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On April 9, 1942, after three months of hunger, sickness, air raids, and retreat, the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East surrendered to Japan. The following morning, the Japanese ordered their new prisoners in the Philippines -- more than 70,000 Filipino and American soldiers -- to begin the infamous 65-mile trek from the Bataan Peninsula.
Asuncion, then 20 and a medic with the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East 1st Regular Division, was herded into a group of 50 men who fell under the direction of five Japanese soldiers. The 55 men set out from Little Baguio and headed north from the base of the Bataan Peninsula toward Japanese internment camps in central Luzon.
Barefooted and starving, with no food or water or rest, the prisoners marched for four days straight. Along the way, the group passed decapitated bodies of American soldiers.
It was one of the hottest months of the year. The temperature exceeded 100 degrees. Desperate with thirst, several prisoners pulled out of line to drink the free-flowing water from the artesian wells along the roadside. Those who did so were immediately bayoneted or shot.
Those who fell, and those who were injured or sick, were killed or left to die. Anyone who went to assist the fallen or ailing faced a similar fate. When a Japanese guard saw one prisoner helping two others who were barely able to walk, Asuncion says, the guard shot all three men and then laughed.
On the fourth day, Asuncion's group stopped overnight at San Fernando, a midway point, where the Japanese fed them a little rice and water. The next morning, they were loaded into a truck heading for the Japanese concentration site at Camp O'Donnel, still farther north.
Asuncion entered the Japanese prison camp on April 13, 1942. He and his fellow prisoners slept on bunk beds in long rectangular barracks made of bamboo and grass roofs. Meals were meager: sometimes rice and boiled sweet potatoes; sometimes rice and rotten boiled sweet potatoes.
He was first assigned to help carry 50-gallon drums of water to the camp from a nearby spring; the camp had no water system. Then Asuncion was put on grave detail. On the detail, he had to arrange the bodies of dead prisoners in 6-by-12-foot holes, sardine-style, for "maximum space conservation." When the holes were filled, they would cover the pile of bodies with a thin layer of dirt to keep the flies and dogs away. Often, he says, he would bury 10 prisoners a day.
He became progressively sicker, and by June 1942, he had contracted malaria, dysentery, and avitaminosis, a disease resulting from vitamin deficiency. The Japanese agreed to release him that month, certain that he would die. When his uncle came to take him home from camp, he was barely able to stand. He had to be lifted into his uncle's wagon.
After recuperating for a year and a half in his hometown, Gerona, Asuncion rejoined the fight against the Japanese. He became a guerrilla fighter under an American-led division, the 202nd Squadron in Western Tarlac, central Luzon.
Equipped with carbines, machine guns, and ammunition delivered by U.S. submarines, the 202nd Squadron would hide in the jungle late at night and ambush Japanese trucks carrying reinforcements and supplies to the northern part of the Philippines. Asuncion wanted to retaliate against the Japanese for what they had done to him, and to everyone else at Bataan. It was 1944, and no one was certain how much longer the war might last.
Boy Soldier: Marcelino Garcia, 68
Marcelino Garcia was 11 years old when the Japanese army arrived in the Philippines early in December 1941. That month, the Japanese destroyed more than half the U.S. Air Force on the ground, and landed troops on Luzon and Mindanao islands. By Christmas, the occupation of the Philippine Islands was virtually complete.
In Tagig, the coastal town on Luzon where Garcia's family lived, the Japanese military had seized horses, cars, trucks, and livestock. The townspeople were hungry. The Japanese had confiscated most of the rice in the town -- people ate boiled sweet potatoes and leaves to survive. Japanese sentries were everywhere.
But like most of the children in Tagig, Garcia did not think much about the war. The tall, quiet boy played basketball with his friends after school when the rains had gone. At night, on weekends, he helped his father fishing.
The boy paid little attention to the Japanese, until one November morning in 1942.
He and his mother were aboard a horse-drawn cart, riding to Santa Ana to sell the fish his father had caught that day. The cart stopped at a checkpoint just outside Tagig, where a Japanese officer ordered all passengers to line up and file past.
He stopped Garcia's mother and demanded to know the nature of her business in Santa Ana. Nervous and not understanding his questions, she hesitated. The officer stepped closer, and slapped her across the face twice, with the front and back of his hand.
The boy watched in angry silence as tears streamed down his mother's face. She set down her basket of fish and wiped her tears. Then she picked up the basket. Garcia followed her as she continued past the checkpoint, and stepped up on the cart.
Beneath his silence, a bitter hatred began to simmer. For days, the boy thought of nothing but what had happened at the checkpoint. He dreamt of revenge, but kept his thoughts to himself.
A few nights later, he and a friend were walking along a riverbank, when he felt the cold, thick muzzle of a gun pressed up against the small of his back. The two youngsters were blindfolded and taken to a boat. After a short trip across the water, the boys were led through the jungle to a house.
