75 years ago, Guard members endured Bataan Death March
By Sgt. 1st Class Jon Soucy | National Guard BureauApril 7, 2017
When Army 1st Lt. Benjamin Morin, a tank commander with the Illinois
Army National Guard's B Company, 192nd Tank Battalion, deployed to the
Philippines in late 1941, he had little idea of what he and his fellow
Soldiers would soon face.
Within a month of arriving, Morin's unit began fending off the advancing
Japanese army along the Bataan Pennisula, giving Morin the distinction
of being one of the first U.S. tank commanders to engage enemy forces
during World War II.
But the Soldiers of Morin's unit could only hold off for so long against
the larger and better equipped Japanese forces. On April 9, 1942 the
Bataan Peninsula fell to the Japanese army after four months of
fighting. More than 11,000 American and 60,000 Filipino soldiers found
themselves prisoners of war and were forced to march the 65 miles under
horrific conditions in what is now known as the Bataan Death March.
Many may say Morin was one of the lucky ones. He and his tank crew were
captured early in the fighting and were not part of the march itself,
though they still endured harsh treatment as prisoners. Other members of
his unit, however, did take part, as well as Soldiers with the New
Mexico Army Guard's 200th and 515th Coast Artillery Regiments and the
194th Tank Battalion, made up of units from the Minnesota and California
Army Guard. Other Army Guard units came from Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri
and Wisconsin.
Those who endured the march were subjected to physical abuse, lack of
food and water and what many describe as unrelenting beating, torture
and brutality. With hot and humid weather conditions, many prisoners
succumbed to the physical demands of the march. Those who couldn't keep
up were often simply executed on the spot.
Roughly 54,000 service members survived the march, though conditions
didn't improve once the prisoners reached their destination. Poor living
areas and overcrowding gave rise to diseases such as dysentery. Medical
care was virtually non-existent and many who survived the march itself
died in the days after reaching the camp.
The prisoners endured continued abuse until the end of the war and were often used as slave labor.
Morin survived and was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1946,
working as a missionary in Peru for 38 years. He died in 2016 at age 94
and was the last surviving officer of the 192nd Tank Battalion.
Others survived too, including Chief Master Sgt. Paul Lankford, who
served with the Army Air Corps' 27th Bomb Group and was captured by
Japanese forces in early 1942. After the war he served in a variety of
positions within the Air Force and worked to establish the Air National
Guard's noncommissioned officer academy at McGhee-Tyson Air Force Base.
He was named the school's first enlisted commandant in 1968. Lankford
passed away in 2008 at age 89.
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