Intermission (4) – 74th Anniversary of the Bataan Death March

6,600 march in New Mexico to honor the Bataan fighters.

As we discuss and chronicle this war, we must not forget that the POWs of Bataan were at this point, still in captivity in various prisons of the Pacific and trying to survive.

Ralph Rodriguez says he’s not a hero. He doesn’t even want to talk about his wartime experiences of battling the Japanese and surviving the Bataan Death March.

“But I do it because I need to help people remember,” said Rodriquez, 98, following Saturday’s ceremony honoring Bataan Death March survivors who are still living, as well as those who have died since April 1942, when U.S. military commanders stationed on the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese.

“It’s not fun to really suffer or be tortured,” the Albuquerque man said.

Rodriquez was one of about 100 people, mostly military personnel, who attended the event near the Bataan Memorial Building on Galisteo Street to mark the 74th anniversary of a journey “too painful to remember, too tragic to not.”

While 74 may seen an odd anniversary to mark — unlike next year’s milestone 75th — time is thinning the ranks of the Bataan survivors. Each year, their numbers dwindle a little more — nine have died since last April’s ceremony. Nine others died the year before that. Every anniversary of the march is significant.

Bataan surrenders

Just three showed up for Saturday’s event — Rodriguez, William Overmier, 97, and Atilano “Al” David, 95.

From December 1941 to April 1942, some 1,800 New Mexico soldiers fought alongside Filipinos to repel Japanese invaders on the Bataan peninsula. On April 9, Bataan’s military commanders surrendered.

The American and Filipino defenders were either killed, captured or forced to march 65 miles through the jungle. Japanese soldiers used their bayonets and bullets along the way to kill the weak, wounded and defiant ones.

Those who survived the march ended up in prisoner-of-war camps where violence, malnutrition and disease took their toll. By the war’s end, just 900 New Mexico soldiers were alive to return home.

David, a native Filipino who moved to the United States in the mid-1950s, was one of the luckier ones.

Weak from a combat wound and suffering from malaria, he knew he faced a risk of being bayoneted or beheaded. And had he made it to a concentration camp, he said, he would not have lasted long. But two of his military buddies who had been carrying him made a decision that saved his life: When Japanese guards were not looking, they pushed David through some deep jungle brush, and the marchers passed him by.

With the aid of local Filipinos, he had recovered within a month and was battling alongside Filipino guerrilla fighters in the jungles, ambushing Japanese supply convoys.

On the day the American military surrendered to the Japanese, he said, “We were crying. I was crying.” Despite being ill-equipped and surviving on one bowl of rice a week, however, many Americans and Filipinos wanted to fight on, he said.

The Bataan battle, he said, was a combination of horror, chaos and death. He recounted with a tone of sorrow how he and some other soldiers had mistakenly shot down an American B-17 bomber, killing its crew, in the thick of battle.

“What can you say about something like that? Sadness,” he said.

Before the Americans surrendered, David felt like the defenders didn’t have a chance. “If we had had reinforcements, the proper equipment and air cover, we could have blown them all away,” he said. “We had no air cover, ineffective weapons and untrained soldiers. The Navy abandoned us. We were doomed from the start.

“We were waiting for Superman and Captain Marvel to win the war for us.”

Still, David avoided the grisly fate that many of his comrades met during or after the march.

Ralph Rodriguez, Jr., POW

For years, he resented the Japanese, who, he said, treated the Filipino prisoners much worse than their American counterparts. One day in the mid-1950s, he found himself shaking with rage when he saw a Japanese man on the subway in New York City.

“Something came over me. I wanted to do something violent to him. Strangle him. But I overcame it.”

Now, he said, he bears no ill will toward the Japanese: “We cannot generalize a nation.”

Bataan Memorial in the Philippines

David just completed a memoir of his wartime experiences called End of the Trail. He hopes it can be published before the 75th anniversary of the march next year.

At 95, his mind is still sharp, though he relies on a wheelchair to get around. But there are still things he won’t talk about regarding Bataan and the war.

“War is an insult to humanity,” he said.

And, like Rodriguez, he says it’s not the soldiers who are the heroes. It’s their families, the ones who wait at home for them to return.

Or suffer when they don’t come back at all.

———

©2016 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.)

Click on images to enlarge.

####################################################################################

POW Sketches by: Ben Steele

Drinking from the mud hole.
by: Ben Steele, POW

The shooting of a straggler.
By Ben Steele, POW

Break time for the prisoners.
by: Ben Steele, POW

 

 

 

 

 

####################################################################################

Farewell Salutes – 

Emanuel ‘Bob’ Amann – St. Louis, MO; USMC, WWII/ Korea, POW (Ret. 20 years)

Jesse Baltazar – Falls Church, VA; US Army, WWII, PTO, Bataan POW/US Air Force, Korea & Vietnam, Maj. (Ret.)

Benjamin “Bill” Bint – Saskatoon, CAN; RC Navy, WWII, ETO, POW, HMCS Athabaskan

Howard Brooks – Greeneville, TN; US Navy, WWII, PTO (Java), POW (CBI), USS Houston

John Edwards – Oakham, MA; US Army Air Corps, WWII, ETO, POW/Korea & Vietnam, Purple Heart, Col. (Ret.)

Murray Leonard Goldschlager – Bronx, NY, US Army, WWII, ETO, Purple Heart

Alan Jones – Pahiatua, NZ; RNZ Air Force # 391706, POW, Sgt.

Jose Salas – Santa Rita, NM; US Army Air Corps, WWII, ETO, POW

Glenna Stoner – Rochester, NY; US Navy WAVE, USS Hope, nurse

La Verne Woods – Hazen, AR; US Army Air Corps, WWII, ETO, POW

####################################################################################