Yes Wainwright's coded message putting Sharp in command of the remaining forces made the surrender difficult. As is said above Homma wouldn't accept the surrender of only Corregidor. When Wainwright said he wasn't in command of all forces Homma said he would only negotiate with some one who was his equal and that if he wished to surrender it would have to be to the division commander on Corregidor. It was feared that if the rest of the forces didn't surrender then those on Corregidor who had surrendered would be executed. Wainwright had to convince the rest of the commanders to surrender many of whom had seen little or no combat and did not see a reason to lay down there weapons.

It is an interesting, complex history. MacArthur imho, trying to maintain/established command from Australia, deserves a lot of the blame.

Thx for posting.

Blame for what? MacArthur had divided the Philippines into 4 different commands. If that had been maintained then each one could have kept fighting individually.

That's a difficult question with three choices. Is it better to continue fighting with no hope of reinforcements and die now of starvation and combat or surrender with a chance of survival? At this time Bataan had already surrendered so Luzon was already gone. If you continue or start to fight in the Visayas or Mindanao then you risk the 11,000 people on Corregidor, whom the Japanese saw as hostages and not prisoners, being executed. Or your last choice is to begin guerrilla operations as MacArthur wanted to do. As it happened, we surrendered. It took a while for guerrilla forces to form and become organized.

I think the brutality of the Japanese is one of the reasons that Wainwright surrendered. Even back in February Wainwright said in response to fighting the Japanese "The old rules of war began to undergo a swift change in me. What had at first seemed a barbarous thought in the back of my mind now became less unsavory."

It's a time period I don't know a great deal about, much to my shame. I've always been more interested in the naval conflict and some of the later war period.

I'm hoping the curator that sent me the scans might have some other stuff from around the same time period, but she's having to slog through so much that isn't digitally cataloged. I have some really cool 20s and 30s era photos of US battleships and carriers in the pacific I've been having a lot of fun trying to date based on deployments vs refit. I still haven't spotted texas yet, but I'm hopeful, she should have made Hawaii with her cage masts still fitted( I have a weird obsession with US battleships with cage masts)