Bataan Death March

Bataan Death March
Part of the Battle of Bataan, World War II
A burial detail of American and Filipino prisoners of war uses improvised litters to carry fallen comrades at Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, 1942, following the Bataan Death March.
Date 9–17 April 1942 Location Mariveles, Bataan and Bagac, Bataan to Capas, Tarlac, Luzon Island, Philippines
Casualties and losses
Exact figures are unknown. Estimates range from 5,500 to 18,650 POW deaths.

The Bataan Death March^[a] was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 75,000^[1] American and Filipino prisoners of war (POW) from the municipalities of Bagac and Mariveles on the Bataan Peninsula to Camp O'Donnell via San Fernando.

The transfer began on 9 April 1942 after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II. The total distance marched from Mariveles to San Fernando and from the Capas Train Station to various camps was 65 miles (105 km). Sources also report widely differing prisoner of war casualties prior to reaching Camp O'Donnell: from 5,000 to 18,000 Filipino deaths and 500 to 650 American deaths during the march.

The march was characterized by severe physical abuse and wanton killings. POWs who fell or were caught on the ground were shot. After the war, the Japanese commander, General Masaharu Homma and two of his officers, Major General Yoshitaka Kawane and Colonel Kurataro Hirano, were tried by United States military commissions for war crimes and sentenced to death on charges of failing to prevent their subordinates from committing atrocities. Homma was executed in 1946, and Kawane and Hirano in 1949.

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