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"For a week after the fall of Bataan I would permit none of our guns to fire against the tip of the peninsula. For six days of that week the Japs fired at us from that point, but I feared that is we returned the fire it might fall among my captured men. I found out later that even when we did fire, after the week of grace, we wounded some of our men, including Lieutenant Colonel Bob Lindsey, who had been my old I Corps artillery officer. However, even death from our shells might have been welcomed by some of our men at that time, if they had been able to know what was in store for them. For by April 15 the almost unbelievable Death March toward Camp O'Donnell was on."
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from his book, General Wainwright's Story |
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| "Death March" |
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| "The Japs
put us in groups of a hundred, columns of four, and marched us out by
groups.... This was April 9, the actual day of surrender. It was as
hot as the dickens. The Jap trucks started coming in. And there was
just clouds of dust. We started
marching.... as we moved on it got hotter and we
got more fatigued. After a couple of hours people started
faltering. Thirsty, tired, some, like me, already
sick. Most everyone was suffering from malaria
and diarrhea, all hungry. I'd been pretty
well fed, but a lot of these fellows
had been on half rations since January and, on top
of that, in all the confusion of the last few days they had
eaten nothing at all. So we were
hungry, plus being under pressure of combat.
We were emotionally spent, so horribly
frightened and depressed and distressed, not knowing what was going to
happen to us."
-Capt. Marion Lawton |
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1st Battalion, 31st Regiment, PA |
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“They’d halt us at these big artesian wells. There’d be a four-inch pipe coming up out of the ground which was connected to a well, and the water would be flowing full force out of it. There were hundreds of these wells so we could see the water and they wouldn’t let us have any. Anyone who would make a break for the water would be shot or bayoneted. Then they were left there. Finally it got so bad further along the road that you never got away form the stench of death. There were bodies laying all along the road in various degrees of decomposition-swollen, burst open, maggots crawling by the thousands-black, featureless corpses. And they stank! Sometimes they’d make us stand at attention two or three hours. They’d just stop and make us stand still. If you got caught sloughing off, shifting your weight from one foot to another, you’d get beaten. I remember very distinctly being beaten once. They hit me with a stalk of sugar cane, which is a pretty heavy instrument. Sugar cane grows anywhere from a half an inch to three inches in diameter and has a very hard skin on it. It doesn’t wear out very easy. And they beat me all about the head and shoulders. I can only remember being fed three times, and that consisted of walking past a gasoline drum that they were boiling rice in. You’d hold your hands out and a Filipino or a Japanese, depending on who was serving, would throw a spoonful of rice in your hands, and the next one would throw some salt on it, and you kept right on walking while eating out of your hands. At night, when they put you in a barbed-wire enclosure, the Japs wouldn’t let you dig latrines. Everybody has dysentery, and with no toilet facilities you’d just have your bowel movement wherever you were. So the nights were spent with people walking over you and around you, trying to avoid walking in excrement which was everywhere. It just wasn’t pleasant. No part of it. The days were worse than the nights though, because it was during the days that you caught the worst physical abuse. And the weather was hot, hot, hot. The sun comes up hot, and it goes down hot, and it stays hot all night. It was just plain hell hot, the humidity was high, and the dust was everywhere, trucks moving alongside, raising more dust and confusion.”
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-Pvt. Leon Beck |
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Antitank Company, 31st Infantry |
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On
9 April 1942, Gen. King surrendered his forces on Bataan, after the
Japanese had broken through the Fil-American last main line of resistance.
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The Japanese assembled their captive Fil-American soldiers in the various
sectors in Bataan, but mainly at Mariveles, the southern most tip of the
Peninsula. Although American trucks were available to transport the
prisoners, the Japanese decided to march the Defenders of Bataan to their
destinations. This march came to be known as the "Death March".
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The "Death March" was really a series of marches, which lasted
from five to nine days. The distance a captive had to march was determined
by where on the trail the captive began the march
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The basic trail of the "Death March" was as follows: a 55-mile
march from Mariveles, Bataan, to San Fernando, Pangpanga. At San Fernando,
the prisoners were placed into train-cars, made for cargo, and railed to
Capas, Tarlac, a distance of around 24 miles. Dozens died standing up in
the railroad cars, as the cars were so cramped that there was no room for
the dead to fall. They were, then, marched another six miles to their
final destination, Camp O'Donnell.
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Several thousand men died on the "Death March". Many died,
because they were not in any physical condition to undertake such a march.
Once on the march, they were not given any food or water. Japanese
soldiers killed many of them through various means. Also, POWs were
repeatedly beaten and treated inhumanely, as they marched.
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Approximately,
1,600 Americans died in the first forty days in Camp O'Donnell. Almost
20,000 Filipinos died in their first four months of captivity, in the same
camp. The healthier prisoners took turns burying their comrades into mass
graves, just as they, themselves, would be buried, days or weeks later.
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Camp O'Donnell did not have the sanitation sub-structure or water supply
necessary to hold such a large amount of men. Many died from diseases they
had since Bataan. Many caught new diseases, while at the Camp. There was
little medicine available to the prisoners. Their inadequate diets also
contributed to the high death rate. Diseases such as dysentery, from a
lack of safe drinking water, and Beri-Beri, from malnutrition were common
to the POWs. The Japanese soldiers continued to murder and miss-treat
their captives.
