April 10, 1942: Bataan Death March Begins

The day after the surrender of the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese, the 75,000 Filipino and American troops captured on the Bataan Peninsula begin a forced march to a prison camp near Cabanatuan. During this infamous trek, known as the "Bataan Death March," the prisoners were forced to march 85 miles in six days, with only one meal of rice during the entire journey. By the end of the march, which was punctuated with atrocities committed by the Japanese guards, hundreds of Americans and many more Filipinos had died.

The day after Japan bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invasion of the Philippines began. Within a month, the Japanese had captured Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and the U.S. and Filipino defenders of Luzon were forced to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula. For the next three months, the combined U.S.-Filipino army, under the command of U.S. General Jonathan Wainwright, held out impressively despite a lack of naval and air support. Finally, on April 7, with his army crippled by starvation and disease, Wainwright began withdrawing as many troops as possible to the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay. However, two days later, 75,000 Allied troops were trapped by the Japanese and forced to surrender. The next day, the Bataan Death March began. Of those who survived to reach the Japanese prison camp near Cabanatuan, few lived to celebrate U.S. General Douglas MacArthur's liberation of Luzon in 1945.

In the Philippines, homage is paid to the victims of the Bataan Death March every April on Bataan Day, a national holiday that sees large groups of Filipinos solemnly rewalking parts of the death route.

This is my wife's Uncle's story...Later he was Major General, Commanding Letterman Army Hospital.

Lt. Col. Jack Schwartz, Medical Officer. My code name was "Avocado."

Abu Ghraib Prison is/was nothing like this...

Regards,

Wolverine

Diary of Lt. Col. Arthur Shreve In his diary, Shreve tells of being interrogated by the Japanese who were especially interested in when "the final attack upon the Japanese mainland" would occur.

....Among the latter were two doctors in the U.S. Army and part of a medical detachment captured in the Philippines. They had been kept there until late in 1943 when they were brought to Kyushu.

The first major operation was the amputation of the arm of a Marine corporal named Specht by Lt. Col. Jack W. Schwartz, the surgeon of the famous Hospital No. 2 on Bataan, who with another Army lieutenant colonel, James McG. Sullivan (sic) [possibly James M. McGrath] of San Francisco, sustained much of the medical burden all the way to Japan.

http://www.oryokumaruonline.org/george_weller_6.html

http://home.comcast.net/~winjerd/Page07.htm#Schwartz

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POW Camp #1 - Page 7

Page 1 INDEX

Check this: http://home.comcast.net/~winjerd/Page01.htm#Index

VIII. The POW Affidavits

These affidavits are the essence and bulk of my research, and they will require extensive scanning, OCR and proof-reading. I will post these as they are completed. If you are searching for an ex-POW you think may have been at Camp 1, please let me know and I'll scan and post that person's affidavit right away.

* Schwartz Jack W. 301 Washington Avenue, Kennett, MO http://www.oryokumaruonline.org/s.html

Ms. Tucker Bruun was eight years old when her daddy died on a Japanese "Hell Ship," the Oryoku Maru, during World War II. This is a letter she wrote to her sixteen year old grandson in remembrance of Othello Christian Bruun. http://www.oryokumaruonline.org/deargrandson.html

To contact Ms. Liliana Bruun (website owner http://www.oryokumaruonline.org/aboutus.html )write to:
oryokumaru@earthlink.net

http://www.oryokumaruonline.org/hellships.html

The following statements are from Japanese officers and merchant seaman associated with the Oryoku Maru ordeal.

His statement http://www.oryokumaru.net/pdf%20files/toshinostatement.pdf

Toshino implicated http://www.oryokumaru.net/pdf%20files/nogi.PDF

Air attack & Toshino http://www.oryokumaru.net/pdf%20files/aihara1.PDF

American Statements

The following links are for statements made to the IMTFE by American survivors of the Oryoku Maru ordeal. All of the statements are in .pdf format.

Robert Conn(Large File)

The HELL SHIPS and the conditions during air raid: http://www.oryokumaru.net/oryokumaru.htm

.....Around 5:00pm, the Japanese lined up the Americans for loading in the Number 1,2, and 5 holds of the Oryoku Maru. The forward hold consisted of around 600 men, the #2 hold held around 260 medics, and the rear #5 hold held nearly 860 POWs.

.....The POWs descended a long ladder down into the holds. In the stern hold once the POWs made it to the bottom deck, a Japanese guard known as Kazutane "Air Raid" Aihara met the men with a vindictive smile, shovel, and bayonet as he pushed the men into the hold. As the prisoners moved toward the back of the hold, "Air Raid" used his shovel and beat the prisoners closer together. According to one account, "Air Raid" took great delight in striking the prisoners in the face or testicles. The men in this hold didn't have enough room to sit down.

.....The night of the 14th proved worse than the previous. Conditions resulting from the hysteria and the cruel treatment led to many prisoners committing acts of insanity. Men slowly died of the before mentioned diseases and in some cases murder by their fellow soldiers driven insane by the conditions in the hold. Some accounts indicate that men seemed normal one minute and then turned into raving maniacs the next. These insane men stabbed, fought, and killed others throughout the night. These men at times attempted to drink urine or bit the thumb of another prisoner to drink blood in attempts to satisfy thirst. The range of this insanity included men who simply sat and whitstled, banged mess kits, preached, and all the way to murder. This night of madness took the lives of nearly 50 men.

....The order finally came from Lt. Toshino, the Japanese Commander, to abandon ship.

http://home.comcast.net/~winjerd/Page06.htm#Death_March

Then there was the Oryokko Maru [Oryoku-maru], the POW transport with the highest number of officers in the holds, more than a thousand, more than one in four of them field grade, and by far the highest proportion of officers to enlisted men, two to one. Yet of all ships, the Oryokko Maru was the one where the worst, most uncontrollable madness broke out, and broke out earliest, starting on the very first night and turning into killing by the second night. More than a thousand American officers could not, or at any rate did not, summon up discipline enough to stop Americans from killing each other. [See Schwartz affidavit]

See an explanation here by Fossey, William J. : http://home.comcast.net/~winjerd/USAffD-H.htm#Fossey

Schwartz

Jack W.

USA

30-Jan-45

23-Apr-45

Texas

Schwartz affidavit http://home.comcast.net/~winjerd/Schwartz.txt

Sketch of Camp #1, Hakozaki http://home.comcast.net/~winjerd/Images/Shwtzmap.jpg

Lt. Col. Jack Schwartz, Medical Officer

Chief Surgeon Schwartz gives us a rather honest and graphic account of what he saw from Bataan to Fukuoka to Korea. He, too, was a survivor of the Oryoku Maru and the two other ships, "which had consumed 7 horrible weeks." For him Camp #1 was "the worst camp in which I was imprisoned."

Read the Schwartz affidavit

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