Bataan Death March and POW Camps: Hell on Earth
By Mike Chisum, Jackie Ellithorpe and Roman Sandoval
Las Cruces bronze honoring Bataan soldiers shows one looking back at the
past, another down at the present and a third ahead to the future.
Photo by
April Vise
Dysentery. Malaria. Starvation. Men bayoneted, shot or decapitated. During
World War II, American and Filipino soldiers died from these and other
causes on what would be known as the infamous Bataan Death March on the
Philippine island of Luzon in April 1942.
The United States had entered World War II as a result of the Japanese
attack on
Pearl Harbor
on Dec. 7, 1941. More than 2,400 military personnel and
civilians were killed. According to the Naval Historical Center, three
battleships, including the USS Arizona, were sunk; in all, 21 ships were
destroyed or damaged. Aircraft losses included 188 destroyed and 159
damaged. Japan followed this assault by others on several East Asian
locations, including the Philippines, then a U.S. commonwealth.
The destruction of the Hawaiian fleet eliminated the chance of evacuation
for those stationed in the Philippines. Ten hours after Pearl Harbor, the
attack on the Philippines came. With no help from the air or sea, American
and Philippine forces were still able to repel the Japanese. With their food
dwindling, in January 1942, the American and Filipino troops were put on
half rations, and then their rations were reduced twice more. Food,
ammunition, medicine and other supplies were dangerously low, and
replacements did not come.
Frank Hewlett, World War II correspondent in the Philippines dubbed the men
“The Battling Bastards of Bataan” in this poem:
No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam;
No
aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces;
No pills, no planes, no artillery
pieces;
And nobody gives a damn.
The 200th and 515th Coast Artillery, Anti-Aircraft, were units of the New
Mexico National Guard and were among the 70,000 troops who defended the
Bataan Peninsula. They had trained at Fort Bliss. The 200th was ranked the
best anti-aircraft regiment available to the United States.
Even as they were ignored by their government, the American and Filipino
forces made a valiant stand for four months before Major General Edward King
finally surrendered the forces on April 8, 1942. This surrender and capture
of American forces is the largest in U. S. military history.
Map of Luzon’s Bataan Peninsula shows the route of the deadly
forced march of American & Filipino soldiers by the Japanese in April 1942. More
Americans were taken prisoner on the island of Corregidor in May 1942.
Drawing by David Jauregui, based on a map provided by Weldon Hamilton
The next day, the Japanese began to march the troops 65 miles on foot from
the town of Mariveles, located at the mouth of the Bataan Peninsula in the
southern corner of Luzon, to Camp O'Donnell. Only about 54,000 of the 70,000
men who were forced to march arrived at the camp. About 10,000 died and some
escaped. On the way, Japanese soldiers subjected these men to brutal acts of
torture.
go to top
From the beginning, the captured American and Filipino soldiers experienced
no compassion from the Japanese. The soldiers were already weakened by
disease and lack of food. Anyone who fell to the side of the road because of
dehydration or disease was either shot or bayoneted. The men received little
or no food for several days. Even more important was the fact that they were
deprived of water, despite its ready availability in artesian wells along
the route.
Stories of atrocities vary from one account to another. According to Dorothy
Cave, author of
Beyond Courage, “The Death March was in reality not one, but
many marches, as groups [of soldiers] filed in from the jungles to join the
main trek north.” As the days went by, the conditions became worse.
While some men were finally given a small ball of rice to eat and a cup of
water a day, others traveled the entire trip without food or water. Weldon
Hamilton, U.S. Air Corps 34th Pursuit Squadron, also stationed on Luzon,
said he was in relatively good shape when he reached Camp O'Donnell, but
that was not the case with other men.
Harry Steen, from the 200th Coast Artillery, recalled barely making it to
Camp O'Donnell. He said that he had not been fed or given water in five
days, and he was weakened by malaria.
In a January 2006 interview with a Borderlands editor, Hamilton was asked
what kept him going. He replied, “the sound of gunshots as another sick or
struggling soldier was shot or the sound of a soldier gasping as he was
bayoneted.” After some time at Camps O'Donnell and Cabanatuan, Hamilton was
taken to Japan aboard one of its unmarked “hell ships,” enemy freighters
used to transport American POWs to Japan, Korea and Manchuria. There they
worked as slave labor for the Japanese war effort. In 1945, Hamilton
witnessed the atomic bomb exploding over Nagasaki.
