Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Plaque State Street Bridge

The next time you cross the State Street Bridge, you might wish to pause and reflect on one of our country's greatest sacrifices, memorialized there by a plaque honoring Bataan and Corregidor.

On April 9, 1942, the 76,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan surrendered the peninsula to the Japanese. The troops had held Bataan for 14 weeks. Only one month later, the 13,000 defenders of Corregidor gave up the island at the entrance of Manila Bay. Except for scattered guerrilla resistance, the fall of the Philippines was complete.

For one week, Corregidor prisoners were not fed; later they were hauled ashore in freighters, driven like cattle through the streets of Manila and then shipped on a train to an improvised prison camp at Cabantuan.

Bataan's survivors were treated even worse. Food, water and medicine were in short supply for the more than 50,000 captives. Most had to walk 65 miles north to Camp O'Donnell. Some soldiers were treated well, but most faced cruelty at the hands of their captors. Seven thousand men died on this march to Camp O'Donnell, which is now called the Bataan Death March. A soldier-poet who would later die in captivity wrote of Bataan's benumbed marchers: "The suffering column moves. I leave behind/Only another corpse, beside the road."

The Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Bridge was first dedicated in 1948 and then re-dedicated by Mayor Richard M. Daley on the 100th anniversary of Philippine Independence, and on the occasion of Bataan Day, April 9, 1998.

The plaque reads: "Dedicated to the memory of those gallant heroes from the Chicago area who were members of the besieged garrison on the Bataan peninsula and at Corregidor, Philippine Islands in World War II.  May the courage and fortitude displayed by this group in the face of adversity be a constant inspiration to our citizens."