The Bataan Death March (also known as The Death March of Bataan) took place in the Philippines in 1942 and was later accounted as a Japanese war crime. The 60 mi (97 km) march occurred after the three-month Battle of Bataan, part of the Battle of the Philippines (194142), during World War II. In Japanese, it is known as Batān Shi no Kōshin (バターン死の行進?), with the same meaning.
The "march", or forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon prisoners and civilians alike by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan.[2] Beheading, throat-cutting, and shooting were common causes of death, in addition to death by bayonet, rape, disembowelment, rifle-butt beating, and deliberate starvation or dehydration on the week-long continual march in the tropical heat. Falling down or inability to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest.
The exact death count is impossible to determine, but some historians have placed the minimum death toll between 6,000 and 11,000 men; other postwar Allied reports have tabulated that only 54,000 of the 72,000 prisoners reached their destination taken together, the figures document a rate of death from one in four up to two in seven of those on the death march.
This is the monument and shrine erected in memory of those who perished:
