On
this date, April 9, 1942, the United States forces surrender on the Bataan
Peninsula. This resulted in the Bataan Death March. I will post the information
from Wikipedia.
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Route taken during the Bataan Death March.
Section from San Fernando to Capas was by rail.
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The Bataan Death March (Filipino: Martsa ng Kamatayan sa Bataan,
Japanese: Batān Shi no Kōshin (バターン死の行進?)), which began on April 9, 1942, was
the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino
and American prisoners of war after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the
Philippines during World War II. All told, approximately 2,500–10,000 Filipino
and 100–650 American prisoners of war died before they could reach their destination
at Camp O'Donnell. The reported death tolls vary, especially amongst Filipino
POWs, because historians cannot determine how many prisoners blended in with
the civilian population and escaped. The march went from Mariveles, Bataan, to
San Fernando, Pampanga. From San Fernando, survivors were loaded to a box train
and they were brought to Camp O'Donnell in Capas, Tarlac.
The
128 km (80 mi) march was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse
and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon prisoners and
civilians alike by the Japanese Army, and was later judged by an Allied
military commission to be a Japanese war crime.
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Dead soldiers on the Bataan Death March
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The
March of Death
The
Japanese were unprepared for the number of prisoners that they were responsible
for, and there was no organized plan for how to handle them. Prisoners were
stripped of their weapons and valuables, and told to march to Balanga, the
capital of Bataan. Many were beaten, bayoneted, and mistreated. The first major
atrocity occurred when between 350 and 400 Filipino officers and NCOs, were
summarily executed after they had surrendered.
The
Japanese failed to supply the prisoners with food or water until they had
reached Balanga. Many of the prisoners died along the way of heat or
exhaustion. Prisoners were given no food for the first three days, and were
only allowed to drink water from filthy water buffalo wallows on the side of
the road. Furthermore, Japanese troops would frequently beat and bayonet
prisoners who began to fall behind, or were unable to walk. Once they arrived
in Balanga, the overcrowded conditions and poor hygiene caused dysentery and
other diseases to rapidly spread among the prisoners. The Japanese failed to
provide them with medical care, leaving U.S. medical personnel to tend to the
sick and wounded (with few or no supplies).
In
June 2001, U.S. Congressional Representative Dana Rohrabacher described and
tried to explain the horrors and brutality that the prisoners experienced on
the march:
They were beaten, and they were starved as they marched. Those who fell were bayoneted. Some of those who fell were beheaded by Japanese officers who were practicing with their samurai swords from horseback. The Japanese culture at that time reflected the view that any warrior who surrendered had no honor; thus was not to be treated like a human being. Thus they were not committing crimes against human beings.[...] The Japanese soldiers at that time [...] felt they were dealing with subhumans and animals.
Trucks
were known to drive over some of those who fell or succumbed to fatigue, and
"cleanup crews" put to death those too weak to continue. Marchers
were harassed with random bayonet stabs and beatings.
From
San Fernando, the prisoners were transported by rail to Capas. One hundred or
more prisoners were stuffed into each of the trains' boxcars, which were
unventilated and sweltering in the tropical heat. The trains had no sanitation
facilities, and disease continued to take a heavy toll of the prisoners. After
they reached Capas, they were forced to walk the final 9 miles to Camp
O'Donnell. Even after arriving at Camp O'Donnell, the survivors of the march
continued to die at a rate of 30–50 per day, leading to thousands more dead.
Most of the dead were buried in mass graves that the Japanese dug out with
bulldozers on the outside of the barbed wire surrounding the compound.
The
death toll of the march is difficult to assess as thousands of captives were
able to escape from their guards (although many were killed during their
escapes), and it is not known how many died in the fighting that was taking
place concurrently.
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The March of Death. Along the March [on
which] these prisoners were photographed, they have their hands tied behind
their backs. The March of Death was about May 1942, from Bataan to Cabanatuan,
the prison camp.
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Death March (95th Km.) marker, Bacolor,
Pampanga (where the Filipinos passed)
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Public
responses
Japanese
In
an attempt to counter the American propaganda value of the march, the Japanese
had The Manila Times claim that the prisoners were treated humanely and
their death rate had to be attributed to the intransigence of the American
commanders who did not surrender until their men were on the verge of death.
