While under siege, the US Army realized that there were inadequate supplies for the nearly 80,000 troops and 26,000 civilian refugees.
Surviving on only 800 calories a day, the defenders of Bataan had been subject to three months of malnutrition, disease, and infection. By March, most of the troops lost an estimated thirty percent of their body weight. Under normal circumstances, many of the wounded would be evacuated, but in the Philippines, casualties still manned their positions.
At the beginning of April, the Japanese focused their airpower and artillery on the Bataan Peninsula. The Americans and Filipinos could no longer defend their positions and on April 9, 1942, Major General Edward King Jr., commander of forces on Bataan, unconditionally surrendered his force of 78,000 men to Imperial Japan. King believed there was no other way to save his men from starvation and disease, but he could not have imagined the atrocities to come.
“You men remember this. You did not surrender…you had no alternative but to obey my order.” – Maj Gen Edward King, Jr.
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