The Bataan Death March took place in the Philippines in 1942 and was later accounted as a Japanese war crime. The 60-mile march occurred after the three-month Battle of Bataan, part of the Battle of the Philippines (1941–42), during World War II.
The march, involving the forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines from the Bataan peninsula to prison camps, was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon the prisoners and civilians along the route by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan. Beheadings, cut throats and casual shootings were the more common and merciful actions — compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, disembowelments, numerous rifle butt beatings and a deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching for nearly a week (for the slowest survivors) in tropical heat. Falling down, unable to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure.
Prisoners were attacked for assisting someone failing due to weakness, or for no apparent reason whatsoever. Strings of Japanese trucks were known to drive over anyone who fell. Riders in vehicles would casually stick out a rifle bayonet and cut a string of throats in the lines of men marching alongside the road. Accounts of being forcibly marched for five to six days with no food and a single sip of water are in post war archives including filmed reports.
The exact death count has been impossible to determine, but some historians have placed the minimum death toll between six and eleven thousand men; whereas other post war allied reports have tabulated that only 54,000 of the 72,000 prisoners reached their destination— taken together, the figures document a casual killing rate of one in four up to two in seven (25% to 28.5%) of those brutalized by the forcible march. The number of deaths that took place in the internment camps from delayed effects of the march is uncertain, but believed to be high.[2] One of the last remaining US commanders who survived the Bataan Death March, Dr. Lester Tenney, was interviewed at Hitotsubashi University in June 2008.
On April 9, 1942, as the final stage of the Battle of Bataan, approximately 75,000 Filipino and American soldiers, commanded by Major General Edward "Ned" P. King, Jr., were formally surrendered to a Japanese army of 54,000 men under Lt. General Masaharu Homma. This was the single largest surrender of a military force in American history.
Logistics planning to move the prisoners of war from Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp in the province of Tarlac, was handed down to transportation officer Major General Yoshitake Kawane ten days prior to the final Japanese assault. The Japanese, having expected the fighting to continue, anticipated about 25,000 prisoners of war and were inadequately prepared and/or unwilling to transport humanely a group of prisoners whose number reached almost three times that estimate.
At dawn, 9 April 1942, and against the orders of Generals Douglas MacArthur and Jonathan Wainwright[citation needed], Major General Edward P. King, Jr., commanding Luzon Force, Bataan, Philippine Islands, surrendered more than 75,000 (66,000 Filipinos, 1,000 Chinese Filipinos, and 11,796 Americans) starving and disease-ridden men. He inquired of Colonel Motoo Nakayama, the Japanese colonel to whom he tendered his pistol in lieu of his lost sword, whether the Americans and Filipinos would be well treated. The Japanese aide-de-camp replied: “We are not barbarians.” The majority of the prisoners of war were immediately robbed of their keepsakes and belongings and subsequently forced to endure a 90-mile (140 km) enforced march in deep dust, over vehicle-broken macadam roads, and crammed into rail cars to captivity at Camp O’Donnell. Thousands died en route from disease, starvation, dehydration, heat prostration, untreated wounds, and wanton execution.
Those few who were lucky enough to travel to San Fernando on trucks still had to endure more than twenty-five miles of marching. Prisoners were beaten randomly, and were often denied promised food and water. Those who fell behind were usually executed or left to die; the sides of the roads became littered with dead bodies and those begging for help.
On the Bataan Death March, approximately 54,000 of the 75,000 prisoners reached their destination. The death toll of the march is difficult to assess as thousands of captives were able to escape from their guards. All told, approximately 5,000-10,000 Filipino and 600-650 American prisoners of war died before they could reach Camp O'Donnell.
On June 6, 1942, the Filipino soldiers were granted amnesty by the Japanese military and released. The American prisoners continued to be held. Camp O'Donnell was hell to the prisoners. They would line up once a day for water. Men were weak and dying from dysentery and beriberi. Eventually they were transferred to camps outside of the Philippines. The start of this process began with American prisoners moving from Camp O'Donnell to Cabanatuan. Acting as a staging camp, many of these American prisoners then were sent from Cabanatuan to prison camps in Japan, Korea, and Manchuria in transports known as "hell ships." The 511 prisoners-of-war who still remained at the Cabanatuan Prison Camp as of January 1945 were freed during an attack on the camp led by United States Army Rangers later known as Raid at Cabanatuan.
