Thursday, April 9, 1942. Bataan surrenders and the Death March begins.

Today in World War II History—April 9, 1942: US surrenders to Japanese at Bataan: 35,000 Filipino troops and 35,000 US troops, the largest surrender in US history.

Sarah Sundin’s entry on her blog, with more than this event being covered on it, notes the grim fact.

I was inevitable, or course.  That Bataan would fall, disaster though it was, could not bee prevented.  The Philippines could not be supplied or relieved.  The troops could not bee withdrawn.  Nothing could be done.  It could be argued that the US should have ordered the bastion to surrender earlier, although their ongoing resistance did tie up a significant number of Japanese forces and even caused the Japanese to send troops to the islands from China, the Japanese army’s primary focus.

The Japanese, in spite of having worked for weeks to complete their conquest in of the Philippines were not prepared to handle such a large number of prisoners.  This, combined with the institutional cruelty of the Japanese armed forces gave rise to an event commenting on this day, the Bataan Death March