91-yr-old vet recalls Bataan nightmare

91-yr-old vet recalls Bataan nightmare

91-yr-old vet recalls Bataan nightmare

By Maurice Malanes

Northern Luzon Bureau First Posted 06:23:00 04/09/2008

BAGUIO CITY—Before rising to become a police chief, a Benguet Corp. vice president and mayor of this city in the mid-1980s, Francisco Paraan lived through starvation, disease and the daily threat of being stabbed with a Japanese bayonet.

Paraan would now refer to the ordeal as his "nightmare," his "Valley of Death." In history books, though, Filipinos have come to know it as the Death March.
At 91, Paraan needs a hearing aid and takes 11 pills a day for his heart and urinary problems, and for other ailments traceable to the horrors he endured serving with the Allied forces during World War II.

Yet the battle-scarred veteran could still vividly remember the indignities and suffering which he and his comrades experienced during the infamous Death March of April 1942, the forcible transfer of some 90,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war from the Bataan peninsula to prison camps in Central Luzon.

The Allied surrender leading to the march is being commemorated by the nation on Wednesday as "Araw ng Kagitingan" (Day of Valor), also known as The Fall of Bataan.
"Physically exhausted, psychologically devastated and without food and water, we only had 10 percent left of our strength and will to fight," Paraan said, describing the Allied troops' condition on the eve of their capitulation.

"During the surrender, a great wave of jumbled, confused and emaciated (Filipino and American soldiers) was pushed towards the south in Corregidor and Mariveles, Bataan," he said. "Units of the USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East) just melted away."

Paraan was a tactical officer of the University of the Philippines ROTC (Reserved Officers Training Corps) when the war broke out. He enlisted as a third lieutenant in the USAFFE and led 30 men, all ROTC cadets, to Bataan. (Six of his men were later sent home after it was discovered that they were under 18.)

Final stand

When American supreme commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur ordered all Filipino and American troops to move to Bataan and make what would become their final stand, Paraan helped establish a main line of resistance on Mt. Natib.

The main Japanese offensive on Bataan actually began on Jan. 9 (a week after the fall of Manila and three months before the surrender). By mid-February, the USAFFE lines have been pushed to the Pilar-Bagac area, past Balanga.

There was a lull in the battle from Feb. 15 to April 2, Paraan recalled in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer. "Both sides suffered great losses, and many of us were sick and exhausted." "But the morale of Filipino-American troops was very high because we were able to frustrate the target of the Japanese, (which was) to capture Bataan immediately. The morale of the Japanese, we learned, was low," he said.

Word also spread that the Japanese forces led by Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma had their share of massive losses and that many of the remaining soldiers were down with malaria and dysentery, the veteran added.

But when reinforcements fresh from Japan arrived, the offensive resumed on April 3, "unleashing their full military might, using air bombs, artillery shells and superior firepower," he said.

Paraan noted that many of the Filipino and American troops were so poorly armed that some were even carrying rifles of "World War I vintage."

On the eve of the surrender, the cornered troops even felt a strong "earthquake" hitting Bataan that day. "After sleeping a few hours on the night of April 8, we ... destroyed all our firearms. And from our jungle hideouts we, as ordered, went down to the highway to surrender the next morning."

Death March starts

Paraan and his contingent were first herded into a rice field in Barangay Cabcaben in Mariveles, where they stayed for a day without sleep and food. From Mariveles, the Death March commenced, covering an initial 80 kilometer to San Fernando, Pampanga.

"We formed a long line of hungry, sick and wounded Filipino and American soldiers," he said. "Those who were too weak or too sick to walk, those straying from line were beaten up, clubbed and bayoneted to death. We were denied food and water."

At one point, Paraan said, he got very thirsty and gambled with his life: He dashed to a nearby rice paddy and filled his canteen with water, completely eluding the attention of Japanese sentries. He slaked his thirst upon rejoining the line.

The next day, Paraan was ill with dysentery.

"It was literally a walk through the Valley of Death," he said. "All along the way, we saw corpses strewn about, some of them decapitated."

When the POWs reached Hermosa and Dinalupihan in Bataan, and later Lubao in Pampanga on April 10, residents came out to see them.

"Many of them wept as they took pity on us," Paraan said. Some of the locals tossed them food as the prisoners walked by.

"(They) gave us panocha (sugarcane molasses), fried chicken and steamed rice wrapped in banana leaves. (We ate them so quickly) it was as though we were just gulping down water."

Paraan said he later learned that many civilians who had given food to the soldiers were tortured and killed by the Japanese.

Reaching San Fernando, his group was met by truckloads of Japanese soldiers, "who taunted us and spat on our faces."

After spending the night at a warehouse at the San Fernando rail terminal, the POWs were then moved by train to Capas, Tarlac, the veteran said.

Packed in box cars

"We were packed like sardines in the box cars. Several (prisoners) died of suffocation," he said, recalling that at least three soldiers died in the car he was in.

From Capas, they marched for another 13 km to finally get to a concentration camp. After surviving Death March, however, Paraan was still down with dysentery. Prison food – a handful of steamed rice sprinkled with salt, served at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. daily – hardly helped in nursing himself back to health.

But Paraan surmised that, still, "God was good" because the Japanese failed to uncover his precious secret: He kept bills amounting to P300 (a substantial amount at the time) hidden in his underwear. With the money, he managed to smuggle food and medicine into the camp, not only for him but also for his younger brother and fellow POW, Ricardo, who was stricken with malaria.

Released on parole

"Without that money, my brother and I would have died at the camp," says Paraan. After six months at the camp, Paraan was released "on parole" and even had some money left for a train ride from Capas to Damortis, La Union, and then a bus ride to Baguio.

He was then contacted by officers of the 66th Infantry, USAF-Northern Luzon. After being treated for his dysentery by Dr. Ernesto Abellera, Paraan engaged in espionage, monitoring enemy movements and suppliers.

He eventually went back into combat, taking part in an assault on Bad-ayan Hill, a Japanese base in Buguias, Benguet, on Aug. 14, 1945.

Six decades later, Paraan said the Death March may have been a nightmare, but surviving it helped steel his will and character.

Leadership positions

"The experience gave me a lot of self-confidence, which prepared me for various leadership positions later," he said.

Paraan became Baguio City's chief of police in 1959 and earned an award as the country's most outstanding police chief during his term.

Paraan later moved to the private sector as security chief and later vice president of Benguet Corp. He served as Baguio City mayor during the Aquino administration.

Paraan, father of eight successful professionals and lolo of 22 grandchildren, is currently editing an autobiography that he finished writing last year. The book, he said, will contain his eyewitness account of the war.