The Bataan Death March[a] was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of around 72,000 to 78,000[1][2][3] Filipino (about 66,000) and American (about 12,000) prisoners of war (POWs) from the municipalities of Bagac and Mariveles on the Bataan Peninsula to Camp O'Donnell via San Fernando.

The transfer began on April 9, 1942, after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II. The total distance marched from Mariveles to San Fernando and from the Capas Train Station to various camps was 105 kilometres (65 mi). Sources also report widely differing prisoner of war casualties before reaching Camp O'Donnell: from 5,000 to 18,000 Filipino deaths and 500 to 650 American deaths during the march.

The march was characterized by severe physical abuse and wanton killings, including the Pantingan River massacre during which up to 400 prisoners were executed. POWs who fell or were caught on the ground were shot. After the war, the Japanese commander, General Masaharu Homma, and two of his officers, Major General Yoshitaka Kawane and Colonel Kurataro Hirano, were tried by United States military commissions for war crimes and sentenced to death on charges of failing to prevent their subordinates from committing atrocities. Homma was executed in 1946, and Kawane and Hirano in 1949. However, Masanobu Tsuji, the mastermind behind the Pantingan River massacre, fled and went into hiding, evading prosecution for his crimes. Tsuji served several foreign intelligence agencies after the war, before disappearing in Laos in April 1961. Tsuji was declared dead seven years later.

Background

General Edward P. King discusses surrender terms with Japanese officers to end the Battle of Bataan

Prelude

When General Douglas MacArthur returned to active duty, the latest revision of plans for the defense of the Philippine Islands—War Plan Orange 3 (WPO-3)—was politically unrealistic, as it assumed a conflict only involving the United States and Japan, not the combined Axis powers. However, the plan was tactically sound, and its provisions for defense were applicable under any local situation.[4]

Under WPO-3, the mission of the Philippine garrison was to hold the entrance to Manila Bay and deny its use to Japanese naval forces. If the enemy prevailed, the Americans were to hold back the Japanese advance while withdrawing to the Bataan Peninsula, which was recognized as the key to the control of Manila Bay. It was to be defended to the "last extremity".[5] MacArthur assumed command of the Allied army in July 1941 and rejected WPO-3 as defeatist, preferring a more aggressive course of action.[6] He recommended—among other things—a coastal defense strategy that would include the entire archipelago. His recommendations were followed in the plan that was eventually approved.[7]

The main force of General Masaharu Homma's 14th Army came ashore at Lingayen Gulf on the morning of December 22, 1941. The defenders failed to hold the beaches. By the end of the day, the Japanese had secured most of their objectives and were in position to emerge onto the central plain. Late in the afternoon of December 23, General Jonathan Wainwright telephoned MacArthur's headquarters in Manila and informed him that any further defense of the Lingayen beaches was "impracticable". He requested and was permitted to withdraw behind the Agno River. MacArthur decided to abandon his plan for defense and revert to WPO-3, evacuating President Manuel L. Quezon, High Commissioner Francis B. Sayre, their families, and his headquarters to Corregidor on December 24. A rear echelon, headed by the deputy chief of staff, Brigadier General Richard J. Marshall, remained behind in Manila to close out the headquarters and to supervise the shipment of supplies and the evacuation of the remaining troops.[8]

On December 26, Manila was officially declared an open city, and MacArthur's proclamation was published in the newspapers and broadcast over the radio.[9]

The Battle of Bataan began on January 7, 1942, and continued until April 9, when the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) commander, Major General Edward P. King, surrendered to Colonel Motō Nakayama of the 14th Army.[10] King went against his superior's orders and told his troops to lay down their arms, accepting personal responsibility for the surrender.[11] He made the following statement: "You men remember this. You did not surrender … you had no alternative but to obey my order."[11]

Allied surrender

Homma and his staff encountered almost twice as many captives as his reports had estimated, creating an enormous logistical challenge: the transport and movement of over 60,000 starved, sick, debilitated and wounded prisoners and over 38,000 equally weakened civilian noncombatants who had been caught up in the battle. The general wanted to move the prisoners and refugees to the north, in preparation for his final assault on Corregidor, but there was simply not enough mechanized transport for the newly captured masses.[12]

