According to an essay published on Wikipedia online, in October of 1944 allied forces landed on Leyte, paving the way for the liberation of the Philippines. In December of 1944, as allied forces consolidated in preparation for an invasion of Luzon almost one-hundred fifty Americans prisoners of war were executed by the Japanese in a POW camp at the island of Palawan. One POW escaped and was able to tell U.S. Army intelligence about the massacre on January 7, 1945. News that the Japanese army was willing to commit mass murder on allied prisoners of war forced allied commanders in the Pacific to consider how they should ensure the safety of POWs as they island hopped across the Pacific toward the home island of Japan (Raid on Cabanatuan).
As American troops landed on Luzon, approximately five hundred thirteen prisoners of war, mostly survivors of the Bataan death march, remained in a POW camp at Cabanatuan northeast of Manila. The allied forces faced the task of liberating the POWs before malnutrition and disease killed more of the prisoners. The real threat was that these POWs would be murdered by the Japanese before they could be freed by allied forces. In 1942, there had been 12,000 POWs in the camp but many of these men had died of malnutrition and maltreatment. Other POWs from the Cabanatuan camp had been transferred to smaller camps in the Philippines or shipped off to Japan to work as slave laborers on the docks or in the mines.
It is important to understand that to the Japanese, allied POWs were held in contempt because under the Japanese code a soldier was never permitted to surrender. The code stated that surrender resulted in shame and dishonor. As a result, the Japanese believed at the time that there was nothing they could do to the allied POWs that was worse than the dishonor the Japanese believed the POWs had brought on themselves by surrendering. Weak and ill, the prisoners languished as self-described ghos...