<P> During the march, prisoners received little food or water, and many died . Prisoners were subjected to severe physical abuse, including being beaten and tortured . On the march, the "sun treatment" was a common form of torture . Prisoners were forced to sit in sweltering direct sunlight, without helmets or other head covering . Anyone who asked for water was shot dead . Some men were told to strip naked or sit within sight of fresh, cool water . Trucks drove over some of those who fell or succumbed to fatigue, and "cleanup crews" put to death those too weak to continue, though some trucks picked up some of those too fatigued to continue . Some marchers were randomly stabbed by bayonets or beaten . The Death March was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime . </P> <P> Once the surviving prisoners arrived in Balanga, the overcrowded conditions and poor hygiene caused dysentery and other diseases to spread rapidly . The Japanese did not provide the prisoners with medical care, so U.S. medical personnel tended to the sick and wounded with few or no supplies . Upon arrival at the San Fernando railhead, prisoners were stuffed into sweltering, brutally hot metal box cars for the one - hour trip to Capas, in 43 ° C (110 ° F) heat . At least 100 prisoners were pushed into each of the trains' unventilated boxcars . The trains had no sanitation facilities, and disease continued to take a heavy toll on the prisoners . According to Staff Sargent Alf Larson: </P> <P> The train consisted of six or seven World War I - era boxcars....They packed us in the cars like sardines, so tight you couldn't sit down . Then they shut the door . If you passed out, you couldn't fall down . If someone had to go to the toilet, you went right there where you were . It was close to summer and the weather was hot and humid, hotter than Billy Blazes! We were on the train from early morning to late afternoon without getting out . People died in the railroad cars . </P> <P> Upon arrival at the Capas train station, they were forced to walk the final 14 km (9 mi) to Camp O'Donnell . Even after arriving at Camp O'Donnell, the survivors of the march continued to die at rates of up to several hundred per day, which amounted to a death toll of as many as 20,000 Filipino and American deaths . Most of the dead were buried in mass graves that the Japanese had dug behind the barbed wire surrounding the compound . Of the estimated 80,000 POWs at the march, only 54,000 made it to Camp O'Donnell . </P>

How many american soilders were taken prisoner after the battle of bataan