E-mail Story
Print Friendly
Send E-mail
Reprint story
Saturday, October 31, 2009
WWII Veteran Wrote Book
By Lloyd Jojola
Journal Staff Writer
Horacio Montoya, a Bataan Death March survivor who chronicled his wartime experiences in his 2009 book, "Rising Sun Over Bataan: Memoirs of War," died Tuesday. He was 93.
The Taos native served in the New Mexico National Guard's 200th Coast Artillery and spent more than three years as a Japanese captive after the 1942 surrender of Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines.
He served alongside Benjamin Montoya, his late brother and also a 200th Coast Artillery member, and they were both held captive in the same prisoner of war camp in Japan.
"I asked him, how did you get through three-and-a-half years of savage, brutal existence," said Carlos Montoya, Horacio Montoya's oldest son. "He kept saying to himself and his brother Ben, they would say to each other every night, 'We're going home for Christmas.'"
"Christmas of 1945, they actually got to be home."
After graduating high school, Horacio H. Montoya attended the University of New Mexico before returning to Taos. He joined the National Guard with his brother and their group was mobilized for duty in 1941.
After Bataan fell in April 1942, the two were among the thousands of American and Filipino soldiers who would take part in the forced march.
"They started the march and about a third of the way into the march my dad and about 100 other American soldiers made a break for it into the jungle," Carlos Montoya said.
The men were captured. About half of them were shot or bayoneted, Horacio Montoya would say. "They brought them back to where the march was going on, and they sat them down like they were going to machine gun them," Carlos Montoya said.
But an American general intervened, Horacio Montoya would say, and told the captors that the men would better serve the Japanese if they took them to Camp O'Donnell to serve as labor setting up barracks and such. "Essentially, they were given a stay of execution," Carlos Montoya said.
Horacio Montoya was taken to Camp O'Donnell and then Cabanatuan, another camp, his son said, before being moved by one of the so-called "hell ships" to Omuta, Japan.
The brothers would be held at Fukuoka Camp 17 and worked in the coal mines.
"He never really talked about it at all, just the fact that he was a POW," Carlos Montoya said. "I know all of these things now because his life's dream was to write a book, his memoirs about his capture and incarceration and the Bataan Death March."
Horacio Montoya typed his memoirs on an old, manual typewriter before it was edited and published.
"He came back. He was a normal man. A good father. Hard working," Carlos Montoya said.
An Albuquerque resident, Horacio Montoya was a retired administrator for the federal Veterans Administration. He had a 30-plus-year career.
A visitation will take place from 5-6 p.m. Sunday, with a prayer service starting at 6 p.m., at French Mortuary, 10500 Lomas NE. Funeral services will take place at 10 a.m. Monday at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church at Lomas and Tennessee NE.
Montoya's survivors include his wife of 61 years, Loyola Montoya; children, Carlos Montoya and his wife Dolores, Victor Montoya and his wife Carolyn, Michaela Montoya, Loretta Robledo and her husband Miguel and Adrian Montoya and his fiancee, Rita Felter; grandchildren, Stephanie, Rachel, Alejandro, Gabriel and his fiancee, Jessica, Andres, Veronica, Michael, Adrian, Lucas and Alana; a great-grandson, Alex; and many other family members.
You also can send comments via our comment form
|
|
