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Title: The Bataan Death March
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Published: Jun 23, 2009
Author: Wikipedia
Post Date: 2009-06-23 18:22:12 by Turtle
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Views: 118
Comments: 5
The Bataan Death March (also known as The Death March of Bataan) took place in the Philippines in 1942 and was later accounted as a Japanese war crime. The 60-mile (97 km) march occurred after the three-month Battle of Bataan, part of the Battle of the Philippines (1941–42), during World War II. In Japanese, it is known as Batn Shi no KMshin (|96;|79;}40;}31;15;{98;92;q14;?), with the same meaning. The march, involving the forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war[1] captured by the Japanese in the Philippines from the Bataan peninsula to prison camps, was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon the prisoners and civilians along the route by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan. Beheadings, cut throats and casual shootings were the more common and merciful actions — compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, disembowelments, numerous rifle butt beatings and a deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching for nearly a week (for the slowest survivors like General Jacob Vass) in tropical heat. Falling down or inability to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure. Route of the death march. Section from San Fernando to Capas was by rail. Prisoners were attacked for assisting someone failing due to weakness, or for no apparent reason whatsoever. Strings of Japanese trucks were known to drive over anyone who fell. Riders in vehicles would casually stick out a rifle bayonet and cut a string of throats in the lines of men marching alongside the road. Accounts of being forcibly marched for five to six days with no food and a single sip of water are in postwar archives including filmed reports.[2] The exact death count has been impossible to determine, but some historians have placed the minimum death toll between six and eleven thousand men; whereas other postwar Allied reports have tabulated that only 54,000 of the 72,000 prisoners reached their destination— taken together, the figures document a casual killing rate of one in four up to two in seven (25% to 28.5%) of those brutalized by the forcible march. The number of deaths that took place in the internment camps from delayed effects of the march is uncertain, but believed to be high.[2] One of the last remaining US commanders who survived the Bataan Death March, Dr. Lester Tenney, was interviewed at Hitotsubashi University in June 2008.[3][4] On May 30th, 2009, at the sixty-fourth and final reunion of Bataan Death March survivors in San Antonio, Texas, Japanese ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki apologized to the assembled survivors for the Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners of war, on behalf of the Japanese government.[5] On April 9, 1942, as the final stage of the Battle of Bataan, approximately 76,000 Filipino and American troops, commanded by Major General Edward "Ned" P. King, Jr., were formally surrendered to a Japanese army of 54,000 men under Lt. General Masaharu Homma. This was the single largest surrender of a military force in American history. Logistics planning to move the prisoners of war from Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp in the province of Tarlac, was handed down to transportation officer Major General Yoshitake Kawane ten days prior to the final Japanese assault. The Japanese, having expected the fighting to continue, anticipated about 25,000 prisoners of war and were inadequately prepared or unwilling to transport humanely a group of prisoners whose number reached almost three times that amount. Historians have noted that the Japanese commander most directly involved in the decision to march and mistreat the prisoners was Masanobu Tsuji.[citation needed] News of this atrocity sparked outrage in the US, as shown by this poster. The newspaper clipping shown refers to the Bataan Death March. At dawn, 9 April 1942, and against the orders of Generals Douglas MacArthur and Jonathan Wainwright[citation needed], Major General Edward P. King, Jr., commanding Luzon Force, Bataan, Philippine Islands, surrendered more than 75,000 (67,000 Filipinos, 1,000 Chinese Filipinos, and 11,796 Americans) starving and disease-ridden men. He inquired of Colonel Motoo Nakayama, the Japanese colonel to whom he tendered his pistol in lieu of his lost sword, whether the Americans and Filipinos would be well treated. The Japanese aide-de-camp replied: “We are not barbarians.” The majority of the prisoners of war were immediately robbed of their keepsakes and belongings and subsequently forced to endure a 60-mile (97 km) enforced march in deep dust, over vehicle-broken macadam roads, and crammed into rail cars to captivity at Camp O’Donnell. Thousands died en route from disease, starvation, dehydration, heat prostration, untreated wounds, and wanton execution. Those few who were lucky enough to travel to San Fernando on trucks still had to endure more than twenty-five miles of marching. Prisoners were beaten randomly, and were often denied promised food and water. Those who fell behind were usually executed or left to die; the sides of the roads became littered with dead bodies and those begging for help. On the Bataan Death March, approximately 54,000 of the 75,000 prisoners reached their destination. The death toll of the march is difficult to assess as thousands of captives were able to escape from their guards. All told, approximately 5,000-10,000 Filipino and 600-650 American prisoners of war died before they could reach Camp O'Donnell. [6] After the surrender of Japan in 1945, an Allied commission convicted General Homma of war crimes, including the atrocities of the death march out of Bataan, and the following atrocities at Camp O'Donnell and Cabanatuan. 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. He was executed on April 3, 1946 outside Manila. For unknown reasons, the Allies did not attempt to prosecute Masanobu Tsuji for war crimes.
Poster Comment: I did not know that most of those who died were Filipinos.
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#1. To: Turtle (#0)
And our government for years denied them any compensation for fighting for the US. Going back even further, war plan Orange in anticipation of such a Japanese attack...wrote off all of the soldiers...in that this country COULD DO NOTHING TO AID THEM. Years before Roosevelt and his government knew that everyone in the western Pacific was expendable and would be written off. They were.
The yellow bastards never got full credit for their war crimes, thanks to the obsession with the Germans and the creation of the state of Israel.
Our ruling elite speak of a...NEW WORLD ORDER... Would you believe the Japanese had the same motto in 1941???????????
I've quite lost the capacity for tears. I hover somewhere between disgust and rage.
Join 2x4 Tuesdays & protect your RKBA. I read this some years back - it was an eye opener.
I did not know that most of those who died were Filipinos.
#2. To: Turtle, Cynicom, all (#0)
#3. To: Jethro Tull (#2)
The yellow bastards never got full credit for their war crimes, thanks to the obsession with the Germans and the creation of the state of Israel.
#4. To: Jethro Tull (#2)
Are you crying yet?
www.righttokeepandbeararms.com
#5. To: randge, Cynicom, Turtle, all (#4)
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