Hello Guys! I’m finally back. I know this topic is kinda late but I can’t let this pass without sharing my thoughts about why this day is very important to me. I wonder what is the f___ing idea behind the law changing Bataan Day to Araw ng Kagitingan.
I was watching the news in GMA-7 last April 9, and in one news segment, the reporter was asking common people on the street on why this day, April 9, is called Araw ng Kagitingan. Being a Bataeno, it really hurts that only 2 out of about 10 who were interviewed answered correctly. People have already forgotten the valiant stand of thousands of Filipinos defending Bataan from the advancing Japanese Imperial Forces for more than three months, despite lack of logistics, until they finally surrendered on April 9, 1942.
The last stand of USAFFE Forces in the Philippines was code named by General Douglas Mc Arthur as War Plan Orange-3 (WPO-3). This was a pre-war plan to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula, regroup, fortify and hold defensive lines across the peninsula, until the U.S. Pacific Fleet could be mustered at full strength. Without this stand, the Japanese might have quickly overrun all of the U.S. bases in the Pacific. Bataan forced them to slow down, giving the allies valuable time to prepare for conflicts such as the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, which followed closely thereafter.
Ultimately, more than 60,000 Filipino and 15,000 American prisoners of war were forced into the infamous 60- mile Bataan Death March. My late father had many stories of how he (who was still in his early teens) witnessed the gruesome long line of the Death March as they likewise walked from Limay to Orani, Bataan and rode a banca towards Manila. They too had to leave Limay which was completely burned by Japanese forces.
Allow me to quote the radio broadcast aired by the Voice of Freedom at the Malinta Channel in Corregidor in the morning of April 9, 1942.
“Bataan has fallen. The Philippine-American troops on this war-ravaged and bloodstained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody but unbowed, they have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the enemy.
The world will long remember the epic struggle that Filipino and American soldiers put up in the jungle fastness and along the rugged coast of Bataan. They have stood up uncomplaining under the constant and grueling fire of the enemy for more than three months. Besieged on land and blockaded by sea, cut off from all sources of help in the Philippines and in America, the intrepid fighters have done all that human endurance could bear.
For what sustained them through all these months of incessant battle was a force that was more than merely physical. It was the force of an unconquerable faith--something in the heart and soul that physical hardship and adversity could not destroy! It was the thought of native land and all that it holds most dear, the thought of freedom and dignity and pride in these most priceless of all our human prerogatives.
The adversary, in the pride of his power and triumph, will credit our troops with nothing less than the courage and fortitude that his own troops have shown in battle. Our men have fought a brave and bitterly contested struggle. All the world will testify to the most superhuman endurance with which they stood up until the last in the face of overwhelming odds. But the decision had to come. Men fighting under the banner of unshakable faith are made of something more that flesh, but they are not made of impervious steel. The flesh must yield at last, endurance melts away, and the end of the battle must come. Bataan has fallen, but the spirit that made it stand--a beacon to all the liberty-loving peoples of the world--cannot fall!”
