After 65 years, news service adjusts Bataan photo caption to match veteran’s memory

Stars and Stripes ^ | March 22, 2010 | Adam Geller

[Jet Jaguar]

For 68 years, John E. Love has been haunted by the memory of carrying fallen comrades to a mass grave hollowed out of a Filipino rice field. Now, at last, a bit of history is being rewritten because of those memories.

After six months of research, The Associated Press is correcting the caption on one of the most famous photos in its library, 65 years after the image first moved on the newswire. The image shows defeated Allied soldiers after their surrender to Japanese forces on the Philippines’ Bataan Peninsula in April 1942.

Over the years, the photo has become perhaps the most widely published image of what came to be known as the Bataan Death March.

But for many of those years, Love, a native of Albuquerque, N.M., who fought to defend Bataan as a 19-year-old Army corporal, saw captions paired with the photo that he believed did a disservice to the truth.

Last August, Love picked up the Albuquerque Journal and saw the photo again, together with a front-page story about Bataan survivors. He called the newspaper and told an editor the caption was wrong.

“That picture is not of the Death March,” says Love, now 87. “The Japanese would not have tolerated a bunch of slow marching guys carrying their own dead. They wouldn’t have tolerated it just one New York minute.”

A Journal reporter, Charles D. Brunt, found other local Bataan survivors who agreed, wrote a story about the conflicting information and contacted AP, the source of both the photo and the caption. That launched the cooperative’s own investigation of the photo, originally supplied to news services by the U.S. military after it was confiscated from defeated Japanese forces.

AP archivists contacted the Pentagon. Eventually, that led to the original photograph, on file in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The catalog recorded it as a photo of U.S. prisoners using improvised litters to carry comrades. But a note filed along with the image, date unknown, said that, according to a retired U.S. Army colonel, the photo was not of the death march, but of the burial detail in the weeks that followed.

That’s exactly the way Love had long recalled it.

“We rounded up bamboo poles ... and we confiscated what blankets we could from the incoming prisoners. We told them we had to have them. The guys were dying faster than we could dig graves or carry them,” Love said. “We carried them 1,000 yards and we would just unload the blankets there and the guys would fall out into the graves. I did that every day until the late hours of the evening for six weeks.”

After discussing the evidence, AP decided to correct the caption. It now reads, in part, “At the time of its release, this photo was identified as dead and wounded being carried by fellow prisoners during the Bataan Death March in April 1942 ... Subsequent information from military archivists, the National Archives and Records Administration, and surviving prisoners, strongly suggests that this photo may actually depict a burial detail at Camp O’Donnell.”

[calex59]

I had many relatives fighting, all in the Pacific, luckily they all made it home. 4 uncles and my Father all fought in the Pacific. The Pacific was where our interest lay and FDR almost cost us that war, or at least came close to prolonging it. We got lucky at Midway and the Canal, if not for that we would have been screwed. We needed B17s in the pacific and fighters that we were not using in Europe at the time, but FDR sent them else where.

You have your ideas about the war, I have mine. Mine are borne out by history, if you read the facts and not revisionist crap. However, thank your relatives for their sacrafice.

[SoCalPol]

As a native here in San Diego, with both the largest active and vetern military in the world,
I know many who served in WWII and speak with them often.

I live less than 3 miles from Marine Corp Recruit Depot, San Diego where most of the Marines in the Pacific went through and I am around 45 miles south of Camp Pendleton here in San Diego, home of the 1st. Marines, over 40,000
And, I am around 12 miles from Mirimar Marine Air Station
here, Home of the 3rd Air wing.
My Dad was in the Marines in WWII and at the Frozen Chosin and Inchon Landing, Korean War
I currently have several Marines relatives serving in Iraq and Afghn.

I hear first hand About the Pacific in WWII along with Marine history.

I also know the results of Hitler, with my neighborhood having many many dozens of people a few years out of the Nazi concentration camps with their numbers on their arms.

You call this revisionist crap, I call these people who
knew war first hand, heroes.

[calex59]

Give it up. I wasn’t calling you a revisionist. I do know that FDR was an a**hat and nearly cost us the war in the Pacific. He caused many Marines to die for nothing at the Canal, Marines that would not have died had he properly equipped them. You think you are the only one who knows veterans? I know many of them and almost all of them hate(d) FDR because of his BS. As I said, think what you want, but don’t try to convince me FDR wasn’t a jerk and ran the war poorly because history shows the truth.

[SoCalPol]

I knew FDR was a tool along with the Marxist people in his adm as far back as the 1960s before I was 20

I laugh at the people I see on TV who just found out about FDR and getting paid for it, such as Beck.

[MikefromOhio]

I should have been more specific in my comment.

I know what Hanks said. I was having issues translating what the other poster said.

Sorry for the confusion.

[sasportas]

Guadalcanal veterans will always stand as some of our country’s greatest heroes. Thank you so much for your service. My Dad fought in the Philippines.

I agree with you about FDR. But I am not so sure about this part about the Navy...

“Marines would have all starved to death simply because the navy refused to stay there and unload”

It has been awhile since I read about this, but if memory serves me right the Navy, namely Admiral Fletcher, didn’t purposely do this to the Marines.

Due to lack of air cover to protect his supply ships at Guadalcanal, having lost the carrier Lexington in the battle of the Coral Sea, he thought it best to temporarily pull his vulnerable supply ships out of there. “Temporarily,” of course, turned out to be much longer than he anticipated. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the story went something like this.

[sasportas]

I forgot to mention the carrier Yorktown was damaged so badly in the battle of the Coral Sea that Fletcher had little to no air cover for his supply ships at Guadalcanal. Leaving only the carrier Enterprise - we only had three carriers at this stage of the war - and I don’t remember where it was at the time. At any rate, it is easy to understand Fletcher’s decision. Anyway you cut it, it was a tough call.

[HereInTheHeartland]

FDR was a Marxist, who prolonged the Depression with his hatred of free enterprise.

Never has a person been so wrongly remembered as FDR.