Forced March

Route of the death march. The section from San Fernando to Capas was by rail cars.[13][14]
Prisoners photographed during the march. They have their hands tied behind their backs. They are (left to right): Pvt Samuel Stenzler (d. May 1942); Pvt Frank Spears (killed June 1945); Capt James McDonnell Gallagher, who died shortly after this picture was taken on April 9, 1942
Portion of Bataan disinterment map highlighting the site of the Panintingan massacre

Following the surrender of Bataan on April 9, 1942 to the Imperial Japanese Army, prisoners were amassed in the towns of Mariveles and Bagac.[10][15] They were ordered to turn over their possessions. American Lieutenant Kermit Lay recounted how this was done:

Wartime public responses

News of the Bataan Death March sparked outrage in the US, as reflected in this U.S Army propaganda poster.

United States

Newspapers in a Hayward, California newsstand, after the fall of Bataan

It was not until January 27, 1944, that the U.S. government informed the American public about the march, when it released sworn statements of military officers who had escaped.[38] Shortly thereafter, the stories of these officers were featured in a Life magazine article.[39][40] The Bataan Death March and other Japanese actions were used to arouse fury in the United States.[41] America would go on to avenge its defeat that occurred in the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte in October 1944. U.S. and Filipino forces went on to recapture the Bataan Peninsula in January 1945, and Manila was liberated in early March.[42]

General George Marshall made the following statement:

These brutal reprisals upon helpless victims evidence the shallow advance from savagery which the Japanese people have made. ... We serve notice upon the Japanese military and political leaders as well as the Japanese people that the future of the Japanese race itself, depends entirely and irrevocably upon their capacity to progress beyond their aboriginal barbaric instincts.[43]

Japanese

In an attempt to counter the American propaganda value of the march, the Japanese had The Manila Times report that the prisoners were treated humanely and their death rate had to be attributed to the intransigence of the American commanders who did not surrender until the men were on the verge of death.[44]

War crimes trial

Japanese War Crimes Trials in Manila, 1945

In September 1945, Masaharu Homma was arrested by Allied troops and indicted for war crimes.[45] He was charged with 43 separate counts, but the verdict did not distinguish among them, leaving some doubt over whether he was found guilty of them all, as Homma did not know the atrocities until the end of the war.[46] Homma was found guilty of permitting members of his command to commit "brutal atrocities and other high crimes".[47] 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.[48] Homma's verdict was predicated on the doctrine of respondeat superior but with an added liability standard, since the latter could not be rebutted.[49] On February 26, 1946, he was sentenced to death by firing squad and was executed on April 3 outside Manila.[45]

Masanobu Tsuji[b] , who had directly ordered the killing of POWs (Pantingan River massacre), fled to China from Thailand when the war ended to escape from war trials of the allied powers.[50] Two of Homma's subordinates, Major General Yoshitaka Kawane and Colonel Kurataro Hirano, were prosecuted by an American military commission in Yokohama in 1948, using evidence presented at the Homma trial. They were sentenced to death by hanging and executed at Sugamo Prison on June 12, 1949.[51][52][53]

Post-war commemorations, apologies, and memorials

Bataan Death March Memorial featuring Filipino and American soldiers at the Veterans Memorial Park in Las Cruces, New Mexico

On September 13, 2010, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada apologized to a group of six former American soldiers who had been held as prisoners of war by the Japanese, including 90-year-old Lester Tenney and Robert Rosendahl, both survivors of the Bataan Death March. The six, their families, and the families of two deceased soldiers were invited to visit Japan at the expense of the Japanese government.[54]

In 2012, film producer Jan Thompson created a film documentary about the Death March, POW camps, and Japanese hell ships titled Never the Same: The Prisoner-of-War Experience. The film reproduced scenes of the camps and ships, showed drawings and writings of the prisoners, and featured Loretta Swit as the narrator.[55][56]

Dozens of memorials (including monuments, plaques, and schools) dedicated to the prisoners who died during the Bataan Death March exist across the United States and in the Philippines. A wide variety of commemorative events are held to honor the victims, including holidays, athletic events such as ultramarathons, and memorial ceremonies held at military cemeteries. The Day of Valor is a Philippine national holiday that occurs every April 9, the day the Bataan Death March began.

