The Bataan Death March 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
were brought to Camp O'Donnell in Capas, Tarlac.
The 60 mi (97 km) 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. It was later judged by an
Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime
The Japanese were unprepared for the number of prisoners
they were responsible for, and there was no organized plan for handling 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 prisoners died along the way from
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 the surviving
prisoners arrived in Balanga, the overcrowded conditions and poor hygiene
caused dysentery and other diseases to rapidly spread. The Japanese failed to
provide the prisoners 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 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 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
