Why was bataan death march important

Along with death by torture, many men died of dysentery. Many artesian wells lined the path of the march, but any prisoner who tried to approach was killed. Desperation would lead men to resort to drinking whatever they could find. The carabao would sit in there and bathe. We would see that and spread the scum along the side and just drink the water. The result was dysentery, real bad dysentery. Following the end of the march, the prisoners were packed into hot steel boxcars with barely enough room to breathe.

During this mile ride, men continued to die from heat and exhaustion. The camp diet was lugao , a watery rice gruel that contained fish heads, vegetables, and usually inch-long weevils. Some POWs ate the weevils for their protein value. The prisoners supplemented their diet with prison stew, which they made from anything edible that they stole, such as turnips, or rats.

Rogers and Bartlit describe how patients lay there and waited to die, because there was little to no medicine. One prisoner described having his appendix removed with a sharpened spoon and no anesthetic. Escaping from the prison might have appeared to be an option, because the fence was just a couple strands of barbed wire. However, the nearest safe zone was 9, miles away in Australia. In addition, the Japanese implemented a system of death squads, where they created groups of ten men.

If one man tried to escape, they all would be killed. Punishments and sadistic acts continued in the prison as well. Then, they would jump on the stomach. This punishment nearly always resulted in death. The prison camps in the Philippines were not the end for the dwindling number of survivors of the death march and other POWs. A small canteen and bucket of rice would be occasionally lowered into the cramped hold, and these rations would be auctioned off every time a man died.

These journeys would take about a month, despite the short distance between the Philippines and mainland Japan, China, and Korea. Because the ships were unmarked, the hell ships were susceptible to enemy fire, and needed to take a convoluted route. Unfortunately, about five ships were sunk by the American navy, and about 10, POWs lost their lives at sea as a result. For more on the hell ships, read here. The hell ships arrived in different places, but many were destined for labor camps in Japan.

At these labor camps, the POWs sometimes engaged in acts of sabotage, bending the fins of bombs and stealing food, explain Rogers and Bartlit. The cruel treatments continued as punishments included forcing two POWs to strike each other in the face until both were bloody, as well as beheadings with samurai swords. Following the Japanese surrender, the remaining POWs received aid as planes dropped medicine and food. The troops immediately went on half rations; by the end of the fighting four months later they were on quarter rations.

Troops in intensive combat require 3, calories per day. As a result, the tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers who entered Japanese captivity in April were already suffering from malnutrition and disease. The Japanese intended for captured Filipino and American soldiers to march the roughly sixty-five miles from the Bataan peninsula to a railhead inland, from which they would be moved by train to a prisoner of war camp.

The victors, however, were unprepared for the tidal wave of around 75, prisoners 65, Filipino, 10, American who fell into their hands. Food, water, medical care, and transportation were in short supply. The poor condition of the troops left many of them in desperate shape as they were forced to endure 5 to 10 days of marching in the hot sun. Captured soldiers along the march with their hands tied behind their backs.

Photo from National Archives. Japanese cultural attitudes made matters much worse. The Japanese considered surrender dishonorable; their troops were encouraged to commit suicide rather than fall into enemy hands. As a result, Japanese soldiers by and large were brutal captors. More than a third of U. Japanese soldiers denied basic needs — especially water — to the prisoners of war trudging along the dusty roads of Luzon.

Soldiers who fell out of the column were beaten, bayonetted, shot, and occasionally beheaded. Although researchers still debate the numbers, it is reasonable to conclude that several thousand Filipinos and several hundred Americans were killed on the march, with as many as 30, dying of disease within weeks after entering captivity. American prisoners use improvised litters to carry comrades too weak to walk along the road.

The U. Propaganda poster featuring the Bataan Death march and Japanese mistreatment of U. When U. The Americans felt as though the Japanese Americans were the enemy and felt as though they needed to be protected by them. The relocation wrecked havoc on traditional families Jardin. It is said that the attack happened because the US would not ship oil to Japan. Admiral Yamamoto who was the leader of this planned attack thought that was a good reason to start a war.

As a nation, America felt the right way to get back at Japan was to bomb them back but on a more massive scale. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu. There is no reason to believe that the defense of their own island would not have been even more tragic. Additionally the United States would have begun to intensify their bombing missions in preparation for an invasion.

Tokyo alone over a twenty four hour, period suffered somewhere between 80, to , deaths. In the following six months of bombing civilian deaths rose too nearly , and over 8 million were displaced or homeless Giangreco, Being sent there was a permit death sentence on the people, it made it hard to keep the belief that you were going to survive. It has showed that approximately only , people survived their horrid time in the Auschwitz camp.

When the Soviet Soldiers liberated Cracow the German soldiers forced about 58, prisoners on a march towards the third Reich.

The Nazi destroyed all burning chambers, documents, experiment results and also a vast majority of the buildings. The majority quartered there because of growing apprehensions regarding an aggressive Japanese presence. A plan was developed to cripple the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor to allow time for Japan to seize the resource areas it needed and fortify them to the point that retaking them would cost more lives than the imperial High Command thought Americans would be willing to pay.

President Truman and the United States Government had many alternatives to dropping the atomic on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in