Military Illustrated, Number 147
A moving, fact-filled documentary... powerful accounts of heroic struggle against overwhelming odds... significant, first-rate programme....
Product Description
On the Brink of 60th Anniversary... Survivors Speak out... Some for the first time...
Just two hours after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 the American troops in the Philippines suffered a surprise attack with devastating consequences. As in Hawaii, all aircraft on the ground were destroyed.
After a brutal four-month battle 25,000 Americans were outgunned, outmanned, and on the brink of starvation. They were ordered to surrender by the American command. It would become the largest surrender in U.S. history.
As savage as the battle was, captivity would prove much worse. The Bataan Death March-- infamous for its vicious cruelty-- led to prison camps where Americans suffered continued starvation and every imaginable tropical disease. Then the "Hell Ships" took the lives of thousands during transportation to Japan as slave labor.
Shot on location in the U.S. and Philippines, the video includes actual battle footage from Clark Air Field and captured Japanese footage from the Death March and prison camps.