“...Those who survived clung somehow to faith and fellow feeling. The image rises from those hell holds of a man averting his eyes from the sight of his enemies who blanketed their bodies with his flag: the echo persists of ‘God Bless America’ rising from swollen throats and failing strength. Helpless, but not hopeless, these men sustained themselves with God, guts, and something beyond courage.”

— Beyond Courage

“...New Mexicans at their best. I salute Dorothy Cave for this very worthwhile undertaking and years of unwavering dedication.”

— LtGen Edward D. Baca (Ret.)

former Chief, National Guard Bureau

It Tolled

One of the major, and largely unknown tragedies of World War II was the surrender of U.S. troops in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. New Mexico’s loss was greater because the 200th/515th Coast Artillery (AA) Regiments were stationed in the Philippines. The 200th, originally part of the New Mexico National Guard, was federalized in January 1941. With the surrender of forces on Bataan, sparsely populated New Mexico earned the dubious distinction of having the highest per capita Japanese prisoner of war population of any state. Not only did the Japanese capture the military, they also interned thousands of civilians, some with ties to New Mexico.

This Invaluable Reference Answers These Questions:

Who was there?

Who did not return?

Why so many New Mexicans?

Where were they imprisoned?

Where do I look for information?

What is the Bataan Memorial Death March?

How do I apply for the Prisoner of War Medal?

Brothers

The experiences of a survivor of the infamous Bataan Death March and a POW in three Japanese camps; contacts with over 120 ex-POWs.

— A tribute to the “Battling Bastards of Bataan”

Carlos

Carlos' story is that of one man's journey through the years of the twentieth century; arguably the most tumultuous times in world history. This book follows him through the lean times of the Great Depression, to enlistment in the National Guard toward the end of the 1930s, and then mobilization and deployment to the Philippines immediately prior to WWII. Shortly after he arrives in the Philippines and eight hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Navy attacks Manila and Clark Field, and for the next four months, the Philippine and U.S. Armies fight to hold the Bataan peninsula until reinforcements arrive. Unlike a Hollywood movie, the cavalry doesn't come to save the day, and approx. 70,000 men are surrendered to the Japanese on the 9th of April 1942. What follows is the notorious Bataan Death March, where thousands died over a span of about fifteen days, then torturous work details and months of starvation in camps across the Philippines. He is eventually transported to mainland Japan via hellship, and spends the remainder of the war as a slave in the freezing environment of northwest Japan, working like a pack-mule, loading coal. In 1945 after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the emperor surrendered unconditionally and Carlos was liberated and returned to society. There he quickly learned that the war had not only changed the society he left behind in 1941, but the three years and ten months that he spent as a prisoner of the Japanese military had also changed him in ways that he and those around him were only beginning to see.

Boellner

“The story began with an inherited shoebox full of crumpled clippings, letters and documents that had not seen the light of day for forty-some years. One curious thing led to another. Time and events began to unravel in astounding order.

“Could any of the men who served in the same locales with my father during those war years be found? Would anyone remember him? Did I truly want to know the terrible events of what had really happened to him, details that had always been hushed? The search began. Somewhat slowly, somewhat with a painful reluctance.

“I found during the search soldiers who remembered, who cared. Each of them, and there were so many, shared their experiences with me. Some had been close friends of my father. What they have given me, the warmth and comfort of just knowing, may these pages repay in part.”

— Betty Arden (Boellner) Jones

Nagasaki

Foreword by Walter Cronkite

BY ANTHONY WELLER

Every great war correspondent has an important story that got away—that was banned by someone in authority, censored into silence and never appeared. For my father, it was linked to one of the cataclysmic events of the 20th century.

As the first outsider to reach Nagasaki, in September 1945, four weeks after the Japanese city was torched by the atomic bomb and still under a news blackout, he defied the orders of Gen. MacArthur forbidding reporters from entering either of the nuclear cities. After sneaking in by boat and train and brazenly telling the Japanese military he was not a newspaperman but a U.S. colonel, he wrote dispatch after dispatch of the greatest scoop of his career—indeed, one of the great scoops of the century—only to see it all killed by MacArthur's censors. His stories never reached his editors at the Chicago Daily News, and until recently, were believed lost. ... [Read entire at Book Page.com.]

