This page is about the military unit. For the article on the youth movement, please see Boy Scouts of the Philippines. This article is about the youth movement For the article on the military unit please see Philippine Scouts.

Philippine Scouts at Fort McKinley firing a 37-mm. See also Military history of the Philippines, Military history of the United States Fort William McKinley was a US military facility in the Philippines antitank gun in training

The Philippine Scouts was a military organization of the United States Army from 1901 to World War II. The United States Army is a military organization whose primary mission is to "provide necessary forces and capabilities. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including Made up of native Filipinos assigned to the US Army's Philippine Department, these troops were generally enlisted and under the command of American officers, however, a handful of Filipinos received commissions from the United States Military Academy. The Philippines ( Filipino: Pilipinas, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (fil ''Republika ng Pilipinas'' RP The Philippine Department ( Philippine Garrison -- The Battling Bastards of Bataan) was a regular US Army unit defeated in the Philippines, during An officer is a member of an armed force who holds a position of authority "USMA" redirects here For other uses see USMA (disambiguation The United States Military Academy (also known as USMA, Philippine Scout units are given a suffix of (PS), to distinguish them from other US Army units.

The first Scout companies were organized by the US in 1901 to combat the Philippine Revolution led at that time by General Emilio Aguinaldo. Year 1901 ( MCMI) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year starting For the municipality see Gen Emilio Aguinaldo Cavite General Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy ( March 22, 1869 &ndash February 6 In 1919-20, the PS companies were grouped into regiments as part of the US Army and redesignated the 43d, 45th, and 57th Infantry Regiments, plus the 24th and 25th Field Artillery Regiments, the 26th Cavalry Regiment (PS) and the 91st and 92nd Coast Artillery Regiments. Year 1919 ( MCMXIX) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Year 1920 ( MCMXX) was a Leap year starting on Thursday (link will display 1920 of the Gregorian calendar The United States Army is a military organization whose primary mission is to "provide necessary forces and capabilities. The 45th Infantry Regiment was a unit of the Philippine Scouts in the Philippine Division. The 57th Infantry Regiment was a unit in the Philippine Scouts. The 24th Philippine Scout Field Artillery Regiment ( 24th FA (PS) was part of the US Army 's Philippine Division, during World War II. The 26th Cavalry Regiment (Philippine Scouts ( 26th CAV (PS) was part of USAFFE 's Philippine Department, during World War II. Service and support formations were also organized as engineer, medical, quartermaster and military police units. The infantry and field artillery regiments were grouped together with the U.S. 31st Infantry Regiment to form the U. The 31st Infantry Regiment ( 31st INF) of the United States Army was formed on August 13, 1916, and was part of USAFFE 's Philippine S. Army’s Philippine Division. Battle of the Philippines (1941–42|Divisions of the United States Army The Philippine Division, originally a named rather than numbered U At this point, the Scouts became the U. S. Army’s front line troops in the Pacific.

The Philippine Department assigned the Scouts to subdue the fierce and warlike Moro tribes on the island of Mindanao, and to establish tranquility throughout the islands. In the 1930s, Philippine Scouts, along with the 31st Infantry Regiment, saw action at Jolo, Palawan. The 31st Infantry Regiment ( 31st INF) of the United States Army was formed on August 13, 1916, and was part of USAFFE 's Philippine Palawan is an Island province of the Philippines located in the MIMAROPA region.

Philippine Scouts and USAFFE

On July 26, 1941, in preparation for the coming war, President Roosevelt called General Douglas MacArthur back to active duty and put him in charge of a new military organization: The United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE). USAFFE ( United States Army Forces in the Far East) included the Philippine Department, Philippine Army (2 regular and 10 reserve divisions MacArthur took command of all military forces in the Philippines except the U. S. Navy’s Asiatic Fleet. The Asiatic Fleet was part of the US Navy. During the World War II era the fleet protected the Philippines. The Philippine Division, Philippine Department and all other Philippine Scout units were included in USAFFE, as was the U. Battle of the Philippines (1941–42|Divisions of the United States Army The Philippine Division, originally a named rather than numbered U The Philippine Department ( Philippine Garrison -- The Battling Bastards of Bataan) was a regular US Army unit defeated in the Philippines, during USAFFE ( United States Army Forces in the Far East) included the Philippine Department, Philippine Army (2 regular and 10 reserve divisions S. Army’s Far East Air Force (FEAF). The Far East Air Force (FEAF was the military aviation arm of the United States Army in the Philippines just prior to and at the beginning of World War II At the time of USAFFE's formation, the unit consisted of 22,532 troops, of which 11,972 were Philippine Scouts. USAFFE ( United States Army Forces in the Far East) included the Philippine Department, Philippine Army (2 regular and 10 reserve divisions

Of the 22,532 troops, 10,473 were members of the Philippine Division, itself containing 2,552 Americans and 7,921 Filipinos. All of the division's enlisted men, with the exception of the 31st Infantry Regiment and some of the military police and headquarters troops, were Philippine Scouts. The 31st Infantry Regiment ( 31st INF) of the United States Army was formed on August 13, 1916, and was part of USAFFE 's Philippine Military police ( MPs) are normally the Police of a Military Organization.

