Have you ever heard of the Bataan Death March?

[KillerMuffin]

If so, do you know much about it? What was so awful about it? What war it occurred in? Do you think it ranks up there as one of the worst war crimes committed, as some do?

Any opinions whatsoever?

 

[lavender]

 

[Bubblegum *sugarless*]

The following is a small blurb I found in a history book.

The Bataan Death March, forced march of 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japenese in the Pilippines WWII.
Starting out from Mariveles, on the sothern end of the Bataan Peninsula, on April 9, 1942, they were force-marched 55 miles to San Fernando, then taken by rail to Capas, from where they walked the final eight miles to Camp O'Donnell.

They were starved and mistreated, often kicked or beaten on their way, and many who fell were bayonetted.

Only 54,000 reached the camp:

7,000 - 10,000 died on the way and the rest escaped into the jungle.

 

[KillerMuffin]

I know quite a bit about it, I've been reading about the war in the Pacific for several years now. I don't think most people know much about it. Nor do they have any idea that when General King surrendered the Bataan Peninsula (it's in the Philippines) to the Japanese, that he gave an estimated 10,000 Americans to the Japanese. Estimates are bad because so many died in the Japanese assault.

They were forced to march 85 miles in April and May in the Phillipenes, but that's not the bad part. They had already been starved and sickened by lack of supplies for the months prior to the attack on Bataan. They were not permitted to drink clean water, only water from waterbuffalo wallows, they were not given food until the fourth day of the march, and many of them were beaten and killed on the way. This is just a glossy cover story of how bad it actually was.

After they arrived at their destination, Camp O'Donnell, they were held without adequate food, water, and no medical treatment. Eventually the survivors were sent off the Japan and used as slave labor by steel, coal, and war machine factories. They frequently perished while there.

It's interesting that there is currently a lawsuit pending against several Japanese corporations who used them as slave labor. It had been blocked by the US government itself, it may still be, I haven't figured it out yet. What's more interesting is that no one ever seems to hear about this.

American soldiers comprised a small portion of the slave labor Japanese used. They took whatever Asians they could get their hands on as well.

 

[CW]

EDITED OUT

Never mind,,, I see that you have the information already.

 

[Vivid Blossom]

Yes

I had heard of it and yes I knew it was bad -- I did not however, know it was that bad.

 

[Problem Child]

The Germans in WWII treated military P.O.W.'s like celebrities compared to the Japanese.

The Jews, Poles, Gypsies and homosexuals were a different story, unfortunately.

Lavy- I didn't know Gypsies were actually called Roma people. I've just always heard the name Gypsie.

 

[p_p_man]

Re: Yes

I had heard of it and yes I knew it was bad -- I did not however, know it was that bad.

The way the Japanese treated prisoners, and non-prisoners of other nationalities of both sexes, went far beyond bad...

It was the first insight people had into minds which had become so insanely sadistic that the term humanity should been withdrawn from them as a reference to a member of the human race.

They lost that status by their own actions...

 

[Vivid Blossom]

Re: Re: Yes

The way the Japanese treated prisoners, and non-prisoners of other nationalities of both sexes, went far beyond bad...

It was the first insight people had into minds which had become so insanely sadistic that the term humanity should been withdrawn from them as a reference to a member of the human race.

They lost that status by their own actions...

Thanks PPMan- I believe I need to read a little more about this now.

 

[MsFigment]

Rape of Nanjing

The Bataan Death March, while horendous, was just one of many Japanese atrocities commited during World War II. Many of the worst of these occurred in China. The United States should not have been surprised by the Japanese treatment of POWs since the Rape of Nanjing in 1937 was widely reported at the time and resulted in the death of 300,000 people and the rape of 20,000 women.

http://www.cnd.org/njmassacre/

 

[OUTSIDER]

The treatment of prisoner's in the second world war by the Japanese is well known in this country and there is still bad blood between those who servived the work camps and the Japanese govt.

I think that the most disturbing thing I've heard but have no proof to back up is the story that there is no mention of Japanese millitary atrocity's in any history book's used in Japanese school's and they have never been told officially about any of it.

 

[Weird Harold]

I will try and find out some stuff for you about it.

Where's Weird Harold when you need him?

I was asleep when this was posted, but I see I'm not needed here at all. After all, I'm not the only one with answers.

