when i was a kid, i remember some accounts by death march survivors. it was the individual atrocities that happened along the way. they tracked the original route of the march and they were laughing and drinking all the way.

but militarily, it was a necessity. the japanese expected less than 30,000 POWs after the fall of bataan. but when they did surrender, it turned out there were more than 80,000. so the commander in bataan had a nice logistic problem. the only POW camp big enough was in capas, tarlac. to get there, one had to ride a train and the nearest arm of the line was in san fernando, pampanga. that's at least 110 kilometers from where they were.

the choices were, process them in bataan and probably end up with 80,000 prisoners dead of starvation and exposure (plus several hundred of your own soldiers dead of the same cause,) or force march them to the nearest rail bend. the japanese chose the latter, and there was urgency in their task. you'd expect a lot of one-sided bayonet action along the way, under the hot summer sun.