Filipino Officers within the Philippine Division, July 1941

In 1910, the U. S. Army began sending one outstanding Filipino soldier per year to West Point. Two of them were Vicente Lim (USMA, Class of 1914) and Fidel V. Brigadier General Vicente Lim (1889 – 1944 was a World War II general Segundo (1917). By 1941 some of these men had risen to the rank of senior officers, and some transferred to the Philippine Army when the Philippine Commonwealth began to build up its own forces in 1937. The Commonwealth of the Philippines was the political designation of the Philippines from 1935 to 1946 when the country was a commonwealth with the United Year 1937 ( MCMXXXVII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. In July of 1941, there were fifteen Filipino Scout Officers within the Philippine Division. Year 1941 ( MCMXLI) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (the link will display 1941 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The Philippine Department ( Philippine Garrison -- The Battling Bastards of Bataan) was a regular US Army unit defeated in the Philippines, during Two were in the Headquarters, two were amongst the Special Troops, three in the 45th Infantry Regiment (PS), one in the 57th Infantry Regiment (PS), five in the 24th Field Artillery Regiment (PS), one in the 12th Quartermaster Regiment (PS), and one in the 14th Engineer Regiment (PS). The 45th Infantry Regiment was a unit of the Philippine Scouts in the Philippine Division. The 57th Infantry Regiment was a unit in the Philippine Scouts. The 24th Philippine Scout Field Artillery Regiment ( 24th FA (PS) was part of the US Army 's Philippine Division, during World War II.

The Philippine Scouts in World War II

On December 7, 1941 Imperial Japanese forces sank the U. S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, bombed the U. S. Army’s Far East Air Force at Clark Field in the Philippines, attacked British Hong Kong, and landed troops on the shores of British Malaya, simultaneously. Clark Air Base is a former United States Air Force base on Luzon Island in the Philippines, located 3 miles west of Angeles City, about 40 miles British Malaya loosely described a set of states on the Malay Peninsula that were colonized by the British from the 18th and the 19th until the 20th century Over the next three months the Japanese Army marched through Southeast Asia, and by March 1942 the Japanese had completely overrun every country and island in the western Pacific—except the Philippines.

On the Bataan Peninsula of Luzon Island, the Philippine Scouts, a few U. The Bataan Peninsula is a rocky extension of the Zambales Mountains, on Luzon in the Philippines. Luzon is the largest and most economically and politically important Island in the Philippines and one of the three island groups in the country with Visayas S Army National Guard units, and ten divisions of poorly equipped, almost untrained Philippine Army soldiers held out against the Japanese. The Philippine Army ( PA) is the ground arm of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP Survivors of the Battle of Bataan, to a man, describe the Philippine Scouts as the backbone of the American defense there. President Franklin Roosevelt awarded the U. S. Army’s first three Medals of Honor of World War II to Philippine Scouts: to Sergeant Jose Calugas for action at Culis, Bataan on January 6, 1942, to Lieutenant Alexander R. Nininger for action near Abucay, Bataan on January 12, and to Lieutenant Willibald C. Bianchi for action near Bagac, Bataan on February 3, 1942. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. Jose Calugas (December 29 1907 - January 18 1998 was a member of the Philippine Scouts during World War II. Alexander R Nininger Jr (1918 - January 12 1942 was a Second Lieutenant of the Philippine Scouts who received the Medal of Honor during World War Willibald C Bianchi ( March 12 1915 − January 9 1945) was an officer in the Philippine Scouts who received the Medal of Honor

With the U. S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in shambles, and the Japanese Navy blockading the Philippines, there was no way to send adequate amounts of food, medicine, ammunition or reinforcements to Bataan. Pearl Harbor is a Harbor on the Island of O{{okina}}ahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Early in the campaign, in January 1942, General MacArthur ordered that his forces be fed one-half daily rations because the USAFFE food-stocks on Bataan were insufficient for the planned six-month siege. Such a diet did not provide enough calories for men working and fighting in the tropical heat of the Philippines' dry season. Nonetheless, the Scouts and the other soldiers held out for more than four months without adequate food or medicine, while malaria, dysentery and malnutrition ravaged their ranks, and Japanese attacks drove them further down the Bataan Peninsula. The Bataan Peninsula is a rocky extension of the Zambales Mountains, on Luzon in the Philippines. In the midst of the Battle of Bataan, on 11 March 1942, U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had General Douglas MacArthur spirited out of the Philippines by PT boat and airplane. General MacArthur redirects here for other meanings see General MacArthur (disambiguation.

