43,102
edits
LOG IN. UPLOAD PICTURES.
The Philippines has Zambo Mart to help propagate the Chavacano Language.
Difference between revisions of "Bataan News"
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
→ → Go back HOME to Zamboanga: the Portal to the Philippines.
no edit summary
| Line 4: | Line 4: | ||
<center>[[Bataan Province, Philippines|<font size=4>'''Province of Bataan'''</font>]] - [[Bataan Archived News|<font size=4 color=green>'''Archived News'''</font>]]</center> | <center>[[Bataan Province, Philippines|<font size=4>'''Province of Bataan'''</font>]] - [[Bataan Archived News|<font size=4 color=green>'''Archived News'''</font>]]</center> | ||
--- | --- | ||
==Roy Diaz celebrates his 95th birthday== | |||
*Source: http://www.thecalifornian.com/article/20111028/OFFSIXTYEIGHT02/111025049 | |||
*By: DAVE NORDSTRAND | |||
*''October 28, 2011'' | |||
Salinas’ best-known World War II veteran gazed out across the aged oak trees and brown hills near his home. | |||
Roy Diaz was feeling a bit like an aged oak himself. | |||
“Four years ago I had a knee operation. It was fine,” he said. “Then it backfired. They say I’m too old to get another operation.” | |||
Sore knee or not, Diaz turned 95 Oct. 23, and, sore knee or not, friends and family threw him a party at the Salinas Elks Lodge on Airport Boulevard. | |||
Because of his war experiences, Diaz, like all those who have served and sacrificed, has a certain public presence. | |||
History has given Diaz special distinction, however. He’s a survivor of the Bataan Death March — one of the most notorious atrocities of World War II — who was a POW for 3 1/2 years in Japanese slave labor camps. | |||
In February 1941, he was one of 105 members of Company C, 194th Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army, largely made up of young men from the Salinas area who had signed up for a National Guard unit that got converted. When the United States was plunged into the war Dec. 7, 1941, after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Company C was stationed in the Philippines and became among the first armored units to engage in combat against Japanese soldiers. | |||
Some 10,000 Allied troops who weren’t killed in action in the initial battles on the Bataan Peninsula, including most of Company C, were captured and force -marched to a prison camp about 60 miles distant. The captives were allowed little food or water. Stragglers were executed along the way. Once at the prison camp, they were routinely tortured. Later, many of them were shipped to Japanese slave-labor camps, where they subsisted on starvation rations. | |||
In 1945, Diaz was one of only 47 men from Company C who made it home from war. Now he’s the company’s last Salinas survivor. (There are three others: Larry Rotharmel, Sacramento; Norman Rose, San Jose; and Manuel Nevarez from Sparks, Nev.) | |||
“Roy’s positive attitude and lack of bitterness is remarkable considering the conditions he survived in Bataan and Japan,” Elks Lodge member Barry Wilson said.\ | |||
'''The basic struggle''' | |||
Diaz’s parents, Ida and Benjamin “Blanco” Diaz, got word of their son’s capture via a blue-and-white U.S. government telegram. | |||
“Your son, Private First Class Roy Diaz has been reported a prisoner of war of the Japanese government ...” the telegram reads in bold block letters. Diaz still has it in a scrapbook. | |||
During his years as a POW, Diaz and his fellow soldiers endured forced labor and the threat of tropical disease. Rations were so meager that his weight fell from 150 pounds to a skeletal 85 pounds, which stretched the skin over his ribs. | |||
Men were shot, bayoneted, and beaten. Friends died. | |||
Memories of such things never take the day off. Even on a birthday decades later, they’re there, Diaz said. | |||
“I still think ... often of those events,” he said of his unit’s tragic journey through the war. | |||
“I think about it every day.” | |||
'''Readying for war''' | |||
Roy Diaz was born Oct. 23, 1916, in Monterey. | |||
His father worked for fish companies along the wharf. His mother made enchiladas and tamales and sold them. | |||
“I’m Portuguese on my mother’s side and Spanish on my father’s side,” Diaz said. | |||
His grandfather on his mother’s side was a harpooner on a whaling ship, in the days when Monterey was a whaling station. | |||
Later, just before his Army service, Diaz was a dry land farmer, growing tomatoes with his father and doing well. | |||
In 1936, he joined Company C. Diaz was assigned duties as a mechanic. | |||
'''Heavy combat''' | |||
By the spring of 1942, U.S. and Filipino troops, including Company C, were fighting the Japanese troops on the Bataan Peninsula. | |||
The Americans were running out of ammunition. | |||
“We didn’t have spare parts or nothing,” Diaz recalled. | |||
Food was low, too. Troops ate monkeys and rats and snakes to stay alive. | |||
For three months they held out. Then came their surrender and the Bataan Death March. During that infamous event, the Imperial Japanese Army forced thousands of American and Filipino prisoners on a trek of horrors. | |||
Those who dropped out, those who tried to take a sip of water, those who held out a hand to a wounded comrade, were beaten or stabbed or executed. | |||
“I remember dead people and the stench,” Diaz said. | |||
“A body over here. A body there. We wanted to bury the bodies, but the Japs said, ‘No.’” | |||
Diaz was eventually shipped to a slave labor camp in Japan. | |||
He survived life as a POW, in part, by volunteering for work details — such as bridge repair — outside prison camp gates. That gave him better access to food and water. | |||
As the war neared its end, U.S. planes began dropping food to U.S. POWs, a process that went undisturbed by the Japanese. | |||
“One day a Japanese interpreter told us to get on a train because we were going north,” Diaz said. “Pretty soon we could see the ocean. A U.S. hospital ship was out there. | |||
“We were given a physical. Then they told us to go to the mess hall and have ham and eggs or whatever we wanted to eat.” | |||
'''Life after war''' | |||
After his return home, Diaz married Lorraine Sayers, now 85, who grew up near the Diaz farm. They wed in 1956 after meeting in 1955 at the Colmo del Rodeo parade. The couple still lives on a parcel of that original Diaz property. The land is the very same that John Steinbeck christened “The Pastures of Heaven.” That would be near the end of San Benancio and the start of Corral del Cielo roads. | |||
Wild ducks, flapping their wings in reverse, skid to a stop on the farm pond. Deer graze in the sunny silence. | |||
With a little help from his walker, Diaz strolls around his garden. What he can’t do, thanks to that uncooperative knee, is kneel to work the soil. | |||
“No more basketball, either, but I did wash the dishes this morning,” Diaz said. | |||
'''A sunshine moment''' | |||
More than 100 guests were expected at the birthday party. Among them, Joe Amato, also a former World War II POW. Plus several widows and survivors of other POWs. | |||
There were times during the war when Diaz doubted he’d make it to the next day, let alone his 95th birthday. | |||
Now, here he is, on a glide path toward the century mark. | |||
“I take it easy. That’s all,” Diaz said. “No other choice, really. I take a deep breath. I look up and into the sky. | |||
“I keep going.” | |||
==Bataan Freeport attracting more investors== | ==Bataan Freeport attracting more investors== | ||
*Source: http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/338308/bataan-freeport-attracting-more-investors | *Source: http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/338308/bataan-freeport-attracting-more-investors | ||