| Original New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper caption: “Weary and unshaven, the heroes of the epic defense of Corregidor are marched away to captivity after Corregidor was surrendered to the Japanese.” This was the LIFE Magazine, August 24, 1942, Picture of the Week — “Reminders of Bataan and Corregidor keep returning to haunt Americans. On opposite page is the latest picture to trickle in from Japan via neutral countries. Here United States soldiers who surrendered at Corregidor are surrounded by their little captors. The Jap[anese] are very pleased. It is a good thing that this kind of taunt returns to slap Americans in the face, for it makes sure that the memory of the defeat will not slide easily from American minds.” This propaganda photo was probably taken outside Malinta Tunnel the morning of May 6, 1942, as American prisoners of war were marched down to the 92nd Garage. Japanese officers ordered the Americans into groups of several 100, directed by an American officer, for the march down from the Tunnel complex to the 92nd Coast Artillery Garage. The space was a flat 10-acre area on the south shore just east of Malinta Hill. 12,000 men were crowded into the camp as they struggled with depression and helplessness as prisoners of war. With no shade, clouds of insects, and 1 water spigot for thousands of men, the march had weakened many who were already suffering from malaria. The Japanese set up work details that loaded the food stores on Corregidor to be shipped away; most believed to Japan. This allowed some American prisoners of war to steal food to supplement the meager rice the Japanese fed their captives. Private Alfred C. McGrew (October 25, 1922 – January 27, 2008), 60th Coastal Artillery, later wrote, “The Japanese did nothing to provide for us at Ninety-Second Garage, not even to provide us water. Every once-free soul of Corregidor, the defenders and the defended, the brave and the shirkers, the fit and the lame, concentrated on this quarter-mile of misery, almost fourteen thousand strong, and each of us getting weaker by the day.” “There was a single square pipe that barely emerged from the ground. Through it, water seeped towards the surface and was dipped out by a round Vienna sausage can and poured into canteens held by the shaking hands of men standing in an endless line waiting for water. It was the only water provided to us until we left on May 23, 1942. When I went down to Ninety-Second Garage in 1981, I found the square pipe. By 2001, it had disappeared under an unsympathetic architectural monstrosity.” “In no place on Corregidor was there ever a more concentrated curse of misery in the air, and it is my curse that any commercial operation at that accursed ramp should likewise fail.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii2012.jpg |
| Image Size | 776.30 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2785 x 2208 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Center of Military History |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | May 6, 1942 |
| Location | |
| City | Corregidor |
| State or Province | Luzon |
| Country | Philippines |
| Archive | Library of Congress |
| Record Number | LC-DIG-ppmsca-13338 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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