Never Forget the Bataan Death March

Eighty Years Ago The horrors of today's war in Ukraine recall some of the atrocities committed by the Japanese empire during World War II.

by Mindy Kotler, proprietor the American POWs of Japan blog

Published April 9, 2022 in the National Interest

Pvt. Lester Tenney of Illinois’ 192nd Tank Battalion felt lucky. The Japanese officer’s sword missed his head and neck. Although he was left with a large gash on his shoulder, medics could quickly sew it up and he was soon back on the dusty road up the Bataan Peninsula. To fall behind or to falter guaranteed death. Like the civilians of Ukraine’s besieged cities, the surrendered soldiers and civilians on the Bataan Death March were defenseless and at the barbarous mercy of the invaders. It began eighty years ago today, on April 9, 1942.

The Bataan Death March is remembered as one of the greatest war crimes of World War II. The Japanese commanders involved were prosecuted for crimes against humanity or for violating the international laws of war and executed. So seminal in American history were these events that Bataan is part of the American lexicon as a metaphor for a tortuous undertaking. It is why National Former Prisoner of War (POW) Recognition Day is held every April 9th. 

It is also one of the few Japanese war crimes for which the Japanese government has made a specific effort to atone. In 2009, the Japanese ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki, prompted by Tenney, traveled to the last convention of the American POWs of Japan and offered his country’s apology.  The ambassador also arranged a visitation program to Japan for surviving POWs.

“We extend a heartfelt apology for our country having caused tremendous damage and suffering to many people, including prisoners of war, those who have undergone tragic experiences in the Bataan Peninsula, Corregidor Island, in the Philippines, and other places,” he told the men and their families.

This apology, which never appeared on the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, was repeated to four visiting delegations of American POWs by three Japanese Foreign Ministers. Japan’s current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, when serving as foreign minister, met with the 2013 POW group. Among them were two Bataan Death March survivors, including a Native American survivor, as well as two widows of Death March survivors. To his credit, he participated in the first principle of reconciliation, which is to hear their story.

The full story is that the Death March came after four months of combat starting when Japan attacked the Philippines within hours of bombing Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. A three-month siege of the Bataan Peninsula accompanied by a starvation diet, air and artillery bombardment, and disease had taken their toll. The Allies’ Europe-first policy combined with Japan’s control of the sea and air ensured that neither resupply nor reinforcement of the Philippines would come.

In the early morning hours of April 9, 1942, the newly appointed commanding general of Am-Fil forces on the Bataan Peninsula, Maj. Gen. Edward P. King Jr., realized that his troops faced slaughter if they continued to fight. He decided the rational course was to order the men and women under his command—against Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s orders—to surrender. Thus, 78,000 troops (66,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans) were taken captive by Imperial Japan.  Among them there were dozens of European civilians—Czechs, Estonians, Latvians, Norwegians, Germans, Finns, Dutch, and British—who had volunteered to join the fight. In addition, there were at least 10,000 in two field hospitals in Bataan. It is the largest contingent of U.S. soldiers ever to surrender.

Focused on saving his exhausted and ailing troops, King could not imagine the horrors that surrender would hold. On the same day as the surrender, the Japanese put the survivors on what has become known as the Bataan Death March. It is estimated that perhaps 2,000 either swam the three shark-infested, mined miles to the fortress island of Corregidor (No one on Corregidor was on the Death March) or disappeared into the jungle. Those who made it to Corregidor became immediately members of the 4th Marines fighting shore defense. Corregidor and the associated three island fortresses surrendered on May 6th. 

The Bataan Death March was a poorly commanded effort to move the surrendered troops and civilians on the peninsula to a POW camp one hundred miles north. The result was that the Japanese neglected the sick and killed the wounded; denied the POWs food, water, and medical care; and abused, robbed, and tortured them. Many men stamped into the road by tanks or shot trying to drink from a stream remain missing. 

