Asia Times: Southeast Asia


	June 29, 2002	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

HEY, JOE
Tour of valor
By Ted Lerner

See also: Return to Corregidor

MANILA - A slab of marble may not seem the most important item in the world, but when you carve names and poignant sayings on to its face, hoist some flags nearby, and add some landscaping around the back and sides, things can change considerably. Suddenly you not only have all the ingredients for the perfect monument, you also give people a place to focus their emotions, to pour out their hearts, to contemplate. At the same time you have something that makes good business sense for all involved.

Bob Reynolds understands perfectly the value of monuments. As the founder of Sacramento, California-based Valor Tours, Reynolds' company was the first to bring the veterans of World War II and their families back to the battle sights of the Pacific theater, starting in the mid-1970s. He knew, however, that these kinds of tourists didn't just want to see the beach where they or a loved one fought. They wanted to see something real. That's why, besides putting together package tours for the vets and their families to such places as the Philippines and the Marianas and Solomon islands, he also got involved in building monuments.

"When people come to a country," said the charming 81-year-old Reynolds, an Englishman who flew Lancaster bomber planes for the Royal Air Force in World War II, "if you sort of wave your hands in the air and say 'This is where such and such a person held a machine-gun', it really doesn't mean anything. They want to see something they can see and touch and read, a shape of some kind they can bring back like a mental image. They want to see something positive, something tangible, something they can touch. This is why we became involved in memorials. I am very proud that we have been involved in 37 memorials in the Pacific area."

One of Reynolds' favorite memorials is a handsome monument of solid marble on the Philippine island of Corregidor, where he recently brought 45 American tourists - including two survivors of the Bataan Death March and five veterans of the battle of Corregidor itself - to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the fall of Bataan and Corregidor to the Japanese. The monument, one of several on the island Reynolds helped set up, is dedicated to a group of American nurses dubbed "The Angels" who served on Corregidor during its darkest hours 60 years ago. The names of all the nurses are listed on the monument.

"I've always been tremendously impressed with their personal sacrifice and continuing sacrifice, and their bravery and gallantry within in the sound of artillery fire," Reynolds said. "They were on duty under dreadful conditions trying to make their patients comfortable." The monument came about when, 20 years ago, Reynolds brought a group of 52 "Angels" back to Corregidor.

"Everyone contributed like $50 or $100. A lot of people like myself who have tremendous admiration for the nurse corps contributed to it, and we had this superb cooperation of Colonel Art Matibag of the Corregidor Foundation."

Some might call it "military tourism" or "historical tourism". Whatever the favored moniker, it is obviously a growing niche market that combines a good portion of marketing and business savvy and a heavy dose of a much-needed public service.

That the market for bringing vets back to the battle sites is growing may seem odd when one considers that many are elderly or have already passed on. If anything the market should be shrinking rapidly, right? Tell that to Bob Reynolds and he just laughs.

"When we started this business in 1975," said Reynolds, "people said you'll be out of business in 25 years because all of your clientele will too old or dead." But he has obviously managed to get the last laugh. "I have more business now than I know what to do with. Our business is getting larger. When we first started the veterans were in their 50s and their early 60s. We recognized when we planned the future of the company that the veterans would fade away but their place would be taken by sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, friends, and we recognized that young historians would be traveling as well. Now, of course, our market is [composed] of sons and daughters, nephews and nieces and grandchildren and young historians."

Done correctly, this kind of tourism is clearly a can't-miss proposition for everyone involved. A country's tourism industry can benefit even in the face of terrorism alerts, as the Philippines has faced, as historical anniversaries are must-attend events for many family members from abroad. And for the vets and their families, trips back to the battle sites can offer life-changing experiences.

"Certainly there are many emotional reactions," Reynolds said, "and I would say we pluck every string of the emotional cord: happiness of course, sometimes sadness - they're greatly impressed with what their relatives did here, how they performed. And they go back with a mental picture of what the scenery was like, what the people were like. We noticed that the sons and daughters and particularly the grandchildren are not only interested in the World War II sites, they're interested in the culture of the country, the costumes and the language of the people."

Reynolds pointed out an added benefit of his brand of tourism that has far-reaching ramifications. "It brings them closer to the country," he said. "Once you've visited the Philippines and Bataan, the Death March or Camp O'Donnell, you are forever linked with the Philippines, and certainly these battle sites and these scenes of great courage and fortitude and great suffering remain a part of you when you go back to the United States. So I would say a little piece of the Philippines goes back forever to the States." And that, more than not, gets people talking.

