Kevin C. Murphy
Author of The Past and Future City: How Historic Preservation is Reviving America's Communities
About the Author
Kevin C. Murphy chairs the Department of Humanities at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and two previous books. He lives in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.
Image credit: from University of the Sciences faculty page
Works by Kevin C. Murphy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
Members
Reviews
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 7
- Members
- 65
- Popularity
- #261,994
- Rating
- 3.3
- Reviews
- 8
- ISBNs
- 13
Inside the Bataan Death March reviews this accepted narrative, and argues these standard roles are oversimplified. The key problem is a lack of empirical evidence to corroborate survivor stories. Conventional wisdom, then, is a patchwork of memory, much of which can be expected to be inaccurate.
Murphy argues there are essentially two reasons for the oversimplification:
• A general motivation on the part of participants either to canonize a story of unjust defeat, or to avoid discussion entirely. Key factor is a widespread sense among GIs they were abandoned by their country: insufficient resources to defend themselves, lack of attention during the Japanese invasion, and then that awkward fact of a real thumping at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army. All of which plays into a need to justify the ignominy, and Murphy argues the role of unjust victims serves this need, at least in part.
• An abiding unwillingness to challenge survivor narrative by anyone not there at the time, especially given an almost complete lack of documentation to consult for corroboration or dispute. No official documents survive the Japanese Imperial Army, none were generated by the prisoners themselves until after the war, and though the Filipino state existed prior to, during, and after the Japanese occupation, again no official acts address the Death March excepting memorials and other post-war efforts.
Each chapter examines specific aspects of these fundamental reasons: the unpreparedness of the U.S. military (training, logistics, discipline, conditioning) for mounting a successful resistance to the Imperial Japanese Army's invasion of the Philippines; the unpreparedness of the Japanese military for managing the scale or condition of its prisoners; varying cultural responses to the tactical situation at the beginning of the Death March; the nature of memory and its likely distortion in recalling personal trauma.
Japanese held American prisoners responsible for the failure of order on the march, while the Americans themselves were ill-suited by temperament, training, and condition to behave as the Japanese expected. [104]
Bataan survivors took a degree of license because they could, because no competing narrative contradicted them and, presumably, because they truly came to believe their stories. Another part of the answer lies in the way their stories have been received -- neither readers of survivors' narratives nor authors of secondary works were interested in any sort of critical response. [150]
//
The book is an historian's survey of the academic literature, supplemented with a synthetic integration of original source documents (primarily diaries and personal narratives). It reads like an early effort to identify and manage the historical facts, the beginning of a research agenda. There are many evocative attempts, from his weaving of personal experiences in Japan, and quotations from Japanese and American literature, to psychological frameworks for analysing personal narratives or atrocities.
The seeds and effort are there, but Murphy has not yet found an elegant way of bringing these strands together, succinctly and evocatively.
//
ROUTE
southern Bataan along western Manila Bay, northward to interior
• Mariveles to San Fernando: 65 miles (march)
• San Fernando to Capas: 10 miles (train)
• Capas to Camp O'Donnell: 5 miles (march)
TIMELINE
• 1941 Dec 08 - Japanese bombing of Philippines
• 1941 Dec 10 - Japanese landing on Philippines
• 1942 Apr 08 - Earthquake, sufficient to unbalance men and sway trees
• 1942 Apr 09 - Gen King surrenders to Gen Homma / begin Death March / (77th Anniversary of Lee's surrender at Appomattox)
• 1942 Apr 23 - Last stragglers arrive Camp O'Donnell / end Death March… (more)