Are we responsible for stolen toilet seats?

As you know, we recently lamented the fact that toilet seats are missing from so many comfort rooms (restrooms) in the Philippines. We asked ourselves, “Why would someone possibly want to take a toilet seat?” We then asked you, our readers, for suggestions of what you might do with a toilet seat, and published a list of creative ideas. Since publishing that list, we have received a few more suggestions. Christopher R. proposed attaching strings to the seat and adding a handle, thus making it a tennis racket, or using one as an old-fashioned stock for criminals. Stephen C. went a step further, saying that his sister has two complete toilets – “thrones” – in her yard that she uses for flower planters.

Looking through old family photos for another reason entirely, we ran across one that led us to think of another use. On the left you can see Steve and his sister Della playing in the bathtub. On the right is a toilet with no seat. Front and center is their sister Paula as a toddler with a toilet seat around her waist. Della is laughing and pointing at Paula, who appears to be using the seat as a hula-hoop.

Now for the bad news. We had intended that our story about the disappearing toilet seats here in the Philippines would be for entertainment purposes only. As we feared, we are now hearing reports of missing toilet seats in certain parts of the United States and other countries all over the world, and the suspected source of the disappearances has been traced to – you got it – this newsletter. So if you have been pilfering toilet seats to use for picture frames, hillbilly horseshoes, or your kids’ hula-hoops, for the sake of your fellow humans, please stop. And whatever you do, please don’t copy Stephen C’s sister and take whole toilets!

Last year while we were in the United States and had access to hi-speed internet we decided to create Facebook accounts. For those of you who are unaware, Facebook is a place for people to connect and share their thoughts. It is a very good way to find ‘lost’ friends and relatives, based upon a number of searches which include the schools you attended. Also, Facebook suggests contacts that you and someone else in your circle of friends have in common. We have had the pleasure of reacquainting ourselves with a number of friends and a few cousins as a result. We do not log onto Facebook often because it requires faster internet than we normally have available.

It seems that when anyone creates something good, someone else has to come along and try to spoil it. One of our sons informs us that Facebook, being one of the most popular websites on the planet, has become a major target of hackers, spammers, and virus spreaders. A number of our readers have received recent emails from Facebook asking them to join, supposedly invited by one of us. It has never been our intention to send out such spam-type notices to our readers. We advise those of you regular Facebookers to be cautious, and to those of you who feel that we are the cause of unintended Facebook spam being sent to your email accounts, we are as much at a loss as to why you received them as you are. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We have been seriously contemplating whether or not to stay on Facebook. However, just today Steve received an email from a granddaughter of Capt. Samuel McF. McReynolds, Jr., who was the commanding officer of Battery Hearn at the time of the Japanese invasion in 1942. Her mother (his daughter) had been born on Corregidor during a prior assignment. She found us through Facebook.


The 68th Anniversary ceremony on May 6 was well attended, thanks to the many guests of Sun Cruises who chose to attend. After the presentation of wreaths and opening remarks by CFI Executive Director Artemio Matibag, Steve gave the principal talk, speaking about the significance of the date and his father’s role in it. At the same time, the plane that we mentioned in the previous newsletter dove over the dome several times. Its shadow even passed over the hole in the dome. We are including a picture that Steve took when the circle of sunlight through the dome was completely covering the altar, something which occurs for less than 30 seconds only twice a year. Although it was intended to occur at noon on May 6 to coincide with the surrender, it actually occurred just before noon on April 29 this year.

Mango season is now in full swing. The upside is that, if we are lucky, we may get some free, delicious fruit. The monkeys here are apt to climb up into the trees, grab a mango, take a bite, decide it’s too sour, throw it to the ground, and repeat. Often we see a mango tree surrounded by mangoes with a single bite out of each one. The downside of mango season is that it brings out more flies. Steve touched a mango on one of the trees the other day, and was immediately under attack by red ants, which are all over the trees in search of the sweet juice. How the Filipinos can pick the fruit before the monkeys, and how they and the monkeys can stand the ants, is beyond us.

Last year we wrote about a tree in the yard which bursts into bloom a few days after a soaking rain. The very fragrant flowers are white, about an inch in diameter and ¾ inch deep, and have five or six petals. The fragrance is light during the day, becoming very intense just after dark, perfuming the house and yard all through the night for about a week. We are still curious about its identity, and wondering if it might be a variety of night blooming jasmine. Its medium-green leaves are relatively soft and not glossy, one to two inches long, with a very finely serrated edge. Take a gander at the picture and let us know if you agree that it is a form of jasmine.

