Bataan Death March

In 1992, I sat down with two Bataan Death March survivors in a VFW hall in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. What I remember more than anything else was how they could describe the most incredible cruelty with no apparent emotion. Many World War II veterans -- for whom much of the war was boredom and fatigue and drudgery -- struggled to speak about carnage, burying the worst moments into recesses of their memory they never revisited. But, for Death March survivors and others who landed in Japanese prison camps, the horror was such a daily part of their lives that they could speak of such things.

http://ww2thebigone.com/2016/04/07/bataan-death-march/

 

My elementary teacher, yes long ago, told us several stories of his experiences of the march and internment. The one that seems to stand out is of his delirious dying friend who he tried to comfort and help by trading his wrist watch for a coup of water with a Japanese soldier. His friend, not of sound mind, knocked it from his hands as he brought it to the graying lips.