3. The Bataan Death March
If neither of the two previous facts about the Japanese hasn’t convinced you that Imperial Japan was worse than the Nazis, probably this one will.
When the Philippines’ Baatan area was turned over to Japan in 1942, the horrors there officially started. Unable to handle the overwhelming number of POWs, the Japanese gave the order for all 75,000 of them to march into the forest; this march came to be known as the Bataan Death March. This is probably one of the worst things the Japanese did during WWII.
When Japan invaded the Philippines in December 1941, the combined American and Filipino forces, who were members of the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), engaged the Japanese in combat for the first time.
The American and Filipino soldiers finally gave up the struggle against the Japanese in April 1942 after a few months of conflict. They were then forced to march 65 kilometers to detention camps by their Japanese captors.
However, they aimed to annihilate their hostages rather than simply transfer them. In one of the history books, there was a line that gave us shivers down our spine and made us think that definitely, Imperial Japan was worse than the Nazis: “The aim is to exterminate them without leaving traces. It’s easier that way.”