Prisoners of War

The Battle of Bataan ended on April 9, 1942, when Major General Edward P. King, Jr., surrendered rather than see any more of his starving, diseased men slaughtered by the advancing enemy. Edward P King (1884 - 1958 was a Major General in the United States Army who gained prominence for leading the defense of the Bataan Peninsula in the At that point 70,000 men became Prisoners of War: about 16,000 Americans and 54,000 Filipinos. Japanese soldiers marched the emaciated Scouts, American soldiers, and Philippine Army men sixty-five miles up the Bataan Peninsula's East Road on the notorious "March of Death," the Bataan Death March. The Bataan Death March (also known as The Death March of Bataan) took place in the Philippines in 1942 and was later accounted as a Japanese war During the March, Japanese guards shot or bayoneted between 7,000 and 10,000 men who fell, attempted to escape, or just stopped to quench their thirst at roadside spigots or puddles. They also beat and sometimes killed Filipino civilians who attempted to give food and water to the POWs, and at times flashed the "V" for "Victory" hand-gesture to the defeated soldiers along the length of the Death March. The March ended at the railroad head in San Fernando, Pampanga province. There the POWs were forced into overcrowded "40 and 10" railroad cars, which only had enough room for them to sit down in shifts on the final leg of the trip to Capas, Tarlac province. At Capas they were herded into Camp O'Donnell, a former Philippine Army training camp, which was to be their prison camp.

At Camp O'Donnell the Japanese crammed all 60,000 survivors into a Philippine Army camp designed to accommodate 10,000 men. Camp O'Donnell was a facility of the United States Air Force in Capas Tarlac, The Philippines. There, the Japanese commander greeted each new group of arrivals with the discouraging "Goddamn you to Hell" speech in his native language, and assured the men that they were "captives," not Prisoners of War, and would be treated as such. There was little running water, sparse food, no medical care, and only slit trenches for sanitation. The heat was intolerable, flies rose out of the latrines and covered the prisoner’s food, and malaria, dysentery, beriberi and a host of other diseases swept through the crowds of men. They began to die at the rate of four hundred per day.

From September through December 1942, the Japanese gradually paroled the surviving Filipino Scouts and other Filipino soldiers to their families and to the mayors of their hometowns. But by the time Camp O'Donnell closed in January 1943, after eight months of operation, 26,000 of the 50,000 Filipino Prisoners of War had died there.

The Japanese transferred the American prisoners to Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija province, where conditions were only marginally better. The City of Cabanatuan ( Ilokano: Ciudad ti Cabanatuan; Kapampangan: Lakanbalen ning Cabanatuan/Siudad ning Cabanatuan; But as U. S. forces pulled closer to the Philippines in 1944, they evacuated the healthiest American prisoners to Japan and Manchuria, for use as slave laborers. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. Manchuria ( Romanized Manchu: Manju,, Маньчжурия Mongolian: Манж is a historical name given to a vast geographic region in northeast Thousands of men were crammed into the dark holds of cargo ships so tightly that they could not sit or lay down. Again, food and water were scarce, sanitary facilities were non-existent, and the heat in the closed holds of the ships was unbearable. Men suffocated to death standing up. The Japanese ships were unmarked and some of them were torpedoed by American submarines. More of the men died of malnutrition and exposure in the work camps. By the time Japan surrendered and the U. S. and Filipino Army liberated the Bataan Prisoners of War, two-thirds of the American prisoners had died in Japanese custody.

