Bataan Death March Memorial March

This Sunday, at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, hundreds will join the annual memorial march remembering the Bataan Death March. Registration to participate in the march is midnight, today, March 26. Details at http://www.bataanmarch.com/.

Individuals and teams from around the world come here to participate in the memorial march. But, fewer and fewer survivors of the actual March, 67 years ago, attend the event each year.

2,000 New Mexicans were forced through the 1942 march. Only three of those men men are still alive, here in our city of Las Cruces.

I am saddened by memories of the many tragedies of World War II, events in which many more suffered and died, but nothing moves me like this singular event. Imagine having been a young man, American or Filipino, pressed into service by your government yet being ill-supplied and equipped for modern warfare. Then, when attacked by a well-supplied and equipped army, that government just says, "Sorry... you're on your own."

In 1942, they said of themselves, "We're the Battlin' Bastards of Bataan, no mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam, and nobody gives a damn."

Today they just say, "Never forget".

UPDATE - Monday, March 30, 2009

More than 5,300 people participated in yesterday's Memorial March. Marchers came from all 50 states and from eight countries.

The Battlin' Bastards would have been pleased to know so many remembered.

NEW UPDATE - Tuesday, March 31, 2009

We have just learned that Ward Redshaw, one of three Death March survivors still living in Las Cruces, died last Saturday, the day before this year's Memorial March.

He had appeared at every Memorial March before this year, to thank the participants for remembering, and to answer questions about the march and his three years in a prison camp in Japan. That imprisonment culminated in his hearing a massive explosion which turned out to be, yes, an atomic bomb dropped by the U.S.

Now only two of the remaining living survivors remain in Las Cruces. Julio Barela and Granville Smith.

R.I.P., American hero.