New Mexico

The 2013 Bataan Memorial Death March at the White Sands Missile Range

The Bataan Death March had a large impact on New Mexico,[57] given that many of the American soldiers in Bataan were from that state, specifically from the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery of the National Guard.[58] The New Mexico Military Museum is located in the armory where the soldiers of the 200th and 515th were processed before their deployment to the Philippines in 1941. The old state capitol building of New Mexico was renamed the Bataan Memorial Building and now houses several state government agency offices.[59]

Every year in early spring, the Bataan Memorial Death March, a marathon-length 26.2-mile (42.2 km) march/run, is conducted at the White Sands Missile Range.[60][61] On March 19, 2017, over 6,300 participants queued up at the starting line for the 28th annual event, breaking the previous record of attendance as well as the amount of non-perishable food collected for local food pantries and overall charitable goods donated.[62]

The 200th and 515th Coast Artillery units had 1,816 men total. 829 died in battle, while prisoners, or immediately after liberation. There were 987 survivors.[63] As of March 2017, only four of these veterans remained alive.[64]

Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory

Due to the large population of Filipino workers on the island of Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory, an annual memorial march is held. The date varies, but the marchers leave from the marina around 06:00 traveling by boat to Barton Point, where they proceed south to the plantation ruins. The memorial march is conducted by Filipino workers, British Royal Marines, British Royal Military Police, and United States sailors from various commands across the island.[citation needed]

Notable captives and survivors

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Filipino: Martsa ng Kamatayan sa Bataan; Spanish: Marcha fatal de Bataán; Kapampangan: Martsa ning Kematayan king Bataan; Ilocano: Martsa ti Ipapatay iti Bataan; Pangasinan: Panagmartsa na Patey ed Bataan; Japanese: バターン死の行進, romanized: Batān Shi no Kōshin
  2. ↑ Masanobu Tsuji, a colonel on the staff of General Homma also was complicit in the Sook Ching massacre. Post war, he fled to Thailand, then to China, successfully escaping trial. He subsequently returned to Japan in 1949 and was later elected to the National Diet. In 1961, he disappeared on a trip to Laos; it is thought that he might have been killed in the Laotian Civil War.

