200th and 515th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)

Heroes of Luzon, Bataan and Corregidor

Only 988 of the 1,816 men of the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery regiments sent to the Philippines in the fall
of 1941 would survive 3-1/2 years as prisoners of the Japanese. Today, only 12 of these men are still living.

Julio T. Barela
A Battery 200th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)
Julio Barela was raised in San Ysidro, a small community north of Las Cruces. He left home at
16 to join the Navy because he wanted to see the world. His mother found out and followed him
to California where she told officials her son was under age, and brought him home. The Army
drafted Barela on May 14, 1941 and he would be assigned to the 200th Coast Artillery's A
Battery. On the Bataan Death March, Barela thought about his mother and how she would suffer
if he died. He almost fell several times from exhaustion and pain caused by his bleeding
feet. Then I would remember her and the prayers she would say for me, and this gave me the
courage to continue on. Shipped north to Japan, Barela was interned at the prisoner of war camp
in Niigata. When liberated, he weighed only 80 pounds. He now lives in Las Cruces, New
Mexico.

Richard J. Daly
C Battery 515th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)
Richard Daly was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After graduating high school, he lied about his
age to join the National Guard at age 16 (Troop B 111th Cavalry.) He attended the Height Finder
School at Fort Monroe, Virginia with Bill Overmier in August 1940. When Bataan was
surrendered, Daly did not make the March of Death. Instead, he was loaded onto a truck to San
Fernando where he and other prisoners were put onto rail cars to Capas and then marched to
Camp O'Donnell. At Cabanatuan, he worked in the kitchen and volunteered for firewood
details. He also went out on burial details. He watched his dear friend Charles Sims of Roswell
succumb to hepatitis there. Daly was sent to the Hitachi prisoner of war camp in Japan. He was
too tall to work down in the mine, so was put to work milling the ore. In August 1944, he was
sent to Mitsushima. When the war ended, aid did not appear to be coming. A couple of men took
a train to Yokohama to let the Navy know where their camp was located in order for planes to begin food drops. Post-war,
he married and went to work for Monsanto in St. Louis as he and his wife Barbara began what was to be a large family. In
1956, he returned to New Mexico to take a job at Los Alamos. Barbara passed away in 1980. Today, Richard Daly lives in
Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Valdemar A. DeHerrera
A Battery 515th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)
Valdemar DeHerrera was born in Costilla, New Mexico to Lupe and Meliton DeHerrera. He was
working at a sheep camp in Wyoming when word of the draft reached him. He returned to New
Mexico to register and on March 21, 1941, entered service in the US Army. He joined the
Regiment at Fort Bliss. When the Regiment was split the night of December 8, 1941, DeHerrera
would be assigned to the new 515th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft), the 200ths child
unit. When Bataan was surrendered, DeHerrera escaped to Fort Drum (El Fraile Island.) In
2008 he recalled to a reporter that on seeing the white flag flying above Fort Drum, he told his
companions, Eat, drink and get ready to die. When Corregidor and the fortified islands were
surrendered on May 6, 1942, troops at Fort Drum were consolidated at Wawa, Nasugbu, Batangas
by the Japanese. They were removed to Manila on May 24, 1942 along with the captured troops
from Corregidor and Fort Frank, the men on Fort Hughes having been removed to Corregidor on May 8, 1942. On
November 11, 1942, DeHerrera and just over 1,200 fellow prisoners of war arrived at the prisoner of war camp at Mukden,
Manchuria. The camp would eventually find almost 2,000 prisoners of war from the US, the UK, the Netherlands,
Australia and New Zealand. DeHerrera was put to work in the textile mill as POW #803. Upon his return to the United
States he was a patient at Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. He and other former prisoners of war would escape into
town in their pajamas because thats all we had. In 1949, he married his wife Connie and they had six children.