For most, the first leg of the Death March was sixty-five miles from the port of Mariveles at the southern tip of the Bataan Peninsula up the East Road to a train terminal at San Fernando. Others arrived at the East Road at the village of Pilar after a sixteen-mile trek from Bagac on the west side of Bataan. It took an average of five days in the tropical heat for the terrorized, sick, and starving men to reach the station. There they were stuffed standing one hundred at a time into small, unventilated boxcars for a twenty-four-mile ride north to the town of Capas. Many died in these rolling ovens.

The survivors were forced to walk another five miles to Camp O'Donnell, an unfinished Philippine Army training camp. With only two spigots of water and no sanitation, the camp was quickly compared with the Confederacy's Andersonville prison camp. Hundreds died of disease, starvation, dehydration, and despair. Most of the deaths from the Death March happened here or at its successor camp, Cabanatuan. 

Survivors of the Bataan Death March endured three-and-a-half years of death camps, brutal labor, and unimaginable indignities and injury. Many were taken to Japan aboard hellships to be slave laborers for Japanese companies in Formosa, Japan, Manchuria, and Korea.  Again they were denied food, medical care, clothes, and adequate housing. 

Tenney ended up in Mitsui’s Omuta coal mine near Nagasaki. The working conditions were so severe that POWs traded their meager meals to have their arm or leg broken so that they would get a short reprieve from going back underground. Today, the mine is a UNESCO World Industrial Heritage site.

More than half the Americans taken prisoner on Bataan died before war’s end. This was greater than the overall death rate for American POWs of Japan, which was 40 percent. It was more deadly to be a POW than a combat Marine in the Pacific. By comparison, the death rate for Americans taken prisoner by the Nazis was less than two percent.

As horrifying as the Bataan Death March was, it was not an exception in Japan’s war. Other death marches were imposed upon American and Allied POWs throughout the Pacific.Torture and executions were commonplace. Death from overwork and malnutrition were the norm. Abuse was systematic.

How a country treats the defenseless and dependent is a measure of their citizens’ values. How the victims endure the neglect and damage inflicted upon them also reflects values. Like the men and women on Bataan, there is much to admire in the Ukrainians. They persist and endure.

As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in August 1943, when the outcome of World War II was still uncertain, “The story of the fighting on Bataan and Corregidor—and, indeed, everywhere in the Philippines—will be remembered so long as men continue to respect bravery, and devotion, and determination.” This still holds true eighty years later.

August 1944 and the American POWs of Japan

Saipan

75 years ago, August 1944, the the end of WWII in the Pacific was in sight.

Whereas in Europe there was June's D-Day at Normandy, July in the Pacific saw a series of equally dramatic D-Days. The campaigns to capture the Mariana Islands–Saipan, Tinian and Guam–would cut off Japan from its resource-rich southern empire and clear the way for further advances to Tokyo. At Saipan and Tinian, the islands nearest to Japan, U.S. forces could establish crucial air bases from which the U.S. Army’s new long-range B-29 Superfortress bombers could inflict punishing strikes on Japan’s Home Islands ahead of an Allied invasion. Guam was personal. On December 10, 1941, it was the first U.S. territory to fall to Japan.

The Marines stormed ashore on Saipan on June 15, 1944 planning for a 3-day fight. Japanese forces proved greater and more ferocious than anticipated. U.S. bombing of the island had been ineffective. The bitter and bloody battle, the first conducted around a substantial civilian population, lasted three weeks through July 9. How the U.S. finally won, became the template for the rest of the war in the Pacific.