C-SPAN2’s Book TV Bio: George Weller was a novelist who became a war correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. He won a 1943 Pulitzer Prize for his story of an emergency appendectomy aboard a US submarine in enemy waters. His books include, “Singapore is Silent” and “Bases Overseas.” He died in 2002 at the age of 95. Anthony Weller is George Weller’s son. He is a jazz and classical guitarist and the author of several novels, including “The Garden of the Peacocks.”

Anthony Weller interviewed by Norman Hatch on Book TV's “After Words” [Watch Program]

Forgotten

Promises! All of us make promises that we hope to keep but sometimes we are kept from fulfilling them by life’s problems. I promised many men in prison camp to contact their parents and loved ones if I made it back and they didn’t. For over forty years I have searched for these families and talked to others but time is running out so I am writing their story of why they didn’t make it home. This story is based on the lives of soldiers I met in basic training at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, the men I met on Bataan and in the prisoner of war camps. This is their story of why they surrendered, why they gave up after all physical strength was gone, and why they died. This is the story of a New Testament, a billfold and a list that made it through all the searches by the Japanese during those three and a half years. The Bible was used many times to comfort these men in their final hours. The battered billfold held the few pieces of paper with vital information and the list of men in Battery E of the 200th, who made it through the first attack on Clark Field on December 8, 1941, and dates of death for many. This is a story of friendship that helped me be one of the survivors of the Japanese prison camps, the hell ships and World War II. But most of all, this is a testimony of the Grace of God toward me in the hours of need. My favorite Scripture was the twenty-third PSALM, and I saw every verse fulfilled in my life. I can only pray that He will sustain and comfort you as you read these words, as he did me as a P.O.W. I express my appreciation to those who have helped and encouraged me to write this story of my experiences. My children have asked me to write down my memories. I especially wish to express appreciation to my wife for the many hours she spent to help edit the story for publication. I could not have completed the writing without her help. I appreciate the front cover design by my nephew, Joel Freeland. Thank you to each one for your help and encouragement.

— James L. Robinson

Valor

This is the story of four New Mexicans, widely divergent in race, faith, and tradition, united in the common cause of America. Through these sons of the cradleland, home of the continent’s earliest civilizations, Four Trails to Valor tells the larger story of the Southwest’s four dominant cultures, and of the land with which they interacted, each group in its own way and in the image of its own gods. Each trail is shaped by the basic elements of earth, sky, and water. Each man’s culture and life were ruled by these same elements. Born into the same generation, the men grew into vastly different societies. Living close to the earth, all relied upon faith and family for strength and support. Catapulted into World War II, they depended upon that legacy for survival. In the end each man’s trail winds back to the wombland, back to his origins, back to his family, back to . . .

Earth . . .

Sky . . .

Water . . .

— Four Trails to Valor

Heroes

“This second edition of the 1946 Heroes of Bataan is dedicated to those for whom the words ‘Bataan’, ‘Corregidor’, ‘Luzon’, ‘Cabanatuan’, and ‘Oryoku Maru’ have a special significance. For them, these words have the power to bring forth vivid and horrifying images as well as the remembrance of comradeship and self-sacrifice. All of the American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and nurses pictured in this book are a part of American history that should not be forgotten and it is to this end that we have reissued this expanded version of the original book.”

— Eva Jane Mason

Jolly

“My sincere congratulations to all who helped produce this fine history of the New Mexico National Guard.

“The story of the soldier-citizen in New Mexico is one of the most interesting and inspiring records in American military history. From the squads of Spanish settlers to the modern Cold War army, there has been some form of a National Guard in the Land of Enchantment for more than 350 years.

“On the following pages you will meet the men who have used muskets, machine guns and missiles to preserve the peace and protect lives and property. They brought honor to their state and nation at San Juan Hill, Bataan and in the sky over Korea.

