Early History

The province of Bataan was established in 1754 by Governor-General Pedro Manuel Arandia out of territories belonging to Pampanga and the corregimiento of Mariveles which, at the time, included Maragondon, Cavite across the Manila Bay.

In 1647, Dutch naval forces landed in country in an attempt to seize the islands from Spain. The forces massacred the people of Abucay in Bataan. In the late 1700s, Limahong, a Chinese pirate used Bataan as the launching point for his conquest of Luzon, which was unsuccessful.

World War II

Bataan featured prominently during World War II. Prior to the 1941 Japanese invasion, the US Army stored nearly 1,000,000 US gallons (3,800 m³) of gasoline here.

Shortly after the Japanese Army invaded the country in December 1941, the combined forces of Filipino and US forces were being gradually overrun and General Douglas MacArthur decided to make Bataan the site of a last stand. On January 7, 1942, Japanese forces started the siege of the peninsula. On April 3 the Japanese began an all-out assault on the American and Filipino troops left on the peninsula. Bataan fell on April 9 and the Bataan Death March began. About 70,000 captured American and Filipino soldiers were forced to march more than a hundred kilometers from Bataan to Tarlac. (Source: Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia.)