On Sunday, March 17, Creighton University’s Army ROTC program sent five cadets to participate in the 2019 Bataan Memorial Death March at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.
The 26.2 mile ruck march through high desert and mountains of southern New Mexico took the Creighton cadets 8 hours 13 minutes to complete.
Creighton cadets marched in memory of Creighton alumni Captain Albert Brown-who died in 2011 at the age of 105. Albert Brown commissioned out of the Creighton University Army ROTC program in 1927. At the time of his death in 2011, Brown was the oldest living survivor of the Bataan march.
History of Bataan
The day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they began their initial invasion of the Philippines. The invasion forced Filipino and American forces to the Bataan Peninsula. After three months of being cut off from resupply, the Filipino and American forces were surrendered to the Japanese. On April 9, 1942, the Japanese forced the 75,000 Filipino and American troops to walk nearly 60 miles across the peninsula. The “Death March” typically took five days to complete. Thousands of Filipino and American soldiers died as a result of starvation and brutality by the Japanese captors. It is documented that soldiers too weak to walk were bayoneted by the captors. Death March survivors were taken by rail to POW camps, where thousands more died as a result of mistreatment and starvation.
Remember Bataan, Always.
For more information about Albert Brown, please visit: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/us/16brown.html
For more information about Bataan, please visit: https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bataan-death-march
For more information about the Bataan Memorial Death march, please visit: https://bataanmarch.com/
