Remembering another lenten march long ago...

64 years ago this lenten season...

It happened on or near Good friday - my Dad told me... it was really sad Holy Week- I was not around but i do remember my dad as a young boy in manila telling me his feelings about the day he heard Bataan had fallen.

Most of those who had seen the fighting from the shores of manila bay remember only defiant words on the radio broadcast over the voice of freedom.

Ironically - from a tunnel also soon to be known for its fall - malinta in Corregedor.

The words- I wonder if any still live to have heard the elequent broadcast the Japanese tried to jam but the rock's ransmiter kept going along.

It confirmed the surrender of Gen King, the radio then was the way word came of the fall of Bataan - came to most- who knew the men of Corregidor would soon follow.

The transcript of the speech read slowly over the voice of freedom....
Indomitable Farewell

"Bataan has fallen. Fil-American troops in the ravaged and blood-stained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody but unbowed, They have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the enemy.

"The flesh must yield at last, for they are not made of impervious steel. They fought a brave and bitterly contested struggle, all the world will testify to the utmost superhuman which they stood up until the last face of overwhelming odds.

"Bataan fell, but the spirit that made it stood, a beacon to all liberty loving peoples of the world, did not fail."

As time passes many forget the sacrifices of men and boys - women and girls who fought or saw these events first hand.

Some look from the past for lessons for today.... I know decades have passed and time has moved on to the present where in todays world things have changed - but there is always a ned to look back remember and think of those times of the past and hope in future people do not forget.

there is more here - on this - perhaps better written than my words can be as I've heard the stories but these stories are people who lived those times...

http://www.paete.org/literary/archives/000006.php