SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By NMDVS
The 77th anniversary of the fall of the Bataan Peninsula will be commemorated in ceremonies in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
On Saturday, April 6, the city of Albuquerque and the Filipino-American Foundation of New Mexico will present its annual ceremony at noon in the city’s Bataan Memorial Park, located near the intersections of Lomas and Carlisle Boulevards NE. For more information, contact Gap Silva at agapsilva@yahoo.com or (505) 377-8383.
On Tuesday, April 9, the New Mexico National Guard will host its annual public ceremony in Santa Fe at 11a.m. at the Eternal Flame Monument in front of the Bataan Memorial Building, located at 407 Galisteo Street. For more information, contact Joe Vigil atjoseph.l.vigil2.civ@mail.mil or (505) 407-3359
The ceremonies honor the heroic service of the 1,800 New Mexicans of the New Mexico National Guard’s 200th and 515th Coast Artillery Regiments. They had been in the Philippines for about eight months for a training exercise when Japan launched a surprise attack on that country just hours after its December 7, 1941 surprise attack on the U.S. Naval Base in Pearl Harbor, HI.
The men were activated, and immediately became part of a larger American and Filipino force that proceeded to put up a valiant fight against the much larger and better-equipped Japanese invading force. After four months of intense combat, supplies and food were now exhausted for the remaining 75,000 Allied forces who found themselves pinned down in the Bataan Peninsula. Sensing defeat, Allied Command ordered a surrender on April 9, 1942—against the wishes of the American and Filipino soldiers themselves, who preferred to fight until death.
Most of the captured American and Filipino prisoners-of-war were then forced to march 60-miles through intense heat and humidity to prison camps. About half of the 1,800 New Mexicans survived this brutal, torture-filled Bataan Death March and ensuing 3-1/2 year imprisonment. Only seven are alive today.