P.S. On the story about toilets seats disappearing because all over the world because of our newsletter – just kidding!!!

P.P.S. We recently heard that you can use a toilet to measure time. “How long is a minute? It depends which side of the bathroom (CR) door you are on!”

May 6, 1942: The fall of Corregidor

I first came to the Philippines with my sister Paula in 2002 to attend the ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of the surrender of Corregidor and the ultimate “Fall of the Philippines.” Traveling with Valor Tours of San Francisco, we were very fortunate to have five Corregidor survivors in the group, as well as two men who had survived the Bataan Death March. I’ve included a couple of pictures from that commemoration of eight years ago.

My father Walter arrived in the Philippines in late April of 1941, having successfully gained entry into the US Army after initial denial due to a perforated eardrum and flat feet. His first May 6 here was spent in paradise-like conditions, assuming Paradise is sunny and a bit on the warm side. But I’m sure that he gladly traded the freezing cold of Northern Minnesota, along with the shortage of job opportunities, for warmth, a steady paycheck, and “three squares” a day. His barracks was only a couple of hundred yards from our house here. His good friend Ray Makepeace of Minnesota told me that on hot nights the two of them sometimes slept on the walkway bridging the downhill slope between the road and the barracks.

Everything was wonderful for the next six months. Apparently his age (27), height (6’6”), and brains impressed his commanding officer, Major William Massello, because he promoted Walter from private to private first class, then corporal (see picture taken with unknown private on Corregidor), and then sergeant in just a few months. Certainly rumors of war with the Japanese must have had an affect on the psyches of the men here, but for the most part a service assignment on Corregidor was considered one of the best that an Army guy could get.

That all changed, of course. Not long after Walter arrived, the Army began sending all military dependants home, so they were safely away when the first bombs fell, unlike the family members of American civilians working in the Philippines, who were for the most part to spend three years in interment camps. I’m not sure just how many wives and children we’re talking about, but there were many buildings for married-officers’ housing on Corregidor, most still in evidence today.

On December 1, 1941, Massello and his men were sent to Bataan, where they initially set up searchlights and tents at Little Baguio. We have visited the area often, it being the relocation site for Hospital Number 1. Walter remembered being there and seeing his first Japanese planes. Even knowing that the Japanese had just attacked Pearl Harbor, they were told not to fire until fired upon!

For the next four months Massello’s men were on the Bataan peninsula, up until the night of April 8, just before General King’s surrender of Bataan itself. Massello did his best to round up as many men as possible to return them by boat to “The Rock.” Once back on Corregidor, Massello sought permission to get Battery Way up and running, and by the time that the Japanese were hitting the beaches on the morning of May 6, the 12-inch mortar assigned to Walter was the only big gun on Corregidor that was still in action.

Thus his second May 6 bore no resemblance to the paradise of the previous year. For the first several hours Walter, under the command of Major Massello, was giving the Japanese hell, hitting at least 14 landing barges and killing hundreds of Japanese assault troops, while he and his men were under very heavy fire. Massello had already been injured, but stayed around on a stretcher despite a severe leg wound, barking out orders and urging the men on. Around dawn they were told to stop firing at the beach on Tailside, since their terrible 700-pound shells were possibly killing some of their own men. About the same time the breech refused to open, having become so hot that it had expanded inside the barrel.

In a way, Walter had it easier than most of the men on Corregidor that May 6. He was one of the “lucky ones” who could keep busy while the enemy was pounding the island at the rate of one shell every five seconds. He had no time to think about being frightened. It was the other men, the ones hunkered down in tunnels or foxholes, who had it the roughest, wondering which shell might be the one to kill them, or if, God forbid, they surrendered, what the Japanese had in store for them. Since more than one in four of these POWs would not live to return home, such fears were well-founded.

Later that May 6, Walter saw his first Japanese soldiers, so small that they reminded him of school children. But these were little men with big guns, holding his life in their hands. Walter and his fellow soldiers saw their lives transformed instantly into over three years of starvation, sickness, humiliation, beatings, torture, and slave labor. The following two May 6ths, Walter was in Cabanatuan prison camp in the Philippines. May 6, 1945, found him forced to work in coal mines in Japan. Little could he imagine that in another three months, the Enola Gay would drop the first of two atomic bombs that shortened the war and paradoxically saved millions of lives, mostly Japanese. And by the following May 6 he would be back home in Minnesota, his weight returned to normal, and by all outward appearances no worse for the experience.

