Philippine officials and executives involved in caring for the country's war veterans have urged younger generations of Filipinos to carry forward the memory of the 1942 Death March, and those in Japan to learn about it.
"We commemorate the Bataan Death March every year so that we will not forget, and so that the following generations — who may be in danger of forgetting the Bataan Death March and who may think that war is (just) a video game — will remember that this is not a video game," said Roberto de Ocampo, chairman of the Philippine Veterans Bank, on Thursday at the launch of this year's activities to commemorate what is considered to have been a war crime by Japan 76 years ago.
Speaking at the same event, Ernesto Carolina, administrator of the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office, spoke in particular to the "millennials" or "the young people" of Japan, whom, he suspects, "do not know what happened" in the Philippines during the 1941-1945 Japanese occupation. "I think it is important that the young children of Japan will continue to know what happened — not for them to condemn, but so that it will never happen again," Carolina said.