The picture shows a painting depicting bataan's death march
Bataan Death March is during World War II, Japan-made war crimes and abuse of prisoners of war incident, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Army began to invade the Philippines, and the United States and the Philippines fought fiercely for 4 months, and finally the United States and the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese army on April 9, 1942, the number of surrendered people was about 78,000, these surrendered prisoners of war, were forcibly escorted to a prisoner of war camp 120 kilometers away, all the way without food and water, and were stabbed to death and shot by the Japanese army, resulting in about 15,000 deaths.
At the beginning of the outbreak of the Pacific War, the US military in all fronts of the rout, only wake island and the Philippine battlefield performance is still eye-catching, the commander of the US military in the Philippines MacArthur transferred the main force to the Bataan Peninsula, abandoned the easy to attack and difficult to defend Manila, insisted on mountain warfare, guerrilla warfare and position warfare, greatly delayed the Japanese offensive pace, but due to the lack of supplies, poor performance of weapons and equipment, in the end still failed to stop the Japanese army to continue to attack the pace, MacArthur alone withdrew from the Philippines, leaving "I escaped danger, but I will come back" The U.S.-Philippine coalition forces that left behind to resist suffered a catastrophe after they surrendered after they ran out of ammunition and food.
Pictured here are ill-treated prisoners of war
Because of the poison of the bushido spirit, the Japanese soldiers regarded being prisoners as a very shameful thing, as long as they survived, they would continue to fight, even if they could not fight, they could not be captured alive by the enemy, and in the values of the United States and other Western countries, if they fought on the battlefield until they ran out of ammunition, exhausted mountains and water, and had fulfilled their duties, then they could choose to surrender, save their lives, and wait for the end of the war in the prisoner of war camp, and this kind of thinking eventually harmed the US-Philippine coalition forces on the Bataan Peninsula.
According to the Geneva Conventions, the soldiers of the United States and the Philippines who surrendered on the Bataan Peninsula should be treated decently as prisoners of war, but even the Japanese army itself did not expect that it could capture so many enemy prisoners of war, and for a time it was not prepared, according to the plan of the Japanese army, it was intended to send the prisoners of war to the O'Donnell prisoner of war concentration camp 120 kilometers away by truck, but because there were not enough trucks, under the threat of bayonets and guns, the Prisoners of the United States and the Philippines were forced to march 120 kilometers in the sweltering tropical jungle, history said" Bataan Death March".
For a strong soldier, 120 kilometers of march is not difficult, but the soldiers of the United States and the Philippines after months of hard fighting, have long been exhausted, starving, physical condition is not as good as before, the whole six days of marching, the Japanese army did not provide any drinking water for the prisoners of war, the only food is just a golf ball of rice balls, in the humid and hot climate of the tropical rainforest, this rice ball quickly deteriorated and sour, in the eyes of the Japanese army, these U.S. and Philippine coalition forces chose to surrender, It was to abandon his dignity as a soldier, he had no need to treat them as human beings, and all prisoners of war who tried to find water and food were killed by the Japanese army.
As long as the physical strength is not left behind, the prisoners of war will be immediately killed by the escorting Japanese troops, and in the tropical rainforest climate, the frail death of prisoners of war is not a minority, and even after being put into the prisoner of war camp, the Japanese army's abuse has never stopped, 78,000 U.S. and Filipino coalition prisoners of war as many as 15,000 died in the Bataan death march, in the two months of arriving at the camp died about 26,000 people, bataan death march became one of the most appalling incidents of prisoner abuse created by the Japanese army. In the United States alone, there are nearly a hundred books devoted to reviewing or studying this war crime.
The picture shows the liberated American prisoners of war
At the end of the war, MacArthur successfully returned to the Philippines, rescued prisoners of war who had been held and mistreated by the Japanese army for several years, fulfilled the rhetoric of "I will return", and was believed to have instructed Masaharu Honma to carry out the Bataan death march, and after the end of the war, he was included in the list of war criminals, tried in Manila, and in April 1946, Honma Masaharu was executed by shooting.