Bataan heroes remembered in America

I saw the photo of the Filipino marchers with their corresponding names at the annual Bataan Memorial Death March held last March 17. Kudos to all of them.

In March 2015, the Inquirer published a picture of my son, a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force, shaking hands with then Philippine ambassador to the United States, Jose Cuisia, at the start of the 2015 Bataan Memorial Death March at Las Cruces, New Mexico, in the United States. The picture was probably taken by the official photographer of the Philippine Consulate in Washington DC. No names except the ambassador’s was mentioned.

We have done this marathon march 12 or 13 times since April 2000 to honor my father, a Philippine scout survivor of the Death March. If I remember right, that was the only one done in April close to the actual event of April 9. Now, it’s done in the month of March. We missed it this year because my son’s wife (who also marched in 2015) is pregnant. In the other years we weren’t able to march, he was in Iraq where he has been deployed twice. The march is now replicated in Brainerd, Minnesota; New York; and Virginia.

As I mentioned before, my father was a survivor of the Death March. In fact, my grandfather, along in years, also fought for our homeland; he was killed defending a bridge in Cabcaben, Bataan. Another brother of his and an uncle also gave up their lives for our country.

I’ve immortalized these four heroes with a kilometer Death March marker, Km. 25, in Limay, Bataan. The 138-kilometer markers can be seen placed from KM 00 in Mariveles, Bataan, to Camp O’donell and Capas, Tarlac. I might be wrong, but the only Philippine veteran we’ve known there and befriended and who was part of the small delegation of World War II vets was retired captain Menandro Parazo of the 26th Cavalry (PS) unit, of El Paso, Texas, and a member of the Philippine Scouts Heritage Society. He passed away in 2011.

I don’t march the rugged 26.2 miles because of advanced age. I only do the 8.5 miles to the medical emergency tents near the renamed Bataan Memorial Highway, part of the interstate that runs from Las Cruces to Alamogordo, New Mexico. My son, always carried the 3-foot x 5-foot Philippine flag through all of the 26.2-mile course. Occasionally, some marchers would question us which country’s flag it was, and we would answer, “the Philippines.” Always our reply would be met with a smiling “Oh!”

Local newspapers have interviewed my son, especially in that first march in 2000, when grandson and son “honor his grandfather” (my father) by doing the march. We might have missed some countrymen in the early years, but a scattering of them proudly posed with us with the Philippine flag in some of the years that followed. We wished the Inquirer was there.

CELSO F. AURELIO, Chicago, Illinois, USA