References

  1. ↑ "The Bataan Death March". origins.osu.edu. April 30, 2017. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
  2. ↑ "Masaharu Homma and Japanese Atrocities". PBS. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
  3. ↑ "Bataan Death March". National Museum of the United States Air Force. Archived from the original on December 27, 2024. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
  4. ↑ Morton, Louis (1953). The Fall of the Philippines. US Army Center of Military History. Archived from the original on December 24, 2007. p.61
  5. ↑ Morton, Louis (1953). The Fall of the Philippines. US Army Center of Military History. Archived from the original on December 24, 2007. p.62
  6. 1 2 3 Murphy, Kevin C. (2014). Inside the Bataan Death March: Defeat, Travail and Memory. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 328. ISBN 978-0-7864-9681-5.
  7. ↑ Morton, Louis (1953). The Fall of the Philippines. US Army Center of Military History. Archived from the original on December 24, 2007. p.67
  8. ↑ Morton, Louis (1953). The Fall of the Philippines. US Army Center of Military History. Archived from the original on December 24, 2007. p.233
  9. ↑ Morton, Louis (1953). The Fall of the Philippines. US Army Center of Military History. Archived from the original on December 24, 2007. p.232
  10. 1 2 3 4 Esconde, Ernie B. (April 9, 2012). "WW2 historical markers remind Pinoys of Bataan's role on Day of Valor". GMA Network. Retrieved December 5, 2016.
  11. 1 2 3 Lendon, Brad (April 3, 2024). "A double dose of hell: The Bataan Death March and what came next". CNN. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  12. 1 2 3 Woolfe, Raymond G. Jr. (2016). The Doomed Horse Soldiers of Bataan: The Incredible Stand of the 26th Cavalry. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 414. ISBN 978-1-4422-4534-1.
  13. ↑ Hubbard, Preston John (1990). Apocalypse Undone: My Survival of Japanese Imprisonment During World War II. Vanderbilt University Press. p. 87. ISBN 978-0-8265-1401-1.
  14. ↑ Bilek, Anton (Tony) (2003). No Uncle Sam: The Forgotten of Bataan. Kent State University Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-87338-768-2.
  15. ↑ Falk, Stanley L. (1962). Bataan: The March of Death. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 102. OCLC 1084550. On April 11th, once the surrender of the I Corps was completed, the Filipino and American troops in western Bataan began their slow assembly. From the front lines south of the Pilar-Bagac road and the jungle slopes of the Mariveles Mountains, they straggled in disorganized groups to the West Road. Then they went either north or south, to Bagac or Mariveles, an uncoordinated mass of men and vehicles moving with little direction from the Japanese.
  16. 1 2 3 4 Greenberger, Robert (2009). The Bataan Death March: World War II Prisoners in the Pacific. Compass Point Books. ISBN 978-0-7565-4095-1.
  17. ↑ "Bataan Rescue: Masaharu Homma and Japanese Atrocities". PBS. Archived from the original on June 2, 2023.
  18. ↑ "US-Japan Dialogue on POWs". www.us-japandialogueonpows.org. Archived from the original on June 3, 2010.
  19. 1 2 Norman, Michael & Norman, Elizabeth (June 9, 2009). Tears in the Darkness (revised ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-27260-9.
  20. ↑ Lansford, Tom (2001). "Bataan Death March". In Sandler, Stanley (ed.). World War II in the Pacific: an encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 157–158. ISBN 978-0-8153-1883-5.
  21. ↑ Kevin C. Murphy, Inside the Bataan Death March: Defeat, Travail and Memory, pp. 29–30
  22. 1 2 3 4 Lansford, Tom (2001). "Bataan Death March". In Sandler, Stanley (ed.). World War II in the Pacific: an encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 159–60. ISBN 978-0-8153-1883-5.
  23. 1 2 "Bataan Death March. Britannica Encyclopedia Online". Britannica.com. April 9, 1942. Retrieved December 17, 2012.
  24. ↑ Greenberger, Robert (2009). The Bataan Death March: World War II Prisoners in the Pacific. p. 40.
  25. ↑ Doyle, Robert C. (2010). The enemy in our hands: America's treatment of enemy prisoners of war from the Revolution to the War on Terror. University Press of Kentucky. p. xii. ISBN 978-0-8131-2589-3.
  26. ↑ Hoyt, Eugene P. (2004). Bataan: a survivor's story. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-8061-3582-3.
  27. ↑ Stewart, Sidney (1957). Give Us This Day (revised ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-393-31921-7. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  28. ↑ "O'Donnell Provost Marshal Report". www.mansell.com.
  29. ↑ Downs, William David (2004). The Fighting Tigers: the untold stories behind the names on the Ouachita Baptist University WWII memorial. University of Arkansas Press. pp. 106–7. ISBN 978-0-9713470-5-2.
  30. 1 2 "Bataan Death March". Interaksyon. April 8, 2012. Archived from the original on December 20, 2016. Retrieved December 5, 2016.
  31. 1 2 Ornauer, Dave (January 20, 2016). "American walks Bataan Death March to raise awareness of Philippine involvement". Stars & Stripes. Retrieved December 5, 2016.
  32. ↑ Ahn, Tony (January 14, 2016). "Hiking the Bataan Death March 2015". MSN Lifestyle. Microsoft Network. Retrieved December 5, 2016.[permanent dead link]
