Author Description

In the spring of 1942, the Japanese 14th Army overran Bataan Peninsula on the island of Luzon in the Philippines and captured 78,100 American and Filipino troops. Almost immediately, a curtain of silence settled over Bataan, concealing from the rest of the world the fate of the prisoners. It was not util more than a year and a half later that the terrible story of the ... more »evacuation of the Filipino and American captives from Bataan became te most publicized episode of the entire Phillipine campaign. Although a few survivors have written about their experiences, this is the first book to tell the whole story of the Death March, of what happened on the Japanese side as well as the plight of the Americans and Filipinos. Mr. Falk not only describes the march- and corrects several mistaken impressions about it- but also explains the conditions and causes that led to it. To do this the author made a careful study of American and Japanese Army records, letters and diaries, the war crimes of Lt. General Masaharu Homma, and interviews with survivors. Stanley Falk is a historian with the Office, Chief of Military History, Department of the Army