Having fought gallantly for four months, weak, starving, sick, exposed to the burning heat of the Philippines, roughly 60,000 Filipino troops and 11,000 – 15,000 men from the United States surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942 on the peninsula of Bataan. A fate that would claim 5,000-10,000 Filipino soldiers and about 650 American lives along the march. The numbers vary due to the inability to get an accurate count of how many actually were captured at the largest surrender of American forces since the Civil War, coupled with those soldiers who were able to escape. While the numbers might differ, the manner in which the brutal slaughter of Prisoners of War occurred is documented and remembered on April 9, 1942 as the worst, most egregious, displays of inhumanity in the Pacific Theater during WWII.
Bataan Park, Bremerton WA
Araw ng Kagitingan, Day of Valor, is currently celebrated with prayers and laying of wreaths at statues and plaques across America and in the Philippines commentating the thousands of souls lost to a hostile enemy. Manila was first attacked on December 8th 1941, with the international date line that was December 7th, 1941, in U.S. time, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor. Outnumbered, with ill preparation by General McArthur, the country of the Philippines was the last to surrender to the Japanese in Asia with the fall of Corregidor on May 6, 1942. [Read more…] about The Bataan Death March
As the 353 Japanese aircraft rained death and destruction across the Island of Oahu, Takeo Yoshikawa, using his alias of vice-counsel Tadashi Morimura, was hurriedly burning his implicating files inside the Japanese Consulate on Nuuanu Avenue. The 13,400-square-foot grounds of the Japanese consulate, in a well-to-do neighborhood, displayed a gold imperial chrysanthemum crest outside the two-story main building where the smoke billowed from the chimney, as the pile of incriminating evidence was destroyed.
There is a lively debate as to which city in our vast country actually held the first Decoration Day in honor of those souls lost in battle. This ancient custom of decorating the graves dates back to before the Civil War. However, on May 5, 1868 General John Logan, commander–in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) established Grand Order #11. This new ruling established May 30th as the day to be set aside annually and observed nationwide to commemorate our deceased soldiers.
The first stanza by McCrea swept Monica Michael, a YWCA worker, into action. At a 1918 conference for Overseas’ War Secretaries, Monica pinned a red poppy to her coat and brought dozens more to hand out. This simple red flower was quickly adopted and by 1920 the red poppy became the official symbol for the National American Legion.