So today we once again will gather at noon to remember May 6 at the World War II Memorial on Topside. I don’t expect that we will have Corregidor survivors attending today’s or future ceremonies, although if we are lucky maybe we’ll be graced with a descendant or two each year. There will be a short ceremony, with Marcia as emcee and me as a guest speaker.

Ironically, as I am writing this a small prop plane is buzzing the island, diving near us time and again. This has become a common occurrence, and to be honest it kind of sounds like a dive bomber without the bombs and machine guns. To say it is disturbing the peace would be an understatement. But it sure beats the alternative of 68 years ago.

Steve (writing) and Marcia (editing) on the Rock

P.S. Valor Tours has announced that it will be offering a “Liberation of the Philippines” tour similar to the one last October. We will again host the tour, which will include visits to Manila, Corregidor, Bataan, Subic Bay, Clark Field, Camps O’Donnell and Cabanatuan. Also included is a flight to the island of Leyte to attend the 66th anniversary ceremonies commemorating MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. One of the guests is expected to be a writer for the Washington Times, who will be researching his grandfather’s exploits, which included escaping from Cabanatuan, then being recaptured, tortured, and finally liberated from Bilibid Prison in Manila. Visit http://www.valortours.com and click on “TOUR DETAILS” for exact dates and costs.

Tears in the Light: Why Bad History Always Makes Me Cry

This newsletter is Steve’s reaction to the ongoing remembrance of the 68th anniversary of the fall of Bataan and Corregidor, his recent reading of a newspaper article and Elizabeth Norman’s “We Band of Angels,” and his subsequent viewing of the movie “So Proudly We Hail.”

Before we moved to Corregidor we lived in Lansing, Michigan for over 25 years. Michigan State University (MSU) is located right next door in the city of Ann Arbor. MSU won the national basketball championship in the mid-1980’s behind its star, Michael Jordan. Their coach was Jed Heathcote. He never won a head-to-head game against Bobby Knight at Illinois.

Some of you are probably asking, “So what?” Others of you are saying, “WHAT????” You see, the preceding paragraph is loaded with errors. Most of you failed to notice any of them. You just expected that we would never print things that weren’t true, that we’d be sure to check our facts, or that, since we claimed to have lived in Lansing, what we said could be taken as gospel. But others of you would know immediately that MSU is in East Lansing, that they won the national championship in 1979, that their star was Magic Johnson, and that Judd (not Jed) Heathcote won and lost many games against Bobby Knight, who coached at Indiana University. Some of you sports followers were probably ready to write letters saying I didn’t know what the heck I was talking about.

So I ask, why do we take our sports so seriously, yet casually tolerate blatant errors and sloppy fact-checking in historical books and movies?

The misinformation about the war here in the Philippines never ceases to amaze and dishearten me. I have commented so often about errors in the bestseller, “Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath,” that someone suggested I write a book called, “Tears in the Light: Why Bad History Always Makes Me Cry.” For example, I pointed out that the endnote on the top of page 414 in “Tears in the Darkness” which states, “…perhaps as many as 2,500 Filipinos were killed or died on the death march…” grossly understates the heavily researched and accepted range of 5-10,000, and perhaps represents an attempt to paint the Japanese in a slightly kinder light.

Unfortunately, exaggerations in the other direction are also common. For example, in an article in the Manila Bulletin earlier this month, writer Brian B. Garcia states that “54,000 reached the concentration camp,” a reasonable figure. But then he continues, “In the end, 50,000 more men lost their lives during the four-month stay at Camp O’Donnell. Only one out of thirteen made it out alive.” This is beyond unreasonable, it is preposterous. In reality, somewhat more than 2,000 Americans died during the period including the DM and their six-to-eight-week stay at Camp O’Donnell, while about 29,000 Filipinos lost their lives during the DM or during their seven (not four) months at O’Donnell. So, of the approximately 76,000 who started the DM, roughly 45,000 soldiers either escaped along the DM or left O’Donnell alive, more than 10 times the 4,000 that Garcia claims. To grossly overstate the atrocities does as much injustice to history as to understate them. Admittedly, the exact numbers will always be in dispute, but writers ought to stick to the accepted ranges rather than rewrite history. Or they had better be able to show reliable documentation before challenging or overturning 65 years of scholarship and research.

