Dear Major Gordon:

My name is Rick Peterson and I am writing this email to you concerning the recent $600.00 I mailed to you.

This money was donated to maintain the BBB Memorial at Camp O'Donnell by World War II veteran Kristin Gilpatrick and myself. The money comes from the sale of Alf R. Larson's recently released book, "Footprints In Courage: A Bataan Death March Survivor's Story." He is a Bataan Death March Survivor from Crystal, Minnesota.
We are under the impression that this is about what it costs to maintain the memorial for a year. We would like the money used for that purpose for as long as it lasts. So, we decided to give this donation in his honor. We are asking that there be a write-up in the next quarterly BBB Newsletter.

I am attaching some information and photos that will be helpful for the article. If you have any questions about this, please let me know.

Thank you very much!

Sincerely:

Rick Peterson

PS: Please let me know when this money is used up as I am considering making another personal donation for this purpose in Mr. Larson's honor.

Thank you!

Dear Major Gordon:

I had not given you a report on the activities on Bataan Day, because I failed to go to O'Donnell on the 9th. The main Bataan Day ceremonies were held at O'Donnell, while the one in Mt. Samat was held in the afternoon of the same day but was not well attended according to the report of Edna Binkowski.

I sent my secretary and driver to Capas in the same evening. They checked in at a local hotel and attended the ceremonies at O'Donnell. Much of what went on is reported in the column of Max Soliven a part of which I sent you via email. There was a ceremony in front of the BBB memorial at ODonnell, held the day before (April 8) by the VFW from Clark.

When my secretary arrived in O'Donnell in the morning of the 9th, the BBB memorial was already bedecked with wreaths left by the VFW and other American organizations. My secretary reported that the following left wreaths at the BBB memorial; JUSMAG (Joint US Military Assistance Program), the US Embassy, American Legion, VFW, and Veterans of the Vietnam War. My secretary laid out near the center of the BBB memorial our own wreath, and one also on the Filipino Memorial and Phil Scouts marker.

My secretary reported that our BBB memorial was the center of attraction again among the huge crowd that attended the unveiling of the black marble wall that now surrounds the Obelisk and where the names of those who died in O'Donnell are engraved, much like the Viet Nam memorial in Washington DC. Ambassador Ricciardone was there at our memorial and spent a lot of time reading all the inscriptions. Our own Gen. Angelo Reyes, Secretary of Defense, also spent a lot of time inspecting our memorial as did other dignitaries and just other common folks.

The interest that our BBB memorial generates is a tribute to your foresight and thoughtfulness.
 

It was a touching experience last Wednesday (April 9) to be present at the unveiling of the "Memory Wall" - the Wall of Heroes Memorial, really, at the Capas National Shrine in Tarlac. The President, of course, presided at the solemn gathering.

On the wall are, at last, inscribed the names of the 32,285 Filipinos and American Soldiers from Bataan who were herded after a four-day Death March into the notorious hell-hole of a prisoner-of-war camp there, Camp O'Donnell, and almost all of whom died there. President GMA found the names of her relatives, seven Macapagals, on the heroic wall. She later recounted in her speech that her uncle, Angel Macapagal, didn't have his name on the wall because, when the Death Marchers got to Lubao, Pampanga, he managed to escape. Then we walked over the "S" panel where she looked for my father's name, Soliven Benito, Major. Thus were our so movingly honored and remembered.

It was a joy, too, to embrace one of the gallant young lieutenants who had marched at dad's side during the cruel ordeal of the 75-mile march in 1942 under the blazing sun of April - no food, no water, and only the Japanese bludgeon gun-butt bayonet or shotgun for those who fell by the wayside. (The Geneva Convention? Perhaps they had never been translated into Japanese.) Papa's march-mate during those terrible days of deprivation? None other than our dear friend, Rafael "Paeng" Estrada, now National Commander of the Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor - who delivered the speech at Wednesday's ceremony on behalf of the veterans.

The wreath laying ceremony, on the other hand, proved a shocker. As we stood there, under the sun, the spaceshipshaped memorial tower and the Wall of Heroes before us, the Armed Forces band broke into - good grief! - the Kimigayo, the national anthem of Japan! I mean no disrespect to the present Emperor Akihito, who's by all reports a good guy, but that hymn to the Emperor of the Empire of Japan was an insult to the good and brave men who were tortured, starved, humiliated, and died there on those same grounds, and whose comrades, 10,000 of them, had perished in the march to get there. I exclaimed in disgust: Sanamagan!... .....

The Memory Wall belongs to us Filipinos and our American comrades-in-arms. The Japanese were the jailers and oppressors there.

Let me be clear in what I say: We've long ago made friends with the Japanese. After half a century, the war is long over. We're at peace and are, at least nominally, allies today. But the one place in which the Emperor's hymn or the Kimigayo must never be played in is over the dead of Capas, the horrible concentration camp and the terminus of the Death March ....

