Bataan Death March
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Route of the death march. Section from San Fernando to Capas was by rail cars. [1][2]
The Bataan Death March (Tagalog: 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.[3][4] 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. [5][6][7] 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'Donell 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.[4]
The March of Death[edit]
Dead soldiers on the Bataan Death March.
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.[8]
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.[5] 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). [5] 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.[9]
Trucks were known to drive over some of those who fell or succumbed to fatigue, [10][11][12] and "cleanup crews" put
to death those too weak to continue. Marchers were harassed with random bayonet stabs and beatings. [13]
Prisoners on the march from Bataan to the prison camp, May 1942. (National Archives).
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.[5] 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.[14]
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.