In 1999 Elizabeth Norman (who with her husband co-wrote “Tears in the Darkness” ten years later) wrote “We Band of Angels.” In it, Norman discusses the making of the movie, “So Proudly We Hail,” the aim of which, she says, “was to tell the story of the battle for the Philippines through the eyes of the nurses who served there.” It focuses on the female American nurses who served on Bataan and Corregidor. Some were evacuated by submarine in the last days before Corregidor fell, and the movie was filmed as if seen through their eyes. One evacuee, Eunice Hatchitt, was assigned as a technical consultant to the director and screen writer. Norman goes on to state that the movie was a great hit, supposedly accurate, but in fact was “storytelling.” Including stars Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, and Veronica Lake, the movie was a smashing success. Critics went wild, and audiences filled the theaters. But the nurses whom the movie portrayed, according to Norman, “were embarrassed.” You see, the movie was made and released DURING the war, when most of these nurses were still POWs in internment camps. This was serious business. After the war, many of them had a hard time forgiving Hatchitt, despite the fact, according to Norman, that she had done her best to have their story told accurately.

Made curious by this introduction to the movie, I watched “So Proudly We Hail” this week. Although I caught a few inaccuracies within the story, I’m sure that I was nowhere near as sensitive to the subject matter as were the nurses who saw the movie after the war, nor did I spot nearly the problems that they would have noticed. Ms. Norman seems to be making the point – she uses five pages for this topic alone – that the portrayal was unfair to the nurses. She essentially makes an argument for historical accuracy in movies.

Whenever I read books or see movies about Bataan and Corregidor, I am as sensitive about accuracy as the nurses who were critical of “So Proudly We Hail.” Some of you may ask, “Why do you get your shorts in a wringer about such matters?” I love, and more importantly, respect history – especially as it relates to WW II in the Philippines. Over the past several years we’ve had the privilege of meeting many survivors, including Malcolm Amos, Dick Francies, Everett Reamer, Chuck Towne, Frank Stecklein, Ray Makepeace, as well as a host of Filipinos. Ray Heimbuch, Tony Bilek, and James Baldassarre are among the thousands we’ve never met, but whose stories are each important and unique. These, like my father, are real men whose stories deserve to be accurately reported and portrayed.

Once something is published it tends to become accepted history. A prime example occurs in William Manchester’s “American Caesar.” On page 291, Manchester states, “On May 6 a terrible silence fell over Corregidor. White flags were raised from every flagstaff that was still standing, and the triumphant Japanese moved their eleven thousand captives to Bataan. The next day the prisoners began the brutal Death March – the long trek northward in which between seven thousand and ten thousand Fil-Americans died of disease, starvation, sadistic beatings, and outright execution.” Today, many books (including, most ironically, “World War II for Dummies” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World War II”) contain this “fact.” In truth, the men who were captured on Corregidor, including my father, DID NOT subsequently participate in the Death March, since it was concluded two weeks before Corregidor surrendered.

Is it wrong for me to hold the Garcias, the Normans, the Manchesters and other writers and historians to the same standard for accuracy that Ms. Norman appeals to in “We Band of Angels?”

The Capas National Shrine gets a new monument

On Monday Steve guided for a group which arrived from the province of Cavite in two small bancas. Several of the adults were supporters of a local orphanage, and three boys, orphans, were also among the group. All went well until they was ready to return to Cavite, at which point the Coast Guard informed them that the banceros were in violation of several regulations, including one bancero having arrived without his license, no life jackets on board either boat, and overloading the bancas. The one bancero claimed to have forgotten to bring his license, and both acknowledged that they should have brought the life jackets, but also asserted that in the past they have never been approached by the Coast Guard. (Due to a number of banca accidents in the Philippines in recent months, it appears that the Coast Guard is cracking down on unsafe practices, something that will ultimately save lives.)

After a lengthy discussion, the Coast Guard agreed to let both banceros return home with their boats, but were adamant that the passengers find another way back to Cavite. This meant either renting a large banca from Corregidor at considerable cost, or taking the Sun Cruises ferry to Manila and then finding their way back to the orphanage by bus. They chose the ferry, and as it turned out, we were going to Manila that afternoon so we spent the 75-minute trip visiting with some of them. So be forewarned: if you are coming to Corregidor via banca, make sure that your bancero is in Coast Guard compliance, or you could be stuck in a similar frustrating situation.

The reason that we were going to Manila was to attend the annual Bataan Death March remembrance ceremony at the Capas National Shrine in Tarlac. In the past it has been scheduled soon after the Mount Samat ceremony of April 9, thus taking place while we were still on tour with our Valor Tours group. This year it was moved to the 20th in hope of drawing a larger audience. The shrine is located at the site of Camp O’Donnell, terminus of the DM and the initial prison camp for the 50-55,000 soldiers who survived it.

