Free Republic

It’s almost beyond belief. How does someone make it through the worst of two wars only to be gunned down on the streets of home for the few bucks in his pocket? It’s been 40 years since the murder of Heren Cabacar, a soldier who survived the Bataan Death March of World War II and the prison camps of the Korean War. Forty years since Portsmouth police knocked on the family’s door at 4 a.m. Forty years since the headlines shouted “Ex-POW killed on walk home.” Forty years of wondering who did it. And trying to make sure the crime...

Elias Saavedra, one of the last survivors of the Bataan Death March, died Wednesday. He was 96. Saavedra died of natural causes at his San Rafael, New Mexico, home after battling a number of illnesses, his son Alfred Saavedra said. Born in 1918 in San Rafael, Saavedra joined the New Mexico National Guard at the outset of World War II. He was one of 75,000 Filipino and American soldiers taken captive by the Japanese in World War II when U.S. forces surrendered in the province of Bataan and Corregidor Island in April 1942. In all, tens of thousands of troops...

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A doctor once told Albert Brown he shouldn't expect to make it to 50, given the toll taken by his years in a Japanese labor camp during World War II and the infamous, often-deadly march that got him there. But the former dentist made it to 105, embodying the power of a positive spirit in the face of inordinate odds. "Doc" Brown was nearly 40 in 1942 when he endured the Bataan Death March, a harrowing 65-mile trek in which 78,000 prisoners of war were forced to walk from Bataan province near Manila to a Japanese...

TOKYO — Japan's foreign minister apologized Monday for the suffering of a group of former World War II prisoners of war visiting from the United States and said they were treated inhumanely. The six POWs, their relatives and the daughters of two men who died are the first group of U.S. POWs to visit Japan with government sponsorship, though groups from other countries have been invited previously. "I offer my deep, heartfelt apology for the inhuman treatment you suffered," Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told the group.

An enraged Japanese guard, the flaps of his hat flying into the air, charges with his bayonet toward an exhausted American soldier on the ground. In other works by Ben Steele, a Japanese soldier strikes a captured American across the face with the butt of his rifle, several guards stand over a withered American digging his own grave, and GIs drink from a mud hole. Copies of these works are currently on display at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art. "I just kind of want to give people an idea of what went on over there," said the 92-year-old Steele...

Former President George W. Bush said during an ABC interview aired in December that the "biggest regret" of his presidency was the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, for which the U.S. waged the war. His statement virtually acknowledges it was a war without a cause. It's too late for regrets, but what about Japan? The Japanese government did support the U.S.-led war on Iraq, but it has now fallen silent as if the war is someone else's affair. Are we simply going to evade the issue by saying it was a decision by former Prime Minister Junichiro...

For those Forum Members who have expressed an opinion on the movie Letters from Iwo Jima, please allow me to share how I re-acted to this film. For lack of a better way to begin, let me say, What “Nice Guys” the Japanese Soldiers Were. It was obvious to me that the Japanese soldiers who fought the Americans on Iwo Jima were not the same soldiers who fought the Americans on Bataan, or were they? As a survivor of the Bataan Death March, I can tell you for certainty, the Japanese depicted in “Letters From Iwo Jima” were in no...

Deliberately targeting civilians is widely considered terrorism nowadays, but during World War II both the Britain’s Bomber Command and the United States Army Air Force deliberately targeted civilians. The British philosopher A. C. Grayling, in his new book Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan (Walker, $25.95), points out that the two air forces combined killed perhaps 600,000 German civilians and another 200,000 Japanese. He makes the case that at least by our current standards we were terrorists, and it logically follows that the attacks were war crimes....

Vietnam Memorial Traveling Wall Comes to Grants Pass, OregonLast weekend, June 24th-27th, 2004, the Vietnam Memorial Traveling Wall came to Grants Pass, Oregon. A touching tribute to the over 58,000 fallen heros of the Vietnam War, this Wall is a replica of the one in Washington D.C.The four days of events included a flyover, bagpipers, speeches by local politicians and veterans, and an awards presentation by representatives of various Indian tribes.It was sponsored by Point Man Ministries, The Vietnam Veterans of America - Three Rivers Chapter #867, and former Oregon State Senator Brady Adams.The Wall was open 24 hours a...

On crisp autumn Saturdays on the football field of Notre Dame, the life of a young fullback named Mario "Motts" Tonelli was measured in hashmarks and goal lines. He was, by virtue of his ability to break into the clear, a hero, a man defined by athletic skill and physical power. But looking back on his life--a life of survival, renewal and redemption, of extraordinary courage and a will to live stronger than a prison death march--his accomplishments on the field seem almost a footnote. Mr. Tonelli did achieve true greatness, but a greatness realized through those traits that rarely...

U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. We hope to provide an ongoing source of information about issues and problems that are specific to Veterans and resources that are available to Veterans and their families. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood...

60 years later, survivors tread route of Bataan Death MarchBy Joseph Giordono, Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, April 8, 2002 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...