On April 9, 1942 70,000 American and Filipino troops surrendered to the Japanese on the peninsula of Bataan, in the Philippines. It was the largest surrender in the history of the US Army. What happened next was the Batann Death March, a sixty mile walk through the steamy hot jungles of the Western Pacific without food or water. Six days. When the march ended no one will know how many died. Maybe as many as 11,000. They were prisoners with the US war efforts turned to Europe.
There are those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. Then there are those who gave up their freedom, at the total mercy of the enemy's humanity and compassion for weeks, months and years.
Today was Former Prisoner of War Day. Did you know? I didn’t.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
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3 comments:
but the enemy showed no humanity or compassion
That was for sure, but I wasn't going to go into those details.
details- i just read about sophmores in high school (a fairly elite high school) that had no idea that slavery still occurred. from the story weve been told - its only the evil white Americans who ever enslaved black people: racism only exists in this country. a lot of good the internet with easy access to information has done.
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