Wen | exploded
The terrible crimes committed by Japanese soldiers in World War II are obvious to all, not only creating one bloody case after another on the land of China, but also not sparing the US troops who fought against them. The most brutal atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers against the U.S. military were the Bataan Death March in 1942.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, a surprise attack that not only won a complete victory but also gave the Japanese an overwhelming advantage in the Pacific, although this advantage did not last long. After the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, even if the United States and Japan completely tore their faces, only ten hours later, the Japanese army continued to sneak attack the US garrison in the Philippines. In the face of the menacing Japanese army, MacArthur, the supreme commander of the US army in the Philippines, ordered all US troops to abandon Manila and retreat to the Bataan Peninsula.
Because the U.S. military's high command positioned the strategy in the early days of World War II as "first Europe and then Asia", the European theater had priority, and a large number of armaments and materiel were used to support the British, so for the Philippine army in the Pacific, the US military can be said to be unattainable. Therefore, the isolated U.S. and Filipino armies could only engage the Japanese in a bloody battle on the Bataan Peninsula. However, the morale of the Japanese army in the early stages of the war was extremely high, and with the assistance of a strong air force and navy near the water tower, the American troops who retreated to the Bataan Peninsula were soon unable to support it.
In order not to let the senior U.S. general MacArthur become a prisoner of the Japanese army, US President Roosevelt repeatedly sent a telegram asking the latter to leave the dangerous Philippines for Australia, although MacArthur initially refused, but watching the Japanese army approaching little by little, MacArthur also believed that the general trend had gone. On March 11, 1942, he left the war-torn Philippines by speedboat and went to Australia to serve as commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific Theater. Of course, we all know the famous quote he said after escaping from danger - I will come back again!
Although MacArthur did return later, his soldiers suffered a nightmarish torture. It turned out that not long after MacArthur left, General King and General Wainwright, who had succeeded him, surrendered to the Japanese on April 9 and May 6, 1942, respectively, and the two surrenders totaled 90,000 U.S.-Philippine Allies.
The Japanese were dumbfounded at first in the face of so many American prisoners, as only 35,000 Japanese troops landed at the time. At this time, masaharu Honma, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese dispatch army in the Philippines, who had long been influenced by Bushido, was very dismissive of these surrendered American troops, because in his dictionary, soldiers should not surrender. Therefore, in order to deter the US military and to establish his own prestige, Honma Masaharu deliberately instructed his subordinates to treat these surrendered US troops in the same way that prisoners of war were treated in the Geneva Convention. To this end, he also specially planned a "death march".
The so-called Death March refers to the Japanese escorting surrendered U.S. troops from Milestone 167 on the Bataan Peninsula on foot to be held at Odernell concentration camp 160 kilometers away. Although the 160-kilometer marching distance was not much far for the soldiers, these American prisoners were tortured and descended by the Japanese army, and the result was a full six days, and the American troops who were escorted in these six days could be said to have spent in hell on earth.
First of all, the Philippines was in the heat of the summer, and before the march, the Japanese army did not allow the American prisoners to carry any water, not only did they have no water, but even the food was sent a day similar to a "golf ball-sized thing". In addition, the Japanese army wantonly beat up American prisoners during the march, not to mention that there were a large number of wounded and sick people in this group of prisoners. The most fatal thing is that because these US troops have been fighting the Japanese army in the jungles of the Bataan Peninsula for a long time, many people have suffered from diarrhea, dysentery and other diseases.
Moreover, Honma Masaharu also ordered the Japanese army to execute all those American troops who were left behind or stopped, so the 80,000 prisoners of war in this forced march killed nearly 15,000 people (and later after reaching the concentration camp, another 25,000 died), the ratio reached a terrible 2:1, that is, one of the two American prisoners died, so it is really called "death march".
After Japan's defeat and surrender, MacArthur took Masaharu Honma to Manila for revenge and tried him as a war criminal, and led his death sentence. He was accused of torturing tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war to death during the Bataan Death March he ordered. On April 3, 1946, Masaharu Honma was shot on the outskirts of Manila. (Li Qiang)