April 9, 1942
American prisoners using improvised litters to carry comrades too sick to walk. This photo is one of the few taken of the actual Bataan Death March.
After the American forces surrendered at Bataan, some of the Japanese Army left to attack Corregidor Island. But others remained at Bataan to capture the prisoners of war (POWs). Most of these men, numbering around 100,000, were already skin-and-bone from months of hunger and non-stop fighting. Now they were at the mercy of the Japanese army.
Have you ever heard of the Geneva Convention? It’s basically an agreement between countries that they will not harm defenseless people during war. Part of the Geneva Convention says, “prisoners of war . . . must at all times be humanely treated and protected particularly against acts of violence, insults and public curiosity. Measures of reprisal against them are prohibited.”
After the brutal fighting of WWI, more than forty-five countries signed an updated Geneva Convention treatise. Japan signed the agreement as well, but they refused to obey the rules.
Japan taught its people that they were a superior race. Japanese culture also followed something called the Bushido code, or “the warrior’s way.” The code was created by the samurai and laid out the highest standard of honor that warriors could live by. The code was so strict that it required soldiers to commit suicide rather than be captured by an enemy. The Bushido code was taught to the Japanese people for hundreds of years, while the new Geneva Convention was only fifteen years old.
The Bushido code influenced the Japanese soldiers so much that when the American forces “allowed” themselves to be captured, the Japanese soldiers saw them as dishonorable, cowardly men who deserved to die. A Japanese soldier would never allow himself to be a prisoner of war—it was a total disgrace to them.
And that’s how the Japanese soldiers saw the POWs of Bataan: as unworthy of any respect.
The Japanese force-marched the POWs from the Bataan peninsula to the city of San Fernando—a distance of fifty-five miles.
In the tropical Philippine climate, April’s weather was hot and extremely humid. As the march continued mile after mile, POWs continually dropped to the ground. Many POWs suffered from malaria, a mosquito-borne illness that causes severe flu-like symptoms. Others had dysentery from unclean water, which gave them crippling stomach pain and diarrhea that leads to dehydration and even death.
Still more POWs were literally dying of thirst. The Japanese soldiers refused to give them fresh water. They even poured out whatever water was in the Americans’ canteens. If a prisoner asked for water, he was beaten or killed. When a prisoner fell to the ground or slowed down the march in any way, he was also beaten or stabbed with bayonets.
Day after day, as the march continued, the Japanese soldiers found new ways to inflict suffering on the POWs.
“Their ferocity grew as we marched," recalled POW Captain William Dyess, squadron commander of the 21st Pursuit. “They were no longer content with mauling stragglers or pricking them with bayonet points. The thrusts were intended to kill.”
Private Blair Robinett, of Company C 803rd Engineers, watched one Japanese soldier pick up a sick POW and throw him into the path of some oncoming tanks.
“When the last tank left there was no way you could tell there’d ever been a man there. But his uniform was embedded in the cobblestone.”
Over the course of the fifty-five-mile trek, some Filipino civilians tried to give water and food to the POWs but the Japanese soldiers beat and killed these people too.
Six days later, the Bataan Death March reached San Fernando.
The surviving POWs were loaded into boxcars. Each car was only big enough for about forty men but the Japanese packed more than a hundred men into each car. Then they closed the doors and sent the train down the tracks. Under the hot sun, a poisonous stench rose in the airless containers. Dysentery affected so many men that soon the floor was slick with mucus, blood, and excrement. Men died from suffocation, but were packed so tightly they remained upright.
When the train stopped, the POWs were unloaded. The dead men were left behind. The living were force-marched another eight miles to Camp O’Donnell.
Of the 100,000 who started the march, only 54,000 POWs reached the camp. An estimated 10,000 Filipinos died on the march, along with 600 Americans. Other prisoners escaped, slipping away into the jungle. Many of those men continued to fight the Japanese as guerrilla warriors.