“The members of the National Guard and all New Mexicans should be proud of the tribute paid the famous 200th Coast Artillery by General Wainwright — ‘The first to fire and the last to lay down their arms.’”

— Jack M. Campbell, Governor, New Mexico

Kathman

I Was There, Charley! is a unique narrative written by an 88 year old survivor of the Battle of Bataan and the Bataan Death March. In it you will go with him from the early days of basic training to the explosive day when the Japanese bombed Clark Field in the Philippines and he realized Sherman’s “War is Hell” was right on the money.

Slave with him in the blazing sun of the Philippines infamous prison camps of O’Donnell and Cabanatuan. Sweat and freeze in the steel mill and on the docks of Hirohata and Fusiki prison camps in Japan. Starve on a diet of rice and greens soup, sleep on bedbug and lice infested bamboo slats. Make the endless trips to the A-frame latrines as you suffer the pangs of Diarrhea and Dysentery. These and hundred of other brutalities only the godless mongols of Japan could inflict. All are told here.

* * *

The author, Clemens A. Kathman, 88 (better know as Clem), is a product of the “great depression”, who worked his way through college, only to have Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo foul up his best laid plans. He was drafted March 1941, assigned to 200th CA(AA). December 8, 1941, the Japanese bombed Clark Field and he was in a shooting war. Bataan, the Death March and 3 1/2 years as a POW, he was liberated in September 1945.

Fourteen months hospitalized, he received his discharge, married and resumed his work in the newspaper field to see the transition from hot type printing to digital and photo-composition. Clem retired in 1981 and lost his first wife to emphysema and a second to heart and lung disease. 1992 to 2002 it was bachelorhood and the Masonic fraternity. He met his present wife on the internet and they were married in July 2002. They live in Brenham, Texas. Both dabble in writing. This is his first book.

Davis

The Rising Sun in 1941 stood for a determined Japanese military that would stop at nothing to expand the empire. Whoever stood in Japan’s path had three options: subjection, death or imprisonment. Across the ocean, young men started on a mission that would cross with Japan’s. New Mexico’s National Guard was activated and sent to the Philippines. The Guardsmen stood directly in the path of the Japanese warlords... In the Shadow of the Rising Sun is the harrowing, true story of D Battery 515, Coast Artillery Corps — a saga of suffering as young New Mexicans disappear one by one.

* * *

“I am grateful to Yvonne Boisclaire, author of In the Shadow of the Rising Sun. This book is a well written story of the men of D Btry 515 CAC — how they put their lives on the line that we could retain freedom. Many of us today do not realize the hell men must endure to keep our country free. I want to say my hat is off to those men for their gallantry and sacrifice. I know what it’s like to live in hell and then some day return to heaven — USA.”

— Captain Elmer E. Long Jr., Ex-POW

National Secretary, American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor

Decker

This is the true story of a group of men who either didn’t surrender or escaped the Bataan Death March; they survived in the jungles and formed a guerrilla warfare unit of Negritos, former members of the Philippine Scouts, and civilians in their area of operation, to fight against and undermine the Japanese.

* * *

“April 9, 1942, the American command surrendered its troops on Bataan, Luzon, Philippine Islands, to the Japanese aggressors. Fighting with outdated weapons, rusty ammunition, and dwindling rations, American and Filipino soldiers slowed the Japanese onslaught to a crawl, and General Masaharu Homma was subsequently relieved of his command for his inability to conquer the Philippines in a timely manner. For their heroic efforts in the face of virtual abandonment by the United States government, this country owes an eternal debt of gratitude to the ‘Battling Bastards of Bataan.’

“Of about 400 men who either did not surrender or escaped from the Death March, less than 200 remained alive at war’s end. On A Mountainside is the story of a small group who survived in the jungles and formed a guerrilla warfare unit of Negritos, the indigenous pygmy-like people, former members of the Philippine Scouts, and civilians in their area of operation. My father, Doyle Decker, and Bob Mailheau, who became lifelong friends, were part of that unit. This is a story of their time in the jungle.”

