$25 DVD

$20 VHS

 

A New Mexico Story:The Bataan Death March to the Atomic Bomb reveals the state’s link with the infamous Bataan Death March in the story of a New Mexico National Guard regiment sent to defend the American territory of the Philippines on the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The regiment’s ethnic make up made them one of the most diverse American units of the day in the United States Army.


Their dark fate is a less well-known chapter of the Pacific War against Japan. It is the story of a courageous  battle fought against a numerically overwhelming Japanese army. It is a testament of starvation and abandonment only to be followed  by long years of brutality as prisoners of war at the hands of the Japanese military.


The long road of the regiment’s survivors is a story of tragic proportions and human cruelty in the face of a religiously fanatical

enemy, and, yet, it is also a story that has moments of supreme human kindness, both of captor and captive. Moments that stand out like jewels of hope against the dark canvas of sadistic brutality suffered by so many.


The film rises to a high level of oral history seldom seen in documentary film. The accounts of the survivors work well to draw in the viewer into the odessy.


The film also finds itself on the home front with development of the atomic bomb in the secret town of Los Alamos in the heart of the state.  The atomic bomb would not only win the war, it would also save the lives of the state’s native sons, who faced a death order from Emperor Hirohito.


Program time:

116 minutes.

Copyright © 2002

McGaffey Films, LLC

All rights reserved.

Distributed  by McGaffey Films,LLC

6208 Academy Ridge PL NE, Albuquerque, NM

87111. Photos courtesy of the the Nation Archives and the Bataan Memorial Museum  and Library.



P R O D U C T I O N

A

To order: send check or money order ($25) to McGaffey Films, LLC, 6208 Academy Ridge PL NE, Albuquerque, NM

87111

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