SURVIVORS of the Death March
8 of 12 New Mexico soldiers still living attend memorial event
Joe Romero struggles to speak, is confined to a wheelchair and has suffered more than 70 years from side effects of his time spent as a prisoner of war during World War II.
The 96-year-old veteran raised his arm and waved Saturday when he was introduced as one of the last living survivors of the 1,800 New Mexico soldiers who were captured in the Philippines and taken as prisoners of war. Eight of the 12 men still alive attended a ceremony at Bataan Memorial Park in Albuquerque to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the start of the Bataan Death March on April 9, 1942.
An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 Filipinos and 600 to 650 American soldiers died during the 65-mile march,
during which many were denied food and water and were killed along the route. Those who survived were forced to endure back-breaking work, malnutrition and other horrific conditions as prisoners until the war ended in September 1945.
Romero, who is from Las Cruces, survived the death march, then spent most of his internment working in a lead and zinc mine in Japan.
Ana Marie Gonzales, his daughter, said her father was the oldest of 10 children, and he and his brother enlisted. She said the Romero family for years didn’t know if the brothers were alive.
“He felt the responsibility to come back and help his mother and father,” she said. “To me, knowing what he went through and knowing what the other ones went through, we can never complain. No matter what.”
Bill Overmier became a POW after he was captured on Corregidor. He helped start the ceremony Saturday by taking down the American flag and replacing it with a flag of surrender, then raising the American flag at the event’s conclusion.
“It’s unbelievable how much you have to think about,” the 97-year-old said. “‘I knew him,’ or ‘No, I didn’t know him, but he was a part of my outfit.’ They went through the same damn thing I did.”
Overmier credited his survival to his work ethic. While growing up in Albuquerque, his father taught him how to build homes. Those skills were put to use when he was forced to work in Japanese shipyards.
“All you could do is day by day. You can’t anticipate anything happening next week or next month. You’re going to work,” he said. “All you could do is live by the moment. You can’t anticipate a dang thing until you started seeing airplanes coming over.”
The ceremony drew a crowd of hundreds. Many in attendance had relatives connected to the New Mexico National Guard’s 200th and 515th Coast Artillery Regiments, which accounted for about 1,800 of the 12,000 American soldiers who were taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese.
Las Vegas, N.M., resident Wanda Hern struggles to speak because of a stroke, but she attended the event with a portrait of her father, Ed Hern, who survived the death march and imprisonment. When he was shipped off to Japan, he weighed 200 pounds. He was about 90 pounds when he returned.
He died in 2015.
“It’s important to remember these gentlemen. We try to go to as many of these events as we can,” said Porfirio Perez, Hern’s husband. “They are heroes and will always remain heroes.”
Gary Finley brought a picture of his father, Jack Finley, and grandfather, Jess Finley, to the ceremony. He said the two men are the only fatherand-son pair of American soldiers who survived after both were taken prisoner.
Before his father died, Finley took a road trip to Houston with him and recorded the conversation to preserve his father’s story. Jack Finley was on the death march for three days before he escaped, received support from Filipinos, then was part of a group that launched guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. He was recaptured a year later and spent two years as a prisoner of war in Japan.
Finley recorded many of his father’s war stories so the soldier’s grandchildren could listen to them.
“I just think about the hell these people went through,” Gary Finley said. “They were sacrificial lambs. They had no choice.”
Honoring the soldiers and listening to stories of what they went through after their capture is the reason the Bataan Death March is remembered, Steve Garcia, the chief of staff of the New Mexico National Guard, said during the ceremony.
Additional ceremonies remembering the fall of Bataan will be today. One is at 10 a.m. near a monument in front of the Bataan Memorial Building in Santa Fe, and a ceremony at Veterans Memorial Park in Las Cruces will be at 4 p.m.
“It’s fading,” Garcia said. “And it takes us to remember.”