Bataan 2011 This Month!

Whelp, it’s finally March!  The race is upon us, and I’m just about as ready as I’m gonna be.  I have one more solid week of training, then two weeks of light maintenance before the event.  I’ve done “take two weeks light” before an event ever since 1997, when I trained hard for nine months for the Marine Corps Marathon only to end up twisting my ankle the week of the run while out on the tank trails at Camp LeJeune.  I missed an important milestone that year as I had really wanted ever since I joined the Corps to run its marathon before I left active duty.

I wanted to take a few minutes here in the month of the Big Run™ to talk about what it is that I’m doing, and why.  I’ve been thinking a lot about that why part lately, mostly good, some bad.  The bad comes at about mile 14 or so of a pack run.  39ish pounds starts getting pretty damn heavy by about that point.  The good is pretty much present at all other times…good for my health, for doing something important (at least to me) in honoring real heroes some of whom are still with us, to help raise much needed funds for my local fire department, as a role model to my children, and finally simply because sometimes it’s good to embrace your crazy and go with it.

If you’re just finding the blog (lots of new readers the past several months) or haven’t gone back to the beginning and read up on what this is all about, here it is.  In April of 1942, US forces in the Philippines were surrendered to the Japanese.  No one truly understands why the brutality that followed happened, but I read last year that some historians had traced several of the Japanese units involved back to the pre-US involvement in the war days on mainland China, where fighting had been going on for years.  The units that had served on mainland China had become extremely brutal there, as you may have heard.  Apparently that mindset came to the Philippines with them when their units transferred for the invasion.

The US and Filipino forces on the Bataan peninsula had held off the Japanese advance for months, against the odds.  They were poorly supplied, had no medical care and for all intents and purposes were “forgotten” as far as how we think of military logistics.  They greatly slowed down the Japanese advance in the beginning of the war, to the point where the Japanese had to send extra forces to the Philippines from Japan to complete the invasion, forces which were slotted to fight elsewhere.

Unfortunately this heroism wasn’t the most that was to be demanded of these guys.  With the delaying tactic successful, the forces remaining were surrendered to the Japanese in the hopes that they would simply live out the remainder of the war in prisoner of war camps, relatively safe.  Their duty, it was thought, was done. 

During the surrender of the forces, the Japanese commander was asked if the US and Filipino prisoners would be treated humanely.  The response was, “We are not barbarians.”

What actually happened was that the Japanese found themselves with a logistics problem.  The main destination camp was 61 miles away, and they had very few trucks.  The 68,000 Filipinos and 11,796 Americans, who were all suffering from starvation, hydration, beriberi, and other diseases were forced to walk the 61 miles in the tropical heat.  During the march, Japanese forces shot, stabbed, beheaded and ran over (with trucks) anyone who fell down or lagged behind.  Marchers were randomly pulled from the marching line to be executed in front of other marchers.  Others died of their diseases, dehydration, or starvation.  As best anyone can tell, up to 21,000 died during the 4 days of walking.

And that wasn’t even the end of it.  The survivors of the march were forced onto railroad cattle cars, packed so tightly that when they died in the cars, they wouldn’t fall down until the train reached its destination and the cars were unloaded.  Those that survived that suffered through prisoner of war camps, prisoner transport ships (some of which were sunk by submarines), and still more prisoner of war camps once they reached their final destinations.

Pretty horrible, huh?  That’s why what they did needs to be remembered.  They gave more for their country and their brothers in arms than most people can imagine.

So this is the kind of thing that people like me tend to latch on to.  We like doing things because they’re hard, because of the challenge.  When we find something that lets us get our crazy on AND has some level of personal meaning behind it, well, that’s just icing on the cake =)