Bataan Death March

So, I thought I would take a brief respite from the Balkans and move into another uplifting chapter in history...the atrocities committed by the Japanese in Southeast Asia! I was definitely familiar with the term 'Bataan Death March,' but only as a hyperbolic expression of something that was long, awful, and painful.

It is more. Here goes:
Bataan is a province in the Philippines and was a gasoline storage site for the US in the Pacific War with Japan during WWII; US forces were stationed there under General King.
Japanese forces invaded the Philippines in December of 1941. The American/Filipino troops retreated to the Bataan Peninsula, but were attacked by the Japanese in January 1942. King surrendered after months of siege in April; at the time of the surrender, King commanded 75,000 troops, consisting of 67,000 Filipinos, 1,000 Chinese Filipinos, and 11,796 Americans.

The March: Began on April 10, 1942, it was 61 miles (some sources say 70), from Mariveles (on the tip of Bataan) to San Fernando. If you tarried or fell behind, you were executed or left for dead. Prisoners were beaten, denied food and water and allowed little time for rest or sleep. One account has several prisoners who stopped to fill their canteens being shot immediately by their captors. For part of the march, the prisoners were crammed into boxcars and many suffocated, but the rest was on foot--and completed in a week. 54,000/75,000 troops made it to the destination.

The villain: Lt. General Masuhuro Homma. Basically, he decided that, because more men surrendered than he had anticipated, most of them would just have to walk. He was later tried, convicted and executed for his role in the March.

Aftermath: this is sweet/creepy--apparently groups ranging from the Boy Scouts to the National Guard arrange 'death marches', honoring those who survived/died at Bataan. It's like a Race to End MS, but, er, more macabre...