New Mexico cities honor veterans of Bataan Death March

ALBQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Survivors of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines and their descendants are gathering across New Mexico to mark the 75th anniversary of the infamous event. Events commemorating the march were scheduled Sunday in Santa Fe and Las Cruces, while Albuquerque held an event at Bataan Memorial Park on Saturday. In 1942, Japanese soldiers forced tens of thousands of U.S. and Filipino soldiers on a 65-mile trudge through hot jungle to a prison camp. Hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Filipinos died along the way. Of the 1,800 soldiers from New Mexico, only about 1,000 survived the march. The Albuquerque Journal reports only a dozen of the New Mexico soldiers are still alive today. Most of them attended Saturday's event in Albuquerque.