War in the Pacific

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War in the Pacific

• The Bataan Death March

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Fall of Batten

• On April 9, 1942, as the final stage of the
  Battle of Bataan, approximately 76,000 Filipino
  and American troops, 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.

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• Logistics planning to move the prisoners of war
  from Marvels 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 or unwilling
  to transport humanely a group of prisoners whose
  number reached almost three times that amount.

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How it happened

• At dawn, 9 April 1942, and against the orders of
  Generals Douglas MacArthur and Jonathan
  Wainwright, Major General Edward P. King, Jr.,
  commanding Luzon Force, Bataan, Philippine
  Islands, surrendered more than 75,000 (67,000
  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.

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• 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 ODonnell.
• Thousands died en route from disease, starvation,
  dehydration, heat prostration, untreated wounds,
  and wanton execution.

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Prisoners on the march from Bataan to the prison
camp, May 1942. (National Archives)
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Dead soldiers on the Bataan Death March
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Prisoners on burial detail at Camp O'Donnell.
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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 postwar archives including filmed reports

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• 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.

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• 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 postwar 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.

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• Those responsible for the March and some of the
  killings were later tried for Crimes against
  Humanity at the end of the war.