"Particularly people who haven't traveled at all, they're nervous of leaving their homeland," Reynolds said. "But once they discover that groups come over here and have a damn good time, they're safe, they're well fed, well housed, clean accommodation, friendly people, then they go back and tell their friends. And very often they come back three and four times themselves and bring their friends with them. In fact on this tour we have 15 who have traveled with us before."

Wilma Malovich was traveling with Valor Tours for the second time. Her brother, Sergeant Raymond Kenny, came to the Philippines from New Mexico in August of 1941 and never left. He was captured in Bataan in April 1942, made the Death March and died in a Japanese concentration camp called Camp O'Donnell that June 1 of malaria, dysentery and starvation. The family only found out about the manner of Kenny's death in 1983.

"My mother and I didn't have any definite information for years," said Malovich, who was traveling with her daughter. "But I was finally able to make contact with some of the remaining Bataan veterans in New Mexico. The first convention I went to was at Clovis, New Mexico, and I got acquainted with them there, also Colonel Olsen." Colonel John Olsen had been interned at Camp O'Donnell, the infamous concentration camp set up by the Japanese where so many thousands of Filipino and American prisoners perished. Olsen managed to keep records of the American deaths there. He eventually wrote a book called O'Donnell: Andersonville of the Pacific. Olsen told Malovich that her brother had been buried in a mass grave somewhere near Camp O'Donnell.

"During the rainy season," Malovich said, "the dirt would wash off the mass grave because they didn't bury the bodies that deep, and the dogs would chew on the bones and flesh." After learning of her brother's awful demise, Malovich decided to come to the Philippines. Nobody knows where her brother's body might be. Instead there is a gravestone at the American cemetery in Manila - one of 38,000 - with Kenny's name on it. When she visited the cemetery in 1985 she had mixed emotions.

"It was rough," she said. "Bob Reynolds made arrangements for a chaplain to be at the gravesite and they had a little service for us and they put a wreath around the stone. It was a little hard to take." When she left the country something didn't feel right. And so she returned again this year.

"It was a little easier this time," she said. "I arranged for flowers to be put out. I think I can go back a little more satisfied this time. Last time when we left I didn't really want to leave. I felt like I was leaving him behind. I can't explain. I just didn't want to leave him. It's been better this time, it's more like a closure."

Malovich's spirits were also buoyed by the unveiling of a marker stone along the route of the Death March with the name of her brother carved into the side. The markers are a part of a new project of the Filipino American Memorial Endowment, which is affiliated with the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines. The group offers markers at each of the 112 kilometers of the Death March for US$500. Malovich paid for her brother's marker at Kilometer 111. The unveiling brought a flood of emotions.

"It's kind of sad he had to die the way he did," she said as she stood by the marker as others in the tour took her picture. "But it happened. That's life."

Harold Malcolm Amos, now 80, was captured by the Japanese on Bataan and made the Death March. But unlike Kenny, he lived to tell about it. He had come to the Philippines in 1940 from Iowa as an 18-year-old and worked as a medic. He became a prisoner of war (POW) in the Philippines for three years. This was his sixth trip back to the Philippines.

"I love the Philippines," Malcolm said when asked why he comes back so often. "I like the Filipino people." He says his war experiences often caused him nightmares. But it's obvious that his trips to the Philippines have made them all much easier to talk about.

"If you couldn't keep up they would just bayonet you and leave you by the side of the road," he said of the Japanese during the Death March. "I saw maybe a hundred or more [die] in six days. No water or food. Well, sometimes Filipinos would rush over and give you a rice bowl."

In Camp O'Donnell he was put in a bloodhound group. "They made them dig their own grave," he said, "drop to their knees and shot them in the back of the head. I saw that twice. That way it made a believer out of you. I always told the guys with me that if they were going to escape be sure to tell me because I want to go with 'em. I didn't want to be one of those who they were gonna shoot in the head."

He says he's still upset over the fact that the relatives of Japanese-Americans who were put in US concentration camps in World War II received $20,000 in compensation while POWs like him received from their own government only a dollar for every day they were held prisoner. "I'm bitter about that today."

Another cause for bitterness came when the organization he belongs to, the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, wanted to sue the Japanese government but were stopped by a little-known fact of history.

"When [General Douglas] MacArthur signed the treaty with Japan," he said, "he sold the American defenders out. Mac made a pact that the Americans couldn't sue. I don't know why he did that. It's kind of underhanded there." Still, Amos clearly revels in being back in the Philippines. Like Malovich, he bought himself a marker - Kilometer 110 - that will stand for all time.

