Commemoration of the Fall of Bataan

National Guard, Dept. of Veterans Services to honor Bataan Veterans in Wednesday Ceremony

SANTA FE, N.M. – The New Mexico National Guard has scheduled a ceremony to commemorate the 83^rd anniversary of the fall of Bataan at 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 9th, outside the Bataan Memorial Building on Don Gaspar Avenue here.

The event, which is open to the public, is followed by a reception.  Many families of Bataan Veterans are expected to attend.  The ceremony features a rifle volley, so citizens should be aware of a brief loud echo of military rifles firing blanks.

The Battle of Bataan in the Philippines — the first major military campaign of the Asian theater in World War II following the Pearl Harbor attack — took a huge toll on New Mexico.

Of the 1,800-plus New Mexican soldiers from the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery Regiments who fought in the battle, only half came home alive. Many of them, survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March and Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, came back physically, mentally and emotionally scarred.

From Dec. 8, 1941, to April 9, 1942, those 1,800 New Mexico soldiers fought alongside Filipinos and other Americans to fight off Japanese invaders on the Bataan peninsula. On April 9, Bataan’s military commanders surrendered, though the soldiers wanted to fight on, despite a lack of weapons, food and medicine.

Most of the American and Filipino defenders were killed, captured or forced to march 65 miles through the jungle. Japanese soldiers used their bayonets and bullets along the way to kill the weak, wounded and defiant ones on what became known as the Bataan Death March.