While the American soldiers who were captured on Luzon made the journey to
O'Donnell, the soldiers on Corregidor, the small Philippine island directly
across from the Bataan Peninsula, kept fighting until May 10, 1942. In a
February 2006 interview, Ward Redshaw, a survivor from the 31st Infantry,
told Borderlands editors the story about leaving the island of Luzon for
Corregidor. A towering six feet seven inches, he was provided with a custom
set of size 15 boots. He lost the only other pair of size 15 boots when he
was ordered to rid himself of his pack while fighting the Japanese.
Redshaw resorted to wearing size 12 boots with the toes cut out. The
commander on Luzon could not accept his footwear and gave the order for his
transfer to Corregidor. Redshaw's transfer may well have helped save his
life. Soldiers on Corregidor were in better shape when they were taken
prisoner because they had food and other supplies during their resistance.
Redshaw was not on the death march itself but did end up in one of the POW
camps in Cabanatuan, approximately 118 miles north of Manila.
In order to escape Cabanatuan, Redshaw volunteered to go to Japan where he
would work in a Mitsui coal mine for another three years. There his height
caused him to shatter the helmet light that miners wore. After three smashed
lights and a beating that almost crippled him, he found a way to get
topside, stoking the boiler that heated water for the miners. He witnessed
the atomic bomb exploding over Hiroshima that finally led to the end of the
war and his freedom.
go to top
At Camp O'Donnell, without food and medicine the men easily contracted
malaria in the mosquito-infested jungle. Most men on the march had dysentery
from drinking out of stagnant pools of water where the water buffalo coated
themselves with mud to prevent the flies from swarming on them. Given only a
bit of rice to eat, Redshaw and Hamilton remember scavenging the camps for
something to eat. Not until much later when the Japanese allowed the men to
receive American Red Cross boxes with food did the men's health begin to
improve.
In July 1942, the Japanese released the remainder of the Filipino soldiers.
The American men who were left behind at the POW camps continued to be
ravaged by disease with little medical care available, and the death rates
soared. The “zero wards” in the makeshift hospitals in Cabanatuan earned
their name from the fact that once a soldier entered one of these wards, the
chance of survival was almost zero. Survivors such as Redshaw and Hamilton
all speak of the horror of their days at Cabanatuan.
After more than three years as prisoners, many of the men resembled
Holocaust victims in Nazi concentration camps. Redshaw had lost 54 pounds
from his pre-service days. Harry Steen weighed 88 pounds when rescued by
marines in 1945. He remembered he was so skinny that he could wrap his two
middle fingers around his thigh and his fingers overlapped!
All the survivors faced numerous scrapes with death. They prevailed over
disease, neglect and physical and mental abuse. They came back different
men: witnesses to hell on earth.
Weldon C. Hamilton has served as the State Commander, Department of New
Mexico, American Ex-Prisoners of War and is the author of a book entitled
Late Summer of 1941 and My War with Japan. Originally from Kansas, he has
lived in Las Cruces with his wife Audrey since 1971.
Ward F. Redshaw also lives in Las Cruces. He lost a leg as a result of the
beatings he received as a POW. He is in the process of writing a book about
his time in the Philippines and Japan. He enjoys building model trains and
attends POW/MIA functions regularly. Harry Steen recounts more of his story
on page 11 of this issue.
A commemorative Death March is held every year at White Sands Missile Range,
and Hamilton and other Bataan survivors try to attend. Begun in 1989 by the
Army ROTC Department at NMSU, this arduous hike of 26.2 miles across desert
sands and hills in the Tularosa Basin is not for the weekend enthusiast but
for well trained military and civilian athletes.
The Albuquerque Bataan Memorial Park features twelve granite columns
containing the story and 1,818 names of the members of the 200th and 515th
Coast Artillery units. In Santa Fe, a museum and library are located in the
original armory where the 200th was processed for entry into the war. The
New Mexico legislature also passed a resolution to require its schools to
teach the story of the Bataan Death March. In 1950, El Paso dedicated the
Bataan Memorial Trainway downtown to area soldiers who died on the march.
On June 1, 2006, Bataan veterans reunited at the state convention of the
American Ex-Prisoners of War at the Las Cruces Hilton and at the Bataan
Memorial Park in Las Cruces. These and other remembrances assure that the
men who lost their lives and the survivors alike will never be forgotten.
Related Sources:
Silent Voices of World War II Chapter 2. (selected pages
at Google
Books) Available at
these libraries.
Cite: Chisum, Mike, Jackie Ellithorpe and
Roman Sandoval . "Bataan Death March and POW Camps: Hell on Earth ."
Borderlands
25
(2006-2007): 10, 14.
Borderlands. EPCC Libraries.
<
http://www.epcc.edu/nwlibrary/borderlands>
Page last updated:
Las Cruces bronze honoring Bataan soldiers shows one looking back at the
past, another down at the present and a third ahead to the future.