Araw Ng Kagitingan – A Day of Valor | The Negros Chronicle - News around Dumaguete City and Negros Oriental, Philippines

Araw Ng Kagitingan – A Day of Valor | The Negros Chronicle - News around Dumaguete City and Negros Oriental, Philippines: "THE CIVIC CIRCLE
This week we enjoy a holiday called Araw ng Kagitingan, formerly known as Bataan Day. On this day, April 9, 1942, the Filipino-American forces in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese imperial Army. At dawn, 9 April 1942, Major General Edward P. King, Jr., commanding Luzon Force, Bataan, Philippine Islands, surrendered more than 76,000 (67,000 Filipinos, 1,000 Chinese Filipinos, and 11,796 Americans) starving and diseaseridden men. Thus begun the Death March, where almost 20,000 prisoner of war died.

Of the 52,000 who survived the march (42,000 Filipinos and 9,200 Americans) the prisoners of war were forced to endure a 90-mile (140 km) march to captivity at Camp O’Donnell . Those who were lucky to travel on trucks to San Fernando endured more than 25 additional miles of marching. Prisoners were beaten randomly and denied food and water. Those who fell behind were usually executed or left to die; the sides of the roads were littered with the dead and the dying. Of those imprisoned at Camp O’Donnel in Capas, Tarlac 30,000 more died “There are times,’’ United States Secretary of War Henry Stimson said, “when men have to die.’’ Tens of thousands of men died defending Bataan during World War II."