"I think it's beautiful, I really do," a beaming Amos said as he stood next to the marker while the other tour members took his picture. "I just can't hardly believe that I'm here to see this."

Steve Kweicinski, now 50, knew the war well, but only as he grew up listening to his father tell tales of his time spent on Corregidor. His father was one of 5,000 Americans who fought on the island. He was part of the famous Battery Way, the last of the big guns firing on Corregidor. He was captured when the island fell to the Japanese on May 6, 1942. He was eventually taken to Japan, where he was used as slave labor. The son recalls that of all his father's war remembrances, Corregidor seemed to be the most vivid.

"He came back to Corregidor in 1980," Kweicinski said, "and it appeared to really bring peace to his life about the war." His father passed away in 1997. And so finally, on the 60th anniversary of the fall of Corregidor, Kweicinski and his sister, neither of whom had ever been overseas, decided to plunk down $2,400 each and join Bob Reynolds' latest tour, and retrace the footsteps of their father.

"I wanted to know why Corregidor meant so much to him," said Kweicinski. "I think I've discovered why that was. I was walking on the island and I ran into a bunch of monkeys and it occurred to me that between the monkeys and the beautiful vegetation and the birds, this was like a paradise on Earth. And I remember my dad saying that Corregidor was a paradise. And I think when he was originally on Corregidor before the war started it was the best time he ever had in his life. He was a child of the Depression. He was dirt-poor, he probably was hungry half the time. He grew up in Minnesota, he was probably cold half the time. And when he came to Corregidor he had a job, he had something to do, he had responsibility. Corregidor itself was such a beautiful island. I think he needed to come back to discover that Corregidor had been restored to that paradise that he had so much fallen in love with in 1941. It appears to have very much changed his life. It kind of completed something that was left."

For the younger Kweicinski, his trip to Corregidor seems to have changed his life as well.

"It was very emotional. I almost couldn't stand up," he said, recalling when the tour boat first pulled up to the island. "I had to grab my sister to hold me up. I was sobbing, and I'm a 50-year-old guy, because I had finally made it to a place that was so much a part of my dad's life and therefore so much a part of mine. Other than being very emotional on the dock I was very happy to be there. But the fact that he seemed to have guardian angels on the island ... I've never felt more at home in a place than I did there, and it's amazing."

That Kweicinski has found a piece of earth he calls holy ground half a world away from his own may seem unusual, but it also makes perfect sense. This is the aftermath and legacy of the war 60 years on. The veterans return to seek some kind of closure. For the relatives, especially the succeeding generations, the pull is even greater: to bask in some of the heroism for themselves. It's how the memories are kept alive, how friendships are renewed and formed, how places are rediscovered and found for the first time, how an emotional piece of a foreign land can be claimed as one's own. It's a win-win situation all around.

Nowhere was this more apparent than when Bob Reynolds' group visited the monument to the Americans who died at Camp O'Donnell. This large marble memorial was set up in 1999 outside of Capas, Tarlac, by the Battling Bastards of Bataan group in the United States based on information compiled by James Litton, himself a Battling Bastards member. On the monument are the names of each of the more than 1,600 Americans who perished from April through June of 1942 from disease, starvation and murder at the hands of the Japanese in nearby Camp O'Donnell, which is now but a mere field.

Upon arriving at the monument, Wilma Malovich discovered the name of her brother on the wall. With emotions obviously high, she and her daughter took an etching of the name as a souvenir.

Harry Hansen, 79, who had fought on Corregidor and ended up being taken to Japan for slave labor, was making his first trip back to the Philippines since the war. He had two childhood friends from Montana who he knew had been in the Philippines and had fought on Bataan. He had never heard from them again and for 60 years the families of the two men knew nothing of what happened to the two. As he and his wife perused the wall, Hansen suddenly stopped in his tracks. He found the names of his two childhood friends.

Hansen and his wife took etchings and photos of the names and then told a story of how, during his captivity, a Japanese doctor saved his life. With the US and Philippine flags flapping in the breeze overhead, they joined the group in singing God Bless America. He admitted it was an extremely happy occasion.

"Now I can go back and tell the families," he said, at once smiling and obviously racked with emotion. "What isn't satisfying about this? It makes this trip more than worthwhile. It brings a little closure. It's great. I'm glad I came."

Ted Lerner is the author of the book, Hey, Joe - a Slice of the City, an American in Manila. He can be reached via e-mail at tedlheyjoe@yahoo.com.

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