 

[Comshaw]

About 15 years ago I met a survivor of the Bataan March. I was introduced by a coworker who lived next to the guy. He told us a few things about it and his time in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. He said that a friend started to keep track, by name, of those that died along the way. After the first week there were so many death's the entry's to his log read something like," another 57 died today."
He also told us that when the Japanese guards got angry with a prisoner, they would take a pair of pliers and pull a toenail or finger nail off. He told us that one time a guard was going to punish him, but found he didn't have any nails left. So the guard beat him unconscious with a rifle butt.
My sister's father in law was captured during the fall of Coregidor and spent three years in a prisoner of war camp. He was on a Japanese ship in Manila harbor, with 1500 other prisoners, when an American plane torpedoed it. The pilot had no idea
there were 1500 prisoners in the hold. Loren made it out alive, one of only 500 that did. Before he died he wrote a book of his experiences.
"A Journey Through Hell" by Loren E. Stamp.
It's told in a very matter of fact style. That was the only way he could tell it, because of the effect it had on him. As it was it took him 10 years to complete the book.
During WWII prisoners captured by the U.S. were treated very well. While stationed a t Fort Lewis in 1973 I was assigned to a work detail helping to renovate some WWII era buildings. The one's we were assigned to had been used for POW holding area's during the war. When we took the inner walls down we found several U.S. made beer cans with German labels and several newspaper's printed in German just for the prisoners. As I said they were treated very well, for prisoners.


Do I think the March was one of the worst war crimes? One of yes, but there have been others. The German concentration camps, the Killing fields of Cambodia and as mentioned the rape of Nanjing.
Some perpetrated by our country.
Andersonville, The Trail of Tears, Sand Creek, Wounded Knee to name a few.


As for the Japanese mind set, do a little reading on where the name Kamikaze (divine wind) came from. It's an amazing bloody story. A hurricane force wind (the divine wind of Japanese legend) destroyed a Chinese invasion fleet, stranding the invading army. Some 200,000 Chinese prisoners were executed on Japanese beaches. Some of the young Japanese soldiers cut off Chinese heads until there arms were so tired they couldn't raise them to make another stroke.
That was the mindset of the Japanese during WWII, invincible, superior, everyone else was inferior.
Comshaw

 

[CRaZy]

The treatment of prisoner's in the second world war by the Japanese is well known in this country and there is still bad blood between those who servived the work camps and the Japanese govt.

I think that the most disturbing thing I've heard but have no proof to back up is the story that there is no mention of Japanese millitary atrocity's in any history book's used in Japanese school's and they have never been told officially about any of it.

The Japanese role in World War 2 is a very sensitive issue to older Australians. I have been to see the Bridge on the River Kwai where so many Australian, Thai and Burmese soldiers died in its construction. The photographs in the museum there are horrific - emaciated men dangling their ulcerated legs in the river so that the piranha-like fish will eat away the dead flesh. The atrocities are undeniable.

It is important to remember that Japanese soldiers were simply fodder in a single-minded war machine for which their Emperor had prepared them from birth. Any sign of weakness in the Japanese imperial army was severely punished. Japanese soldiers were trained to commit hari kari rather than suffer the humiliation of defeat. The only way they might see their loved ones again was to ensure victory.

There is an Australian incident known as "The Cowra Breakout" which highlights the equal atrocities committed by Australians in charge of a Japanese war camp. Basically, you had two cultures, each desperate to win with the soldiers fighting it unaware of the politics behind the war. Japan has had a change of heart in the past decade. They have begun to recompense many of their war crimes and the history books have become less one-sided. All history books are biased whether they belong to America, Australia or Japan. Let's not forget that.

I saw a doco last Anzac day where an Australian WW2 POW went back to Japan to meet one of his Japanese guards. This particular guard would provide them with a little more rice if it was possible, smuggled in medical supplies and only hit the prisoners, as gently as he dared, if one of the Commanders was watching. It was heartbreaking to watch the Aussie soldier explain that he would have been dead if it were not for the small kindness shown by this guard. The guard was crying because he had not been able to do more.

In war, everyone does things they later regret. It is a suspension of reality in which your own survival, even at the cost of others suffering, becomes your only goal. Let us also remember, that 50 years later, Japan continues to suffer the horrific effects which the bombs on Hiroshima and Ngasaki inflicted on millions of civilians.

 

[doctor_insanus]

Unfortunately, it was thousands of innocent civilians who bore the suffering... while the men responsible for the Japanese atrocities of WW II have largely gone unpunished...

 

[CRaZy]

Unfortunately, it was thousands of innocent civilians who bore the suffering... while the men responsible for the Japanese atrocities of WW II have largely gone unpunished...

Well, it's pretty hard to punish an Emperor. The soldiers were pawns in a game. I see no point in punishing anyone for war crimes 50 years on. I also see no point in trying to apportion blame. It's easy to point fingers with hindsight. All sides behave badly in war.

 

[p_p_man]

I don't always follow that line of argument...

Well, it's pretty hard to punish an Emperor. The soldiers were pawns in a game. I see no point in punishing anyone for war crimes 50 years on

The Japanese soldier had as much psychological disturbance in his mind as did the leaders of Japan.

There are far too many stories of atrocities, (enforced prostitution of thousands of Korean, Chinese and European women which begs the question if there were thousands of forced prostitutes there had to be thousands of ordinary every day soldiers to be serviced). Beheading we have all heard about, starvation, slave labour, reprisals which go far beyond normal human behaviour and a host of war crimes to which the Japanese have never admitted, never shown remorse and never paid compensation to their victims.

