Survivors fear Bataan march will be forgotten
Many New Mexicans were among those forced to march 65 miles to Japanese POW camp during WWII
Evans Garcia used to tell his daughter Margaret that freedom is not free.
He and hundreds of other New Mexicans — as well as soldiers from other states and native Filipinos — learned this lesson 76 years ago as they made a valiant stand to stave off a superior force of Japanese invaders on the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines.
Their four-month defense bought America and its allies much-needed time to organize forces and derail a Japanese plan to invade Australia, among other places. But it also resulted in one of the most infamous and brutal events of the early years of World War II: the Bataan Death March.
The Battle of Bataan, the first major military
campaign of the Asian theater in World War II following the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, took a huge toll on New Mexico. Of the 1,800-plus New Mexico soldiers who fought in that battle, only half survived. Many returned home physically, mentally and emotionally scarred after surviving the 65-mile Bataan Death March and subsequent incarceration and inhumanity in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.
Just over a dozen of those soldiers are believed to be alive today. As they and their descendents prepare for another annual commemoration of that campaign in Santa Fe — 11 a.m. Monday, April 9, at the Bataan Memorial Building on Galisteo Street — some wonder if their story will eventually be overlooked as those survivors pass away.
“We descendants are often concerned that the legacy and sacrifices our fathers, uncles and other family members made on Bataan will be forgotten,” said Margaret Garcia, whose father died in 2011. “So many people in society today, especially our youth, do not appreciate what our World War II veterans fought for.”
Consuelo “Connie” DeVargas, wife of Valdemar DeHerrera, a 98-year-old survivor of the march who lives in Alamogordo, agrees. Two of her grandchildren came from Colorado to take part in the annual Bataan Memorial Death March commemoration hike of up to 26 miles on White Sands Missile Range in late March.
When they returned to their school the following Monday, replete with stories about the march and materials pertaining to the 1942 campaign, the other students and teachers “didn’t even know what they were talking about,” DeVargas said. “I think it will be forgotten.”
But others, including historians and history teachers, disagree. They say that as long as the story of the “Battling Bastards of Bataan,” as the defenders were known, remains in the textbooks, they and other educators will continue telling their story.
“It’s one of the state standards [for education] set by the state’s legislators, many of whom knew the people who were involved with it, and who see it as an important event,” said Capital High School teacher Steve Hegmann, who incorporates the story of the Bataan campaign into his New Mexico history class for ninth-graders. “It would take a long time for it to be forgotten, at least here [in New Mexico]. Most teachers in the state realize that New Mexicans were involved in the campaign.”
Stephen Martinez, a professor of U.S. and New Mexico history and Western civilization at Santa Fe Community College, agrees. “It’s always a sad chapter in the story when we lose the survivors,” he said. “But New Mexico is very proud of its history, and it’s a very long history, and because of that, I think their voices and stories will never be
lost, even though they pass on.”
Both Hegmann and Martinez said they blend coverage of the Bataan campaign with other New Mexico-related events tied to World War II, including the story of the Navajo Code Talkers and the creation and detonation of the atomic bomb. In Hegmann’s case, he also uses the Death March and its aftermath as a way to discuss the issue of war crimes, a still-relevant topic.
“I can tie it to current atrocities … and the idea that there are rules that society has decided are not acceptable in wartime,” Hegmann said. “The question my students often ask is, ‘What were the consequences of violating the Geneva Convention code of conduct [regarding prisoners of war]?’ ”
Jon Hunner, a professor of history at New Mexico State University, puts the battle of Bataan and the ensuing tragedy into the context of the Japanese Bushido — or samurai — code of conduct. To a Japanese soldier in World War II, Hunner said, “If you surrendered, it was so dishonorable that you could not be treated like a human, so it was perfectly justifiable in that Japanese code of war to treat your prisoners as less than human.”
He said many historians overlook the actual battle of Bataan and focus on the Death March and the atrocities “because it is very tragic; it shows the inhumanity of man.”
Capt. Gabriel Peterman, who runs the New Mexico National Guard Museum in Santa Fe, agrees.
“We always talk about the surrender and the Bataan Death March, but we don’t talk about the four-month battle that those men fought,” he said. “They were low on ammunition, low on food, low on supplies. … They shut down a lot of plans the Japanese had to take over Australia and other islands. I don’t think it’s too much to say that their defense helped us win World War II.”
He added: “If we don’t maintain the annual Bataan ceremony and the tradition it was built upon, there is a fear that we will forget Bataan.”
Hunner said he thinks that with the passing of each Bataan veteran, as well as the passage of time, there is legitimate concern that the story of Bataan could fall by the wayside.
“As generations get away from the time of any historic event, they lose sight of it because other historic events that are recent become more relevant and they can find someone living to talk to about those,” he said.
As such, he said, these history stories “are like a ship sailing over the horizon.”