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Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Bataan Survivor Enlisted at 14
By Lloyd Jojola
Journal Staff Writer
Leo J. Padilla, a Bataan Death March survivor, died last Tuesday. The Albuquerque resident was 87.
"Leo Padilla will be forever celebrated as a national hero for his courageous effort for first defending against a Japanese takeover of the Philippines, and then for enduring one of the most horrific episodes of brutality ever imposed upon mankind," state Department of Veterans Services Cabinet Secretary John Garcia said in a statement.
Born and raised in the Armijo area of the South Valley, Padilla had said he was 14 years old when he joined the National Guard, lying about his age so he could enter.
"The National Guardsmen at that time they wore these knee-high boots," said Bernadett Charley Gallegos, a family representative and member of the Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Foundation of New Mexico. "And since he was out in the fields irrigating all the time he figured if he could get a pair of those high boots he'd been good to go in the farming end of it."
Padilla was part of the 200th Coast Artillery — later split to form the 515th Coast Artillery — that served in the Philippines during World War II and provided anti-aircraft support for Clark Field and Fort Stotsenberg.
Some 1,800 New Mexican fighters were part of the units that battled the Japanese until Bataan and Corregidor fell in April and May of 1942. Many of those captured took part in the Bataan Death March, a long, forced march of tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers.
They were starved, beaten and killed.
Padilla was on the march for at least five days, Gallegos said. "He said he was never so scared in all his life," she said.
According to information provided by Gallegos, Padilla was among the first groups of prisoners to be moved out of the Philippines to be used as slave labor in October 1942. He was loaded on the Tottori Maru — a so-called "hell ship" — that docked in Pusan, Korea, and was among 1,000 prisoners taken to the Hoten prisoner of war camp in Mukden, Manchuria.
He was prisoner No. 589.
"Hoten Camp was made up of three different factories," Gallegos said. "He was sent to the textile factory.
"While he was there, he would steal parts like car tires and he'd throw them over the fence and the Chinese civilian would trade the tire for food."
The camp was completely isolated — no news of the outside world or mail until some packages arrived at the end of 1944 — and at a location where the temperatures dipped drastically below zero in the winters.
The first year 100 men froze to death, Gallegos said. "They put them in a cold house and just left them there until the spring thaw when they could bury them," she said.
Come mid-August 1945, Office of Strategic Services parachute teams landed in the vicinity of the prisoner camp, and Red Army troops arrived not long after to liberate it.
From Okinawa, Japan, to Manila and back to the mainland United States and New Mexico, Padilla said his first meal back was enchiladas.
But unless something came to mind, perhaps during idle talk, Padilla "really didn't tell you anything about his experiences," Gallegos said.
"But in his later years he really did want people to understand what Bataan meant on a bigger level," she said.
Padilla and other Bataan-Corregidor veterans, including Ernest Montoya, Agapito Silva and William Overmier, were instrumental in expanding the memorial at Bataan Memorial Park in Albuquerque.
Padilla was active in the Albuquerque chapter of the Bataan Veterans Organization, lobbied for compensation for former Japanese prisoners and helped fellow veterans file disability claims, Gallegos said.
Padilla worked as an electrical contractor, and owned other business establishments, during his lifetime.
The funeral Mass was celebrated Monday at St. Charles Borromeo Church, followed by burial at the Santa Fe National Cemetery.
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