War heroes’ anecdotes to spike up memorial programs

BENCHWARMER
Ramon Dacawi

“I remember the “Fall of Bataan” and the “Death March” because I was there! That was on 9 April 1942 – a good 58 years ago today. The start of the “Death March” was somewhere on 11 April 1942 from Mariveles, Bataan. It was painful, indeed, to accept initial defeat, but I knew there was a tomorrow to settle the score.”

Such remembrance Sgt. Florencio Esteban wrote in 2000. It was about a war too far and remote in the past for today’s children to know, much less to understand. For them, to know, portions of his memoir will be read by kids at a memorial here on April 9, and during a more joyous observance thereafter - the Liberation of Baguio on April 27, 1945.

“Sergeant Esteban's recollections and those of other heroes of the war will be read by children – so they and we will know and understand,” said city councilor Peter Fianza who was designated chairman of the two observances under the city’s “Summer Vacation” special events program.

“At Lubao Pampanga, we were placed in an enclosure,” Sgt. Esteban wrote of the Death March. “Because I had not eaten for three days, I dared the most impossible – to escape regardless of the consequences. Thank God, I am still around to tell the story of the Fall of Bataan and the Death March”.

Sgt. Esteban, a native Ibaloi, was with the 11th Division of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East. His name is etched with those of others on the wall of heroes under the 66th Infantry at the Veterans Park along Harrison Road where the two commemorative rites will be held.

His son Mike recalled after one memorial program at the park: “After my father died, we waited for four years for his funeral benefits to be processed and released.”
It’s a common lament among surviving heroes of the war and their families. They continue to fight for benefits long overdue, even as their voices continue to be muted by their continuous fading away.

The caption of a photo taken by newsman Sly Quintos accompanying Esteban’s memoir carried in the April 17, 2000 issue of the Sun-Star read: “VAN ISHING TRIBE. A favorite quiz among World War IIU veterans during wake or burial of a brother-in-arms is “who’ll go next?” and when the last of them dies, “who’s going to give him that one final farewell salute?”. One thing good, the vanishing heroes take it with good taste and humor.”

Esteban remembered how, in the jungles of Bataan before the fall, he and fellow soldiers survived on nuts, banana stalks and green leaves of wild oranges. “In my case with Comrade (Daniel) Akia, we started to fish at night. Our catch was good for a week. At one point, some monkeys came to play on the trees covering our headquarters. Comrade Akia said: “Let us wait until those monkeys are a little far from our headquarters and then…shoot some of them for food.”

He and Comrade Akia eventually shot one each. “We roasted them and they lasted for at least one week,” he wrote. The late Baguio newsman Willy Cacdac narrated how the image of another war hero burned into his memory, haunting him. That was when he and the late city councilor Eugene Pucay Sr. stopped by a promontory in Abatan, Buguias, Benguet. They were on their way to supervise a work camp for the YMCA when Pucay said he wanted to see the view.

“We lost many men here,” Cacdac recalled the old man as saying while they scanned the valley floor where the Battle of Loo was fought. “I looked at him and saw tears rolling down his cheeks as he stood there in silent prayer for his fellow heroes who fell in that battle.”
Pucay, who passed on quietly at 93 after he fell asleep while listening to his transistor radio one evening, was also with the that, together with the U.S. Army forces, liberated Baguio.

This diminutive Ibaloi patriarch and philanthropist was instrumental in building the YMCA of Baguio, the local chapter of the Masons, the local Boy Scout Council and even the Baguio Central University. He served as city councilor after the war. During the so-called ‘peace time’ or the period before the war, he played baseball and became one of the best base stealers at the Burnham Park diamond.

These and more vignettes will be recalled at the two April rites that, Fianza hopes “would help us all restore our sense of history and values, enough to redeem and restore the Veterans Park as hallowed ground”.

The city recently fenced off the memorial park to discourage boys from practicing their skateboards, drunks from using it for their evening sprees and people from relieving themselves all over the place.