60 years later, survivors tread route of Bataan Death March

At the end of the day, emotions overcome Whitney "Chuck" Langlois Jr., whose father survived the Bataan Death March but died last year.

One of the Battling Bastards of Bataan, John Real, and a family member of another complete the lastg portion of the re-enactment.

At the end the re-enactment, Richard D'Antoni gazes up at the huge Capas National Shrine. Several re-enactment participants gather in prayer. Debra Ann Grunwald holds her father, Bataan Death March survivor Harold Bergbower, at the Capas National Shrine.

Two of the Battling Bastards of Bataan, Karl Houghton and Harold Bergbower, read a small monument at the Capas train station Karl Houghton, enjoys a cigar during the re-enactment.

A curious Filipino child watches the re-enactment. Another young local spectator.

CAPAS, Philippines--Sixty years later, everything has changed for Karl Houghton.

There are no guards prodding him with bayonets. His comrades are not falling dead by the dozens. And he has all the water he wants.

But for Houghton and 13 other survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March, the memories are as painful as ever.

The group, collectively known as the Battling Bastards of Bataan, is back in the Philippines to mark the 60th anniversary of the march, in which thousands of American and Philippine prisoners perished from disease, exhaustion or at the hands of their Japanese captors.

Early on Saturday morning, they re-enacted a steamy five-mile portion of the march with friends and family. "A lot of good men died here," said Houghton, a spry man of 90 who puffed on a cigar most of the way through the re-enactment. "It had changed so much, it’s hard to imagine that this is the same route we took. But you get little flashes of the memory. It’s hard."

For many of the survivors on this trip, it is their first — and last — return to the spot that changed their lives. Of the 60,000 American and Philippine prisoners held at Camp O’Donnell in the days after the 1942 surrender of the central Philippines, 31,000 died.

But Saturday’s march was more a commemoration of the living that a eulogy for the dead. Winding along the same route they took 60 years ago, the men and their families shared their stories of survival.

From the time of their surrender, they were at various times packed into cattle cars, herded into holding pens, beaten, disparaged and used as forced labor. The original march began in Mariveles, Bataan province, and went 55 miles to San Fernando.

There, the prisoners were packed into boxcars and shipped 25 miles to Capas. From there, it was another five miles to Camp O’Donnell.

Anyone who fell behind on the march was shot or bayoneted. They would not be freed for three years until 1945, when the Japanese formally surrendered. "When we finally ended the march at Camp O’Donnell, the Japanese commandant addressed us. I remember exactly what he said: ‘When you surrendered, you forfeited your right to live.’

That has stuck with me until this day," said James Copeland, who was a 20-year-old sergeant in the Army Air Corps. "It was at that point that a lot of the guys realized what a situation this was going to be."

Copeland, who lives in Jensen Beach, Fla., said some of the most vivid memories were in the days immediately after his capture.

As the rail cars full of American prisoners rolled slowly through the Philippine countryside, sympathetic locals tried to sneak them food.

"I was right by the open door, and I remember those people handing us little things to eat. I’d stuff them in my coveralls and try to pass them out later," he said. "Sometimes the guards would see you and punish you for it. Sometimes they wouldn’t care."

On Saturday, as the long, straggling line of about 60 survivors and family members made its way through small villages, children and curious locals lined the streets to wave and stare.

Despite starting the re-enactment at 5 a.m., the sun quickly burned through the morning clouds. By the time the group reached the Camp O’Donnell memorial around 8 a.m., the temperature topped 90 degrees.

"We always come in April. April is when this happened, and April is the hottest month down here. We just wanted to give our families a taste of what it was like," joked Richard Gordon, a retired Army major and leader of the Battling Bastards who has returned to the Philippines a few times.

Coming back to Bataan was just as important for the family members of the veterans, they said. Seeing what their fathers, brothers and grandfathers endured gives them a better appreciation of their stories.

"It’s almost overwhelming to be here and see it firsthand," said Melissa D’antoni, whose grandfather survived the march and died last year.

Melissa and five other members of her family made the trek, all bearing signs around their necks honoring the memory of Capt. Whitney Langlois.

Throughout the day, they shared their favorite memories of Whitney. One of the most popular stories was how disobeying his mother ended up saving his life.

Raised on the banks of the Mississippi River in New Rose, La., Langlois’ mother always warned him to stay out of the water. But he couldn’t resist and taught himself to swim in the river.

After his capture, Langlois was put on a "Hell Ship" with hundreds of other prisoners and transported to work camps in Japan.

Three times, the ships that he was on sunk. Three times, he swam back and forth from the ships, saving comrades and supplies.

When Melissa and her family reached the Capas National Shrine, the memorial marking the spot where Camp O’Donnell stood, they gathered in a circle and said a tearful prayer for Langlois. Once they reached the memorial, the survivors searched for the names of fallen comrades on the wall. But because of financial and space constraints, not all the names of those killed are inscribed on the memorial.

