Bataan Death March

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May 26

World War II

Britain's Operation Dynamo gets underway as President Roosevelt makes a radio appeal for the Red Cross, 1940

On this day in 1940, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt makes known the dire straits of Belgian and French civilians suffering the fallout of the…

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Forced march of 90,000 to 100,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines in the early stages of World War II. Starting out from Mariveles, on the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula, on April 9, 1942, they were force-marched 55 miles (88 km) to San Fernando, then taken by rail to Capas, from where they walked the final 8 miles (13 km) to Camp O'Donnell. They were starved and mistreated, often kicked or beaten on their way, and many who fell were bayoneted. Only 54,000 reached the camp; 7,000–10,000 died on the way and the rest escaped to the jungle.

After the war, the Japanese commander of the invasion forces in the Philippines, Lieutenant General Homma Masaharu, was charged with responsibility for the death march and was tried by a U.S. military commission in Manila in January–February 1946. Convicted, he was executed on April 3.

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