My father’s story of service, sacrifice, and survival
“He moved on by forgiving his enemies, planting vegetables and flowers, teaching young minds, serving the church, and making his peace with God.”
My father, Gregorio G. Melegrito, did not die peacefully in his sleep. He woke up screaming in the middle of the night. Something inside him burst. He was rushed to the Veterans Hospital in Biloxi, Mississippi, and died minutes later. He was 89 when he passed away on August 11, 2005.
“I don’t want any heroic measures to save me,” he had told the doctors and his children the last time he was in the hospital nine months earlier. “I’m ready to go.”
Born on March 25, 1915, in a barrio in Nueva Ecija (a northern province in the Philippines), he immigrated to the United States in the 1960s with his wife and four children. After my mother died in 1963, he spent the last 25 years of his life tending a vegetable garden, raising pigs and goats in his backyard, and teaching Bible classes in a Baptist church.
His father was a poor farmer who could afford to send only one of his seven sons to school. As the youngest, my father was chosen to get an education. He made it through high school and college, all the way to completing his master’s and doctoral degrees at a university in Missouri.
Military Service
On July 26, 1941, as tensions rose between the United States and Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called more than 260,000 Filipino soldiers into service under the United States Armed Forces of the Far East (USAFFE).
My father served in the USAFFE under the command of General Douglas McArthur. He was already an officer in the Philippine Commonwealth Army, having joined military service soon after graduating from college.
The Invasion
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial Forces invaded the Philippines. My father was with the 1st Filipino Infantry Regiment. For four months, Filipino and American soldiers endured heavy and relentless attacks as they defended Bataan and Corregidor. They were low on food and supplies. It was one of the longest and fiercest sieges of the Pacific war.
The Bataan Death March
On April 9, 1942, the defenders of Bataan were forced to surrender and ordered to march to prison camps. My father was among the 80,000 Filipino and American soldiers who marched for 65 grueling miles in searing tropical heat with no provision for food, water, or shelter. Of the 10,000 prisoners who died in the infamous Bataan Death March, 9,000 were Filipinos.
“We didn’t want to surrender,” my father told me when I asked him about the war years later. “We wanted to keep on fighting.”
During the Bataan Death March, he wanted to escape, but was too weak to even try. Two uncles who pleaded with him to join them were able to make their daring move undetected when the guards were asleep. Both uncles later joined guerrilla units and continued to fight the Japanese occupiers.
Sharing his recollections of the death march was too painful for my father. He didn’t like to open up each time I tried to ask him. So I had to do my own readings and research. I learned that Japanese soldiers were always pointing their bayonets at prisoners to keep them in line, and brutally beating up anyone who disobeyed. For 15 days, faced with heat, dust, and disease, they suffered hunger, thirst, fatigue, and heatstroke.
Prisoner of War Camp
From San Fernando, Pampanga (a province in the Central Luzon region of the Philippines located north of Manila), prisoners who survived were crammed in railway cars and unloaded at Camp O’Donnell, where my father and thousands of soldiers—emaciated and exhausted—were confined for six months as prisoners of war. They were subjected to further cruel treatment and starvation.
Many were ill and some 16,000 more lost their lives in the first two months at the camp. By the time they were released six months later, 25,000 prisoners had already died. Thousands of POWs were later transferred to other concentration camps or placed in hell ships and transported to labor camps in Japan, China, and Korea.
My father shared very little of what he went through in the POW camps. This prompted me to look for written accounts by other POWs.
Fellow POW Survivors
Among the survivors who wrote a book about his own experience is Antonio A. Nieva. In his memoir, Cadet, Soldier, Guerrilla Fighter, he describes how the prisoners were all packed like sardines in nipa-thatched barracks.
He wrote: “…the stench of weeks-old sweat of unwashed bodies in unlaundered clothes; dysentery excreta, vomit, festering wounds, gangrene-pus, and the foulness dripping from the upper deck. The air from outside furnished no relief. It was fetid with decay from the fly-infested, maggot-filled, open-trench latrines and pools of stale urine around the bamboo poles stabbed into the patient earth, and the sweet-sourish rot of corpses awaiting burial just outside the barracks doors.
“And the sounds. Even in the daytime. Moans and sighs, groans and grunts, coughs, mumbles, and babblings punctuated by sudden yells of fevered souls with unexorcised ghosts that refused to die.”
I imagined with outrage how it must have been for my father and the other prisoners to have lived through these horribly inhumane conditions.
Back Home
All the prisoners were eventually released six months later. My father returned to his hometown in Nueva Ecija. His parents were shocked to see him so dark, thin, weak, and sickly. Recovery took several weeks of rest.