The first American POWs on Saipan were from a B-24 Liberator that crashed into the waters near Saipan on May 29, 1944. Piloted by Captain Loren Arthur Stoddard (CA), the 10-man crew was on a photo reconnaissance mission leading up to the American invasion of the island. Six of the men died on impact. Four survived in a raft for four days that drifted towards Saipan. On June 2, the men were picked up by a Japanese patrol, questioned for four days then flown to Japan where they were taken to the Ofuna Naval Interrogation Center in Kamakura, the infamous torture facility. Paralyzed from the waist down, Bombardier 1st Lt. Ernest Ferdinan Peschau, Jr. (NC) died en-route from Saipan on June 8th. Captain Stoddard, Co-Pilot 2nd Lt. Peter Hryskanich (NY), and Radio TSgt Lincoln S. Manierre (CT) survived their ordeal.

suicide cliff

The conclusion of the battle on Saipan made a lasting impression on American war planners. At dawn on July 7, the Japanese launched a gyokusai attack. (roughly translated as broken jewels, a reference to the destruction of an entire Japanese unit, a suicide attack that is sometimes called a banzai attack) The exact number of attackers will never be known, but it is estimated that more than 4,000 Japanese participated in this last-ditch assault on the American forces. A dozen or so Japanese soldiers carrying red flags led the way. Behind them came the remaining able-bodied Japanese soldiers. Behind that group of 3,000 men were the wounded, many on crutches and unable to carry a gun. Along with the wounded were the civilians of Saipan, carrying bamboo spears. The battle lasted 15 hours, leaving 650 American soldiers dead or wounded, and 4,300 Japanese killed.

As the fighting on Saipan continued, Japanese citizens headed to the Northern tip of the island. There they chose two specific areas, known today as Banzai Cliff and Suicide Cliff, and jumped to their deaths as families. The majority of the suicides happened in the last four days of fighting, between July 8th and July 12th.

By the end of the fighting, nearly 30,000 Japanese soldiers were dead, 5,000 by their own hands, including the island's Commander General Gen. Yoshitsugu Saito , who was found dead in a cave alongside Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the Naval commander who lead the Japanese carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor. Only 921 prisoners were captured. Of the 25,000 Japanese civilians on Saipan, 22,000 were dead as well, almost all of them having taken their own lives. Total casualties for the Marines and soldiers who fought on Saipan amounted to 786 officers and 13,438 enlisted men killed, wounded or missing in action.

Saipan showed American war planners that there were long, hard battles ahead against an enemy determined not to surrender, but to ensure as many casualties, military and civilian, as possible.in their defeat. Saipan became the measure for a future battles, especially in planning for the invasion of Japan. The battle for Japan was expected to look much like the battle for Saipan: large ground forces, air support, a civilian population, rugged terrain, a suicidal defense to the last man. The “Saipan Ratio” was developed to determine how the future battle would unfold. For example, on Saipan the Americans lost four soldiers for every seven Japanese. Planners figured there were roughly 3.5 million enemy soldiers waiting for them on Japan. As they applied the Saipan Ratio of 4:7 to the invasion of Japan, they estimated American casualties would be roughly 2 million, 500,000 of which would be killed and the rest wounded. This assumed a battle lasting roughly two months. If it dragged on, casualties would go up from there.

Another lesson of Saipan, was that America's African American Marines were more than ready and able for battle. Saipan was the first use of the Montford Point Marines in combat during World War II. First used to unload food and ammunition from landing vehicles and deliver the supplies under fire to troops on Saipan's beach, they were soon in combat fighting alongside the white Marines. The Montford Point Marines were awarded the Congressional Gold medal in 2011 in recognition of their personal sacrifice and service to their country during World War II.

MacArthur, Roosevelt, Nimitz

The loss of Saipan stunned the political establishment in Tokyo. Many of Saipan’s citizens were Japanese, and the loss of Saipan marked the first defeat in Japanese territory that had not been added during Japan’s aggressive expansion by invasion in 1941 and 1942. Worse still, General Hideki Tojo, Japan’s wartime prime minister, had publicly promised that the United States would never take Saipan. He and his cabinet, which included Kishi (Abe's grandfather) was forced to resign barely a week after the U.S. conquest of the island, July 18th.

