Free Republic

Thank you from the very bottom of my heart...maybe I know who you are...your handle doesn’t give a clue, but THANKS!!

Hi Oatka...thanks for looking into what the “Battling Bastards of Bataan” went through to continue protecting our country and “buying time” for recovery after Pearl Harbor in killing as many enemy troops as possible before giving their lives if they had to. My father said the defenders of Bataan “went for broke,” in that they knew they were laying their lives on the line every day.
My father was severely wounded (”gut shot” as they say)but somehow left that field hospital to rejoin his unit (Co. C/1st Battalion/31st Inf. Regiment)and fight while still stitched up. He also was one who said they would’ve rather gone down “Alamo style” if they had only known what subhuman and ungodly horrors lay ahead. How he survived it all to become the great father and caring person he was, i’ll never know. He’s been gone a year now and I just came back from visiting his humble grave...no monument or testimony there to what he survived and did.

My late father, John Zale, told me the older-looking American POW pictured with what looks like a woven basket in his lap was a fellow infantryman from the 31st Inf. on Bataan. The man’s name escapes me now, but he was an older career soldier from New York City. He died in my father’s arms in the POW camp at Cabanatuan. The photo grips me every time i see it. Dad said they would have gone “all the way” and fought to the death, but the brass decided surrender on “humanitarian grounds” would be preferrable to wholesale, Alamo-style slaughter. Humanity wasn’t present there.

If your post is serious, i believe you should check in with a shrink and get help with this very sick line of thinking; human beings lost their lives here — it’s not any old “event” that’s eligible for use as a political football, get it? Let’s try to be part of the solution, not the problem.

My father (still living at his own home!) was aboard the Tatori Maru (in the hold) as a POW of the Japanese. He was gut shot during combat as a sergeant in the 31st Infantry and somehow recuperated enough to make the Death March and subsequent 3.5 years of daily hell at the hands of the merciless captors. His journey away from the Phillipines aboard the Jap ship was nearly interrupted by an American sub (it is believed) that fired torpedoes not knowing U.S. POWs were aboard. The torpedoes missed, although the men swear they heard them coming in! His journey ended in Mukden, Manchuria. Anyway, he’s been plagued by the question ever since — what was the sub’s name and who commanded her? He’s lived with lots of problems and bad memories his whole life since, but i sure wish i could help him answer his one remaining question out of the whole mess. Any ideas out there as to how i can find this info for him? By the way, his name was changed after the war due to spelling difficulties! It used to be Sgt. John S. Zubrzycki during the war years.