  33. ↑ Falk, Stanley L. (1962). Bataan: The March of Death. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 197–198. OCLC 1084550.
  34. ↑ "Bataan History". New Mexico Guard National Museum. Archived from the original on November 30, 2016. Retrieved December 5, 2016.
  35. ↑ Herman, Arthur (2016). Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior. Random House Publishing Group. p. 649. ISBN 978-0-8129-9489-6. He had learned how 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners had been force-marched.[...] The 18,000 prisoners who couldn't make the Bataan death march had been either shot or beaten to death along the way.
  36. ↑ Horner, David Murray; Robert John O'Neill (2010). World War II: The Pacific. Rosen Publishing. pp. 74, 77. ISBN 978-1-4358-9133-3. Between 7,000 and 10,000 died or were killed during the "Bataan Death March" ... Somewhere between 6,000 to 18,000 POWs died or were murdered during the Death March
  37. ↑ Darman, Peter (2012). Attack on Pearl Harbor: America Enters World War II. Rosen Publishing. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-4488-9233-4.
  38. ↑ Friedland, Roger & Mohr, John (2004). Matters of culture: cultural sociology in practice. Cambridge University Press. p. 197. ISBN 978-0-521-79545-6.
  39. ↑ McCoy, Melvin; Mellnik, S.M.; Kelley, Welbourn (February 7, 1944). "Prisoners of Japan: Ten Americans Who Escaped Recently from the Philippines Report on the Atrocities Committed by the Japanese in Their Prisoner-War-Camps". Life. Vol. 16, no. 6. pp. 26–31, 96–98, 105–106, 108, 111.
  40. ↑ "LIFE". February 7, 1944 – via Google Books.
  41. ↑ Jansen, Marius B. (2000). The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, Mass. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. p. 655. ISBN 9780674003347.
  42. ↑ History (November 9, 2009). "Bataan Death March". history.com. Retrieved February 3, 2023.
  43. ↑ Chappell, John David (1997). Before the bomb: how America approached the end of the Pacific War. University of Kentucky Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-8131-1987-8.
  44. ↑ Toland, John (1970). The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936–1945. New York: Random House. p. 300.
  45. 1 2 Sandler, Stanley, ed. (2001). "Homma Masaharu (1887–1946)". World War II in the Pacific: an encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. p. 420. ISBN 978-0-8153-1883-5.
  46. ↑ Yuma Totani, Justice in Asia and the Pacific region, 1945–1952: Allied war crimes prosecutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 40–46
  47. ↑ Solis, Gary D. (2010). The law of armed conflict: international humanitarian law in war. Cambridge University Press. p. 384. ISBN 978-0-521-87088-7.
  48. ↑ "The Trial Of General Homma | AMERICAN HERITAGE". www.americanheritage.com.
  49. ↑ Solis, Gary D. (2010). The law of armed conflict: international humanitarian law in war. Cambridge University Press. pp. 384, 385. ISBN 978-0-521-87088-7.
  50. ↑ Inside the Bataan Death March: Defeat, Travail and Memory: Kevin C. Murphy p.30-31
  51. ↑ John L. Ginn, Sugamo Prison, Tokyo: an account of the trial and sentencing of Japanese war criminals in 1948, by a U.S. participant (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 1992), pp. 101–105.
  52. ↑ "Kadel, Maj. Richard C. – Bataan Project". May 11, 2019.
  53. ↑ "Manchester Evening Herald" (PDF). June 11, 1949.
  54. ↑ "Japanese/American POW Friendship Program". www.us-japandialogueonpows.org. 2010. Archived from the original on October 16, 2012.
  55. ↑ Brotman, Barbara (April 1, 2013). "From Death March to Hell Ships". Chicago Tribune. pp. Lifestyles.
  56. ↑ Among others, additional narration was provided by Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Kathleen Turner, and Robert Wagner. "Never the Same: The Prisoner of War Experience". Gene Siskal Film Center. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Archived from the original on March 28, 2014.
  57. ↑ Lauren E. Toney (March 24, 2012). "Bataan survivors attend rededication of monument Saturday". Las Cruces Sun-News. Archived from the original on March 14, 2013. Retrieved February 22, 2013.
  58. ↑ "Timeline". Battle for Bataan!. New Mexico State University. Archived from the original on March 28, 2004. Retrieved February 23, 2013.
  59. ↑ "Central Complex". www.generalservices.state.nm.us.
  60. ↑ "USA Marathons & Marathoners 2007". marathonguide.com. Retrieved May 8, 2008.
  61. ↑ Schurtz, Christopher (March 22, 2010). "Record Number Gather To Honor Bataan Death March". Las Cruces Sun-News. p. 1.
  62. ↑ Ramirez, Steve (March 21, 2017). "Largest Bataan Memorial Death March brings in 27,500 pounds of food". Las Cruces Sun-News. Retrieved January 30, 2025.
  63. ↑ "History of Bataan Death March – New Mexico National Guard Museum". bataanmuseum.com. Archived from the original on November 30, 2016. Retrieved November 12, 2014.
  64. ↑ Ramirez, Steve. "Early reviews favorable of Bataan Memorial Death March". www.abqjournal.com. Las Cruces Sun-News.
  65. ↑ Shofner was an American officer, captured on Corregidor, who escaped DaPeCol in 1943.

Further reading

allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March