After an overnight stay in our usual hostel in Malate, we were off to Makati where we joined a distinguished group for the ride to Capas. Edgar (Bubi) Krohn, whom we have featured in the past, rented a 10-passenger van for us. The group included Leslie Murray of the Filipino-American Memorial Endowment, her husband Brian, author Marie Vallejo, retired Doctor of Economics Benito Legarda, Jr., and Elsa, a website designer hard at work on the site for F.A.M.E.

We left Makati at 8:30, hoping to arrive at the shrine before the program’s scheduled start at 11:00. However, traffic was so heavy that we didn’t get out of Metro Manila until 10:00, putting us almost an hour behind the goal. Given the group in the van, it was an enjoyable and interesting ride. Bubi was directing the driver in Tagalog, and talking with Benito in Spanish. Bubi’s first language is German, since his ancestors came to the Philippines from Germany. He says that he also “gets by” in French, and we can vouch for his excellent English.

Leslie had phoned ahead, and since our group included some of the honored guests, everyone at Capas waited patiently for us. We arrived shortly after 11:30, and the ceremony got underway around noon, opening with the playing of the Australian, U.S., and Philippine National Anthems. After the invocation and several introductions, Dr. Rico Jose – a highly reputed historian and professor at the University of the Philippines – gave the keynote talk. He was dressed in period clothing which he described for us, a typical Filipino Scout’s uniform, essentially a one-piece blue denim coverall. Then Dr. Legarda announced and unveiled the new monument dedicated to the Filipino civilians of the three provinces of the DM – Bataan, Pampanga, and Tarlac – who aided the soldiers along the Death March, at risk to their own lives. Approximately eighty percent of the participants of the DM were Filipinos, and this new marker was dedicated to Filipino civilians. Therefore we found it a bit ironic and sad that most of the 100 or so in attendance were Americans and Australians, many of them members of the Angeles Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 2485. We hope that the smaller Filipino contingent was a byproduct of publicity challenges combined with the event taking place on a work-day, and not due to apathy. We were pleased that a number of our friends from the Philippine Scouts Heritage Society in attendance. They came wearing their authentic khaki uniforms, serving as an honor, lending a nice air of formaility to the event.

The two of us have prior experience with lunch at VPF Post 2485, since we always stop there during our trips with Valor Tours. Our sincere thanks go to Bubi Krohn, who treated the group to a tasty though very late lunch. Thanks also to Leslie for her invitation and encouragement to attend in spite of having just gotten back to Corregidor following our tour.

Fortunately for all of us, we seemed to encounter less traffic on our ride back to Manila. We arrived at the hostel about 7 o’clock, much more tired than you’d expect from a day mostly spent sitting. Wednesday morning we returned to Corregidor, with no major events scheduled for a while.

If you are reading this blog and would like to have it sent to your email, write us at steveandmarciaontherock@gmail.com

Valor Tours Ghost Soldiers of Bataan Tour 2010

Our nine-day, eight-night tour for Valor Tours began on the day after Easter. The flight arrived at 3:20 AM, so we decided to let Tommy from Rajah Tours, the Filipino company that handles the local logistics, meet our guests at the airport. By the time they got through customs, retrieved their baggage, and made the bus trip to the Manila Hotel, it was about 6:00. Two guests had arrived the afternoon before, so we’d spent some time with Jack and Sue on Sunday. The remaining 10 guests checked into their rooms after Steve’s brief “meet and greet.” We spent the day touring Intramuros – old Manila, literally “within the walls” – and the U.S. Embassy, visited Tesoro’s, a Filipino handicrafts store, and enjoyed dinner at a fine Spanish restaurant back inside the old city walls.

On Tuesday we took the Sun Cruises ferry to Corregidor. We did a typical day tour with Steve guiding. We visited the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor monument, which contains the name of Hortense McKay, sister of Wally and aunt of Patty. In the late afternoon we toured the original hospital, watched the sun set, and then most of the group walked through the hospital within Malinta Tunnel. Wednesday we took a two-hour banca ride around the fortified islands of Manila Bay: Carabao (Fort Frank), El Fraile (Fort Drum, the concrete battleship), Caballo (Fort Hughes), and Corregidor (Fort Mills). We were on-board El Corr(egidor) II, a 48-passenger banca, providing safe and dry travel.

