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Surviving the Bataan Death March: The Ken Porwoll Story description

In early 1942, 21-year-old Ken Porwoll was a soldier in the 194th tank battalion defending the strategic Bataan peninsula in the Philippines against the invading Japanese army. On April 9, 1942, 10,000 American soldiers and approximately 60,000 Filipino soldiers became Japanese prisoners of war. That same day, these soldiers would begin a forced hundred-mile march without food or water, in the blazing heat of the tropic sun, to Camp O'Donnell prison camp. This hundred-mile journey became known as the infamous "Bataan Death March".

Of the 60,000 soldiers on the death march, 17,000 would not survive. Historians call the Bataan Death March "the worst military atrocity ever suffered by American soldiers in the history of the United States". Ken Porwoll survived this torturous march and more than three years as a prisoner of war of the Japanese.

Ken's graphic recall of these events, over 60 years ago, told with deep humility and no lingering animosity, captures for listeners the gut wrenching experience of these soldiers who suffered wartime brutality almost beyond belief.

Surviving the Bataan Death March is a story of man's inhumanity to man - yet inside this story of brutality and despair, are powerful moment s of warmth, humor, compassion, kindness, and faith. Ken's story is testament to the human spirit's ability to overcome all obstacles and endure - told in such a way it symbolizes the story of all soldiers on the Death March.