Survivor of Bataan Death March recalls horror 75 years later
Thousands of Filipinos and Americans died
After 75 years, it is the MANILA hunger and thirst that colonel Vicente Alhambra remembers most.
Alhambra, now 100, was a Filipino soldier captured by the Japanese during World War II and forced on the notorious Bataan Death March — a 65mile trek under intense tropical heat. Filipino and American prisoners were starved and beaten, and those too weak to move were shot or even beheaded. About 10,000 prisoners died during the march, about 1,000 of them Americans.
“Wells were nearby, but they didn’t allow us to get water,” Alhambra recalled. “There was no food. Some people on the road tried to throw food to us, but they couldn’t let the Japanese see them, or they would be killed.”
On May 6, 1942, American forces in the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese after the Battle of Corregidor. Commemorative events honor Filipino veterans from the war, 9,000 of whom are still alive in the Philippines.
Despite the ceremonies, many of the veterans’ relatives and supporters said enough hasn’t been done to recognize their sacrifices. About 260,000 fought for America during the war, and
more than a fifth — 57,000 — died.
Many live in poverty, and only meager benefits are available to them from the resource-strapped government. Veterans are eligible for a pension after age 65 of just $100 a month, and there is only one veterans’ hospital in the country.
“The perception is that the great battles fought here were Japanese vs. Americans,” said Bob Hudson, a researcher on the war in the Philippines based on the Bataan Peninsula across Manila Bay from this capital city. “Most of the fighting and most of the dying was done by Filipinos.”
Veterans and their families are disappointed in the United States for what they said was the postwar abandonment of Filipino soldiers.
In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt created the U.S. Army Forces of the Far East, offering full veterans benefits to Filipinos who enlisted. The Philippines was then a U.S. commonwealth, and Filipinos were U.S. nationals.
Once the war was over, that promise was quickly rescinded. The Rescission Act of 1946, signed by President Truman, stripped the soldiers of their status as U.S. veterans. The Philippines was singled out from the 66 nations allied with the United States during the war.
“You’re looking at the Philippines as the only nation whose veterans were chosen by the U.S. government to have their service revoked retroactively and denied benefits and services that other veterans who served similarly got,” said Ben de Guzman, an official of the Filipino Veterans Recognition and Education Project.
Retired general Resty Aguilar, chief of the Veterans Memorial and Historical Division of the Philippines Veterans Affairs Office, said the Rescission Act left a wound that has never healed.
“The benefits should have been enjoyed by the veterans while they were still alive,” he said. “Many of the veterans, hundreds of thousands of them, were waiting for benefits to come, but they have died and never saw the promise fulfilled. Their families that have nursed this feeling for many, many years, they feel that they were forsaken by America.”
Aguilar said the feeling of betrayal was not just about lost financial benefits. “What was important to them was the recognition,” he said.
After the fall of the Philippines to Japan, Filipinos remained loyal to the United States. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and citizens formed guerrilla regiments during the occupation to engage in sabotage and intelligence work and help lay the groundwork for the U.S. return in 1944.
William Pasiwen, 92, joined the guerrillas when he was 16, acting as a guide and translator around his northern hometown of Baguio.
“I was a very good guide because I had already finished fourth grade at that time, and I could speak English,” he said.
Pasiwen said he joined out of a sense of loyalty to Americans, who lived in his area, working in education and in the booming mining industry.
“We were pro-Americans,” he said. “They were our teachers.”
Some amends have been made in recent years. In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus package included a one-time payment of $15,000 to surviving Filipino veterans who were U.S. citizens and $9,000 to those who weren’t.
On a trip to the Philippines in 2009 after signing the bill, President Obama called the treatment of the Filipino veterans “an injustice.”
In 2015, Congress approved an act to issue a collective Congressional Gold Medal, the United States’ highest civilian honor, for Filipino World War II veterans.
“(The gold medal) is significant symbolically, and realistically, it’s maybe the final significant legislative victory we’re going to be able to win for them while there are still enough of them to appreciate it,” de Guzman said.
Overdue recognition in school history books is coming as well. Last year, the California Board of Education approved the inclusion of Filipinos’ roles in World War II as part of its revised history curriculum framework.
The chance for the veterans to enjoy the recognition — as well as to share their own stories — is growing short. All remaining veterans are over 90 years old.
“Time is running out fast and the numbers of veterans are dwindling,” said Aguilar, whose office is recording their histories. “We estimate that in three years’ time, their number will only be in the hundreds.”
Alhambra, the former colonel who still wears his class ring from the Philippines Military Academy, said many in the USA and within the Philippines don’t know the history of his sacrifice.
“They forget,” he said. “But we are still proud of what we did during the war.”