April 9, 1942 just a day after Pearl Harbor had been bombed, over 70,000 soldiers were forced to march 65 miles to prison camps. During this brutal time, thousands of soldiers were dying from starvation, diseases, and mistreatment. Lieutenant Homma Masamura was tried as a war criminal and 4 years later the Geneva Convention was written to prevent things like this to happen again. (Bataan Death March, 2009). Today, there are countries like North Korea who are mistreating their citizens in similar ways.
In order to better understand what happened in the Bataan Death March one must understand Japanese culture during WWII. The culture began to shift with the start of the Showa Period in which Prince Hiroto had taken over after his father’s death in April, 21, …show more content…
The Allied captives were faced with a trail of walking over 65 miles of difficult terrain without water or food. This would only prove more difficult with the constant beatings from Japanese captors along the way. Some of these punishments would be, the men would be split off into groups of around 100 men who would then die due to the brutal treatment from the men in charge. One such punishment was called the Sun Treatment in which POW’s would be tied down and be forced to stare into the blistering sun. They would also decapitate prisoners or shoot them for simply trying to steal a drink of water. Most of the men in the Bataan Death March were forced upon “Death Ships” that were used to transport prisoners to the main islands in the most brutal conditions. The rest of them were corralled into boxcars and transported closer to their destination. The soldiers were ordered a final march of 5 more miles to Camp O’Donnell where they would suffer more punishment until February 1945. (New Mexico National Guard 's Involvement in the Bataan Death
In order to better understand what happened in the Bataan Death March one must understand Japanese culture during WWII. The culture began to shift with the start of the Showa Period in which Prince Hiroto had taken over after his father’s death in April, 21, …show more content…
The Allied captives were faced with a trail of walking over 65 miles of difficult terrain without water or food. This would only prove more difficult with the constant beatings from Japanese captors along the way. Some of these punishments would be, the men would be split off into groups of around 100 men who would then die due to the brutal treatment from the men in charge. One such punishment was called the Sun Treatment in which POW’s would be tied down and be forced to stare into the blistering sun. They would also decapitate prisoners or shoot them for simply trying to steal a drink of water. Most of the men in the Bataan Death March were forced upon “Death Ships” that were used to transport prisoners to the main islands in the most brutal conditions. The rest of them were corralled into boxcars and transported closer to their destination. The soldiers were ordered a final march of 5 more miles to Camp O’Donnell where they would suffer more punishment until February 1945. (New Mexico National Guard 's Involvement in the Bataan Death