Eddie Graham
D Battery 515th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)
I always had faith I was coming back. It was prayer that helped Graham survive during those
dark days as a prisoner of war. Japanese soldiers stripped him of all dignity and possessions he
doesnt know why but they left his rosary beads. A group of about 15 Catholic soldiers prayed
the rosary with him every night. Even with the rosaries, Graham wonders how he survived on the
meager rations of half a cup of rice and water three times a day for almost four years. A survivor
of the Bataan Death March, Graham was shipped north to Japan to slave labor at the Seitetsu Steel
Mill at Hirohata (Osaka), prisoner #1301, until the camp was rescued September 4, 1945. While
most of the guards disappeared, one stayed. He was known for treating his prisoners well, so after
the war the ex-POWs worked to see he was taken care of. We took care of him because he was
good to us. Graham was a slight man before the war, weighing only 135 pounds. He came home
weighing only 90 pounds. He spent 15 months in hospital before moving to Hutchinson, Kansas to attend the Salt City
Business College. He married and had one son. His wife Dorothy passed away in 1998. December 28, 2012 was
proclaimed Eddie Graham Day by the Sedgwick County Commission (Kansas). The next year, he made a Kansas Honor
Flight to Washington, DC in May 2013. God kept me here this long. What I went through there, I can hardly believe I am
still alive. (Condensed from the writings of Kathy Hanks, The Hutchinson News with Hirohata information added.)

Rosenaldo Ross Lovato

A Battery 200th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)
Originally from Las Tablas, New Mexico, Ross Lovato was a Searchlight Operator with the 200th
Coast Artillerys A Battery. After surviving the Bataan Death March, Lovato was sent to the
Pasay POW Camp, where he labored on the notoriously brutal detail at Nichols Field where
prisoners hand dug through a hill known as The Cut in order to build a runway for the
Japanese while being deliberately starved. Guards were so sadistic, some had to be relieved as not
to impede the building of the airstrip by disabling prisoners of war. On July 17, 1944 he was
loaded onto the Nissyo Maru with 1,600 prisoners of war, and sent north to Japan. After an attack
on the convoy by American submarines, the Nissyo Maru made port in Moji, Japan on August 3,
1944 where the men scrambled for a pair of shoes from a pile of used shoes on the dock. Lovato
was then sent on to Osaka #3B at Oeyama where the men labored in the nickel mine and smelting
plant or at the nickel refinery. He was liberated on September 2, 1945, and finally returned home to the United States on
the USS Storm King on October 18, 1945. Today, he lives in Gallup, New Mexico.
Don Nano Lucero
B Battery 200th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)
Don Lucero escaped the surrender of Bataan with the 200ths Doyle Decker and Clinton Wolfe.
Together for many weeks, the men went their separate ways, and Nano remained a fugitive for the
next 3 years. A Filipina, Ramona Rivera, found Lucero stricken with malaria and nursed him
back to health. The two married and had a child and Ramona accompanied him back to New
Mexico in June 1945, however, she and their son returned to the Philippines in January 1946. In
2001, Doyle Deckers son found Nano Luceros name on the BCMFofNMs web site while doing
research for his book, On a Mountainside. With the help of Rick Padilla at the Bataan
Memorial Military Museum, he was able to connect with Nano Lucero in Maine. A year later, a
woman, also visiting the BCMFofNMs web site, saw a posting by Doyle Decker. She contacted
him, and wondered if Nano Lucero could be her grandfather. With Decker acting as a go-
between, it was determined that Lucero was indeed her grandfather; by a daughter he never knew he had. On Valentines
Day, 2012, Don Lucero married his partner of 32 years. She, Evelyn Lucero passed away in March 2016. Today, Don
Lucero lives in Augusta, Maine.

