Kevin C. MurphyCritiques

Received wisdom among U.S. citizens regarding the Bataan Death March portrays GIs as victims and the target of neglect and inhumanity at the hands of Japanese captors, soldiers characterized as deliberately cruel and abusive. Filipino soldiers received much the same treatment as GIs, and Filipino civilians generally were reduced to watching helplessly, only occasionally assisting prisoners along the route (which efforts risked their own lives). It is a story of tyrants, bystanders, and victims.

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

I had only limited knowledge of the Bataan Death March starting this book. I think Kevin Murphy did a great job of making me question my preconceived notions of what happened and taking a fresh look at the facts surrounding what happened.

Kevin Murphy expertly dissects the real, the imagined, and the propaganda surrounding the Bataan Death March and looks at how, in many ways, the tragedy on Bataan was a very real three-way clash of cultures, showing both the best and the worst that each country had to offer. He delves into the historical utility of first-person "I was there" narratives, and scrutinizes the developmental roadmap followed by both the U.S. and Japanese armies in the decades preceding WW2: their training, their outlook, societal perspectives and impact, and their overall approach to it all. He has reviewed a tremendous amount of first and second-hand accounts, along with historical documents and primary resources. Some reviewers complain about the density or difficulty of the book, but I found it to be an honest, no nonsense approach to an emotional turning point of the war in the Pacific. It's a must-read for any student of WW2, military, or Philippine history.

Great book. Although not what I would term an "easy read." This is not a narrative history. Nor, is it, as one reviewer termed it, revisionist history. I have a BA and MA in history and I have always loathed the term "revisionist history." The reason for this is that it seems to always imply that the author is not telling the "real" history that he is telling a history that is biased. In truth no retelling of history is without bias. Before reading this book, I knew very little of the Bataan Death March. What I did know I took at face value--that the Japanese soldiers were nasty--that American a Filipino bodies were strewn all over the roadside. Murphy addresses the brutality of the Japanese (he does not claim that it did not happen), but he also delves into the ideas that nothing is ever black and white and that oral histories (histories that are compiled from the participants' memories) are far from flawless representations of the events that occurred. Murphy goes into detail on many aspects of the events of this tragic event. He discuses how American veterans of the Bataan Death March were treated when they came home (not well), that many of the deaths can be attributed to being basically written off my General MacArthur (many of the American soldiers blamed him for what happened), that some Japanese soldiers were kind to their captives, that not all of the Americans in the prison camps can not be considered "heroes' in that they did not treat their fellow Americans well,...and many other subjects.
This book is not revisionist, it gives a clearer picture of what actually happened to all of the men that were involved in this tragic event. This is not "revisionist history," it is "history."

Not really what I was expecting. I did learn some things while reading the book, but to be honest I didn't finish it. Just seemed to difficult to want to continue reading it. Not sure that I could recommend it to anyone.

I received a copy of this book as part of the Early Reviewers books.

Kevin Murphy has written a very thoughtful book that does exactly what history should do: Challenge the way we think about history. To be clear at the outset, "Inside the Bataan Death March" is revisionist in its approach. Murphy defines the mythos of the March as three key elements. First, that the Americans and Filipinos captured in the Bataan defeat were victims. Second, that the Japanese were brutal. And, third, that the Filipino civilians who watched the march were sympathetic to the captured.

Murphy's argument is engaging and complex. He seeks to set the scene both in terms of the training of the Japanese soldier and what led to the brutality so often seen from the Japanese army, but also the conditions that led to the poor conditions of the surrendered Americans and Filipinos. As regards the latter he is unsparing in his criticism of MacArthur in his Philippines defense and all but states that MacArthur carried out a post-war vendetta against Homma, the Japanese general who led the Japanese conquest of the Philippines and defeated MacArthur.

The narrative of the Death March is communicated in a large number of survivor accounts published after the war. Murphy explores these accounts and the motivation behind them observing that the survivors of the Death March were the forgotten veterans of the war. Far from sharing in the glory of the "good war", they were the defeated.

None of this is meant to excuse or apologize for any of the horrors of the March. After three months of combat the defeated army was marched 63 miles on limited food and water. Many were sick or wounded and all had been on short rations well before surrender. Discipline within the Japanese army was brutal and that was the standard applied to the captured. In short, the world of the captured could be defined in Hobbsian terms: nasty, brutish and short.

Despite the strengths of this work, there are some limitations. Peppered throughout the book are Murphy's recollections of walking the same route as well as a number of his experiences as a teacher of English in Japan. These seem to sit uneasily into the narrative. The points they seem often to attempt to make would have been better made by reference to a primary or secondary source.

Revisionist history encourages the reader to consider an alternate interpretation of events. It sits uneasily with us because it challenges the perceived wisdom, but leads us to think about the past. "Inside the Bataan Death March" is just such a history: often uncomfortable, but demanding our thought and attention.

This book is not about the Bataan Death March. The focus is on the less than perfect memories of march survivors. The author goes to great lengths to excuse the brutal behavior of Japanese soldier's by blaming it on psychological upbringing. This book is kin to those that downplay the extent the Holocaust, arguing over minutiae while ignoring the bigger picture.½

While I think it is useful and necessary for historians to reexamine the popular conceptions of historical events, including emotionally-laden events like the Bataan Death March, I did not find Murphy's account particularly compelling or interesting. The author sets out to provide a revisionist account of this event, but instead of directly engaging the core subject matter, dozens and dozens of pages are devoted to the intricacies and evolution of Japanese culture over multiple centuries. Expecting to read a revisionist World War II novel, I had a hard time engaging with this expansive analysis of Japan and the book quickly felt like homework rather than pleasurable reading. Murphy clearly loves Japanese culture and is very knowledgeable about it. However, the book isn't set up as an analysis of Japanese history and culture and I was not expecting to be bogged down in Japanese terminology and phrasing for so long.

From a physical perspective, the book is very strange to read. The pages are a very odd size - much larger than most paperbacks with very narrow margins. As a result, even though I have no eyesight problems, I had a hard time keeping track of what line I was reading because of the width of the pages; I would frequently find myself starting to read the same line of text over and over again. I would be cautious of buying a book from this publisher again, if that is their norm.½

A wide-ranging, detailed book that puts the horrors of the Bataan Death March into a useful cultural perspective.

Having said that, the book is too wide-ranging, including sections on 17th century Japan and memoirs of the author's own experiences in post-war Japan. It also includes many strange drawings done specially for this book that do little to illuminate the text. This book ended up feeling like a cross between a good, scholarly look at an important subject, and a scrapbook of the author's favorite thoughts about Japan. An odd book.