As John Wayne refused to use a stunt-double in the movie, director Edward Dmytryk and screenwriter Ben Barzman wrote scenes for Wayne with dangerous stunts so that Wayne would want to use a stuntman. Not even this deterred Wayne who still did the stunts.
As the script for the movie was being written, the battle for Bataan was still being fought. The screenwriters were constantly updating the script based on the latest news from the front.
The Bataan of the film's title refers to both the World War II Battle of Bataan and the place Bataan which is a Central Luzon region province on Luzon island in the Philippines which occupies the whole of the Bataan Peninsula on the island.
The character Andres Bonifacio played by Anthony Quinn is supposed to be the grandson of Andres Bonifacio, a leader of the Philippine revolt against Spain in the late 19th century. The real Andres Bonifacio's only child died of smallpox, so he had no grandchildren.
The first 10 notes of "Lupang Hinirang", the Philippine National Anthem was played during the vehicular ambush scene against the Japanese by the Philippine Guerrillas
The movie took one hundred and thirty days to shoot the picture, i.e. about one third of a year or four months.
The state of the war in World War II was an ever-changing dynamic and two thirds of the way through production, the American invasion of the Philippines took place. As such, script changes and re-writes needed to be made to keep up to date with the current status of the war.
This is one of a handful of feature film movies that have featured the story of the World War II Battle of Bataan. They include Bataan, So Proudly We Hail!; They Were Expendable and Back to Bataan.