Thursday morning we boarded El Corr II for the 20-minute ride to Camaya point, where Tommy met us with the big bus. We drove from Mariveles to Balanga, stopping at particular kilometer markers of the Bataan Death March. We arrived during a brief ceremony at the park at km0, the traditional start of the DM in Mariveles. Karen, the daughter of a DM survivor, spoke briefly to the assembled veterans and townspeople. Wally also made a few remarks about his sister’s experiences working with Filipino nurses. At km7, aka Little Baguio, Karen was overcome with emotions, knowing that her father, with the 228 Signal Corps, had been at that spot around the time of the surrender. (Steve’s father was at Little Baguio when war began four months prior.) After visiting the site of General King’s surrender of Bataan at Balanga Elementary School, and then lunch, we proceeded to Montemar Beach Resort along the secondary route of the DM, which ran from Bagac on the west coast to Pilar on the east, where the two routes merged. We stopped at three markers, those dedicated to Wally’s sister and the commander and men of the 194th Tank Battalion, Company A, from the Brainerd, Minnesota, area.

Friday we attended the Araw ng Kagitingan, or Day of Valor, at Mount Samat National Shrine. Our group was warmly greeted by members of the Philippine Scouts Heritage Society, dressed in period uniforms, who set up chairs for us near the stage. President Arroyo was out of the country, so the Philippine Vice President was the featured speaker. Also speaking were the Japanese Ambassador and the U.S. Charge d’Affairs Leslie Bassett, who was standing in for Kristie Kenney’s successor, the newly confirmed Ambassador Thomas. We then drove to Subic Bay, visiting the Hellships memorial. Sue, whose father died on the Brazil Maru two days before reaching Japan, having survived the sinkings of the Oryoku and Enoura Marus, presented a wreath in honor of her father and all who perished. We later attended a demonstration at the Jungle Environmental Survival Training (JEST) center.

On Saturday we drove to Angeles City, the home of Clark Field. On the way we stopped at the San Fernando train station where many of the DM men were put into rail cars for the torturous four-hour trip to Capas, and San Guillermo Church, which was inundated by lahar flows after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption of 1991. Lunch was the traditional filet mignon at the Angeles VFW. In the afternoon we visited the Clark Museum at Fort Stotsenberg. The buffet dinner at the Holiday Inn was spectacular, with standing rib roast, roast pork with a cherry sauce, a hundred other selections, and deserts galore. It was very hard not to stuff ourselves. Okay, we actually did stuff ourselves, but we all know that calories don’t count on tour.

Sunday we repeated the buffet experience, this time for breakfast. We added a new stop: the Bamban Museum. It is very simple, consisting mostly of photographs of local war history, most notably the American retaking of the area from the Japanese in 1945. We stopped at the Philippine Bataan Death March memorial, then the Capas train station where the surviving POWs resumed walking to Camp O’Donnell. We stopped at the markers for Malcolm Amos (km 110) and Dick Francies (km 112) and many of us walked the final kilometer to Camp O’Donnell, where Karen’s father was interned for about six weeks. After a flat tire change, thanks to momentous effort by driver Emil and photographer OG, on we went to our hotel in Cabanatuan City.

Monday morning we visited the memorial at the site of Cabanatuan POW Camp, where the fathers of Sue, Karen, and Steve spent time during the war. We then drove to Manila where we visited the University of Santo Tomas, location of a civilian internment camp. Jean, one of our guests and the oldest at 88, was an army nurse who was here at the end of the war. She couldn’t recognize the city area around Santo Tomas, which had been basically leveled during the liberation of Manila. Now it is one building after the other, the exception being the grassy plaza on the UST campus and the main building, which Jean could clearly remember. Maita of the museum staff gave us a half-hour talk about the internment camp. Next, we walked down an alley to see the entrance to the Manila City Jail, another POW camp known as Bilibid.

Tuesday, our final day together, we visited the American Cemetery in Manila. Since Sue’s father was lost at sea, his name is on the Wall of the Missing. It is the largest American cemetery outside of the United States. Until our aging veterans began dying in large numbers, there were more WW II vets buried here than anywhere else in the world. The tour ended at noon, with Sue and her husband going back to Hawaii. Jean and her friend Darlene went on to Thailand, while the others left together early in the evening to fly back to San Francisco.

This is our fifth tour to host in four years for Valor Tours, and once again we really enjoyed it. Every indication from our guests was that they thoroughly enjoyed themselves as well. Many questions were answered for the POWs’ descendants in the group, and all appreciated the opportunity to be in the places where the veterans had been. We invite you to consider joining us – if not next year, begin thinking about 2012, when we will be hosting the 70th Anniversary tour commemorating the Fall of Bataan and Corregidor.

