Death March

The Survivors of Bataan

940.5472 KNO 1981 Donald Knox

Interviews with 68 survivors

• Japanese Attack Luzon 1941 December 8
• Bataan Surrender 1942 April 9 (10,000 Americans, Maj. Gen. Edward P. King)
• Corregidor Surrender 1942 May 6
• pxi 6000 to 7000 died in captivity
• pxiii 4000 alive when Japan surrenders in August 1945
• WP: between 19,500 and 50,000 Japanese surrendered to Western Allies before April 1945
• WP: Meiji Japan adopted western POW policies, no-surrender fanaticism emerged 1920s and 1930s
• pxxi April 1943 American prisoners escape Davao prison camp to Australia
• pxxii 78K troops, 66K Filipino and 12K Americans
• pxxxii Japanese planned for 40K captives

• p03 moderate prime minister ( Prince Fumimaro Konoe ) replaced by former war minister Hideki Tojo

• 04 35 B-17 bombers at Clark Field

• 10 told to scatter tanks, loaded machine guns by hand, then ordered to clean the cannons
• 13 B-17s land to re-gas, lined up on runway
• 19 Japanese attack "mapped out perfect", every bomb hit a gasoline storage tank or an airplane
• 24 double bottom, hiding in the bottom of the ship, the slobs were the brave ones
• 27 P-35 radials short noses, P-40 long noses tip onto nose on grass runways
• 27 Zero more maneuverable and wins dogfights, P-40 faster, hit-and-run instead
• 28 bad ammunition, P-40 gun jams had to be cleared on the ground
• 32 Japanese enter Manila 1942 Jan 2

• 53 First Bataan battle line from Mauban across Mount Natib to Abucay

  • plenty of ammunition, half rations
  • hold out until the American fleet arrived (but two years needed to fight its way across the Pacific)

• 65 old WW1 doughboy helmets

• 118 Death march (5K to 10K Filipinos died, 600 to 700 Americans died)
• 153 to Camp O'Donnell (partly completed airfield) near Capas
• 359 1943 defeats, millions of factory workers drafted, war captives replaced many
  • 337 Hell ships 1944 Sep-Dec, overloaded freighters from Philippines to Japan, more than 5000 died when ships sunk
  • 175 camps, shoveling coal, repairing track, mines and foundries, loading cargo ships
• WP Phillipines Liberation 1944 Oct 20 to 1945 Aug 15
• WP Corregidor Allied capture 1945 Feb 27, Manila Allied capture March 3, Fort Drum incinerated April 12
• 439 Camp in Omuta, smoke from Nagasaki 40 miles southwest
• 440 Camp in Korea, Japanese colonel surrenders to senior officer Lt. Col. Curtis Beecher USMC
• 441 Camp Omine Machi commander Omura surrenders to US senior officer, who commands him to keep it and take it home
• 446 American pilot drops note "open the kitchen door", bounced a rolled-up newspaper through it on next pass.
• 451 train near Hiroshima: trees missing leaves, then branches, then trunks missing, then nothing. Beautiful to freed POW, because it ended the war
• 463 4-F'er MP, curfew. "get off the street". My dad told him "My kid just come back from a POW camp. and you better move your fat butt out of our way or I'm going to whip you right here."