Though the scene has changed immeasurably since 1942, it was close enough for some. "This camp was 10 times worse than anything I could imagine," said John M. Deal, who was making his first trip to the Philippines since the war. "There were bodies lying everywhere. There were flies all over those bodies. It was something that you just cannot imagine how bad it really was."

As he looked over the memorial, taking it all in, Deal pointed to the words inscribed at its base. They are the words several of the survivors said sums up what they want remembered about the ordeal: "Freedom is not free."

MacArthur was a brilliant general, conquering and liberating vast amounts of territory and numbers of people, all while sustaining relatively light casualties, but unfortunately his administration of postwar Japan left something to be desired.

Rivalry with the USN had disastrous results. The Navy had many, many folks fluent in Japanese, but MacArthur had no use for them. The occupation would be an all-Army affair, and all business conducted in English. As a result, SCAP cut itself off from critical intelligence.

American occupation authorities disbanded the Japanese military and the Naimusho, or Ministry of the Interior, made the police answerable to prefectural public safety commissions, purged fifteen hundred businessmen, barred a few politicians from public office, and dissolved ultra-nationalist organizations. They did not attempt to reconstruct the Japanese governing apparatus, but had decided that the entirety of the bureaucracy be left intact. MacArthur insisted on the continuation of the Japanese government. Legally, Japanese rule of Japan never ended. Even as the Instrument of Surrender was being signed on the USS Missouri, Japan was administered by Japanese.

Unfortunately, MacArthur thought Japanese bureaucrats to be the same kind of rational public management specialists as bureaucrats from other countries. Additionally, American authorities decided to leave the actual achievement of SCAP policies to the Japanese. The democratization of the entire Japanese civil service was the responsibility of a sole lieutenant of the US Army Transportation Corps. Later, he was replaced by specialists in modern administrative methods. In its fundamental form, the prewar Japanese government survived.

The Naimusho was disbanded, the police force was decentralized, and a democratic, pacifist constitution was bestowed upon Japan by MacArthur. The foundation for the future Japanese economic miracle had been laid, and democracy was all the rage. Truly, Japan had made a break with the past and a national recovery from a prolonged psychotic episode appeared inevitable.

But MacArthur had forgotten an essential fact of freedom: rights can never be received. They can only be taken, for what is granted can also be withdrawn. The Japanese had not wrested control of the country from the power structure, instead, a democratic constitution was rammed down the throats of the prostrate power elite, who were forced to implement it.

Thinking Japanese, liberated from what was colloquially known as Thought Police (tokko keisatsu, meaning "Special Higher Police") started a popular movement for the genuine reform of the civil service selection system. But American ignorance of the Japanese bureaucratic tradition was appalling. Economic indices all showed steady growth from 1946, the nation’s economic recovery was inevitable, and SCAP saw no reason to change the way bureaucrats were selected. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” seems to have been the American attitude. By 1949 the movement to change the bureaucracy exhausted itself due to lack of US support.

The SCAP had left “democratization” to Japanese bureaucrats, who were left largely untouched. Many Tokko Keisatsu officials dodged the Americans through administrative reassignment. Thus, ex-Thought Police and Naimusho bureaucrats returned to public life, in those government bureaucracies which had replaced the disbanded Naimusho.

Machima Kingo, who censored the press and persecuted religious groups, became the minister of home affairs and chairman of the National Public Safety Commission that oversaw the postwar police. Niwa Kyoshiro, who was Thought Police section chief of Kyoto, became a transportation minister. A Tokko Keisatsu section chief who had supervised in Aichi Prefecture and in Tokyo named Okazaki Eijo became political vice-minister at the Ministry of Labor, the Administrative Management Agency, MITI (the Ministry of International Trade and Industry,) and vice-chairman of the LDP’s public security committee. Kagoshima Thought Police section chief Hara Bumbei went to the Upper House of the Diet and was later head of the Tokyo metro police. In November of 1996, Hara is currently in charge of administration of war reparations to former “comfort women,” sexual slaves of the Imperial Japanese Army. Hara’s foot dragging in the dispersal of funds is well known.

A colleague of his, Okuno Seisuke, who denies that “comfort women” ever existed, became vice-minister of home affairs, education minister, and justice minister before becoming director-general of the National Land Agency in 1987. Former Naimusho police bureau chief Furui Yoshimi, who was also a Naimusho vice-minister and governor of Ibaragi and Aichi, became a welfare minister and justice minister. Thought Police section chief in Wakayama, Masuhara Keikichi, became director-general of the Self-Defense Agency. Otsuo Yasuo, formerly section chief of a police press censorship unit, became vice-minister of education and of justice, and was also a chairman of the judicial affairs committee of the Lower House. Goto Fumio, a Naimusho minister who was a major organizer of prewar and wartime youth groups, served in the Upper House.

The list of ex-Thought Police and Naimusho bureaucrats who became politicians is prohibitively long, and the above listed are only those who gained public notoriety, but it is important to note that many more of them became prefectural governors, and that others became active in lower regional government bureaucracies and the police supervisory positions of local public safety commissions.

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