The above photo is real, one of the stark vignettes during those dark days in the Philippines. Ask any survivor of that era and he will agree that indeed WAR IS HELL..
IN A TV DOCUMENTARY, some of the survivors described how life was before, during and after April 9, 1942..
There were about 75,000 US-Filipino soldiers that were hiding inside Bataan. Only a few thousand were left, rescued by the returning Americans in a POW camp in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija.
Some said after their food supply was gone, they had to eat rats, cockroaches, "anything that moves..". One said, "hell, it was better than nothing, it was a source of protien"
A Japanese speaker of that documentary commented the Japanese were brutal because that was how they were trained.."The officers harassed the privates, treated them like animals...So the privates had nobody else to vent their anger and frustration, except the POWs.."
The documentary showed that whatever brutality you heard re: the war, (e.g. POWs and babies used for bayonet practice by the Jap soldiers, ) were true. Photos were shown to attest these events.
The late Mayor Alejo of Asingan was one of the victims during the war years. He preferred to die, according to the story, rather than reveal the names of so called "guerillas" to the Japanese authorities. He died, they said, with water torture--#
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