Seventy-four years to the day the defenders of the Bataan peninsula were forced to surrender during World War II, Brainerd community members gathered Saturday honor the memory of Bataan Death March participants.
The event was held outside the Minnesota National Guard's Training & Community Center, or Armory. Walt Straka, the last surviving member of Brainerd's A Company, 194th Tank Battalion, flew up from his winter home in Texas for the ceremony.
National Guard soldiers read the names of each of the Brainerd men who had died in combat or in captivity. For each name, they hung the soldier's dog tags on the gun barrel of an M3 Stuart tank outside the armory, the same kind of tank the 194th used at Bataan.
A bitterly cold wind made the flags flutter and snap, and the dog tags jingled together eerily.
The last name read was that of Julius Knudsen, a Brainerd native who disappeared during the march and is still listed as missing in action. Initially, lists of Bataan prisoners from Brainerd didn't include Knudsen, since he had transferred into the 194th from a different unit.
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Knudsen's nephew Jim has tried to investigate and find out more about what happened to his uncle, having taken over the search from his father after he passed away.
"My dad would have been proud of it," he said of Saturday's ceremony.
Straka was on the march with Knudsen, but the chaos meant he was unsure of Knudsen's fate. Straka thinks Knudsen was shot while attempting to escape.
"I think he tried to get away, I think that's what happened to him," he said. "Somebody said he took off. That's the last we heard of him."
Lt. Col. Joshua Simer, present-day commander of 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 194th Armor Regiment, spoke on behalf of the battalion. He asked rhetorically why those assembled needed to gather in the cold, when there were historical accounts of the Death March.
"It's to make history something that's living," he answered. "History needs to be more than just something that is inflicted upon us by a teacher at school. History is who we are."
The anniversary of the surrender brings up bad memories for Straka, and he recalls being "numb" after the news came down in 1942. On the way to the Philippines, Straka and his comrades had been shown films depicting Japanese atrocities, he remembered. After the surrender, they didn't know if they would be next.
Straka's experience was so horrible that more than seven decades later, he still can't believe he actually made it.
"I wake up in the morning and go, 'Why in the hell am I still here?'" he said.
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Despite those bitter memories resurfacing, though, Straka needed to come to Saturday's ceremony.
"I wouldn't have missed it for anything," he said.
ZACH KAYSER may be reached at 218-855-5860 or Zach.Kayser@brainerddispatch.com . Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ZWKayser .
