Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Men who refused to quit

Friday, April 26, 2002 | 9:57 a.m.

WHERE WERE YOU 60 YEARS AGO this month? There's a better than even chance you weren't born. Then again, maybe you are one of the old-timers who read this column and can recall April 1942. I was still a farm boy thinking about joining the horse cavalry and later coming home to help my parents work in the fields. By the time I eventually made it into military service the horses were gone and so was our farm. The local army facility, Camp McCoy, swallowed it up for training purposes.

Today it may make little difference where we were 60 years ago, but there was one group of Americans at the time who were going through hell after being captured by the Japanese in the Philippines. Henderson's Gerard Gauthier is one of the Nevadans who survived the brutal Bataan Death March in early 1942. Later he was taken to Japan to work as a slave laborer in a steel mill. Like the other POW slaves who worked for Japanese private industry, he has yet to be compensated. His own country continues to keep these brave survivors from receiving more than $1 a day for their 12 and 14 hour work days with little food. Gauthier's life could have ended the last month of World War II. The steel mill in which he worked was in the city designated as the target for the second atomic bomb. Because of a heavy cloud cover an alternate city received the blow.

I'm amazed that there are still more than 5,000 POWs, once held by Japan, who are living today. Just six years ago more than 50 lived here in Nevada. Year after year their numbers continue to lessen.

In 1996 Henderson's Harvey Earl Hunter told Sun reporter Ed Koch, "The Japanese allowed us to take one canteen full of water with us for the march. Some of the men drank theirs too quick. When they ran out, they attempted to refill them from artesian wells. Every man I saw who tried that was shot or bayoneted to death."

Reno's Ralph Levenberg, in a UNR oral history collection, recalled. "As a Boy Scout, I had learned to put a clean little pebble under my tongue to ward off thirst, and that really worked. With a full canteen of water ... when you don't know when you will get more, you sip and you preserve everything you can ..." When released at the end of the war he weighed 72 pounds.

A story about Mario "Motts" Tonelli ran in a February issue of the Sunday Sun-Times in Chicago. He was a football great at Notre Dame and in the pros before he joined the Army. His story of horror on the death march and eventual return home weighing 100 pounds is written by Bryan Smith. He made it back for enough action on the football field to earn his NFL pension.

Tonelli's pride in his Notre Dame ring was severely tested when a Japanese guard demanded it. Smith goes on to write, "Motts watched as the man walked away, turning it and grinning. A few moments later, he saw an officer grab the soldier and ask him something.

"Then, the officer walked up to Motts and asked, in perfect English, 'Did one of my soldiers take something from you?'

'Yes,' Motts said. 'My graduation ring from Notre Dame.'

'The officer reached in his pocket and produced the ring.

'Is this it?' 'Yes, that's my ring.'

'You know,' the officer began, 'I went to the University of Southern California. I graduated the same year you did.' Motts looked back at the man, astonished.

'In fact, I saw that game where you ran 70 yards in the national championship. You beat us.'

"Great, Motts thought. I have to find the one officer who knows I beat his team.

"The officer reached in his pocket and pulled out the ring. He turned it over for a moment, and then handed it to Motts.

'You were a hell of a player,' he said, walking away.

"Before he left, he turned back to Motts. 'I'd advise you to put that away,' he said, 'someone is going to take it from you.' "

The next time you reflect on the history of our country, take time to think about these special men who survived the Bataan Death March. They are a special breed of men who 60 years ago showed the world just how tough Americans can be.