At Camp O’Donnell, the torture continued.
Before entering, the POWs were stripped of their possessions. If a soldier had any Japanese items or money, he was executed on the spot. The Japanese confiscated everything from blankets and pens to surgical equipment and knives. The only items the POWs were allowed to keep were canteens, mess kits holding rations, and a metal plate and spoon.
Camp O’Donnell had only two water spigots for the 53,000 men. The line to fill canteens sometimes was twelve-hours long. Desperate for something to drink, men pulled water from a nearby river, but it was polluted and caused even more dysentery to break out. The only latrines were trenches in the ground. With sick men unable to control their bowels while waiting in line, many prisoners resorted to using buckets as toilets. Flies landed on the excrement and carried the disease, eventually contaminating the food. The camp had no effective dysentery medicine, so even though the sick men were placed in separate barracks, it became a waiting room for death.
Within the first forty days, 1,570 Americans died at Camp O’Donnell, some from illness, others from savage beatings by their captors.
The men captured at Bataan were soon joined by the men captured at Corregidor. But in July, 1942, the Japanese transferred all POWs, except the very sickest, to another camp called Cabanatuan. Another 3,000 POWs died there. (However, Cabanatuan also was also the site of one of the world’s greatest rescues and raids. You’ll read about that in a later chapter).
It wasn’t until about two years later, in 1944, that most Americans learned of the Bataan Death March. The military released sworn statements by some officers who escaped the march. Hearing about the Japanese brutality caused a great fury among the American people, and a resolve to win this war, once and for all.
American POW executed on Bataan Death March
WHO FOUGHT?
Private Leon Beck with the 31st Infantry Battalion was on the Bataan Death March, and survived to tell his story:
“I don't think there's any glory in being a prisoner of war, and I'd made up my mind, when it looked desperate . . . . I told everybody: ‘I’m not going to march in the prison camp. If I have to die, I'm going to die in the attempt or I'll die free. But I'm not going to go in prison camp, no glory in being a prisoner.’ We were taught [that] you had a moral, legal, and ethical responsibility if you were ever captured, that you should make an attempt to escape and if that attempt was successful, you had to continue to resist to your enemy, until such time as you could re-join friendly forces. That's the way it was taught to us, every time they read the Articles of War to us. So, I've tried to fulfill that. I enlisted voluntarily and I felt I had a responsibility and I tried to fulfill it.”
How did Beck escape the Bataan Death March?
“The road that we were marching on was the main road from Manila all the way into Bataan, to Baguio, which was the summer capital. And, as we came in to the town of Geauga, there was a tide river, which paralleled the road. And nobody would go with me, I'd been begging for many days for people to attempt an escape with me. And, they just flat refused... [Finally] I said ‘hit it.’ I just rolled off of the road and got into the edge of the river and there's a lot of palmetto brush and weeds and one thing or another growing and as soon as the group marched on past me, and got a ways down the road, and out of sight and there wasn't anything in sight, coming up the road, I went up swam and waded across that river and got out into a cut rice field and I could see a shack over there...”
After his daring escape from the death march, Beck was helped by Filipino civilians. He then joined the American guerillas and continued to fight the Japanese in the Philippines.
Read more of Beck’s story, as well as other survivors of the Bataan Death March, here:
FIND OUT MORE:
BOOKS
A Study in Valor: The Faith of a Bataan Death March Survivor by William T. Garner
The Bataan Death March: World War II Prisoners in the Pacific (Snapshots in History) By Robert Greenberger
Voices of the Pacific: Untold Stories from the Marine Heroes of World War II by Adam Makos, Marcus Brotherton
INTERNET
The National Museum of the US Air Force maintains several links to Bataan Death March sites:
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=3667
New Mexico had the largest number of soldiers of any state represented on the Death March. New Mexico’s national guard created the Bataan Memorial Museum. You can see some of the exhibits here: http://www.bataanmuseum.com/
MOVIES
Bataan
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