ON APRIL 8, 1975, a Friendship Tower symbolizing the restored friendship between the Philippines and Japan following World War II, was inaugurated in the municipality of Bagac on Bataan peninsula.
The peace monument is located about 200 meters (660 feet) from where the “Bataan Death March” of the World War II started. It is 27 meters (89 feet) in height and consists of three pillars encircled by rings.
Earlier, in April 1942, the Japanese invading troops at gunpoint forced some 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war to walk to San Fernando, Pampanga, some 120 kilometers northeast, then taken by rail further north to Capas, Tarlac, where they walked the final 13 kilometers to Camp O’Donnel.
Nearly 10,000 of the prisoners, weakened by hunger and diseases and unable to endure the tropical heat, expired along the way.
