Last WWI survivor has Pinoy connection
By Nestor Palugod Enriquez
www.filipinohome.com
Coming to America
Frank Buckles, the last surviving US veteran of World War One, has died at age 110. He died on Sunday at his farm in West Virginia at the age 110 and 26 days. He lied about his age to join the army at age 16. The Missouri native was among nearly 5 million Americans, who served in World War One in 1917 and 1918. The United States had been reluctant to enter WWI and WWII contrary to what we know, yet no nation had sacrificed more than Uncle Sam. It was the United States that ended the two Great Wars so the world can enjoy freedom and peace.
“I knew there’d be only one (survivor) someday. I didn’t think it would be me,” he was quoted as saying in recent years. Memorial day celebration will not be the same with his passing.
“Three years, two months,” he said of his captivity in the Philippines, eventually at a notorious camp in Los Banos. There, under pitiless Japanese guards, hundreds of Allied civilian and military internees lived in squalor, subsisting on often wormy rations.
“The starvation was so bad … it is surprising that any of us survived,” said Mr. Buckles, who was among 2,147 Los Banos prisoners liberated Feb. 23, 1945, in a risky assault by U.S. paratroopers and Filipino guerrillas.
sThere was no mercy as far as the Japanese wwasconcerned.” He once saw three men, British and Australian, nearly beaten to death. Food became scarce as the Japanese began to lose the war. At Los Banos, on the campus of an agricultural university, the prisoners found a scale. Buckles discovered that he had lost almost a third of his 140 pounds. “When I got down to 100 pounds,” he said, “I quit weighing.”Buckles still has the chipped metal cup from which he ate his beans and rice.
On Feb. 23, 1945, six months before the end of World War II, U.S. and Philippine forces liberated the Los Banos camp. Buckles, who had led daily fitness exercises in the camp, was almost the only one of 2,100 survivors who didn’t go directly to a hospital when they landed back in San Francisco, he said. Instead, he checked into a hotel. He discovered that while he had been gone, his paychecks from his shipping company had been piling up at the Crocker Bank.
“I was starving, but I had money in the bank,” he said
He suffered the aftereffects of beriberi, dysentery and dengue fever. Deciding he had had enough adventure, he worked in sales for a West Coast paint company after marrying in 1946. Then he settled on his 330-acre Gap View Farm, driving a tractor past his 100th birthday until the years finally caught up with him.
He speaks Spanish and German, even surprising a visitor of Filipino descent with a warm send-off in Tagalog. A remnant of 3 1/2 years spent as a civilian prisoner of war in the Philippines during World War II.
A man who brought him food during those 3 1/2 years became a lifelong friend, well after Buckles had returned home, married and raised a daughter.
When the Filipino man’s three daughters were old enough, it was Buckles who paid their college tuition.
The Los Banos prison raid was conducted behind the enemy lines south of Manila. The Filipino guerrilla assisted in the historical operations, among them WWII Veteran Jose Red from Jersey city. Col Frank Quesada knows about the daring rescue mission that became part of the US Army technical manual.
The hand-to-hand skirmish was not without casualties. A handful of guards were able to muster a makeshift defense, killing two young Hunter guerrillas, Pfc. Atanacio Castillo and Pfc. Anselmo Soler. Their bodies were recovered and buried beside the College chapel. Again, these were contributions by the Filipino WWII veterans for the Allied forces that should not be forgotten.
In retaliation, the Japanese soldiers massacred some 1,500 men, women and children, and burned their houses as well as those in the adjacent towns suspected of collaborating with the liberators. Konishi, the prison was tried for his war crimes after the war and hanged.
I doubt that any airborne unit in the world will ever be able to rival the Los Baños prison raid. It is the textbook airborne operation for all ages and all armies. This is coming from General Colin Powell, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Cabanatuan operation known as the Great Raid was the other rescue operation narrated in the History Chanel.
Buckles was among the over two thousand POWs rescued and got another lease of life. He went on to live 65 more years until his passing on last Feb 27, 2011.
Cpl Frank W. Buckles (Feb 1, 1901-Feb 27, 2011), the farmer, soldier, sailor, and survivor. A friend of the Filipino people.
