Last night i was watching this show on the military channel called "Ghosts of Bataan". Now like a lot of people ive heard of the bataan death march, maybe glossed over it in a history book, but never really paid any attention to it. If i could find this program on google videos or youtube id post a link, it was very moving to hear the surviors talk. But one comment one of those vets made when weighed against the attrocities committed by the japanese was that at pearl harbor, around 2,400 people were killed. On the Bataan death march, the death count there is cited by some courses as between 6,000, and 11,000 men, other sources cite the figure as 18,000 men - AND YET... you never hear of it. No mention of it at all in the movies or anything.
So whats the big deal?
(i know wiki isn't the greatest, but its really hard to screw this info up)
Quote:
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, guttings (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) in tropical heat. Falling down, unable to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure.
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 post war 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 post war 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.
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So where exactly is Bataan on the map? I'll wager most won't know.
Some links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March
http://ghostofbataan.com/
http://www.npswapa.org/gallery/album14