A 97-kilometer death march on the Bataan Peninsula took place in the Philippines in 1942 after the end of the Battle of Bataan and was later regarded as a war crime by the Japanese. Prisoners of war were unjustifiably ill-treated.
It was the most numerous simultaneous military surrender in American history. According to the most conservative estimates, more than 8 thousand prisoners of war were killed, died from wounds, illnesses and exhaustion during these days. In response to all these atrocities, the Americans and the British came to the conclusion that the Japanese soldier was not a human at all, but a rat to be destroyed. The Japanese were killed, even when they gave up with their hands up. The death march was one of the reasons that led to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