Readers tell us what to do with a toilet seat

We are currently hosting 12 Americans for Valor Tours and are visiting World War II sites. We plan to give a tour summary next week. So here are some suggestions for using toilet seats.

From Danny R:
There were no toilet seats in many places in the Middle East, like the Dubai Airport.

(We did not mean to imply that the Philippines is the only place this occurs, just that it is rarely if ever observed in the U.S. However, after our friends in the U.S. read the following comments about all of the cool uses there are for used toilet seats, we hope we aren’t responsible for a run on them there as well. Read on!)
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From Jeff L:
1. Picture frame (especially as a joke)
2. Target for bean bag or ball toss
3. International symbol on a sign indicating where restrooms are located
4. Necklace worn as part of a costume
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From Linda L:
Decorate the seat by gluing beads, shells, what have you and put a picture in the middle. Hang it on the wall. :)
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From Boyet V:
How about using it as a picture frame?
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From Peter P:
1. For the aged and therefore incontinent, it is more comfortable than a mere hole cut in a seat to cut the hole and place a toilet seat over it. These folks have to spend a lot of time thus seated.
2. The more colorful seats can be used to fabricate shade hats. Amazing what a few feathers and flowers can do for a toilet seat. Excellent for use at weddings and funerals.
3. I hear that rednecks often use these as Frisbees and actually have toilet seat-throwing competitions.
4. These can also be used on bancas if mounted securely, enabling you to take care of your personal needs without risk of falling into the sea.
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From Bill S:
Life preservers on a banca! Hang them along the outside :-)
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From Jerry L:
As for those toilet seats...how about using them as the yoke portion of a harness for goats to haul small carts?
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From Virginia R:
You can use it as frame for an oval mirror, or frame for a painting. You can repaint it and make it look like gilded gold or silver.

Re the twin bananas, yes, we have them all the time. Folks used to say that if you are pregnant, and you eat twin bananas, you are bound to have twin babies. LOL. Btw, I think we have about 200 varieties of bananas. And you may even get to see twin avocados later. (Several of our readers mentioned the folklore of bearing twins if you eat twin bananas.)
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From Tess T:
I couldn't think of any other use for a toilet seat but as a toilet seat. It's quite ridiculous to use it for something else. Bwa ha ha ha.
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Twin bananas are not unusual in the Philippines. In the US, the bananas that are imported go through rigid quality control so the "unusuals" do not make it to shore. There is even a variety of banana that is so full of seeds, we used to have seed spitting contests because there were so much seeds in a banana.
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From Aida R:
Regarding your toilet seat project?? Maybe you could make a good old bench using the toilet seat to comfortably fit the butt or to rest your tired neck, and use it on top of the sink to wash Steve’s dusty hair.
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From Tomas A:
Last week we had to replace a whole unit of a toilet. Although the flushing mechanism was flawless, there was something in the design which we did not like. We did not want to just throw away a toilet in good working condition, so we asked friends and relatives if they could use such a toilet. There was one taker. She said that she would take out the toilet seat cover and the toilet seat, making the toilet sans toilet seat and cover. I was taken aback and asked why she would do that. Her answer was that the toilet seat was in the way-can you believe that? I was speechless. So then I told her to do whatever suits her.
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From Penny J:
Here is my "crazy" suggestion for the toilet seats---use them as picture frames. (Believe it or not I used one as a picture frame once, of course for a joke.)
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From John C:
I only use for old toilet seats I can think of is for colonial stocks. They could be decorative as well!
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From Eli S:
On toilet seats, how about making it as a substitute for basketball rings? In the provinces where basketball courts are sometimes located far from their backyards, teenagers usually make do with anything that they could shoot the ball into like round-bottomless tin cans nailed in tree branches (that's how desperate they are sometimes). Another possibility is by tying a piece of rope at opposite ends of the seat and tying the other ends of the rope around a tree branch and presto, the kids will have a unique kind of a swing. Also, if say one hundred seats are tied together (five by twenty seats) and laid flat on the ground or hanged against a triangular structure, the kids will have some interesting segments of an obstacle course.

From Wes S:
You can use the toilet seats for “hillbilly horseshoes”!
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And last, a couple of our own ideas:

1. As a variation of the horseshoes suggestion using the open-ended type of seat, the closed type would work for ring-toss games.
2. A mirror frame as a joke-gift for someone with a very good sense of humor, of course.

We invite you to walk the Death March route

The question is, would you be interested in walking the complete route of the Bataan Death March with us some day?

