A student hands a pinwheel honoring a Bataan Death March hero to Bataan Intermediate School Principal Morgan Siefke. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

BY SHERI TRUSTY

PORT CLINTON – All across America, children enter schools named after long-forgotten men and women. The students don’t know who those people are or why their school was chosen to bear their name. They are names with no substance because their impact has been lost to time. But that’s not true at Bataan Memorial Elementary School.

Bataan remembers.

On Nov. 7, the school hosted the annual Bataan Day. The event is organized each year to remember and honor the men from Port Clinton who were forced to endure the Bataan Death March – one of the horrors of World War II. Bataan Day helps keep their memory alive and it teaches each generation of schoolchildren that their school was named after the Men of the March.

Bataan 5th graders tell the story of the Bataan Death March. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

Bataan Intermediate School Principal Morgan Siefke said the school hosts Bataan Day “not just to observe” the heroes’ sacrifice and service, “but to actively honor” them.

“We believe it is our duty to keep their memory alive,” Siefke said.

Port Clinton resident Virginia Carr is grateful that Bataan remembers. Her father, Virgil C. Janes, was one of the men who survived the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, which began on April 10, 1942. An estimated 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino POWs were forced by the Japanese to march about 65 miles in grueling, and often deadly, conditions. Thirty-two Port Clinton men from Tank Company C fought in the Battle of Bataan.

Former Bataan Memorial Elementary teacher, Jane Taylor, reads the story of the Bataan Death March to the large crowd that gathered for Bataan Day on Nov. 7. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

Carr said her father didn’t talk much about the Bataan Death March, but she remembers one story he shared. During the march, her father tried to obtain an aspirin for a friend and was caught by the Japanese.

“He had to kneel bare-kneed on stone for hours,” Carr said.

Carr attended Bataan Memorial Elementary when she was a child, and one day as her family stood in the school, her father talked about his gratitude that the city remembered the Men of the March and named the school in their honor.

Virginia Carr, right, and her cousin, Linda Sutherland, attended Bataan Day in honor of Carr’s father, Virgil C. Janes, who survived the Bataan Death March. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

“I can still see us standing in here,” Carr said. “He explained how the school was built to honor them.”

On Nov. 7, Carr stood in the same school and felt grateful that the school still remembers.

“This is so good,” she said of Bataan Day. “This is an emotional time for me.”

About 400 staff, students and community members attended the event, where former teacher Jane Taylor served as the keynote speaker. She sat in a rocking chair and read the story, “What’s in a Name?” which explained how the school got its name in 1957. She said the school chose Bataan to symbolize the ideals of peace, justice, freedom, sacrifice and equality.

Members of Port Clinton American Legion Post #113 posted the colors at Bataan Day. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

To ensure that the Men of the March are remembered, each name was called out as a student carried a pinwheel to the front of the room. What’s in a name? The names of the Men of the March epitomize a legacy of courage and sacrifice.

As they actively honored the Men of the March, the students likely didn’t realize that they live out that legacy every day. As they walk the halls of Bataan each school day, they enjoy rich freedoms that were purchased by the sacrifices of some of Port Clinton’s greatest men. They are the heroes that the school refuses to forget.

Because Bataan remembers.