About 2,200 Americans and 27,000 Filipinos died from disease and starvation at Camp O'Donnell before the camp was closed in July 1942, just three months after the beginning of the Death March. Ortega -- now the lone surviving member of the 192nd tank battalion - spent 3 ½ years in captivity in the Philippines and Japan before being liberated in August 1945 following the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing a reluctant Japan to surrender. Ortega eventually returned to the United States in October 1945, the first of five brothers to return home from the war. A sixth died in action.
Americans used atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.