Bataan Death March – Philippines

(Handout for Canadian Hong Kong Veterans and Allied POWs: Wounds and Closure, prepared by BC ALPHA www.alpha-canada.org)

Bataan Death March – Philippines

Handout to accompany Prezi presentation: Canadian Hong Kong Veterans and Allied POWs in the Asia-Pacific War:

Wounds and Closure

Overview Just hours after their attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army simultaneously attacked several other countries, including the Philippines. The US and Filipino forces fought for four months, ending with the fall of the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942 and the surrender of American and Filipino forces to the Imperial Japanese Army. An estimated 78,000 POWs—12,000 Americans and the rest Filipinos —were marched in successive groups of 100 to 1,500 northward along a 88-kilometer journey to San Fernando, from where they were taken in train boxcars to Capas. After they reached Capas, they were forced to walk the final 8 kilometers to Camp O'Donnell. Along the journey the POWs were treated brutally. They were marched with barely any food or water, and were even intentionally prevented from having water when it was available. They were without adequate clothing, often walking barefoot over hot rocks. They were beaten, tortured and constantly threatened with their lives. Those who physically couldn’t march were bayoneted, beheaded, buried alive, shot and or simply left to die. Conservative estimates say that around 10,000 POWs died in the death march.


Testimony Excerpts Excerpt from interview with former American POW Alf R. Larson Retrieved from http://www.bataansurvivor.com/content/the_bataan_death_march/1.php You and your group began the march on April 12, 1942? Yes. We began walking the next morning. It was about eighty miles from where we started to where we ended up. It doesn't seem very far, but we were in such awful condition that eighty miles was a heck of a long way to walk. It took six days to get to San Fernando. […] On the first day, I saw two things I will never forget. A Filipino man had been beheaded. His body lay on the ground with blood everywhere. His head was a short distance away. Also, there was a dead Filipino woman with her legs spread apart and her dress pulled up over her. She obviously had been raped and there was a bamboo stake in her private area [...] You didn't eat a thing for four days and you were already starved when you were captured. That's right. We weren't given any water either. There was good water all around us. Artesian wells flowing everywhere! They would not let us go and get it. Men went stark raving mad! Soldiers broke ranks and ran towards the water. They went completely insane because they had to get it. They never got it! Of course, you know what happened to them. Our soldiers were shot before they reached water? That's right. Excerpt from interview with former American POW Alfred X. Burgos Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/sfeature/bataan_capture.html […] If you should not want to walk anymore -- let's say you were tired -- well, I've seen them shoot walking prisoners of war -- actually be shot. Or if you tried to get food which was thrown by the civilians to the walking military, the Filipino military, that not only endangered you, but the one who was giving the food or throwing the food to you [...] Well, those that they could catch, they'd just shoot them there [...] If you could not keep up with the group in the Death March, rather than slow the Death March, they'd get rid of you by shooting you [...] Oh, they bayoneted people, they shot people, and if they think that you were delaying the Death March, you're dead. Excerpts from the book “My Hitch in Hell: The Bataan Death March” by former American POW Lester I. Tenney […] I was talking with Bronge and Cigoi when a Japanese officer came riding by on horseback. He was waving his samurai sword from side to side, apparently trying to cut off the head of anyone he could. I was on the outside of the column when he rode past, and although I ducked the main thrust of the sword, the end of the blade hit my left shoulder, missing my head and neck by inches. It left a large gash that had to have stitches if I were to continue on this march and continue living. As the Japanese officer rode off, Bronge and Cigoi called for a medic to fall back to our position. The medic sewed up the cut with thread, which was all he had with him,


and for the next two miles or so, my two friends carried me so that I would not have to fall out of line. We all knew that falling out of line meant certain death. (p. 53) Photo of POWs on Bataan Death March

Photo of a burial detail of Filipino POWs using improvised litters to carry fallen comrades at Camp O’Donnell following the Bataan Death March.

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Bataan Death March – Philippines