It's a great read, like many of the first hand accounts of what our military men saw and perceived. I say perceived because there are a couple of obvious historical inaccuracies in his account. These are things that an enlisted man on the ground in the midst of fighting could not know first hand and do not at all detract from his experience.
First, it was the Japanese 14th Army that invaded the Philippines early in the morning of December 8, 1941. The 14th was commanded by Lt General Masaharu Homma, who did not commit ritual suicide. He remained in command until after the fall of Corregidor. He was forcibly retired in 1943 because he was perceived to be not aggressive enough, expected his troops to treat POWs in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and advocated decent and fair treatment of the Filipinos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaharu_HommaSecond, it is implied that the Japanese lull in the Battle of Bataan was attributed to to the bombardment of Singapore. That is simply not true. The bombing of Singapore was conducted from the air on Dec 8, nearly simultaneously with the landing on Luzon. The 14th Army never was pulled out and did not go to Singapore. They never left, so they never had to come back. Homma did not anticipate the retreat of our forces into the Bataan peninsula, and was unprepared for a long siege. After trying unsuccessfully to take Bataan by tactical maneuver, he was pressured to press a frontal assault after wearing down the Bataan defenders. Bataan was surrendered by General Edward King on April 9, 1942, and the Bataan Death March commenced almost immediately thereafter.
Homma was arrested in Japan after the surrender and taken to Manila, where he was tried by the war crimes courts primarily for the Death March, convicted, and sentenced to death by firing squad. He was executed in what is now Luneta Park in April, 1946.