A gust of wind, by the way, came out of the clear sky and almost blew down the wreath of the President a few minutes later. Was it the ghosts of our men of Bataan expressing their displeasure at having the Japanese Rag, the Red Sun, flying once more over their tomb?

Don't we remember? When our boys were dying at the rate of 500 per day from their war wounds, from malaria, dysentery, cholera, lack of food, no medicines at all, and inhuman mistreatment in Camp O'Donnell, our humiliated prisoners-of-war, weak and sick as they were, used to be made to stand in the sun in the morning to listen to the Kimigayo, and bow in humiliation and servitude to the camp commandant and their Japanese captors.
Before he succumbed to malaria, weeks after his release, my father told us how there were two lines daily that bore the dead for burial in a common grave, and the half-dead for treatment (usually hopeless) in their makeshift clinic. Sometimes, he had related in hollow humor, a "corpse" would feebly Butter his eyes and hoarsely whisper: "Don't bury me yet. I'm still alive." Dad was one-third his original weight when they let him go, already dying of malaria - a gaunt skeleton of the once dynamic and boisterous man he had been when he went off to war.

Forgive, yes. Forget - never. Forgetfulness is what will destroy our national spirit.

From Lamao

Dear Major Gordon,

Students helping out on the cleanup detail of markers.  Thank you for the warm response, please give my regards to Mrs. G.

Attached is photo of the kids assigned to clean the BBB's DM#7. Three of the kids were Japanese and they worked very hard, made it shining. This is the first year that Bataan was chosen by some of the children as site of their "I Care" community service. Some went to Corregidor and cleaned and painted the relics. Some went to other provinces. With tough security guidelines, it was a tough three days work, working inconspicuously as much as possible

The overall teacher coordinator gets panicky everytime the driver makes a wrong turn. The kids belong to international community and most of them are sons and daughters of dignitaries, expats, and wealthy people. Now that it's finished, it's time for press release. Bataan children and school teachers should know this kind of nobility.  Just in case you need other info regarding community events here:

An American national, Steven Bobelock, an entrepreneur doing business in Bataan Economic Zone, has sponsored 7 FAME death march markers, and indicated that he would sponsor 3 more.

Petron-Bataan Refinery in Limay has sponsored one marker, and they would landscape the other markers close by. They also would repair and fence the memorial in Alangan (built by the BBB).

The Director of Tourism in Luzon, has written to the Mayor of San Fernando to fix the relic train station. He has mentioned that Secretary Richard Gordon of Tourism has written to the same official. I will personally check on this and will let you know of the development.

Best regards,

Edna

From San Diego

Dear Major Gordon & Battaling Bastards of Bataan:

We would like to extend our greatest appreciation for your support of the petition for review before the California Supreme Court which we filed on behalf of our clients in Mitsubishi Materials Corp. v. Superior Court (Dillman).

The Supreme Court of California has agreed unanimously to review the Fourth District appellate decision which denies former American POWs who were forced into slave labor in Japan during World War II to sue the Japanese companies that enslaved them. The grant of a Petition for Review is very rare. Only about 5% of these petitions are granted, and we could not have attained this goal without your support as an amicus curiae. Your organization demonstrates to the Court that the rights and sacrifices of these veterans and the mistreatment of prisoners of war must not be ignored.

Our fight is not over. We will need your tremendous support and assistance again, as the briefing before the California Supreme Court progresses. We will be contacting you to discuss this as your organizations presence as amicus curiae would greatly enhance our argument for the defendants' long overdue apology and compensation to our American veterans. Thank you again.

Please feel free to contact us at (619) 238-1811 if you have any questions, comments; or concerns.
Very truly yours,

Wendy Behan, Esq. Herman, Mathis, Casey, Kitchens & Gerel, LLP

Dear Mr. Soliven,

At long last, a man of your stature, spoke out in protest against the annual insult to those who died in Bataan, in the Death March, and in the prison camps. There is a time and a place for reconciliation and there is a time and place for private grief. The annual commemoration of Bataan Day in Mt. Samat, and lately, in Camp
O'Donnell, in Capas, Tarlac, is a time for private grief, reserved only for Filipinos and Americans who gather together for one day in a year to recall the sufferings of their soldier kin and comrade-in-arms and to remember with sadness, the brutal torture, neglect, and the inhumanity that the flower of our country's youth had to endure in the hands of the Japanese military. Inviting the Japanese ambassador or his representative to these gatherings in memory of our war dead is like inviting the murderer of our sons to the wake. If we have no respect for ourselves, we must at least show some respect for our war dead!

We must neither forget or forgive. Forgiveness is a private matter and only the dead can forgive, when the final Judgment day arrives, if there is one at at all.

On the matter of the sequence of the playing of the national anthem, protocol dictates that the national anthem of the host country (the Philippines) be played last. Any protocol officer schooled in the elementary canons of diplomacy knows this.
Again we extend to you our congratulations and gratitude for standing up for former comrade-in-arms who can longer speak for themselves.

Yours truly,

James Litton

For and in behalf of The Battling Bastards of Bataan
An organization of American Bataan Veterans and Death March survivors.