Fall of Bataan

Nano Lucero, 91, had never been to Santa Fe for the annual commemoration of the day in 1942 when he and some 1,800 other New Mexico soldiers were among the troops captured by the Japanese on the Bataan Peninsula of the Philippine island of Luzon.

But Lucero, originally from Albuquerque, came all the way from Augusta, Maine, for Monday’s 70th anniversary of the fall of Bataan.

“I told her (his wife Evelyn), ‘I’m going if it’s the last thing I do,’” Lucero said as he was crowded by well-wishers after the ceremony.

“There’s no more guys like me,” he said. “I had to see the few that are left.”

Several other survivors of the surrender, the infamous Bataan Death March that followed and years in captivity before liberation were also at the Bataan Memorial across the street from the Roundhouse Monday. But Lucero traveled the farthest to attend.

He said he figured this might be his last chance to see others who’d been around in 1942. “Hopefully not,” he added quickly.

“No words can describe it,” Lucero said of his experiences in the Philippines. “It all comes from the heart.”

But Lucero in fact painted a vivid word picture of what he and wife Evelyn said was one of two escapes. He said his Japanese captors “beat the heck out of me” on a Saturday but on Sunday, they all got drunk.

To escape, “I had to bayonet a young Japanese guard, which to this day hurts my heart. He was a true soldier. I cry for him all the time, but I had to do it.”

At another point, he hid in a foxhole for two days and nights without food and water. He showed a picture of a Filipino woman who helped him and other soldiers in the jungle. “She provided food and safety, to several of us,” he said.

Evelyn said Nano and others were once placed in front of a firing squad but weren’t shot – an effort to get information from the soldiers.

Of the 78,000 American and Filipino soldiers who were ordered to surrender to the Japanese in April 1942, about 1,800 were from New Mexico. About half of the New Mexicans died from the torturous march to a prisoner-of-war camp or by war’s end, speakers said Monday.

“Seventy years later, we still feel the profound impact,” Gov. Susana Martinez said during Tuesday’s commemoration.

“May their memory inspire the hero in all of us,” the governor said.

Santa Fe Mayor David Coss, reading a proclamation to mark the day, noted that one Bataan survivor often reminds him that the troops were ordered to surrender, and didn’t give up on their own, after Japanese reinforcements broke through Allied lines. The soldiers “wanted to go down fighting,” Coss said.

The ceremony featured the raising of a white flag of surrender. But Col. Tim Paul of the New Mexico National Guard said the flag also represented the sacrifice of the soldiers who died or were killed on the Bataan Peninsula.

The event included a 21-gun salute, and a bagpiper played “Amazing Grace.”

Along with Lucero, other Bataan survivors present Monday were Ralph Rodriguez, John Love, William Overmier, Ernest Montoya and Richard Trask, all of Albuquerque, and Tony Reyna of Taos Pueblo.

During the ceremony, the names of New Mexico Bataan survivors who died over the past year were read. They were Charles Franklin “Charlie” James, Menandro B. Parazo, Max Casaus, Timothy H. Smith, Robert M. Malone, Morgan Thomas “Tommy” Jones, Lee Charlie Roach, Tommy Foy Jr. and Vincent Silva.