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Due to the high death rate in Camp O'Donnell, the Japanese transferred all
Americans to Cabanatuan, north of Camp O'Donnell, on June 6, 1942, leaving
behind five hundred as caretakers and for funeral details. They in-turn
were sent to Cabanatuan on July 5, 1942. The Filipino prisoners were
paroled, beginning in July, 1942.
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| * Cabanatuan was the camp in which the men from Corregidor were first united with the men from Bataan. No Americans* from Corregidor ever made the "Death March" or were imprisoned in Camp O'Donnell. Not having suffered the extreme depravations and conditions endured by the men from Bataan, the prisoners from Corregidor were, overall, much healthier. (*There were Philippine Scouts and some men from the Philippine Army, captured in Corregidor, who were interned in Camp O'Donnell.) |
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- The Battling Bastards of Bataan - Outline of events
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"The nights were the worst times for me. We walked all day, from early morning until dusk. Then we were put into barbed-wire enclosures in which the conditions were nearly indescribable. Filth and defecation all over the place. The smell was terrible. These same enclosures had been used every night, and when my group got to them, they were covered by the filth of five or six nights. I had dysentery pretty bad, but I didn't worry about it because there wasn't anything you could do about it. You didn't stop on "the March" because you were dead if you did. They didn't mess around with you. You didn't have time to pull out and go over and squat. You would just release wherever you were. Generally right on yourself, or somebody else if they happened to be in your way. There was nothing else to do. Without food it was water more than anything. It just went through me... bang. I was in a daze. One thing I knew was that I had to keep going. I was young, so I had that advantage over some of the older men I helped along the way. If someone near you started stumbling and looked like he was going to fall, you would try to literally pick him up and keep him going. You always talked to them. Tried to make them understand that if they fell they were gone. 'Course, there was nothing you could do about the people who fell in the back."
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| -Capt. Loyd Mills |
| Company C, 57th Infantry (PS) |
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"We were put in a wire compound, moved up tight-chest to back and elbow to elbow-and told to lie down and sleep. We got down to the ground somehow or other, legs spread, the man in front backed up against you, and you backed up against the man behind, and that is how we spent the night. Exhausted, acutely thirsty, stomachs rebelling from lack of food for several days, with aching muscles, raw blisters, and throats coated with dust, we were almost at the limit of our endurance. Many, as we found when the morning came, had passed the limit and were gone. The two dead in my immediate vicinity had to be hauled out of the compound, and I have no idea how many more there were scattered through the group. Over everything was a horrible stench. In the morning light we discovered the reason. The latrine trench provided for thousands of prisoners was an open pit, already overflowing with excreta and slime, and for several feet on each side swarming with gray, wriggling maggots."
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From his book, The Naked Flag Pole Battle for Bataan |
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| "So
you are dead. The easy words contain No sense of loss, no sorrow, no despair. Thus hunger, thirst, fatigue, combine to drain All feeling from our hearts. The endless glare, The brutal heat, anesthetize the mind. I can not mourn you now. I lift my load, The suffering column moves. I leave behind Only another corpse, beside the road." |
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There was a big tin warehouse or granary somewhere along "the March" that they packed us into one night. You could sit or lay down, but there was no water and it was very hot. And it stank! The next morning across the road the Japs had dug a hole and had some Filipino soldiers bury some dead men, except not everyone was dead. One poor soul kept trying to claw his way out of the hole. The Jap guards really started giving these Filipinos a hard time, trying to get them to cover this man up faster. Finally a Jap came over, took a shovel and beat him on the head with it. Then he had the Filipinos cover him up."
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-2d Lt. Kermit Lay |
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I Philippine Corps |
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During the four days that it took us to cross Bataan Province, it was like living on death row, watching the other captives march with a death-warmed-over appearance. Entering Pampanga Province was like being given a stay of execution. Now we were getting food from our own people. The fistful of rice that each prisoner had received form the Japanese at the last barrio on Bataan was a mere pittance, and not every prisoner was fed. The people thronged the road to see us and, with tears streaming down their faces, they asked for names of their loved ones. Others were flashing the victory sign. They constantly risked their lives by throwing all kinds of food at us. These included panocha (hard brown sugar), bucayo (coconut candy), bibingka (rice cakes), hard boiled eggs and fruit. The Japanese didn’t believe in charity to the captives, so they showed no compunction about swinging their rifles at the women, old men and children, and kicking over containers with water that had been placed by the residents at the side of the road for us to pick up. I remember an elderly man who tossed some food in a paper sack to our group. He had the care-worn countenance of a kindly uncle and when he saw that I had caught the sack, he smiled, exposing a mouth with missing teeth and obviously gratified. A guard spoiled his happy demeanor- and mine – by knocking him flat with his rifle butt, and the kicking him where he lay limp and expressionless, before moving on with our column. From Brownell Cole: The Filipinos were lined on the side of the road throwing something to us. This woman, who must have been about eight months pregnant, threw some of that coconut candy into the group and, of course, the POWs mad a fuss and attracted the attention of the guards. One of the guards went back and bayoneted her right into the side and you could hear her scream for a mile along the road.
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| -Mariano Vallarin |
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From his book, We Remember Bataan and Corregidor |
Back Music: by Michael Giacchino Next |
