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Bataan Death March

(April 1942) the ruthless forced march of American and Filipino POWs to Japanese prison camps after the fall of Bataan. Some 75, 000 surviving defenders of Bataan, most of them ill and severely malnourished, were marched approximately sixty miles to a rail center where they were sent to their ultimate destinations. The Japanese were unprepared to deal with such numbers, and their commanders tolerated any cruelty exercised on the captives, including execution for falling out of line, regardless of reason. Some 600 to 700 Americans died before reaching the camp, as did 5, 000 to 10, 000 Filipinos. Thousands more died in the camps.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

 
 

(April 1942) Forced march of 70,000 U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war (World War II) captured by the Japanese in the Philippines. From the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula, the starving and ill-treated prisoners were force-marched 63 mi (101 km) to a prison camp. Only 54,000 prisoners lived to reach the camp; up to 10,000 died on the way and others escaped in the jungle. In 1946 the Japanese commander of the march was convicted by a U.S. military commission and executed.

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Wikipedia: 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 crime. The  mileskm) march occurred after the three-month Battle of Bataan, part of the Battle of the Philippines (1941–42), during World War II. In Japanese, it is known as Batān Shi no Kōshin (バターン死の行進?), with the same meaning.

The march, involving the forcible transfer of tens of thousands (72,000—75,000[citation needed]) of prisoners of war, the surrendered remnants of the combined United States personnel and the Phillipines home defense forces from the Bataan peninsula to prison camps was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse, murder, savagery, 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 being casually shot were the more common and merciful actions — compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, guttings (cut open bellies and left to die), 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 whatever. Strings of Japanese trucks were known to drive over anyone who fell, resulting in a corpse resembling squashed tomato. Riders in vehicles would casually stick out a rifle bayonet and cut a string of throats in the lines of men marching along side the road. Accounts of being forcibly marched for 5–6 days with no food and a single sip of water are in post war archives including filmed reports.[1] The exact death count has been impossible to determine, but historians have placed the mininum 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. How many died from the brutal experience in delayed effects after reaching the internment camps at the end of the march is also accounted as a high but uncertain number.[2]

The Fall of Bataan

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.

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 humanely transport a group of prisoners whose number reached almost three times that estimate.

The Death March

Prisoners on the march from Bataan to the prison camp, May 1942. (National Archives)
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Prisoners on the march from Bataan to the prison camp, May 1942. (National Archives)

At dawn, 9 April 1942, and against the orders of Generals Douglas McArthur and Jonathan Wainwright, 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 most trivial keepsakes and belongings and subsequently forced to endure a grueling 90-mile enforced march in deep dust, over vehicle-broken macadam roads, and crammed into sub-standard rail cars to captivity at Camp O’Donnell. Thousands died en route from disease, starvation, dehydration, heat prostration, untreated wounds, and wanton execution. Some survivors stated that many of the fatalities resulted from the prisoners' failure to observe sanitary precautions, causing the spread of disease—notably dysentery. [citation needed]

News of this atrocity sparked outrage in the US, as shown by this propaganda poster.  The newspaper clipping shown refers to the Bataan Death March.
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News of this atrocity sparked outrage in the US, as shown by this propaganda poster. The newspaper clipping shown refers to the Bataan Death March.

Those few who were lucky enough to travel to San Fernando on trucks still had to endure more than 25 miles of marching. Prisoners were beaten randomly, and were often denied the food and water they were promised. 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 72,000 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. [3]

Camps O'Donnell and Cabanatuan

Prisoners on burial detail at Camp O'Donnell.
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Prisoners on burial detail at 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, eventually to be 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 The Great Raid.

War Crimes Trial

After the surrender of Japan in 1945, an Allied commission convicted General Homma of war crimes, including the atrocities of the death march out of Bataan, and the following atrocities at Camp O'Donnell and Cabanatuan. The general, who had been absorbed in his efforts to capture Corregidor after the fall of Bataan, claimed in his defense that he remained ignorant of the high death toll of the death march until two months after the event. His neglect would cost him his life as General Homma was executed on April 3, 1946 outside Manila.

