Saturday, December 7, 2019

The Greatest Surrender in American Military History and The Bataan Death March

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   The infamous Bataan Death March that claimed the lives of some 5,000 soldiers and showcased the extent of brutality that the Japanese were capable of during WWII.
   It all began with the Battle of Bataan, which started in January 1941. US and Filipino troops that were defending against Japanese forces in the southern Bataan Peninsula and had been expecting back up from Pearl Harbor (you'll never guess what happened). As the reinforcements failed to arrive and the Japanese attacks strengthened, General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the U.S. Army in the Far East, ordered his men to retreat. For nearly five months, December 1941 to early April 1942, US and Filipino troops tried their best to hold off the Japanese soldiers, who had now doubled in number. The sense of abandonment and low morale that the soldiers experienced was summed up in this limerick:

We're the Battling Bastards of Bataan, 

No Mama, No Papa, No Uncle Sam,

No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,

No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces,

And nobody gives a damn!

   Finally, on April 9, 1942, General MacArthur surrendered 12,000 American and 58,000 Filipino soldiers to the Japanese. Ravaged by diseases like dysentery and malaria and suffering from lack of food and supplies, 1/3 of the soldiers were either sick or wounded.
   Thus, the surrendered soldiers were forced to embark on a 7-day, 65-mile journey through 100-degree heat. Due to the Japanese Bushido code, a concept which expressed that surrender was cowardly and worse than death, the surrendered troops were treated horribly and as inferiors. On their journey, they received no food, no water, and very few breaks. In an interview, Lester Tenney explained just how brutal the Japanese military was:
   “It was called the death march, because of the way they killed you. If you stopped walking, you died. If you had to defecate, you died. If you had a malaria attack, you died. It made no difference what it was; either they cut your head off, they shot you, or they bayonetted you. But you died, if you fell down.”
   In addition to the terrible conditions, the prisoners were also killed and tortured frequently at the hands of Japanese soldiers: “Numerous emasculations, disemboweling, decapitations, amputations, hundreds of bayoneting, shootings and just plain bludgeoning to death of the defenseless, starved and wounded soldiers were common on the march…in full view of their helpless comrades,” said Paul Ashton, one of the soldiers who survived.
 To this day, the Bataan Death March remains a notorious example of the evils war brings out.

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1 comment:

  1. Your post was super informative and painted a really good picture of how brutal the Bataan Death March was. I love how you explained why the battle was a failure and gave a detailed description about the conditions of the march. After some more research, I found out that, at first, news and details about the march were hidden from the American public. The reason was that the government didn't want to risk Japanese forces punishing the captives. However, the news was released in 1944 to boost a war-bond drive campaign and to rekindle the American fighting spirit.

    https://www.britannica.com/event/Bataan-Death-March/The-march-and-imprisonment-at-Camp-ODonnell#ref326110

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