacArthur in Australia surrender all four forces in the Philippines. Nor was there any means, short of a direct threat of reprisals, by which they could force MacArthur to consider such a proposal. Even if they had followed the same procedure as on Bataan, where General King was told that he had not surrendered but had been captured, the effect would have been the same as the separate surrender of all four forces.

Wainwright could not consistently maintain his right to surrender only a portion of his force on the pretext that the remainder was no longer under his command. His presence on Corregidor and his well-recognized position as commander of all forces in the Philippines made him especially vulnerable to pressure from the Japanese. Perhaps it was to avoid just such a situation that MacArthur established the organization he did, and in this desire may lie the true meaning of his cryptic explanations at the time to General Marshall that he had made these arrangements because of "the special problems involved," and the "intangibles of the situation in the Philippines."

In the time between General Wainwright's departure from Corregidor and his return late that night, much had happened on the island. The Japanese had filtered around Malinta Hill, cutting it off from the rest of the island, and entered the tunnel by way of the east entrance. By about 1600 they had cleared out all Americans and Filipinos, except the hospital patients and staff officers, and were in complete possession of the tunnel. Later that night, in accordance with their original plan, the Japanese had landed additional troops on the island.

There was little Wainwright could do on his return to Corregidor late on the night of the 6th but surrender under the terms dictated by the Japanese. He could see the enemy's campfires all over the island and as he approached the tunnel he saw that it was already in enemy hands. There was no point in further delay and without waiting to complete the journey he asked Nakayama to take him to the local Japanese commander. His guides led him around Malinta Hill to the barrio of San Jose, and there, in the ruined market place, he met his opponent, Colonel Sato, commander of the 61st Infantry.

There was no discussion of terms. The surrender was unconditional and the document drawn up by the two men contained all the provisions Homma had insisted upon. Wainwright agreed to surrender all forces in the Philippines, including those in the Visayas and on Mindanao, within four days. All local commanders were to assemble their troops in designated areas and then report to the nearest Japanese commander. Nothing was to be destroyed and heavy arms and equipment were to be kept intact. "Japanese Army and Navy," read the closing paragraphs, "will not cease their operations until they recognize faithfulness in executing the above-mentioned orders. If and when such faithfulness is recognized, the commander in chief of Japanese forces in the Philippines will order 'cease fire' after taking all circumstances into consideration."