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I visited the Rock four times during the 1970's. I was editing a small newsletter for a military vehicle restorer's club then, and this is what I wrote
CORREGIDOR
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"THE ROCK" is the largest of the five islands that dot the twelve-mile entrance to Manila Bay. Whoever had the control of it had the complete control of the Bay, and it was for this reason that a formidable array of eighteen twelve-inch and ten-inch coastal rifles and twenty-four twelve-inch mortars covered the approaches to Manila Bay. From the air, the rock looks like a tadpole with a large bulbous head facing the South China Sea and a long, slightly twisting tail, extending eastward into the bay's mouth. From the Bataan shore, two miles to the north, Corregidor more nearly resembles the Loch Ness monster, its six hundred and twenty-eight foot head tapering down to sea-level then rising abruptly again in a four hundred feet rugged hump, with lower irregular ridge sloping out towards the end of the tail. Manila Bay may have been the bottle, but whoever held Corregidor held the cork. At least that was the theory. Many of the islands larger guns, however, had been in place two decades or
more before the war, and all of the anti aircraft weapons, though newer, were obsolescent.
More critical, were two factors: firstly Corregidor was designed and built in the days
when the battle ship was Kind and as a result the batteries were useless against both
ground or air attack as they faced only towards the sea. Secondly, both nearby shore lines
have hills that tower several thousand feet higher than Corregidor and would provide an
enemy artillery with excellent positions for observations, firing, and protection.
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The one hour ride across Manila Bay by hovercraft was a nightmare of ups and downs as the weather was somewhat less than hospitable. Glad to set foot on the rock, we were met by two buses, (one for the Japanese speaking tourists) and a Dodge personnel carrier (for the locals). I'd suffered the tour once before, so I checked in at the hostel where I found I was the only guest on the island. Fortunately I struck up a friendship with the Manager/Caretaker, and it was no trouble persuading him to act as a guide, for he usually spent his spare time exploring the Island. Most of the people staying permanently on the island work for the Tour Company, and nearly all of them spend their time off either fishing or exploring. It is they who know all that needs to be known and more besides. Time had taken its toll and by the time I had arrived, it was increasingly difficult to find what needed to be found. Most of the beach defenses and batteries had been literally pulverized, the concrete machine gun nests reduced to powder. What survived had been the target of scrap metal dealers, "the scrappers", and so there was very little to see of the batteries unless one knew first where to look. Nearly four weeks of bombardment had made life on the surface impossible. On one day Japanese artillery delivered a five hundred pound shell every five seconds for five hours 3600 shells, enough to fill 600 trucks (they also had 13 air raids that day as well). It is no wonder that the tunnel systems hold the most fascination for they are almost the only thing left. Malinta Tunnel is
831 feet long, 24 feet wide and 18 feet high at the top of its arch, and its durable construction has enabled it to endure the
fearful beating and still be the single most fascinating attraction. Begun as a public
works project in 1932, it's real purpose as a bomb proof storage and personnel shelter was
known only to the Chief of Coastal Artillery. Some of its laterals were so secret only
those working there knew of their existence, and even they were blindfolded to and from
each work shift. When in February 1945 the Japanese exploded the inner laterals of the top
secret Navy Tunnel, they buried forever these tunnels and the secrets they contained.
Booby traps, still live after all these years, have ensured that on the other side of the
debris, these secrets lie inviolate with the remains of their Japanese guardians.
Vehicles, munitions, supplies, five hundred or more Japanese bodies and a rumored
fortune
of Corregidor gold still lie there behind several thousand tons of fallen rock.
Incidentally, before the Americans were captured, they dumped 15,000,000 dollars of pure
silver pieces (at 1941 prices) somewhere in Manila Bay and after heavy seas I have seen
the occasional silver piece found on the beaches of Corregidor. I spent several hours
inside the tunnels, finding the old hospital laterals, MacArthur's H.Q. lateral,
storerooms, and an escape tunnel supposedly dug especially for MacArthur. It is the most
stygian blackness imaginable, a darkness so total it can paralyze all the senses. Malinta
means, "leach", but it is difficult
But Corregidor is much
more than tunnels and caves. The flags of the United States and the
Philippines still fly over the skeleton of topside barracks. Battery
Hearn, the biggest gun on the island, still looks out to sea for an enemy
that never came that way. When it was test fired, every windows on the
island was shattered. Battery Geary still knows the devastation of the
direct hit on it's twelve inch mortars open powder magazine. Members of
it's crew were vaporized as the twin ton mortar barrels were blown
hundreds of yards
Mile Long Barracks, said to be
the longest in the world have been left in ghostly ruins, with bomb craters and bullet
punctures showing the intensity of the rain of steel that forced its occupants to join the
10,000 underground dwellers of the tunnel systems. Rusted vehicles still lay off the
cratered roads, so gutted so as to be hardly recognized. Dozens of shells litter the creek
beds after the summer I spent three days on the island, and could have spent three weeks. I read history in the evenings and saw it in the daytime. I believe less in ghosts now than I once did, for if ever there was a place where they should have been, it was there. Of the 6000 or more Japanese defenders, about 40 survived in one way or another. Many people accuse us, as members of the Military Jeep Club, of glorifying military achievements but nothing is further from the truth. To know and to remember places like these, is not to glorify, but to recognize them for what they were. There is no sin in knowledge, and if we choose the restoration of military vehicles as the means of our knowledge of those historic times, then the other only difference between the historians and ourselves is that we have oil and grease on our hands, not ink.
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Corregidor - Then & Now GHQ | Coast Artillery - Harbor Defenses | 503d RHQ | 503d PRCT Heritage Bn. | Rock Force | Board |
H Version 09.09.11
* I have since learned from John Lindgren and Tony Sierra, both of whom were there, that "Suicide Cliff" was a fiction. Commentary can be found on "The Strange Story of Suicide Cliff."