“With each painful mile of nonstop marching, the blazing sun’s heat, former battle injuries, malaria, dysentery, and constant whippings began to take their toll on the weakest marchers. Slowing down or stopping brought on savage beatings and worse — a bayonet.”

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One of the most God-awful events of World War II was the Bataan Death March which took place in the Philippines in 1942. 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war were captured by the Japanese and forcibly transferred to prison camps.

Our men and the other prisoners suffered brutal physical abuse. Beheadings, cut throats and shootings were the more common and merciful actions — compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, guttings (disembowelments), rifle butt beatings and no food or water while kept continually marching for nearly a week in tropical heat.

Japanese trucks drove over anyone who fell. Riders in vehicles would casually stick out a rifle bayonet and cut a string of throats in the lines of men marching alongside the road.

No one knows for sure how many men died on that road to hell. Some historians estimate between six and eleven thousand men died at the hands of their Japanese captors.

Master Sgt. Frank Lovato, 87, was one of the lucky ones who survived. His son, 60-year-old Francisco Lovato, wrote a book about his father’s ordeal. It’s titled, appropriately – “Survivor: An American Soldier’s heartfelt story of intense fighting, surrender and survival from Bataan to Nagasaki”.

Tonight Francisco joins us to talk about his father’s ordeal and the 4-day trek he himself made last week to commemorate his father’s death march.

We get underway TONIGHT at 9p ET on my nightly radio program. Get to it here.

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