Memorial Day

a personal perspective

 

You'd expect that this statue was erected by the government or some veteran's group, but it wasn't.  The money to erect it came from a grateful group of people--American Filipinos who did not want to forget the sacrifice of American and Filipino soldiers who endured the Bataan death march. 

 

While most of us focus our views of WWII upon the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941  which killed some 2,400 there (mostly civilians), the Bataan peninsula fell the same month to Japanese forces. Little is noted of the "death march" of some 60 miles  which was ordered for some 75,000 captured prisoners.  Only 25,000 made it to the prison camp.  The rest were butchered, starved, and shot.

 

The "A Tribute To Courage" Memorial in Kissimmee, Florida depicts a scene from the Bataan Death March: two soldiers, one American and the other Filipino, are propping each other up while a Filipino woman is offering water to them. It was erected to symbolize the unique friendship between the United States and the Philippines—the two countries who fought together during World War II, and the heroism and comradeship between the Americans and Filipinos. It is the only statue in the United States dedicated to the heroes and survivors of the fall of Bataan and Corregidor and the Bataan Death March.

 

Three prisoners escaped from those camps, one of them I remember well.  He lived four houses from my childhood home, and was the first to reveal to our country the extent of the brutality he witnessed.  The Chicago Tribune featured his story, which had been suppressed for many months due to the government's fear there would be such outrage over what the Japanese forces had done that the European war would be no longer be our first priority. 

 

 

 The vast majority of soldiers never receive deserved honor or mention in our history books.  It is usually a matter of being in the "wrong place" in the "wrong time".  They did not set out to be honored.  They simply wanted to help the oppressed overcome and to defend freedom.  Some barely lived past their teens; millions of young married men never saw their children born.   

 

Their brief time on this earth escapes our thoughts as we live ours.  Statues in dedicated parks and days set aside to remember will seldom due just honor to our war dead, but rather focus more on the thrill rides and hot dogs sold there.   We do not like to be reminded of war's brutality and the sacrifices that someone paid for our days off and fun at the beach. 

 

We may not remember them as we should, but we will not forget to enjoy the Day of Remembrance. And when I think about it, I am certain most of those who perished in all those wars would do it again, just so we could.

 

  

 

MARY E. ADAMS