Mr. Bates, our 8th grade teacher, was a survivor of the so-called Bataan Death March. The following is a description of that horrific event that I found in an email from one of my representatives, Tom Udall. He is introducing legislation to memorialize this event by awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to those who took part.
Having built a military goliath and mobilized for all-out war, Japan hoped to capture the Pacific all the way to Australia before Allied forces could mount a defense. They had the advantage of size, organization and momentum. We had a small number of units that had been stationed near Manila, in the Phillipines, before the war began.
For months, American troops resisted the Japanese surge. They slowed Japanese forces and allowed Allied troops to eventually reverse Japan's progress. Thanks to the heroism of these troops, America was able to recover from Pearl Harbor and take the fight to the Axis powers in Asia before going on to defeat Hitler.
On April 9, 1942, 12,000 American troops and 67,000 Filipino troops surrendered in the Philippines' Bataan Peninsula. The group included 1,800 members of the New Mexico National Guard. New Mexico's 200th and 515th Coast Artillery units were, according to one general, "the first to fire and the last to lay down their arms." Months of fighting had taken their toll. The forces that were surrendered on April 9 were suffering from a lack of supplies, malnutrition, malaria and starvation with no resources left to continue and no reinforcements able to arrive.
What followed has come to be known as the Bataan Death March, one of the great tragedies of our history. American and Filipino troops were forced to march 65-miles through tropical heat, without food or water, for days on end. Many were summarily executed. Thousands died from mistreatment, malnutrition, sickness and captivity. Those who survived were held as prisoners of war in squalid encampments for almost three years. By the time they were rescued, towards the end of the war, half of New Mexico's 1,800 soldiers had died. Another 300 would die within a year of returning to the U.S. as a result of complications related to their captivity.
4 comments:
A little late for many of the survivors of the march. Maybe they should have thought of it fifty years ago.
I am getting prepared to write another of my "Regrets". If ANYONE
says, "please don't", I will not do it.
GO FOR IT, Wayne! I look at it as being similar to lancing a boil. Lets the poison out.
They deserve any medal or citation that we can give them. Certainly that march and their subsequent imprisonment was one of the most ugly episodes of the Pacific war.
As Wayne said, it's too late lfor most of them.
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