THE following are excerpts from Wikipedia so that the new generation may appreciate what transpired on April 9, 1942, when Japan invaded the Philippines: The Bataan death march began on that day when 80,000 Filipino and American soldiers surrendered to the Japanese imperial forces.
After a three-month battle for Bataan, the Filipino and American soldiers were taken as prisoners of war.
All told, approximately 2,500–10,000 Filipino and 100-650 American prisoners of war died before they could reach Camp O’Donnell which was converted into a concentration camp by the victorious Japanese invading army.
The 128-kilometer march was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon prisoners and civilians alike by the Japanese Army, and was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime.
The Japanese were unprepared for the number of prisoners that they were responsible for, and there was no organized plan on how to handle them.
Prisoners were stripped of their weapons and valuables, and told to march to Balanga, the capital of Bataan. Many were beaten, bayoneted and mistreated. The first major atrocity occurred when between 350 and 400 Filipino officers and NCOs were summarily executed after they had surrendered.
The Japanese failed to supply the prisoners with food or water until they had reached Balanga. Many of the prisoners died along the way of heat or exhaustion.
Even after arriving at Camp O’Donnell, the survivors of the march continued to die at a rate of 30–50 per day, leading to thousands more dead. Most of the dead were buried in mass graves that the Japanese dug out with bulldozers on the outside of the barbed wire surrounding the compound.