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My great-grandfather was the oldest survivor of the Bataan Death March.
Even before he really got into genealogy, this was one of the top facts about our family which my dad liked to bring up. My great-grandfather was, if I recall, sixty years old when he survived it – a gruelling march of American POWs up the Bataan Peninsula in the Japanese-occupied Philippines. "If you stopped to rest," my dad would say, "a Japanese soldier would come up and shoot you in the head."
This POW's daughter was in a prison camp elsewhere in the Philippines, and it was there she met a British shipping clerk who'd been working in Manila. After being rescued by American commandos and rushed out under heavy gunfire, they married, and eventually became my grandparents.
I suppose having these sorts of stories in the family might explain to some degree why I've never been one to shy from the darker side of life on earth. You know how bad it can get, and those who'd like to pretend reality is otherwise are in for a shock. Get used to it early and resilience is baked-in.
Recently, I've come to realise how much these stories can worm their way into your psyche in other ways. My grandmother, having gone through late puberty – when you get your curves – under starvation conditions in a prison camp, fretted about her weight for the rest of her life. The cigarettes she used to curb her appetite eventually killed her, but not before passing on an unhealthy relationship with food and the female form to her son – "Sometimes," my dad would tell my sister and me when we had a second slice of cake, "she would let herself have a bowl of rice for a treat." We've both had long journeys unlearning inherited baggage around food and body image.
Only just today, though, I realised that the "devil take the hindmost" Bataan story has rippled through the generations as well. I am always anxious about falling behind – a reasonable fear for anyone, no one wants to be left behind – but there's a terror with which I run and run to keep at the front of my ability, which has led to emotional/psychological burnouts and physical "crocking up", not to mention a trail of broken friendships. I found a lot of resonance in Moist von Lipwig's "Always move fast. You never know what's catching you up." Only recently, after far too much experience, have I begun to learn the value of a break every once in a while. I wonder now if what was catching me up was the shadow of a Japanese soldier with a pistol.
It's interesting to consider, too, that the person who told me these stories, always with the subtext of how monstrous the Japanese were in WWII, also loudly lauds a political system that does much the same thing as far as mercy for the ill, disabled, incapacitated, and anyone else who's a drain on resources. The Japanese pistol of financial ruin and death on the street should motivate them to keep up. No time for slackers. And borderline anorexia is a triumph of self-control, not a lamentable side-effect of trauma.
It's 105 years today since the search party found the remains of Scott, Wilson, and Bowers, in a snowed-up tent in the middle of nowhere, bang on course for home but run out of time. As time goes on I wonder less and less what attracted me so forcibly to the story of men who, when their companions flagged, slowed to accommodate them and sacrificed themselves to keep them alive as long as possible, even to the point of losing their race against winter. There are those who read the story and think them frustratingly stupid for doing so. Untold reams of paper have been spent on the "if"s surrounding their moral decisions, but to choose otherwise would have been unconscionable to them. The world lost three great men in March of 1912; the records brought to light the following November make a sterling counterexample to the Bataan Death March. With any luck, none of us will have to face the choice of becoming Captain Scott or the Japanese soldier, but it's worth considering which path we'd take, and why. I know whose world I'd rather live in.
Even before he really got into genealogy, this was one of the top facts about our family which my dad liked to bring up. My great-grandfather was, if I recall, sixty years old when he survived it – a gruelling march of American POWs up the Bataan Peninsula in the Japanese-occupied Philippines. "If you stopped to rest," my dad would say, "a Japanese soldier would come up and shoot you in the head."
This POW's daughter was in a prison camp elsewhere in the Philippines, and it was there she met a British shipping clerk who'd been working in Manila. After being rescued by American commandos and rushed out under heavy gunfire, they married, and eventually became my grandparents.
I suppose having these sorts of stories in the family might explain to some degree why I've never been one to shy from the darker side of life on earth. You know how bad it can get, and those who'd like to pretend reality is otherwise are in for a shock. Get used to it early and resilience is baked-in.
Recently, I've come to realise how much these stories can worm their way into your psyche in other ways. My grandmother, having gone through late puberty – when you get your curves – under starvation conditions in a prison camp, fretted about her weight for the rest of her life. The cigarettes she used to curb her appetite eventually killed her, but not before passing on an unhealthy relationship with food and the female form to her son – "Sometimes," my dad would tell my sister and me when we had a second slice of cake, "she would let herself have a bowl of rice for a treat." We've both had long journeys unlearning inherited baggage around food and body image.
Only just today, though, I realised that the "devil take the hindmost" Bataan story has rippled through the generations as well. I am always anxious about falling behind – a reasonable fear for anyone, no one wants to be left behind – but there's a terror with which I run and run to keep at the front of my ability, which has led to emotional/psychological burnouts and physical "crocking up", not to mention a trail of broken friendships. I found a lot of resonance in Moist von Lipwig's "Always move fast. You never know what's catching you up." Only recently, after far too much experience, have I begun to learn the value of a break every once in a while. I wonder now if what was catching me up was the shadow of a Japanese soldier with a pistol.
It's interesting to consider, too, that the person who told me these stories, always with the subtext of how monstrous the Japanese were in WWII, also loudly lauds a political system that does much the same thing as far as mercy for the ill, disabled, incapacitated, and anyone else who's a drain on resources. The Japanese pistol of financial ruin and death on the street should motivate them to keep up. No time for slackers. And borderline anorexia is a triumph of self-control, not a lamentable side-effect of trauma.
It's 105 years today since the search party found the remains of Scott, Wilson, and Bowers, in a snowed-up tent in the middle of nowhere, bang on course for home but run out of time. As time goes on I wonder less and less what attracted me so forcibly to the story of men who, when their companions flagged, slowed to accommodate them and sacrificed themselves to keep them alive as long as possible, even to the point of losing their race against winter. There are those who read the story and think them frustratingly stupid for doing so. Untold reams of paper have been spent on the "if"s surrounding their moral decisions, but to choose otherwise would have been unconscionable to them. The world lost three great men in March of 1912; the records brought to light the following November make a sterling counterexample to the Bataan Death March. With any luck, none of us will have to face the choice of becoming Captain Scott or the Japanese soldier, but it's worth considering which path we'd take, and why. I know whose world I'd rather live in.