Footage taking after the raid of Cabanatuan.
The march, involving the forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines from the Bataan peninsula to prison camps, was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon the prisoners and civilians along the route by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan. Beheadings, cut throats and casual shootings were the more common and merciful actions — compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, disembowelments, numerous rifle butt beatings and a deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching for nearly a week (for the slowest survivors) in tropical heat. Falling down, unable to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure.
Prisoners were attacked for assisting someone failing due to weakness, or for no apparent reason whatsoever. Strings of Japanese trucks were known to drive over anyone who fell. Riders in vehicles would casually stick out a rifle bayonet and cut a string of throats in the lines of men marching alongside the road. Accounts of being forcibly marched for five to six days with no food and a single sip of water are in post war archives including filmed reports.
The exact death count has been impossible to determine, but some historians have placed the minimum death toll between six and eleven thousand men; whereas other post war allied reports have tabulated that only 54,000 of the 72,000 prisoners reached their destination— taken together, the figures document a casual killing rate of one in four up to two in seven (25% to 28.5%) of those brutalized by the forcible march. The number of deaths that took place in the internment camps from delayed effects of the march is uncertain, but believed to be high.[2] One of the last remaining US commanders who survived the Bataan Death March, Dr. Lester Tenney, was interviewed at Hitotsubashi University in June 2008.
On April 9, 1942, as the final stage of the Battle of Bataan, approximately 75,000 Filipino and American soldiers, commanded by Major General Edward "Ned" P. King, Jr., were formally surrendered to a Japanese army of 54,000 men under Lt. General Masaharu Homma. This was the single largest surrender of a military force in American history.
Logistics planning to move the prisoners of war from Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp in the province of Tarlac, was handed down to transportation officer Major General Yoshitake Kawane ten days prior to the final Japanese assault. The Japanese, having expected the fighting to continue, anticipated about 25,000 prisoners of war and were inadequately prepared and/or unwilling to transport humanely a group of prisoners whose number reached almost three times that estimate.
At dawn, 9 April 1942, and against the orders of Generals Douglas MacArthur and Jonathan Wainwright[citation needed], Major General Edward P. King, Jr., commanding Luzon Force, Bataan, Philippine Islands, surrendered more than 75,000 (66,000 Filipinos, 1,000 Chinese Filipinos, and 11,796 Americans) starving and disease-ridden men. He inquired of Colonel Motoo Nakayama, the Japanese colonel to whom he tendered his pistol in lieu of his lost sword, whether the Americans and Filipinos would be well treated. The Japanese aide-de-camp replied: “We are not barbarians.” The majority of the prisoners of war were immediately robbed of their keepsakes and belongings and subsequently forced to endure a 90-mile (140 km) enforced march in deep dust, over vehicle-broken macadam roads, and crammed into rail cars to captivity at Camp O’Donnell. Thousands died en route from disease, starvation, dehydration, heat prostration, untreated wounds, and wanton execution.
Those few who were lucky enough to travel to San Fernando on trucks still had to endure more than twenty-five miles of marching. Prisoners were beaten randomly, and were often denied promised food and water. Those who fell behind were usually executed or left to die; the sides of the roads became littered with dead bodies and those begging for help.
On the Bataan Death March, approximately 54,000 of the 75,000 prisoners reached their destination. The death toll of the march is difficult to assess as thousands of captives were able to escape from their guards. All told, approximately 5,000-10,000 Filipino and 600-650 American prisoners of war died before they could reach Camp O'Donnell.
On June 6, 1942, the Filipino soldiers were granted amnesty by the Japanese military and released. The American prisoners continued to be held. Camp O'Donnell was hell to the prisoners. They would line up once a day for water. Men were weak and dying from dysentery and beriberi. Eventually they were transferred to camps outside of the Philippines. The start of this process began with American prisoners moving from Camp O'Donnell to Cabanatuan. Acting as a staging camp, many of these American prisoners then were sent from Cabanatuan to prison camps in Japan, Korea, and Manchuria in transports known as "hell ships." The 511 prisoners-of-war who still remained at the Cabanatuan Prison Camp as of January 1945 were freed during an attack on the camp led by United States Army Rangers later known as Raid at Cabanatuan.
Footage taking after the raid of Cabanatuan.
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