The first thing his family did was to give him a good bath. They had to scrub him several times to remove the thick layers of dust and dirt that had dried and hardened on his skin. Cleaning him up thoroughly was vital to restoring his health.
In a way, he was also scrubbing off the horrors of war from his mind, removing ugly and painful images of comrades being blown up, beaten up, and beheaded by cruel enemies, starved to death in concentration camps. He wanted to erase them forever from memory—in order to find peace.
The Ravages of War
But, like many of his comrades, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Short and explosive tempers, angry outbursts, moodiness, depression, and irritability—these were among the manifestations. He was constantly haunted by the demons of war.
An Added Blow
And then, adding insult to injury, the US Congress passed the 1946 Rescission Act, which denied Filipino World War II veterans their rightful status and benefits. After serving with courage and valor under the US flag, and paying the ultimate sacrifice, Filipino soldiers suffered yet again the humiliation of defeat.
But this one hurt even more because they were stripped of their honor and human dignity. It’s like they never existed at all in the eyes of America.
From Soldier to Farmer to Teacher
War is all about death and destruction. Wounds heal, but the emotional scars remain.
My father returned to farming and teaching after he retired from the Army. Plowing the soil, sowing seeds, and watching rice and corn fields yield the season’s harvest gave him a new sense of meaning and purpose. It must have been gratifying for him to feed his family nutritious food, having known starvation and malnutrition.
He took immense pride in manual labor, using his hands to make things grow, nourishing the earth with sweat and brawn. The bustle and hustle of life in the farm—the clucking of chickens and the oinking of pigs, and the sight of verdant fruits and green vegetables—were a stark contrast in his mind to the sight and stench of dead and decaying bodies in prison camps.
But farming was hard. Seasonal storms, floods, and drought destroyed the crops and killed farm animals. It took weeks and sometimes months to recover, to repair the fields and replant the crops. Other obstacles threatened the stability of simple farm life: the emotional stress of knowing you might not be able to feed your family the next day.
Still, my father remained resolute, in the same way he persevered in that grueling 65-mile Bataan Death March and six months in a prison camp. His faith in God steeled him to face formidable challenges. He always cited the story of Job in the Bible, how he remained patient and faithful despite being visited by death and disease and loss.
Giving Back
Both my parents were also teachers. They aspired to be educators, so they pursued higher education in the United States, attaining master’s and doctoral degrees in their professional fields. They gave back by opening a vocational school in a small barrio in the Philippines, providing opportunities for children of farmers who couldn’t afford to go to the bigger schools in the city.
My father taught math and science, while my mother taught English and literature. They continued to teach in public schools in the US and occasionally encountered racially motivated harassment from white students.
Still, they persevered. “What we do is enlighten minds and save lives,” my father used to say, recalling how his six other brothers never finished school and ended up living a life of poverty and struggling to maintain a decent livelihood for their families.
“Had I not been given the chance to attain a high school diploma, I wouldn’t have been able to pursue higher education. And I wouldn’t have had the means to send my children to school so they can have a better life.”
Moving Forward With Forgiveness
Months before he died at 89, he was still strong enough to teach Bible studies at his local church, bag groceries at his neighborhood Safeway store, and raise a garden of vegetables. He was always giving away baskets of tomatoes, beans, eggplants, and leafy greens.
I still wish I was able to get his stories about the Bataan Death March and the Camp O’Donnell prison camp. Whether he could no longer remember or just wanted to forget, I know that he chose to move on, having scrubbed off the layers of painful memories, including the hurtful blow of the 1946 Rescission Act. He moved on by forgiving his enemies, planting vegetables and flowers, teaching young minds, serving the church, and making his peace with God.
Recognition, Finally
Twelve years after dad died and more than 70 years after the war ended, the US Congress passed the Congressional Gold Medal Act, officially recognizing—finally—the service and sacrifice of Filipino World War II veterans. By then, only 15,000 (mostly in their 80s and 90s) of the 260,000 soldiers who served under the US flag, remained.
Although he didn’t live to see this day of honor, my father, a proud Filipino World War II veteran, remained faithful and loyal to America, grateful to her promise to give him and his family a better life.
Editor’s Notes:
About the Author
Jon Melegrito from Kensington, Maryland, is the son of a Filipino World War II veteran. He is the Executive Secretary of the Filipino Veterans Recognition and Education Project (FilVetREP), whose purpose is to raise awareness about the service and sacrifice of Filipino and American veterans during World War II.
