Bataan Peninsula

Bataan, which is a peninsula, lies due west of Manila across the bay, but to get there by car, at least to the southern trip of Mariveles, might take almost four hours of driving, at least in traffic. (A ferry to Orion is quicker, but then you will not have a car, and renting one on the peninsula is difficult, if not impossible. There are are buses and local taxis so you can get around.)

This model relief of Bataan is shown from the south, with the town of Mariveles cut off at the bottom. It’s Kilometer Zero, where the Bataan Death March began in April 1942, after the American surrender, and where the commemorative markers, at each kilometer, are posted along the roadside that runs alongside the right ride of this model/picture.

In all it took the defeated American and Filipino soldiers about a week to walk one hundred and six kilometers north to Capas, where they were installed in a prison camp.

Anyone who fell out of line on the march for whatever reason—illness, wounds, fatigue—usually died or was killed. Estimates are that about 600 Americans and 5-10,000 Filipinos died during the march.

The historical questions about the failed campaign, to resist the Japanese landing in the north, have focused on the generalship of Douglas MacArthur (holed up on Corregidor) and the overall failure of the American government to reinforce the units on the peninsula.

Many books, both memoirs of survivors and historical accounts, describe the ordeal of the Death March and the subsequent lives and deaths of those in Japanese prison camps.

Lester I Tenney’s My Hitch in Hell: The Bataan Death March is an accessible memoir.

Hampton Sides’s Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission became a best-seller, and the basis for a film in 2012, focusing on the feel-good liberation of one camp in 1945.

John W. Whitman’s Bataan: Our Last Ditch : The Bataan Campaign, 1942 is a vast compendium of interviews, oral histories, descriptions, and details of the battle.

The town of Angeles, near Clark International Airport (used by many budget airlines, in particular), can be a good place to stay during a tour of Bataan and Capas.