Liberation and the “New” Scouts

During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines an extensive Filipino guerrilla movement sprang up. Guerrilla warfare is the unconventional warfare and combat with which a small group of combatants use mobile tactics (ambushes raids etc In some cases the guerrilla units were led by escaped American officers (e. g. , Wendell Fertig) and often included "paroled" Philippine Scout and Philippine Commonwealth Army soldiers, along with civilian members of the Philippine underground. Wendell Fertig (December 161900 – March 24 1975 was an American Civil engineer in the Philippines, who became a leader of a guerrilla force in the As MacArthur’s forces, supported by the guerrillas, liberated the Philippine Islands, the surviving Philippine Scouts stepped forward and rejoined the U. The Philippines ( Filipino: Pilipinas, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (fil ''Republika ng Pilipinas'' RP S. Army. The Filipino guerrillas joined them, and the U. S. Army set up new Philippine Scout units, reconstituting the old Philippine Division as the 12th Infantry Division. Subordinate units included the 43rd, 44th and 45th Infantry Regiments (PS); 23rd, 24th and 88th Field Artillery (PS) Battalions; 56th Engineer Battalion (PS) and the 57th Infantry Regiment (PS). The 45th Infantry Regiment was a unit of the Philippine Scouts in the Philippine Division. The 57th Infantry Regiment was a unit in the Philippine Scouts. The “New Scouts” actively participated in combat against the Japanese Army in north Luzon, served as military police to restore order and help locate pockets of escaped Japanese in the south, and served as occupation forces on Okinawa. Luzon is the largest and most economically and politically important Island in the Philippines and one of the three island groups in the country with Visayas Military police ( MPs) are normally the Police of a Military Organization. is one of Japan 's southern prefectures, and consists of hundreds of the Ryukyu Islands in a chain over 1000 km long which extends southwest from Kyūshū As planning for the invasion of Japan progressed, the Philippine Scouts were included in the invasion forces, and were selected to become part of the occupying force once Japan was defeated.

After Japan surrendered in August 1945, the United States granted the Republic of the Philippines full independence on July 4, 1946. At that point the ethnically Filipino Philippine Scouts held a unique status in U. S. military history: they were soldiers in the regular U. S. Army, but now they were citizens of a foreign country. To solve this dilemma, the United States offered the Filipinos in the Philippine Scouts full U.S. citizenship. Article I section 8 clause 4 of the United States Constitution expressly gives the United States Congress the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization Most of the surviving Scouts accepted, and the Army transferred them to other units to finish their military careers. In 1946, President Truman disbanded the Philippine Scouts as an official element of the United States Army, and all of their unit colors were retired.

Many of the former Philippine Scouts went on to serve the United States in military careers of twenty and more years, campaigning in the Korean Conflict, the build-up to the planned invasion of Cuba during the October 1962 Missile Crisis, the Vietnam Conflict, and the Cold War. Children of the Scouts (known as "Army Soup" in pre-WWII Fort McKinley days) sometimes carried on their father's military tradition and also became US Army soldiers and Marines. Two Philippine Scout children even earned the stars of US Army generals: Lt. General Edward Soriano and Major General Antonio M. Taguba. Lieutenant General Edward Soriano (born November 1946 was the highest-ranking Filipino American in the United States Army until his retirement in 2004 Antonio Mario Taguba (born October 31 1950 is a retired major general in the United States Army.

Unlike other non-citizen veterans, veterans of the Philippine Division and other Filipinos that fought as part of the USAFFE were never granted citizenship. USAFFE ( United States Army Forces in the Far East) included the Philippine Department, Philippine Army (2 regular and 10 reserve divisions Since 1993, various bills have been introduced to the United States Congress under the name Filipino Veterans Fairness Act to rectify this. The United States Congress is the bicameral Legislature of the federal government of the United States of America, consisting of two houses The Filipino Veterans Fairness Act is the name of a number of acts that have been introduced to the United States Congress in both the United States House of Representatives However, this was a complicated matter as after the liberation of the Philippines members of the Philippine Scouts were offered enlistments and in some applicable cases commissions in the US Army and subequent citizenship. However, few took advantage of this opportunity as most members of the Philippine Scouts failed to return to duty. This is believed to be in part due to concerns members had concerning their cooperation and collaboration with Japanese Government. While the Philippine Scouts did serve in the US Army they also served (by force and some by voluntary will) in the Imperial Japanese Army as occupation troops, with most units using their same unit numbers and chain of command.

Bibliography

• Olson, Col. John (ed. ) (2002). The Philippine Scouts. Daly City, CA: Philippine Scouts Heritage Society.  
• Olson, Col. John (1985). O’Donnell: Andersonville of the Pacific. San Antonio, Texas: privately printed.  
• Knox, Donald (1981). Death March: The Survivors of Bataan. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company.  
• Linn, Brian M. (1997). Guardians of Empire: The U. S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina press.  

See also

• Military History of the Philippines
• Military History of the United States
• Philippine Scout Mutiny

External links

• Philippine Scouts Heritage Society