72,000 soldiers of the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), fighting with outdated weapons, lacking supplies, and stricken with disease and malnourishment, eventually surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. The Japanese had initially planned for only 10,000–25,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war (POWs). Although they had organized two hospitals, ample food, and guards for this estimate, they were overwhelmed with over 72,000 prisoners. By the end of the 60-mile (97-km) march, only 52,000 prisoners (approximately 9,200 American and 42,800 Filipino) reached Camp O'Donnell, with an estimated 20,000 having died from illness, hunger, torture, or murder. Later with the closure of Camp O'Donnell most of the imprisoned soldiers were transferred to the Cabanatuan prison camp to join the POWs from the Battle of Corregidor. In 1944, when the United States landed on the Philippines to recapture it, orders had been sent out by the Japanese high command to kill the POWs in order to avoid them being rescued by liberating forces. One method of the execution was to round the prisoners up in one location, pour gasoline over them, and then burn them alive. After hearing the accounts of the survivors from the massacre at the Puerto Princesa Prison Camp, the liberating forces feared that the safety of the POWs being held in the country was in jeopardy, and decided to launch a series of rescue operations to save the surviving POWs on the islands. POW camp The Cabanatuan prison camp was named after the nearby city of 50,000 people (locals also called it Camp Pangatian, after a small nearby village). The camp had first been used as an American Department of Agriculture station and then a training camp for the Filipino army. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines, they used the camp to house American POWs. It was one of three camps in the Cabanatuan area and was designated for holding sick detainees. Occupying about , the rectangular-shaped camp was roughly deep by across, divided by a road that ran through its center. One side of the camp housed Japanese guards, while the other included bamboo barracks for the prisoners as well as a section for a hospital. Nicknamed the "Zero Ward" because zero was the probability of getting out of it alive, the hospital housed the sickliest prisoners as they waited to die from diseases such as dysentery and malaria. Eight-foot (2.4-m) high