75 years later, mission to keep alive legacy of few surviving Filipino soldiers who endured brutal Bataan Death March
Daughter of man who survived infamous Philippines march 75 years ago collects veterans’ stories before they die
Ramon Regalado was starving and sick with malaria when he slipped away from his Japanese captors during the infamous 1942 Bataan Death March in the Philippines, escaping a brutal trudge through steamy jungle that killed hundreds of Americans and thousands of Filipinos who fought for the US during the second world war.
On Saturday, the former wartime machine-gun operator joined a dwindling band of veterans of the war in San Francisco’s Presidio to honour the soldiers who died on the march and those who made it to a prisoner of war camp only to die there.
They commemorated the mostly Filipino soldiers who held off Japanese forces in the Philippines for three months without supplies of food or ammunition before a US Army major general surrendered 75,000 troops to Japan on April 9, 1942.
Few Americans are aware of the Filipinos who were starving as they relentlessly fended off the more powerful and well-supplied Japanese forces, said Cecilia Gaerlan, executive director of the Berkeley, California-based Bataan Legacy Historical Society organising the event at the former military fort.
“Despite fighting without any air support and without any reinforcement, they disrupted the timetable of the Imperial Japanese army,” she said.