In early March we walked from Mariveles to Cabcaben, the first 15 kilometers of the primary Bataan Death March route. Last Friday we walked the next 25 km, from Cabcaben to Pilar. The DM route is sometimes along the National Highway, but the old road often passed further to the east, so to follow the actual route we had to stay on the parts that were labeled as the Old National Road. This takes you through Cabcaben, Limay, Orion, and Pilar, towns you would otherwise bypass nowadays.

Going between Corregidor and Bataan meant once again taking banca rides. There was a little more excitement than usual. First, the winds were stronger than typical, causing higher than usual waves. Second, we passed very near ocean freighters in both directions. These ships create two very high parallel wake waves from each side of the bow, probably at least six feet high, having a single trough maybe 10 feet deep between them. Going toward Cabcaben meant heading into the winds and waves, so the first large pair of waves hit us rather hard, and we passed through them very quickly. The second pair of waves was heading in the other direction, and once we caught up to them it took a while to climb the first one, and then slide down it. Once we were in the deep trough, we had to reach just the right speed to climb the second crest, then speed up to outrun it. We were grateful for Mang Emilio, whom we have mentioned before, who speaks very little English and is mostly deaf, but is very experienced in crossing Manila Bay in his small double-outrigger. On the return trip, it at first appeared that we would cross in front of a freighter. Then it became apparent that we were heading for a direct collision and the ship warned us twice with its fog horn to back off, which Mang Emilio decided to do, literally at the last minute.

Getting back to the Death March, walking 25 km in one day in late March in the Philippines is not an easy task. Again, we want to emphasize that there is no comparison between us –well fed, well watered, fit and healthy – and what the Japanese put the sick and starving Filipinos and Americans through 68 years ago. Nonetheless you can only get somewhat of an appreciation by actually doing it. The heat, the humidity, the hills, the stagnant creeks and rice paddy channels, the surroundings, these are things that in combination can only be experienced in this one place on earth. Our goal is to eventually walk the entire distance to Capas National Shrine, formerly Camp O’Donnell. We also want to include the secondary route, which goes from Bagac in the west to Pilar in the east of Bataan.

Our goals are twofold. First, we just want to do it. Second, we want to scout the route to look for such things as water stops, restroom availability, restaurants, and sleeping accommodations should the need or desire arise to accomplish the entire DM in one continuous trek.

We would like to find out if there is any interest in an actual Death March hiking tour. The goal would be to hike from Mariveles to Camp O’Donnell on the same roads as the DM took place. We know that a few of our readers are DM survivors, and at their ages there is no way they will ever repeat their feat in this lifetime. But a great many more of our readers are descendants or acquaintances who might have thought of what it must have been like, and maybe even thought about giving it a try. There are many considerations, including whether you are in good enough shape to walk 70 miles in five or so days in tropical conditions. There may be some who would like to walk as much as possible, but might need occasional rides. A “sag wagon” would cover this need, as well as first aid provisions and water supply.

In any case, before we spend a lot of time and energy planning for something that may never happen, we need to know if there is an interest. If so, are you interested in just walking the DM? If you have never been to the Philippines, you probably would want to spend a couple of days in Manila and on Corregidor, so let us know that as well.

For the fourth year in a row, we will be escorting Valor Tours’ Ghost Soldiers of Bataan & Hellships Memorial Tour, which begins next Monday and lasts nine days. We have 13 guests, including two WW II vets and two whose fathers were POWs here. It is too late to sign up for this year’s tour, but we highly recommend that you consider it in the future. The year 2012 will be the 70th Anniversary of the Fall of Bataan and Corregidor, and if we have enough interest, who knows, there could be two tours, one in April for Bataan and another in May for Corregidor.

We are disappointed that this year’s tour will not include Harold “Malcolm” Amos, who has been with us the last four years, and whom Steve first met in 2002. Malcolm, who was rescued in the “Great Raid” at Cabanatuan, had to choose between the tour and the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Convention. This year’s convention is being held at the same time as our tour, which is always scheduled to include the actual anniversary dates of the beginning of the Death March. We can’t blame Malcolm for wanting to spend time with his remaining few survivor friends, and hope that maybe we can see him again next year. We are including a picture of Malcolm from last year, taken at his Death March marker, which is located only two kilometers from the entrance to the infamous Camp O’Donnell.

P.S. Today, April 1, is Marcia’s birthday (no fooling). To see the tribute to my wife of 37 years that I wrote last April, see http://steveandmarciaontherock.blogspot.com/2009/04/steves-tribute-to-marcia-on-her.html Marcia’s email is marciaontherock@gmail.com.

Steve