— Malcolm Decker

* * *

Malcolm Decker is well qualified to write the saga of his father’s experiences in the jungles of Luzon and Bataan during World War II. His assignment as an artillery officer in Viet Nam gave him first-hand knowledge of the rigors and language of the jungle. His lifelong friendship with Bob Mailheau, his father’s compadre during the Japanese occupation, and his military background helped forge friendships with other veterans of the Philippines occupation. As a result he was able to insert himself into the experience as if he, truly, was there. The resulting “first person account” is an extremely valuable contribution to the history of World War II in the Pacific.

Waves

There are many stories of the war to be told, but very few are as unique as the story that can be related by five particular United States soldiers about one fateful day near the end of World War II. On this day, while held against their will in the middle of the South China Sea on a Japanese prison ship, the Arisan Maru, a torpedo from their own country arrived to rip their world apart, killing 1,800 of their comrades. Calvin Graef, one of the five soldiers who survived the destruction of the Arisan Maru, had already experienced the Bataan Death March and imprisonment in three Japanese POW camps. Graef’s story goes beyond most recollections told by other POWs, whose final destination was the coal mines in Japan. He rode typhoon waves in a lifeboat, faced the big guns of a Japanese destroyer ship on the hunt, and bonded with the common people of China in a united effort to ensure that he returned to his homeland again. While running from the Japanese across the Chinese Mainland, he escaped from their iron hand of tyranny by means of such conveyances as rickshaws, bicycles, disguises, and prayers.

* * *

“Why Calvin Graef repeated the horror he endured at the outset of World War II to author, Melissa Masterson, is a mystery to me and many others. Over the years, many attempts to pry the knowledge from Calvin failed or provided only small bits and pieces of this important part of history. Such is the nature of Calvin Graef and others who suffered the horrors of being a prisoner of war. Their modesty and value of privacy kept many of the details of the hell endured by the ‘Battling Bastards of Bataan’ locked away for these many years. Well, here it is at last. The true and final chapter told completely and with a dignity, which only the truth can bring forth.”

— Harrison D. Taylor, Col. (Ret.)

Former Director, Bataan Memorial Military Museum

(Santa Fe, New Mexico)

Senso

Vincent Silva served from March 1941 to April 1946 in the 200th Coast Artillery (CA) Anti-Aircraft (AA) and 515th CA (AA), Battery G, of the New Mexico National Guard. In September 1941, he was sent to the Philippine Islands with his division to protect the Islands from the impending invasion of the Japanese. Vince, along with thousands of other American and Filipino men and women, became a prisoner of war on April 9, 1942, when Maj. Gen. Edward P. King surrendered Bataan to the Japanese. It would take another thirty days before Gen. Jonathan Wainwright would be forced to surrender Corregidor and the rest of the Philippine Islands. By that time, the Bataan Death March had taken place and thousands of American and Filipino soldiers had been tortured, starved, beaten, and murdered at the hands of the Japanese.

This is the story of one soldier — what his life was before the War, what he went through to survive the savage treattment of the Japanese, and his struggle to live a normal life when he returned to his wife and daughter after the defeat of and liberation from his Japanese captors. During World War II, one of twenty-five POWs in Europe died as prissoners of the Germans while one of three POWs in the South Pacific died as prisoners of the Japanese. For the 200th CA (AA) from New Mexico, this number was one of two.

Survivor

My Father, Msgt. Frank N. Lovato, is one of only a handful of Death March and Japanese POW camp survivors still living today. Approximately 13,000 Americans started the Death March, only about 4,000 returned to the their homes in the US 42 months later. It was 18 times more fatal to be a POW of the Japanese than a military combatant. For nine years I interviewed and wrote his account of his time in Hell. A story that tells of heroic battles, unimaginable pain and loss, and horrific inhumanity.

... [Read entire atKVIE.org.]

“Frank Lovato was one of New Mexico's ‘Battling Bastards of Bataan’ who survived and came home to build an American century. His story is worth being told.”

— Heather Wilson, United States Representative, New Mexico