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Govt to invite survivors of Bataan Death March The government plans to invite to this country former American prisoners of war who survived the Bataan Death March, Foreign Ministry sources have disclosed. The Bataan Death March took place in April 1942 on the Philippine island of Luzon. The Japanese army forced about 70,000 U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war captured in the Battle of the Philippines to march about 100 kilometers in tropical heat from the Bataan Peninsula to POW camps. The POWs were given little food or water. Between 7,000 and 10,000 people are believed to have lost their lives on the march. This is the first time the government has planned to invite to Japan former U.S. servicemen who were taken captive by Japanese forces during the war. Invitations will be extended to U.S. survivors, their families and people who helped the POWs during the march as civilians, the sources said. The government hopes to lessen the former POWs' antipathy toward Japan by inviting them to take part in events commemorating the tragedy and stay in the homes of Japanese citizens. It also hopes the planned invitations will help improve the currently strained ties between Japan and the United States over the issue of relocating the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station in Okinawa Prefecture, the sources said. Although specific schedules have not yet been determined, the first group of about a dozen former POWs and their families will be invited within the year, according to the sources. The scope of invitations will gradually be increased beginning in fiscal 2011, they said. (Apr. 27, 2010) Last year’s Yomiuri article on the same topic
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