Santiago G. Lucero
G Battery 515th Coast Artillery

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Santiago Lucero was inducted into service on May 24, 1941
at Fort Bliss, Texas. His official job was that of telephone operator with the 200th Coast Artillery.
When the Regiment was split, the provisional coast artillery men drew from equipment still at
the docks, and spent the night unpacking, cleaning equipment still packed in Cosmoline, filling
gas tanks G Battery was charged with covering the oil tanks east of Manila. All of the (to later
be named) 515th Coast Artillery batteries were set up and ready to fire at 4pm on December 9th.
The 200th earning the moniker the day before, the new G Battery would be, First to Fire. At
home, families sat by their radios and prayed for their boys. On New Years Day 1942, the
Albuquerque Journal reported, Santiago Lucero wired his mother, Mrs. Virginia Lucero, 1013
West Pacific, Christmas greetings from Manila. Captured on Bataan, in October 1942, Lucero
arrived at Kobe POW Camp #2 (aka Kobe House) where prisoners labored as stevedores for Nippon Express Company.
On June 5, 1945, 473 B-29 Superfortresses firebombed Kobe. The camp destroyed, the prisoners were relocated north out
of the city, and then back to Kobe. Lucero would be rescued from the prisoner of war camp at Wakihamacho in September
1945. On June 12, 1946, he was released from US Army service at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Today, Mr. Lucero lives in
Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Trinidad G. Martinez
A Battery 200th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)
A native of Mercedes, Texas, Trinidad Martinez, worked on his familys ranch until he was
inducted into the US Army in April 1941. He took his Basic Training at Galveston, Texas before
being sent to Fort Bliss where he was attached to the 200th Coast Artillerys A Battery. Of the
April 9, 1942 surrender of Bataan he said, We used all that we had. There was nothing left. He
attributes his survival of the Bataan Death March to his basic training days. In November 1942,
he was put on the Hell Ship Nagato Maru with some 1,500 prisoners of war. Seven men died on
the voyage to Japan, and upon arrival, another 150 were lined up on the dock and never seen
again. In Japan, Martinez slave labored at shoveling coal. Returning to the United States, he
used the GI Bill to study to become a mechanic. Mr. Martinez lives in San Antonio, Texas.
William C. Bill Overmier
B Battery 200th Coast Artillery
Because his mother was suffering from tuberculosis, Bill Overmiers family moved to New
Mexico in the 1920s. He joined the National Guard to earn extra money to pay for his degree at
the University of New Mexico. In late summer of 1940, he drove across country to attend the
Stereoscopic Height Finder School at Fort Monroe, Virginia. A Range Section Operator on a
Stereoscopic Height Finder with an M4 Director and 3-inch guns, by mid-November 1941,
Overmier and the rest of the Regiment were on alert and set up around Clark Air Field on Luzon.
When Bataan was surrendered, Overmier made his way to Fort Hughes. When Corregidor was
surrendered on May 6, 1942, the prisoners were removed to Old Bilibid Prison in Manila for
several days, and then marched to the train station and packed into cattle cars to Cabanatuan City.
From there, they were marched to Cabanatuan Camp #3. On the march, he saw a respected
officer of the 200th whose name he cannot remember and three other men standing in front of a pit. A Japanese officer
gave no verbal order, but raised his sword. When he lowered the sword, the firing squad shot the men and they fell into the
pit. On September 21, 1942, Overmier was among 300 prisoners of war loaded onto the Hell Ship Lima Maru that made
port in Takao, Formosa where he remained until mid-November 1942 when he was transported to Japan to slave labor in
the shipyards of Yokohama working sun-up to sun-down as a ship fitter. He held onto a pair of coveralls and a Marine
issued wool blanket throughout his prisoner of war days that would provide some protection against the cold Japanese
winters. In May 1945, American bombers destroyed the Yokohama camp. Overmier was then sent to Sendai Camp #2 at
Yoshima until liberation. Arriving in San Francisco, Overmier was greeted by his parents. He returned to UNM and
received his degree in engineering. Of the Bataan Memorial he once said, At least members of our family can visit the
park in later years and read a little bit about the history of what happened and some of the names of the men who were lost.
It means everything. Today, Mr. Overmier and his wife Ann live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Ralph Rodriguez Jr.

