News-Info-Alerts

Re: "Presence" Was Best Christmas Gift

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: December 22, 2002

"Presence was best Christmas gift
WWII veteran recalls ordeal in POW camp
By Debbie Pfeiffer Trunnell , Staff Writer
PICO RIVERA -- Cipriano Ramirez returned to life on Christmas Eve.

It was Christmas Eve 1942 when Ramirez, who had been languishing near death in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines for months, possibly suffering from malaria, suddenly regained consciousness.

"I could hear guys talking, saying they were going to get chocolate,' he recalled. "I jumped up and asked what year it was.'

Fellow prisoners told him it was Christmas Eve 1942. On Christmas Day, his compatriots told Ramirez the Red Cross was to arrive at Cabanatuan Camp, north of Manila a place Ramirez nicknamed Satan's Playground to distribute care packages containing Spam, butter, jam, cigarettes and chocolate.

For the starving men, it was indeed a joyous Christmas, Ramirez recalls today.

"We sang 'Silent Night' and "Noel, Noel,'' he recounted. "I cried and cried with joy I had survived.'

Today, 60 years after that Christmas Eve, Ramirez, now 85 and a Pico Rivera resident, makes sure to keep a can of Spam on a kitchen shelf "to remind me of that Christmas Eve in 1942,' he said.

His children and grandchildren will gather at the Ramirez home this Christmas, as they have for years, to celebrate. And they will ask, as they do each year, for grandpa to tell them about what it was like for him during the war.

It is difficult for Ramirez to talk about it. In previous years, Christmas brought conflicted emotions to the former U.S. Army foot soldier, one of the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March, a forced five-day march from the Bataan peninsula to the town of San Fernando on the island of Luzon during which hundreds of American prisoners died.

Only recently has he begun to feel more at ease recounting his experiences.

"I went through years of depression getting close to Christmas, when I would remember the beatings in the camps,' he said.

"But now I think I have lived through the worst and I want to share my experiences.'

Ramirez was 25 when he shipped out as a machine gun sergeant with the 200th Coast Military to the Philippines in September 1941. He was in the island nation when the Japanese invaded in April 1942, taking 75,000 Americans prisoner.

The following years were like a nightmare that Ramirez still relives in his mind.

At Cabanatuan Camp, "it was not uncommon to wake up with a corpse next to you,' he recalled.

"We were burying about 400 soldiers a day. I remember getting beaten often because the Japanese knew I had been a machine gunner.'

After falling ill and then recovering on Christmas Eve 1942, Ramirez spent two more Christmases at Cabanatuan Camp. He was then shipped to prison camps in China and Japan. He was not freed until the end of the war in 1945.

He returned to his hometown of Silver City, N.M, a decorated veteran, having earned the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

In 1951, Ramirez and his wife moved to Southern California, where he earned an associate of arts degree in business at Long Beach City College. He worked for 30 years as an accountant for Rockwell International in Anaheim.

His grandson, Jeffrey Fleck, 22, of Pico Rivera says Ramirez's stories of the war have been an inspiration to him.

"They make me realize that if he could survive those prison camps, I can do anything,' said Fleck, who plans to become a firefighter.

Debbie Pfei ffer Trunnell can be reached at (562) 698-0955, Ext. 3028, or by e- mail at debbie.pfeiffer@sgvn.com .

Copyright © 2002 San Gabriel Valley Tribune"