My late father, John Zale, told me the older-looking American POW pictured with what looks like a woven basket in his lap was a fellow infantryman from the 31st Inf. on Bataan. The man’s name escapes me now, but he was an older career soldier from New York City. He died in my father’s arms in the POW camp at Cabanatuan. The photo grips me every time i see it. Dad said they would have gone “all the way” and fought to the death, but the brass decided surrender on “humanitarian grounds” would be preferrable to wholesale, Alamo-style slaughter. Humanity wasn’t present there.
Thanks. I always wondered how they made out.
I read a lot of that fight and more than one survivor said that had they known what was in front of them, they would have gone out Alamo-style.
I always thought we got the crap beat out of us, but in reading one definitive, IMO, book about Bataan, we put up one Helluva fight, despite the lack of food and medicine.