Commemorations

The Philippines

New Mexico, USA

The Bataan Death March is commemorated every year at White Sands Missile Range just outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The march, which covers 26.2 miles via paved road and sandy trails, allows 4000 entrants from both civilian and many military units both International and the United States armed services. Several of the few remaining Bataan prisoners await the competitors to congratulate them on their success of the grueling march. [4]

Minnesota, USA

The 194th’s Company A was deployed to the Philippines in the fall of 1941. To commemorate the military and civilian prisoners that were forced to march from Bataan to Camp O’Donnell, an annual Bataan Memorial March, organized by the 194th Armor Regiment of the Minnesota Army National Guard and is held in Brainerd, MN. The march is open to anyone who wishes to participate with ten and twenty mile distances. The march has different categories consisting of teams, individuals, light pack, or a heavy pack. A closing ceremony is held at the end to award the finishers and pay tribute to the survivors and their comrades who did not survive the death march.

Maywood, IL USA

Maywood, IL plaque
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Maywood, IL plaque

For 65 years, this small western suburb of Chicago has marked the second Sunday in September as "Maywood Bataan Day". This is the anniversary of the first Maywood Bataan Day held on the second weekend of September, 1942. At that time, residents of this suburb were raising awareness of the status of nearly 100 Maywood National guard troops who were taken prisoner when American forces surrendered Bataan on April 9th, 1942. These men were forced to endure the Death March, prison camps, hell ships and eventually slave labor in Japan. The men were part of Company B of the 192nd Tank Battalion. The original Maywood Bataan Day drew more than 100,000 spectators, dozens of marching bands, and celebrities including the Mayor Ed Kelley of Chicago, and other movie and radio stars. Today's celebration is much smaller, but still draws several hundred people. The service is supported by the village of Maywood, IL and a non-profit group, the Maywood Bataan Day Organization. [5]

Memorials

  • The Bataan Bridge in Carlsbad, New Mexico commemorates the victims of the march.
  • The Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Bridge in Chicago, Illinois, where State Street crosses the Chicago River, commemorates the defenders of Bataan and Corregidor as well as those on the march.
  • The Bataan Memorial Highway in Indiana, SR 38 from Richmond, Indiana to Lafayette, Indiana.
  • Highway-70, through Southern New Mexico was renamed the Bataan Memorial Highway.
  • Statue of American and Filipino Bataan survivors resides at Veterans Memorial Park, in Las Cruces, New Mexico
  • The "A Tribute To Courage" Memorial in Kissimmee, Florida, at the corner of Lakeshore Boulevard and Monument Avenue. It depicts a scene from the Bataan Death March: two soldiers, one American and the other Filipino, are propping each other up while a Filipino woman is offering water to them. It symbolizes the unique friendship between the United States and the Philippines - the two countries fought together during World War II, and the heroism and comradeship between the Americans and Filipinos. It was sculpted by Sandra Storm and is made of bronze. A brick walkway encircles the monument and there are commemorative plaques depicting the history of the Bataan Death March and the Memorial. American and Filipino flags fly side by side. It is the only statue in the United States dedicated to the heroes and survivors of the fall of Bataan and Corregidor and the Bataan Death March [1].
  • Bataan Elementary School in Port Clinton, Ohio commemorates the 32 men from the Port Clinton area who were victims of the march. [2]

See also

References

  1. ^ WGBH Public Television production (Producer). (2007) "The Unavoidable war" (WW-II, 1942 plus December 1941). URL accessed on 2007-09-29.
  2. ^ WGBH Public Television production (Producer). (2007) "The Unavoidable war" (WW-II, 1942 plus December 1941). URL accessed on 2007-09-29.
  3. ^ Bataan, Corregidor, and the Death March: In Retrospect. Retrieved on 2007-09-27.
  4. ^ Official Bataan Memorial Death March Page
  5. ^ Maywood Bataan Day Organization web page

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US Military Dictionary. The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bataan Death March" Read more

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