On
May 9, 2009, the Japanese government apologized through its ambassador in the
U.S. to former American prisoners of war who suffered in the Bataan Death
March.
A
year later, on September 13, 2010, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada
apologized to a group of six former American soldiers who during World War II
were held as prisoners of war by the Japanese, including 90-year-old Lester
Tenney, and Robert Rosendahl, both survivors of the Bataan Death March. The six
and their families and the families of two deceased soldiers were invited to
visit Japan at the expense of the Japanese government in a program that will
see more American former prisoners of war and former prisoners of war from
other countries visit Japan in the future.
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'stay on the job until every murdering jap is
wiped out!' World War II poster
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United
States
The
Bataan Death March and other Japanese actions were used to arouse fury in the
United States. It was not until January 27, 1944 that the U.S. government
informed the American public about the march, when it released sworn statements
of military officers who had escaped from the march.
General
George Marshall made the following statement about the march:
These brutal reprisals upon helpless victims evidence the shallow advance from savagery which the Japanese people have made. [...] We serve notice upon the Japanese military and political leaders as well as the Japanese people that the future of the Japanese race itself, depends entirely and irrevocably upon their capacity to progress beyond their aboriginal barbaric instincts.
In
2012 film producer Jan Thompson created a film documentary on the Death March,
POW camps, and Japanese hell ships titled Never the Same: The
Prisoner-of-War Experience. The film reproduced scenes of the camps and
ships, showed drawings and writings of the prisoners, and featured Loretta Swit
as the narrator.
War
crimes trial
In
December 1943, (General) Masaharu Homma was selected as the minister of
information for the incoming prime minister, Kuniaki Koiso. In September 1945,
he was arrested by Allied troops, and indicted for war crimes. Homma was
charged with 43 different counts of crimes against humanity. The court found
that Homma had permitted his troops to commit "brutal atrocities and other
high crimes". 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. On February 26, 1946, he was sentenced to death by firing squad. He was
executed on April 3, 1946, outside Manila.
Also
in Japan, Generals Hideki Tōjō (later Prime Minister), Kenji Doihara, Seishirō
Itagaki, Heitarō Kimura, Iwane Matsui, and Akira Mutō, and Baron Kōki Hirota
were found guilty and responsible for the brutal maltreatment of American and
Filipino POWs, and were executed by hanging at Sugamo Prison in Ikebukuro on
December 23, 1948. Several others were sentenced to imprisonment of between 7
and 22 years.
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U.S. medical men are attempting to identify
more than 100 American Prisoners of War captured at Bataan and Corregidor and
burned alive by the Japanese at a Prisoner of War camp, Puerto Princesa,
Palawan, Philippine Islands Picture shows charred remains being interred in
grave., 03/20/1945
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Memorials
and commemorative events
Main
article: Memorials to Bataan Death March
victims
Dozens
of memorials (including monuments, plaques, and schools) dedicated to the
prisoners who died during the Bataan Death March exist across the United States
and in the Philippines. A wide variety of commemorative events are held to
honor the victims, including holidays, athletic events such as ultramarathons,
and memorial ceremonies held at military cemeteries.
The
Bataan Death March had a large impact on the state of New Mexico. Eighteen
hundred New Mexico soldiers from the 200th/515th Coast Artillery of the
National Guard were deployed to the Philippines in World War II. Only half
these soldiers survived, and within a few years after the war almost one half
more had died. The New Mexico National Guard Bataan Memorial Museum is located
in the Armory where the soldiers of the 200th and 515th were processed before
their deployment to the Philippines in 1941. Every year, in early spring, a
rigorous 26.2-mile march/run is conducted at White Sands Missile Range, New
Mexico, in honor of the service members who defended the Philippine Islands
during World War II. As of May 2012 there were 60 survivors, 31 of whom reside
in New Mexico. Many of these survivors were teens at the time and had lied
about their ages to gain entry into the military.
In
popular culture
The
novel Ceremony (1977), by the New Mexico novelist Leslie Marmon Silko,
is the story of a Laguna Pueblo survivor of the Death March who comes home to
the reservation with tragic memories.
Notable
survivors and captives
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