"Courage is a quality God has seen fit to dispense with utmost care. The men of Bataan were His chosen favorites."
Major General Edward P. King, Jr.,
USA Commanding General, Luzon Forces
Back to Bataan
1942
By Tom Owens
They are old men now. They are bent and gray, some are in wheel chairs, some can barely see, most wear hearing aids. Age and the vicissitudes of life have done what the cruelest of the soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army could not.
These Brothers in Bondage came together last week in Washington, D.C. for the sixty second year to celebrate their survival and their victory over the Japanese nation that tried to destroy them in their youth. They are the survivors of the Bataan Death March. They are the survivors of Corregidor and Mindanao. They are the survivors of the prisoner of war camps in the Philippines. They are the survivors of the notorious Hell Ships that so few lived to tell about. They are the survivors of unimaginable cruelties imposed upon them as slave laborers in Japan's acid plants and armament factories and coal mines. They are great men of great honor who survived incredible odds. They are the few who came home.
It has been one of the great honors of my life to attend the convention of the Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor this past week in Washington, D.C. There are perhaps two hundred of these great American Heros left out of a hundred and twenty five thousand that were taken captive by the Japanese as the Philippines and Far East fell to the Imperial Army in 1942. There were about seventy of them that convened last week to once again break bread and renew the bond that only they can share.
The Bushido code of the Japanese Military of that time made any one taken prisoner a sub human not worthy of normal compassion or respect. That is why there were so few Japanese prisoners taken by the Allied forces in World War Two. It is also why the Allied prisoners taken prisoner by the Japanese were brutalized beyond anything in modern warfare, or anything we can imagine.
The death toll for American prisoners of the Japanese was over forty percent. As a comparison, about two percent of those captured by the Germans died in captivity. Over a hundred and twenty five thousand American, British and Allied troops fell captive in Bataan, Corregidor and the Philippines after holding out against all odds from that day of infamy 7 December 1941 until the final fall of Corregidor and the surrender of the Philippines on 6 May 1942. They were already weak and frail from these long months of half rations as they tried to hold back the overwhelming tide of the Imperial Army. They had very few weapons, ammunition or equipment as they held out in the Hills of the Bataan Peninsula, the jungles of Mindanao and the fortified island of Corregidor in Manila Bay.
When they were finally overcome they were subjected to extreme cruelty beginning for many with the infamous Bataan Death March which took them seventy five miles over a dusty road in temperatures around a hundred degrees with no food or water. Any one who stumbled or failed to immediately obey any order was run through with a bayonet, or shot, or had their head cut off with a swift strike of a sword. Some were simply murdered on a whim. There was no mercy, there was no compassion, they had been abandoned by their country and by their God. They were at the mercy of a merciless and evil empire.
When those that survived the march reached Camp O'Donnell they had only begun their journey through the depths of hell. The camp was a fetid mosquito and fly infested place of death. They suffered from dysentery, malaria, diarrhea, beri beri, starvation and the ever-present brutality of their captors. They suffered beyond our imaginations and they died horribly by the thousands.
In the words of Abie Abraham who survived it: "The death toll was like a scoreboard that was constantly changing. With men dying at the rate of thirty to forty a day, the bodies started to stack up like cordwood. The burial details couldn't dispose of the corpses fast enough. The days fell on us like a relentless hammer. We were wretched animals. Every day we walked among the dead, having no thoughts, no desires. There was no stopping the deaths. They went on and on like the waves of the ocean."
In addition to being arbitrarily murdered for the slightest of reasons, they were starved, denied water and medicine and forced into slavery under the worse possible conditions. Over twenty one thousand of these brave young men were killed on the notorious Hell Ships which the Japanese used to transport them through out the far east for use as slaves. These ships were unmarked and thus subject to attack by American forces. On the twenty fourth of February 1944 the Tango Maru was torpedoed and three thousand American servicemen went to their deaths confined in the stinking sewage filled hold. On the seventeenth of September 1944 the Juno Maru was hit by American bombers and five thousand six hundred and twenty of our brothers, sons and fathers met their horrible fate in the depths of the China Sea. These are only two examples, the list goes on and on and is typical of the sheer cruelty suffered by these great men.
And now there are only two hundred left. In spite of their unspeakable suffering and sacrifice they are a rather jovial and fun group when they are together. They can joke about most anything, they can tell great funny stories and do. But underneath this wonderful positive spirit there is a deep and abiding reverence for their fallen comrades and the last just war. There is a great love of their country that deserted them in those darkest hours, and there is a barely disguised contempt for politicians that lead the younger generations into new and foolish wars in other foreign lands.
It was humbling to be in the presence of these defenders of freedom. They are the best of that Greatest Generation that stood up for freedom in the world's darkest hour.
Mr. Owens is a U.S. army veteran who served with the 101st Airborne Division during the Vietnam Era, and who maintains a strong continuing interest in veterans' issues. In November of last year, as part of a Veteran's Day special edition, the Salt Lake Tribune published another of Mr. Owens' articles -- a tribute to Salt Lake City resident Courtney Kruger, a survivor of several years' captivity in the brutal custody of the Japanese Army. We also provide a link to that "companion article" here.