I think the race as a whole didn't go over the edge, that would be too kind to suggest that it was a form of temporary insanity, more to the point I think they have a problem coming to terms with what is widely considered normal human behaviour.

Even today with their soiled girls panties on sale from vending machines, pornograhy that is very close to paediophillia, violently sadistic game shows and the thin veneer of civilisation they try to cover themselves with indicate that not a lot has changed in the national psyche.

 

[OUTSIDER]

Well, it's pretty hard to punish an Emperor. The soldiers were pawns in a game. I see no point in punishing anyone for war crimes 50 years on. I also see no point in trying to apportion blame. It's easy to point fingers with hindsight. All sides behave badly in war.

While I see your trying to promote a sense of "live and let live", I must say I do not agree with your arguement.

By your reasoning a person can commit the most heinous crimes imaginable and get away with it as long as their not caught and punished right away, there can never be a time limit on war crimes or we just open the door for every tin pot dictater to become an Adolf Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot.

At the end of WW2 we felt so bad about the A bomb we dropped on Japan, we let Japanese soldier's go largely unpunished, that was a mistake and I think everybody who's ever heard about it now agree's that.

Again I think I find the story that Japanese children are never told about what their granparents got upto in WW2 the most distubing thing of all, after all I'm quite aware that it was the British army that came up with the concentration camp idea and I think it make's me a stronger person to be told about our evil's as well as our triumph's.

 

[*Lazer*]

My great uncle died during the march. My grandfather normally the kindest of men maintained a deep hatred of the Japanese to his death. After I read about the treatment of those men I understood him better. All things considered it is my opinion that dropping the bombs was every bit as horrible.

 

[Problem Child]

At the end of WW2 we felt so bad about the A bomb we dropped on Japan, we let Japanese soldier's go largely unpunished, that was a mistake and I think everybody who's ever heard about it now agree's that.

"We" felt bad about dropping the bomb?

Doubtful.

 

[Comshaw]

posted by *Lazer*:

All things considered it is my opinion that dropping the bombs was every bit as horrible.

You won't get any argument out of me as to the a-bomb being as horrendous as the march, but the alternative was even worst. Combine the death toll from both a-bomb drops and it still doesn't equal the one fire bomb attack on Tokyo. Even after the attack on their capitol city, and casualties above 200,000 in one night, the Japanese were still ready to repulse any invasion force. The only way seen at the time to prove they were beaten was use the a-bomb, and it worked. It probably saved a million or so American troops, as well as a few million Japanese lives.
My father was a one of the truck drivers that took supplies into Nagasaki after American troops landed in Japan. He was at ground zero and saw what the devastation. He didn't speak of it much, but over the years I got some of the story out of him. Your use of the word horrendous is the only way to describe what he saw.

Comshaw

 

[Barb Dwyer]

Outsider,

You made a valid point. No, we cannot forget. Nor forgive. Murder, in any form-manslaughter, homicide, genocide, is exempt from a statute of limitations. Just because the Nazis fled to Argentina and hid for 50 years doesn't absolve them from their brutalities.

My grandfather told me stories of things he saw in the Pacific theater that to this day send chills up my spine. Heinous, uncalled-for atrocities above and beyond human understanding even in the context of war. But I am not pointing fingers solely at the Japanese. I have read reports where similar behaviors were witnessed in any number of engagements in war zones. Oh, the things we do to one another!

Not everyone gets away with it, however. Witness today's actions in the Netherlands where Slobodan Milosevic was finally put into custody and is awaiting trial at The Hague for his actions against humanity and war crimes in the Balkans. It does shock that he still has supporters there though.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010628/ts/yugoslavia_milosevic_dc_19.html

 

[OUTSIDER]

"We" felt bad about dropping the bomb?

Doubtful.

Being somewhat of a WW2 buff and having read/seen a lot about it as well having family members that served in almost all theatres I can say that although at first there was a feeling of triumph, that was soon replaced by a feeling of resigned sadness at what had, "had" to be done, once the true horror of the A bomb was known.

The bomb had to be dropped for the reason's already given by other's, but that still didn't stop the allies from feeling sorrow and a little shame about it, and that's why a lot of Japanese war crimes to this day go unpunished.

 

[p_p_man]

That's one of the differences...

...we feel a terrible shame about what happened with the A-Bomb the Japanese don't about their treatment of non-Nippon races.

 

[OUTSIDER]

Re: That's one of the differences...

...we feel a terrible shame about what happened with the A-Bomb the Japanese don't about their treatment of non-Nippon races.

Very true from what I've read about the Japanese, and as I've said twice already the Japanese don't teach their children anything about the war other than they where in it and that the allies bombed them with the A-bomb, so far no one has made comment about that so I guess they either don't know or don't care.