RE: Cabanatuan . . .

‘Dropping like flies’

The day following his arrival, Pedro Espinosa, then a 19-year-old from Gallup, fought malnutrition and exhaustion to help organize burial details for the hundreds of men dying from malaria, dysentery and malnutrition.

“They were dropping like flies,” Espinosa said.

Espinosa and his detail buried 76 men in one day. One of the men he would later bury in the hard volcanic ground of the Philippines would be his brother Damian.

His brother had reunited with Espinosa at O'Donnell, but the brother eventually succumbed to the effects of dysentery and malnutrition.

“He died on July 6, 1942,” Espinosa said. “That's when I buried him.”

— Christopher Schurtz

April 15, 2000

Robert L. “Squaw” Evans

Mukden POW #422

He was in the Infamous Death March, and was responsible for many of the men from the 200th Making it through this terrible ordeal, by helping those that would have been killed if not for him. He even carried one of his friends on his back for about 12 miles, because his friend could not walk any more. This would have cost him his life.

— Orville F. Padilla

A-XPOW Bataan Chapter #1

March 1979, Albuquerque, NM

William R. “Bill” Evans

Bill Evans, a survivor of the Bataan Death March, chose to remain in the Army following the war, retiring in 1963 as a chief warrant officer in the Criminal Investigation Division of the Office of Provost Marshal General. At the time of his retirement, he was commanding officer of the 16th CID in Paris.

Bill Evans wrote two books about life and death in the Japanese prison camps, “KORA” and “Soochow and the 4th Marines”.

Mr. Evans passed away in Rogue River, Oregon on December 2, 1001.