After the Fall of Bataan during the Japanese conquest of the Philippines, approximately 2,000 defenders of Bataan managed to withdraw to Corregidor; the rest, about 78,000 U.S. Army and Filipino troops, were left behind and became prisoners of the Japanese. The Japanese code of military conduct, founded on ancient warrior (Bushido) traditions, regarded surrender as dishonorable and therefore sanctioned, even encouraged, the abuse of prisoners in flagrant and unapologetic violation of the Geneva Conventions. The treatment of the Bataan prisoners was an especially horrific demonstration of this warrior code.

Japanese lieutenant general Homma Masaharu decided to transport the Bataan prisoners to a captured American camp, Camp O'Donnell, which became a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Accordingly, on April 9, 1942, the prisoners, who were in a state of semi-starvation, having endured a long siege on half rations, were started out from Mariveles, on the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula, and were marched 55 miles to San Fernando, where they were put on trains to Capas, then marched an additional 8 miles to Camp O'Donnell.

The jungle climate was extremely hot and humid and the terrain difficult. Prisoners who faltered, collapsed, or otherwise fell behind were executed, typically by bayonet. Prisoners were frequently beaten, apparently at random. They were often denied food and water for days. During "rest periods," prisoners were typically forced to sit in the full sun without helmets or water. Sleep periods were a few hours long, the prisoners jammed into enclosures that allowed virtually no movement. Those who survived to reach the railhead at Capas were loaded into stifling boxcars.

The entire progress to Camp O'Donnell took more than a week to complete. Some 54,000 men reached the camp, 7,000 to 10,000 having died on the way, the rest having escaped into the jungle. Some of these men survived to fight alongside Filipino guerrillas.

Homma, overall commander of Japanese invasion forces in the Philippines, formally surrendered himself to U.S. forces in Tokyo on September 14, 1945, and was tried in December for war crimes. Subsequently remanded to the authority of a U.S. military commission in Manila, Philippines, he was tried there during January-February 1946 and convicted of having authorized the Bataan Death March and its attendant atrocities. He was executed on April 3, 1946.

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