Vicissitudes of the Victor
Honor, history at stake as Filipino veterans press for recognition
As the ceremonies wound down at MacArthur Park, Colonel Jaime Catral, 80, a junior artillery officer when the war broke out, talked to a reporter, calmly at first, of the horrors he experienced on the Bataan Death March - of desperately thirsty men shot and bayoneted for breaking ranks for a drink of water, of local women savagely beaten for throwing handfuls of rice to starving prisoners.
"My feeling is it is very unfair," he says of the denial of benefits. "I don't need the money. I'm okay economically, but . . ."
Catral stopped, struggling to find the right word. He clenched his fist and tapped his chest as if trying to show a doctor where the pain was.
"I mean, we fought with you. They should restore that honor . . ."
Time, however, is not on the veterans' side. Only 70,000 survive, of whom 26,000 live in the United States, most of them American citizens. The death rate among the entire group is estimated at five per day.
The committee is unlikely to send the bill to the House this year. But having fought the good fight so far, the Filipino veterans, like the man who once led them to victory, have promised to return, and, like the civil rights workers before them, they mean to hold America accountable not so much for its vices as for its virtues. It is, after all, simply what's right.
The men at Omaha Beach would have understood.
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