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We thank the people of New Mexico for honoring our soldiers.
“The Philippine embassy in Washington DC said in a news release that more than 6,000 people from all over the United States and some from the Philippines on Sunday paid tribute to Filipino and American World War II veterans by taking part in the reenactment of the infamous Bataan Death March,” reports InterAksyon.com.
The report noted: “Ambassador Jose Cuisia Jr. joined surviving Filipino and American veterans at the 26th Bataan Memorial Death March staged at the White Sands Missile Range every year in honor of the so-called ‘Battling Bastards of Bataan.'”
Cuisia said, “Being here with you on the year that we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Philippines, is the least I can do to pay tribute to the Filipino and American soldiers who gallantly fought together in Bataan during the Second World War”
The report further pointed out that the Bataan Death March reenactment in New Mexico was “considered to be the largest commemoration of the Bataan Death March outside the Philippines,” as “the annual 26-mile march at White Sands has been participated in by more than 72,000 people since it was started by Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) Department of the New Mexico State University in 1989.”
The report recalled: “The event is in remembrance of the more than 75,000 Filipino and American soldiers who were force-marched 65 miles by Japanese troops following the surrender of Bataan on 9 April 1942. As many as 10,000 men — 9,000 Filipinos and 1,000 Americans — perished in the march while many more died at the concentration camps in Capas and Cabanatuan and in the sinking of prisoner of war ships that were transferring them to Japan and Manchuria.”
Photo: Elmer Cato, Philippine embassy in Washington DC (via InterAksyon.com)
