The Bataan Death March. (Painting by Mukai Junkichi)
On April 9, 1942, 75,000 American and Filipino soldiers who surrendered to the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippines were forced to march more than 60 miles in the extreme heat of the Philippines. Hundreds of Americans and thousands of Filipinos died in the journey.
The reward for the survivors was brutal treatment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp for the next three years if they were lucky to live that long.
Americans back home might never have known about the harsh conditions for POWs in the Philippines if it weren’t for 12 men who escaped from the enemy prison camp and made an arduous cross-country expedition to tell the world.