March of Death
Death March was written by Bienvenido Santos, a Filipino-American Fiction, poetry and Non- fiction writer. Death March is a forced march of war prisoners or other captives or deportees with the intent to kill, brutalize, weaken and/or demoralize as many of the captives as possible along the way. It is distinguished in this way from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Death marches usually feature harsh physical labor and abuse, neglect of prisoner injury and illness, deliberate starvation and dehydration, humiliation and torture, and execution of those unable to keep up the marching pace.
After the April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II (1939-45), the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make a 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. Thousands perished in what became known as the Bataan Death March. The day after Japan bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese invasion of the Philippines began. Within a month, the Japanese had captured Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and the American and Filipino defenders of Luzon (the island on which Manila is located) were forced to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula. The main idea is that many had suffered during the Japanese colonization specifically in death march. Filipino and American soldiers were forced to participate, they had experienced brutality, violence, murder, and many inhumane acts. It is believed that thousands of troops died because of the brutality of the japanese, who beat the marchers, and killed those too weak to walk, while they are heading their path some Japanese are heating them and weren’t giving them food to eat and even time to rest for a meantime. Survivors were taken by rail from San Fernando to prisoner-of-war camps, where thousands more died from disease and mistreatment. In spite of the hardships they had gone through, few survived, maybe because they remain on keeping their faith, believing that all these will come to an end, and that is a good thing about us Filipinos, that even if we are about to give up, we just keep on going and fighting just prove other people and ourselves specially that we are capable of doing things and that we will never let anyone dominates us. Reference: http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bataan-death-march |