On April 10, 1942, one of the most horrific war crimes in American history began.
The event would forever change how America viewed its enemies.
And on this day in history, the Bataan Death March began that shocked America to its core.
The brutal Bataan Death March remains one of history’s darkest moments
The Japanese invasion of the Philippine Islands came just days after the Pearl Harbor attack, catching American and Filipino troops completely unprepared.
For three brutal months, Allied forces fought desperately on the island of Luzon, making their final stand on the Bataan Peninsula until April 1942.
On April 8, American General Edward King made the heart-wrenching decision to surrender his forces, telling his men, “You did not surrender. You had no alternative but to obey my orders.”
A somber broadcast from Corregidor Island told the world, “Bataan has fallen. The Philippine-American troops on this war-ravaged and bloodstained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody but unbowed, they have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the enemy.”
Japanese captors unleash unspeakable brutality on American soldiers
What followed was not the honorable treatment of prisoners of war but a display of sadistic cruelty that still haunts military history.
The Japanese rounded up approximately 78,000 American and Filipino troops and civilians, many already malnourished and sick from months of fighting.
Lieutenant Kermit Lay witnessed the horror firsthand. “They pulled us off into a rice paddy and began shaking us down,” he recounted. “There were about a hundred of us, so it took time to get to all of us. Everyone had pulled their pockets wrong side out and laid all their things out in front. They were taking jewelry and doing a lot of slapping. After the shakedown, the Japs took an officer and two enlisted men behind a rice shack and shot them.”
American soldier Bert Banks watched in horror as a Japanese guard cut off a fellow prisoner’s hand with a machete for not removing a ring quickly enough. When Banks tried to help, he was pushed aside as the wounded man was bayoneted and left to die.
A Japanese colonel named Masanobu Tsuji even executed 400 Filipino officers after their surrender, viewing their resistance as traitorous.
The Death March begins as soldiers face impossible conditions
On April 10, the nightmare intensified as prisoners were forced to march nearly 65 miles north in groups of 100.
Most had been denied water since surrendering and were forced to stand in the scorching sun while their captors relaxed in the shade.
As temperatures soared to 110 degrees, the already weakened men began to collapse. Those who slowed down or fell were shot or bayoneted on the spot.
Men desperate for water were executed for simply asking. Those brave enough to reach for water from roadside puddles were gunned down immediately.
Japanese trucks deliberately ran over fallen prisoners, while “clean-up crews” finished off those too weak to continue.
Filipino civilians who attempted to offer food or water to the prisoners were chased away or shot by the guards.
At various points along the route, prisoners were tied to trees or fences and executed as warnings to others.
The journey’s horrific final leg reveals depths of Japanese cruelty
Staff Sergeant Alf Larson later wrote, “The train consisted of six or seven World War I era boxcars, ‘forty-by-eights,’ I guess they called them. They packed us in the cars like sardines, so tight you couldn’t sit down. Then they shut the door. If you passed out, you couldn’t fall down.”
“It was close to summer and the weather was hot and humid, hotter than Billy blazes! We were on the train from early morning until late afternoon without getting out. People died in the railroad cars,” Larson recounted.
When Filipino civilians tried to feed the prisoners at a stop near Clark Field, Japanese guards beat them away with clubs. As Larson described, “The Filipinos tried to throw the food since they couldn’t get close to the train. We never got the food.”
After the train journey, prisoners force-marched the final nine miles to Camp O’Donnell, a facility built for 10,000 that would now hold 60,000 survivors in conditions even more horrific than the march itself.
Men died at the rate of 400 per day in the camp.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 men perished during the five-day death march alone, making it one of the greatest atrocities in the Pacific Theater during World War II.
The Japanese kept no records of the death toll, or they destroyed them when American forces recaptured the Philippines in 1944.
The survivors of the Bataan Death March had to wait until 1944, when American forces recaptured the Philippines, to be freed from their nightmare. While many Americans have forgotten this dark chapter in our history, the lessons of Bataan remain as relevant as ever, reminding us of the high price of freedom and the importance of honoring those who endured such unimaginable suffering.
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