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No need to mention Japan when commemorating Bataan Death March due to improved ties —De Ocampo
The "improvement" of Philippine-Japan ties means there is “really no need to emphasize” the Japanese’s role in a bank’s activities commemorating the 76th anniversary of the Bataan Death March, a former finance chief and bank executive said on Thursday.
“I think the relationship with Japan over the years has improved to the extent that there is really no need for us to emphasize in any way the Japanese part of the occasion,” said former Finance secretary Roberto de Ocampo at a news forum in Quezon City.
He added that Japan is one of the country’s biggest foreign investors.
“We’ll do this step by step, and the friendship between the Philippines and Japan will not be dented by the fact that we are honoring an event that really highlights Philippine heroism,” he also said.
De Ocampo now chairs the Philippine Veterans Bank (PVB), a private commercial lender for military veterans and their descendants.
The bank is setting up its annual trail run and fun run slated for March and April in time for the commemoration of the infamous march, which killed thousands of Filipino and American soldiers under harsh treatment from their Japanese captors.
The Japanese government has “no direct involvement” in the activities, De Ocampo said.
He instead emphasized the Philippines’ continued remembrance of the grueling foot journey, a more-than-100-kilometer force-march from Mariveles, Bataan to prison camps in Tarlac in April 1942, after US troops surrendered to the Japanese in Bataan and Corregidor Island.
“It is so easy for us in these days to think that the most important issues of the day are political and to think that that is a life and death matter. But soldiers and those who fought for the country put their lives on the line and that is what it means to be a veteran, and so therefore we want to highlight that,” he said.
For his part, Philippine Veterans Affairs Office Administrator Ernesto Carolina said Japanese support for the slated events is “not that important.”
He said getting young Japanese people or millennials to participate in the event will be more significant.
“I think it is important that the young children of Japan will continue to know, will know what happened, not for them to condemn, but for them to...so it will never happen again, they will continue to accept is one part of their history,” Carolina, a retired Lieutenant General, said at the same forum.
Around 7,000 World War II veterans, both in the Philippines and in the United States, are still alive and receiving pension from the government. But most of them are in their 90s, and are dying at a rate of about 300 a month, said Carolina.
Trail, run
This year’s Bataan Death March Freedom Memorial Trail, divided into a 160-kilometer eight-man relay, a trail for big bikers, and a torch-passing relay for youth groups, will be held on March 24 and 25, according to Mike Villa-Real of the PVB.
Its participants will follow the route of the original Bataan Death March from Kilometer Zero in Mariveles, Bataan, to Capas, Tarlac. It was first held in 2017.
Meanwhile, the five-year-old Bataan Freedom Run will be held on April 8, featuring a 42-km and 21-km full and half marathon, as well as 10-km, 5-km, and 1-km running courses.
Organizers are expecting 5,000 participants, they said in a press release.
The proceeds of the event, they said, will be used for the maintenance of the historical markers memorializing the death march.
Also on Thursday, the bank’s officials turned over to Robert Hudson, vice president of nonprofit group Filipino-American Memorial Endowment, Incorporated (FAME), a check worth over P500,000, the proceeds of 2017’s commemorative events.
Hudson’s small group of volunteers manages the maintenance and restoration of the markers. He said the amount was the "greatest donation" his group has received.
His father was a World War II veteran. —KG, GMA News