After Saipan, American troops turned toward Guam and Tinian. On July 8th, cruisers and destroyers of Task Group 53.18, commanded by Rear Adm. Charles Turner Joy, began daily bombardment operations on Japanese defenses in Guam. Battleships joined the bombardment group on July 14. U.S. Marines and soldiers made amphibious landings on July 21. Guam was secured August 10. The assault on Tinian began July 24 and formal fighting ended by August 1.

click to order

And not to be forgotten, on July 13, 1944, after being adrift in the Pacific for 43 day when his B-24, Green Hornet, crashed during a rescue mission, California Olympian and Airman Louis Zamperini (CA) is captured by the Imperial Japan Navy near the Kwajalein Atoll known as “Execution Island.” He is transported to Kwajalein after three days. In his cell he discovers carved on the wall “Nine Marines marooned on Makin Island, August 18, 1942,” followed by their names). The Marines, he learned, had been executed. He was soon taken to Japan and the Ofuna Naval Interrogation Center in Kamakura,

In the midst of these battles, July 26-27 , the Pacific Strategy Conference was held in Hawaii. President Roosevelt met with Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur at Pearl Harbor to decide the next priority of the war in the Pacific: Formosa or the Philippines. On the island, Roosevelt witnessed exercises in preparation of the invasion of Japan.

ROOSEVELT'S 1942 STATEMENT ON PUNISHMENT OF WAR CRIMES

DOCUMENT ON THE HISTORY OF THE  POWS OF JAPAN
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT'S STATEMENT ON PUNISHMENT OF WAR CRIMES
August 21, 1942
White House news release.

The Secretary of State recently forwarded to me a communication signed by the Ambassador of the Netherlands and the: Ministers of Yugoslavia and Luxembourg on behalf of the Governments of Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the French National Committee in London, calling attention to the barbaric crimes; against civilian populations which are being committed in occupied countries, particularly on the continent of Europe.

In this communication, attention was invited to the declaration signed in London on January 13, 1942 by the representatives of nine governments whose countries are under German occupation. This declaration affirmed that acts of violence thus perpetrated against the civilian populations are at variance with accepted ideas concerning acts of war and political offenses as these are understood by civilized nations; stated that the punishment, through the channel of organized justice, of those guilty and responsible for these crimes, is one of the principal war aims of the contracting governments; and recorded the determination of the contracting governments in a spirit of international solidarity to see to it that those guilty and responsible, whatever their nationality, are handed over to justice and tried and that the sentences pronounced are carried out.

The communication which I have just received from the chiefs of mission of the Netherlands, Yugoslavia and Luxembourg states that these acts of oppression and terror have taken proportions and forms giving rise to the fear that as the defeat of the enemy countries approaches, the barbaric and unrelenting character of the occupational regime will become more marked and may even lead to the extermination of certain populations.

As I stated on October 25, 1941:

"The practice of executing scores of innocent hostages in reprisal for isolated attacks on Germans in countries temporarily under the Nazi heel revolts a world already inured to suffering and brutality. Civilized peoples long ago adopted the basic principle that no man should be punished for the deed of another. Unable to apprehend the persons involved in these attacks the Nazis characteristically slaughter fifty or a hundred innocent persons. Those who would 'collaborate' with Hitler or try to appease him cannot ignore this ghastly warning.

"The Nazis might have learned from the last war the impossibility of breaking men's spirit by terrorism. Instead they develop their 'lebensraum' and 'new order' by depths of frightfulness which even they have never approached before. These are the acts of desperate men who know in their hearts that they cannot win. Frightfulness can never bring peace to Europe. It only sows the seeds of hatred which will one day bring fearful retribution."

The Government of the United States has been aware for some time of these crimes. Our Government is constantly receiving additional information from dependable sources and it welcomes reports from any trustworthy source which would assist in keeping our growing fund of information and evidence up to date and reliable.

The United Nations are going to win this war. When victory has been achieved, it is the purpose of the Government of the United States, as I know it is the purpose of each of the United Nations, to make appropriate use of the information and evidence in respect to these barbaric crimes of the invaders, in Europe and in Asia. It seems only fair that they should have this warning that the time will come when they shall have to stand in courts of law in the very countries which they are now oppressing and answer for their acts.