In 2013, FilVetREP partnered with various organizations to create a nationwide awareness campaign that led to:
1) The issuance of the Congressional Gold Medal to the veterans and their national recognition by the US Congress on October 25, 2017. Former President Barack Obama signed this measure into law on December 14, 2016.
2) A national online interactive education program that preserves the legacy of these veterans and their role in world history. It is vital for younger generations to be aware of this important part of history excluded from textbooks. Visit the online exhibition here.
Reparations Through Fate
Considering everything that happened during the war, it is understandable if there is some bad blood between affected generations of Japanese and Filipinos. That is why we would like to point out some facts that may not be common knowledge to both parties.
Many know that retired Major General Antonio Taguba led FilVetREP's campaign to compel the US government to recognize the contributions of Filipino veterans in World War II, which resulted in them being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
But in the years leading to that victory, others were also working in the background to bring that goal to fruition, as well as passing other bills that would benefit Filipino veterans and their families. Two of them were US Senators Mazie Hirono and Daniel Inouye.
Hirono is the first Asian-American woman to serve in the US senate. She sponsored the bill awarding Filipino veterans the Congressional Gold Medal. She also championed the Filipino World War II Veterans Parole Program, an immigration bill that reunites these veterans with their children and other family members.
Inouye lobbied in the senate for legislation that pushed for equity for Filipino veterans. With his chief of staff, Marie Blanco, he introduced bills to revoke the Rescission Act in congress for 18 years. Their efforts resulted in the Filipino Veterans Equity Compensation Fund in 2009.
Inouye and Hirono are Japanese-Americans—which shows how life events do come full circle.
About the Bataan Death March Memorial
The figures in the main photo form “Heroes of Bataan,” the centerpiece of the Bataan Death March Memorial located at the Veterans Park in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
The statue shows three soldiers during the march: two American and one Filipino. It is an eight-foot symbol of the tight-knit bond and camaraderie among the soldiers who were part of the march, survivors of whom went on to be interned in Japanese prison camps during World War II.
According to Miguel B. Llora’s University of Hawaii-Manoa dissertation in American Studies, the memorial is the brainchild of the late New Mexico Senator Pete V. Domenici and Chairman of the Las Cruces Convention and Visitors Bureau Advisory Board, John Joe Martinez.
The latter’s parents named him after his maternal uncles, Sergeant Juan (John) and Jose (Joe/Pepe) Baldonado from the 200th Coast Artillery of the New Mexico National Guard. Both uncles survived the death march, but spent almost four years as American prisoners of war in Japanese death camps.
Martinez approached sculptor Kelley Hestir to create this monument to the Bataan Death March veterans in commemoration of the Bataan surrender’s 60th anniversary on April 9, 2002. The monument’s unveiling coincided with the annual Bataan Memorial Death March at the White Sands Missile Range and Domenici’s designation of Highway 70 East to Alamogordo as the Bataan Memorial Highway.
Domenici’s and Martinez’s compulsion to build the memorial came from a desire to keep the story of the veterans’ heroism alive for future generations and because the march “holds tremendous historical significance for New Mexico.” Many who perished from the event came from the southern part of this state.
The two American sculpted soldiers were created after the likeness of Martinez’s uncles and the Filipino soldier is a depiction of Command Sergeant Major Gilbert L. Canuela, then stationed at White Sands Missile Range in Las Cruces. Canuela and another family member are also survivors of the march.
Uncle Jose is the one with the helmet, Uncle Juan is the middle soldier, and the one peering over his shoulder on the lookout for approaching danger is Canuela.
The footprints leading to and from the three figures represent the multitudes of soldiers who began the march and the few who completed it. The impressions were taken from the feet of survivors.
Domenici raised funds for the project by successfully lobbying for the memorial in Washington DC, resulting in a $150,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
It was the first and only federal fund granted toward preserving the memory of the Bataan Death March, one of the most horrendous chapters in American military history.
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More about the author:
Jon Melegrito is the…
Editor-in-Chief of Manila Mail, a community newspaper based in Washington DC. He also contributes articles to various publications, including Inquirer.Net, Positively Filipino, and Pinoy News Magazine.
Executive Secretary at The Filipino Veterans Recognition and Education Project, Washington DC
Executive Director at Tanghalang Pilipino ng Washington DC
Former Executive Director at the National Federation of Filipino American Associations
Photo and Memorial Credits:
Image of the Bataan Death March Memorial statues—Sage Scott
The memorial’s sculptor, concept artist, and site designer—Kelley S. Hestir
Thumbnail silhouette—Mohamed Hassan
Snapshots of father and son Melegrito—furnished by Jon Melegrito
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