sourced story
April 1942Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Sixty to eighty thousand prisoners are forced on a 65-mile march after Bataan's surrender

On the timeline · around April 1942 · The Tide TurnsAxis AscendantThe Tide TurnsSixty to eighty thousand prisoners are forced on a 65-mile march after Bataan's surrender1942

What happened

American and Filipino forces on the Bataan Peninsula held out for 99 days against Japan's invasion of the Philippines, well past Japan's own 50-day objective for the campaign. When they surrendered on 9 April 1942, the Japanese army found itself with 60,000 to 80,000 prisoners of war and no real plan to move that many men. The prisoners were forced to walk roughly 65 miles to a railhead further inland, through tropical heat and humidity, with no adequate food, water, or medical care provided. Guards beat, bayoneted, and in some cases beheaded prisoners who could not keep pace.

Why it matters

Filipino prisoners suffered disproportionately worse than American troops in both the march and its aftermath, a detail often lost when the march is remembered mainly as an American story. The march became one of the signature Japanese war crimes prosecuted after the war: Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma, the Japanese commander responsible for the Philippines campaign, was tried by an American military tribunal, convicted, and executed. Word of the march's brutality reached General MacArthur only in 1943, more than a year later, through a group of American prisoners who escaped a Mindanao camp and became known as the Davao Dozen.

How we know

The march is documented through survivor testimony gathered after the war, the 1945-46 war crimes tribunal record that convicted Homma, and the firsthand account of the Davao Dozen, the group of escaped prisoners whose report to MacArthur's command gave the United States its first confirmed account of what had happened.

Sources

See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.

Part of a timelineWorld War II59 events · From a staged skirmish at a bridge outside Beijing to a charter signed in San Francisco, the deadliest conflict in history, every event sourced.View all →