515th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft) Medical Detachment
When Clark Field was attacked on December 8, 1942, an anti-aircraft gunner spotted Rodriguez
and called for help. Although a Medic, Rodriguez fed belt after belt of ammunition into the .50-
caliber machine gun during that first raid. Four months later he was one of the thousands
enduring Bataan Death March. After Camp ODonnell, he was transferred to Cabanatuan where
he spent the remainder of the war. On January 30, 1945, Rodriguez had just finished making an
entry in his secret journal when Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts and Philippine Guerrillas began
their daring rescue to liberate 500 prisoners of war at Cabanatuan. The Rangers came in and
started shooting All Hell broke loose Within fifteen or twenty minutes, it was all over.
Frightened by the first American he saw, he recalled, This guy looked like a giant He had guns
everywhere. Big hands. He could have been a man from Mars. He yelled out, Any more
Americans? I was trembling when I raised my hand, Here! On returning to New Mexico, Rodriguez earned a business
administration degree and followed his father into the timber industry. He spent much of his time assisting and advocating
for former POWs and served as an officer in prisoner of war chapters from the local to the national level, including terms as
Commander of the Bataan Veterans Organization and as National Commander of the American Ex-Prisoners of War
organization. In 1968, he and fellow POWs sent a Resolution to Congress urging that body to speed its efforts to free the
82-man crew of the USS Pueblo. In 1967, he was appointed former Governor David Cargos personal ambassador to the
Philippines to coincide with a pilgrimage to the Philippines marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of Bataan. Today, Mr.
Rodriguez lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Joe S. Romero
A Battery 200th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)
At 19, Joe Romero joined the National Guard with his brother Frank. Surviving the Bataan Death
March, after prisoners were removed from Camp ODonnell to Cabanatuan, Romero was selected
for the infamous Las Pinas Detail (Nichols Field), on which, prisoners were literally worked to
death removing a hill for a runway with picks and shovels, dumping the rubble into rice paddies
for landfill. After American planes bombed the airfield, he and over 1,000 prisoners were
crammed into the holds of the Hokusen Maru in October 1944. Arriving in Formosa via Hong
Kong in November, the men were off-loaded and would remain on Formosa until January 1945,
when they were transported to Japan. From Moji, the prisoners traveled to the northern region of
Honshu Island and then were transported to their camp via a narrow gauge railroad and a long
hike in freezing temperatures. There, Romero would slave in the Hosokura lead-and-zinc mine.
When finally rescued in September 1945, Mr. Romero weighed only 110 lbs. It took 8 years to recover his health. On
Japans surrender he said, I started crying. I just broke down and started crying. Frank Romero had been taken to
Mukden POW Camp in Manchuria in October 1942. He passed away in 2003. In August 1943, the JC Penney Store in Las
Cruces, New Mexico, the brothers hometown, featured a window display honoring their men and women in service. Joe
and Franks pictures were among the photographs displayed. The Hosokura mine, which closed in 1987, is now an
amusement park. Today, Joe Romero lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Richard A. Trask
B Battery 515th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)
Richard Trask, originally from Albuquerque, joined the National Guard in 1939 or 1940. He was
a Company Clerk with the 515th Coast Artillerys B Battery. After surviving the Death March, he
did not see any New Mexicans after that, except two he didnt know, one from Lovington and one
who might have been from Belen. He was sent to Omori POW camp where the prisoners labored
as stevedores mules loading and unloading box cars at railroad sidings rice, barley, soybeans,
tobacco leaves, sugar, cement, pig iron, roofing tile I think all the freight for the whole damn
country came through Tokyo. And all of it in straw sacks, said fellow prisoner of war Paul
Pickerell. Of the meals of rice and soup, which came in two buckets, Trask remembered, Onion
soup five onions in a five-gallon can of water, and maybe soy sauce for flavor, and cucumber
soup, one of their big cucumbers and hot water. There was nothing more tasteless. Sick most of
the time, hed work the hot wires cooking rice in a secret homemade contraption that worked as a double boiler made
of cans and wires that would heat the water. He wondered how no one was electrocuted. The prisoners also had a hidden
chicken that laid an egg every morning at 10 am, followed by a cackle they feared the Japanese would hear. They kept a
roster, and top guy on the list got the egg that day. Prisoners slept on 36-inch wide wooden shelves lining the barracks.
There was no heat, but enough body heat from the crowded conditions to keep them warm in winter. Richard Trask was
married to Sophie Marie Babe (Hendricks) Trask, the sister of Gertrude Finley, the wife of the 515th Coast Artillerys
Jack Finley. Sophie passed away in Surprise, Arizona where the couple had been living. Richard Trask returned to New
Mexico after her death.
 Albuquerque Welcomes Home its Heroes

New Mexicans in Other Units

An estimated 400 New Mexicans fought in other units in the Philippines. Of these, only Pete Gonzalez
is known to still be living.

