March
22

Twelve College of the Ozarks students will embark with six Bataan Death March/Corregidor POW survivors and liberators and three descendants of survivors on an incredible journey to the Philippines April 3-13.

Seventy years ago this March and May, thousands of American and Filipino soldiers were taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese in the Philippines on Bataan and the island of Corregidor. They would become known as the “Ghost Soldiers,” nearly forgotten because of the raging war in the Pacific. These “Ghost Soldiers” endured unthinkable living conditions and inhumane treatment by the Japanese military.

It would take reports of the savage Bataan Death March to reach the U.S. mainland before the outrage spurred the U.S. military to save the “Ghost Soldiers.” Once the Americans heard how American soldiers were made to march 80 miles without food or water, shot upon stopping or resting, and ruthlessly beaten or bayoneted, special forces, following the invasion, were dispatched to liberate the POWs three years after they had been imprisoned.

Now, 70 years later, Philippine survivors Wayne Carringer (27th Bomb Group, U.S. Army Air Corps), Jim Collier (59th Coast Artillery, U.S. Army), Bob Ehrhart (4th Marine Regiment), Warren Jorgenson (4th Marine Regiment) and Bataan/Corregidor liberators Ed Night (43rd Infantry, U.S. Army) and Lawrence Nelson (1st Calvary, U.S. Army) will accompany College of the Ozarks students to significant sites. Among those, the contingent will visit Camp O’Donnell, the prison camp where some were held on Luzon, the Balanga location where Major General Edward King surrendered the “Battling Bastards of Bataan” and Mt. Samat for the Day of Valor 70th Anniversary ceremony.

Since June 2009, College of the Ozarks has been sending its students with WWII veterans to European and Pacific battle sites to learn about history from the men who lived it. The students are devoted to learning each veteran’s story, so that their legacy will live on, their sacrifices will not be forgotten.

During the trips, two or three students pair up with a veteran and document the trip by journaling, keeping up a group blog and recording the veterans stories, as well as significant moments on the trip, by using a flip-cam or digital voice recorder. Students report learning more during one of these two-week trips than they learned in 12 years of pre-college schooling. Moreover, they vow to pass on to their children what they learned.

This trip and others like it are about history and making history. Generational gaps are bridged, emotional wounds of the veterans healed, and what may have been a superficial patriotism transformed into unwavering love of country and our nation’s veterans.
Students are selected from a pool of applicants who submit essays defining their desire to learn from the veterans. The highly competitive process has produced student-veteran pairings who share not only experiences, but more importantly, a bond between two very different generations that is cherished by both.
The Patriotic Education Travel Program is funded completely by College of the Ozarks and generous donors, allowing students and veterans to travel at no personal cost. For more information about participation or support of the Patriotic Education Travel Program, please contact the Character Education Office at (417) 690-2242.

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