Pedro Amor Pete Gonzalez

Hq & Hq Squadron, 19th Bombardment Group (Heavy) V Bomber Command
Pete Gonzalez was born in 1921 in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He joined the Army on July 16,
1940 at Fort Bliss, Texas and was assigned to the 19th Bomb Group as a Personnel Clerk. When
the Japanese first attacked Clark Field, the group suffered numerous casualties and lost many
planes. Supplies and headquarters were hastily moved from Clark Field to comparatively safe
points nearby, and planes that had not been too heavily damaged were given emergency repairs
and dispatched to Del Monte Field on Mindanao. There the 19th began reconnaissance and
bombardment operations against Japanese shipping and landing parties. Sustaining heavy losses,
the group ceased these actions after about two weeks, and the ground personnel joined infantry
units in fighting the invaders. Gonzalez survived the Bataan Death March. Of his prison camp
days he recalled lying down next to a fellow prisoner knowing the prisoner was going to die. In
the middle of the night, he reached out and felt the mans cold body and knew he was dead. He took the mans shoes and
moved to another place. He was liberated from an Osaka area prisoner of war camp and was discharged from the Army in
May 1946. Today, he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
 Veterans who made New Mexico their home post-war

Joe Bergstein
Air Warning Service Company, US Army Signal Corps
Joe Bergstein, a Pennsylvania native, was attached to the US Army Signal Corps Air Warning
Service Company. At the start of the war, he was one of a 35-man platoon operating a
rudimentary radar detector on southeastern Luzon that wasnt very good. Two planes flew over
us. We didnt pick up either one of them! A survivor of the Bataan Death March, Bernstein was
sent to Formosa on the Hokusen Maru, and later to Japan on the Melbourne Maru. He was
interned at Sendai POW Camp #7 at Hanaoka where prisoners labored in the copper mine. Hes
said that he didnt see a lot of World War II, but he read a lot about it after! Joe Bernstein lives
in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Atilano B. Al David
33rd Infantry Regiment (PA), 31st Division, USAFFE
Al David was an ROTC cadet at the University of Santo Tomas when he joined the United States
Army of the Far East (USAFFE) at age 19. Suffering from malaria and dysentery and shrapnel
wounds on the Death March, and his buddies no longer able to carry him, David decided to make
his escape. Passing a house, his comrades pushed him into some bushes and he rolled into a
ditch. The family living in the house threw banana leaves over him and hid him until it was safe.
When he recovered, he sought out other escapees forming guerrilla units. The underground group
David joined stopped trucks with supplies headed for Japanese garrisons until they found that
after these raids, the Japanese would execute people in nearby villages in retaliation men,
women, children. A severe case of malaria sent him to Manila. There his spy cell to counted
tanks, tracked movements, and gathered other information that they passed on by radio to
Australia. When MacArthur returned to the Philippines, David turned himself in to the Americans at Camp Olivas. He
wanted to be a part of the liberation of Santo Tomas, but was refused. He wound up at Camp Murphy were he produced the
newsletter, scooping Stars & Stripes on the Japanese surrender. In 1973, David became a US citizen. While living in
Orlando, Florida he was asked to design a memorial based on his experience. He thought of a Filipino housewife offering
ladles of water to suffering soldiers. His sketches became the Bataan-Corregidor Memorial at Lake Kissimmee, Florida,
dedicated in 1994. Mr. David lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Granville D. Smith
Battery F, 60th Coast Artillery (Anti-aircraft)
Granville D. Smith, an Oklahoma native, entered US Army service in January 1941. He was attached
to the 60th Coast Artillerys F Battery (Flint) that was assigned to Harbor Defenses of Manila and
Subic Bays on Corregidor. Following the surrender of Corregidor, Smith was a prisoner at Cabanatuan
prisoner of war camp before being taken to Manchuria via Korea on the Hell Ship Tottori Maru. At
Hoten POW Camp, Mukden, Manchuria, he was prisoner #625. Smith returned to the United States on
the SS Simon Bolivar in October 1945. Today, he lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Bernadett Charley Gallegos for the Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Foundation of New Mexico, Inc.