Memorial Reception for Jose G. Jaurequi 062826, part 2

By Mary Alice Murphy

[Editor's Note: This is part 2 a series of articles of a memorial reception that gook place on June 28, 2026, to honor Private Jose G. Jaurequi. He died in the Philippines in connection with the Bataan Death March, as well as the 200th and 515th Coastal Artillery Regiments, which included many New Mexican soldiers in their ranks. To understand the history, it is best to read Part 1 first at https://grantcountybeat.com/home/news-articles/memorial-reception-for-private-jose-g-jaurequi-062826-part-1-and-photos-of-the-event ]

"I'm going to give you a little bit of background," Larry Jaurequi continued."Now we go to the Philippines. The documentary we filmed in the Philippines this year is about the forgotten Gen. Jonathan Wainwright. What happened was in March of 1942, President Roosevelt tells Douglas MacArthur to get out. "This is a no-win situation. Leave the Philippines." MacArthur leaves on around March 17 late at night on a PT boat and goes and gets close to Australia. At that point, he says to Johnathan Wainwright, 'It's yours.'

"Jonathan Wainwright is like, 'Okay, we'll continue to fight. That's when Jose was on Corregidor. There was a gentleman on that island that was overseeing all the cavalry horses. They were fighting in the north part of Luzon, and they were cavalry. There was a veterinarian that oversaw all the horses, including General Wainwright's, including Douglas MacArthur's, and this was before the surrender of April the ninth, with many of the solders suffering from starvation and dysentery.

"I'm going to introduce Col. 'Will' Worthington, who was a Vietnam soldier and he's with us today. He flew his own plane from Phoenix, and I got to know Will in the Philippines. Now, keep in mind this: they interviewed over 800 people in the United States about this documentary. 'What do you know about the Bataan Death March? Who was in that you know? Was it your uncle? Who was it? What do you know about it? Did you serve under Jonathan Wainwright? Did that uncle or your dad serve under Jonathan Wainwright? Were they on Corregidor Island?' And they interviewed over 800.

"IYou have to submit information, justification on what you know about the story of your relative. So I gave the information to the producer about Uncle Jose, and I got a call from the director one day. He says, "Tell me more about your uncle.' He goes, 'Yeah, tell me more about the 200th and 515th Regiments.' He goes, 'Were a lot of them U.S. citizens, or were they guys born in the United States?' I go, 'no, because a lot of them are Mexicans.'

And he says, 'then why would they be so loyal, even though they're wearing their U.S. uniform, that a country at that era was not always so kind to them? There's this guy going along? Why did they fight the way they did to get over 75,000 soldiers, about 30,000 civilians, to go across the Alupa Bridge and be in the rear and fight in hand-to-hand combat? We do know this, and this is not in any way disparaging remarks.'"

The director continued: "MacArthur had a difficult situation. He really did. The Filipinos now, the majority were brave soldiers, and there were some that were young kids who found themselves in the war, and they at one point say, 'I'm out of here. I'm gone.' So the director tells me and the producer says, 'Why would these Mexican-Americans still stand their ground? We've interviewed over 800 families. We want you to come to the Philippines, and we want to tell your own story.'

"So I go to the Philippines," Larry continued. "John's right here. He's a historian. He's a well-renowned specialist in Hellships. We have Colonel Will Worthington here.

"We're there now, and they're recognizing these families. My uncle's mosaic is the only non-commissioned officer that's being recognized out of 1560. Jonathan Wainwright's goddaughter was there.

"Gen. Edward King surrendered on April the 9th. He had a descendant there, and Jose Jaurequi from Silver City, New Mexico was being recognized as a non-commissioned. And we're talking about people that were West Point graduates, Annapolis graduates, and we have a Mexicano from Silver City that's being recognized among the 50 non-commissioned. But we had a tremendous opportunity to get to know each other, and an opportunity to get to know a young man from Silver City New Mexico, that didn't come home, representing the state and also representing the regiments of the 200th and 515th."

Jaurequi said it was a tremendous honor to introduce one Vietnam veteran who is the descendant and son of a gentleman who was in charge of the gathering horses. "Will, please?"

"It was a singular honor to to go on this documentary trip with others who had relatives," Worthington said. "I had read about in my dad's diary, but to be there and and walk where those people walked and see where the rest of the place was a real kind of singular kind of epiphany, if you will, to think what all happened was rather wonderful. My trip to the Philippines last month was actually my second trip to the Philippines. I had my first birthday in the Philippines, and that was April 8, 1941.

"And therein lies the story. What was I doing in the Philippines in 1941? My dad was a veterinarian in the U.S. Army, and his job was to take care of the horses and mules. I was born in Maryland in 1941, and my dad came out on an order to Fort McKinley in the Philippine Islands, and so we boarded the ship, the U.S. S. Grant in January 1941. We arrived in the Philippines in February '41, I had my first birthday in Manila, April 8, 1941, and the family was evacuating. My brother, sister, my mother, we all came back on May 14, 1941, and we were all there, and again, May 14, 85 years later. So it was my second trip to the Philippines. My dad, after we were evacuated, my dad stayed there, of course, and on New Year's Eve, 1941, he took up the orders that they'd been signed at Fort McKenzie, and we had to evacuate.

"He was part of the division when he went to the Philippines, that was commanded by then Major General Wainwright at that time. During the time, his job continued to be the senior veterinary officer and responsible for taking care of the horses and mules. He was part of the 26th Cavalry Regiment, and that was part of the Philippine mission, as well as all the horses and mules that were assigned to the artillery units, that towed the portable artillery units. So that was his primary job. He was the doctor for the horses and mules. As the war went on and rations became scarcer, his job became to slaughter all the horses and mules, and to feed them to the troops. Regrettably, that included General Wainwright's favorite horse.

"So the question then comes up: They were they out of horses and mules about the first of March. So what did the veterinarian officer do? He doesn't have any patients anymore. They had slaughtered all the horses and mules.Well, General King basically told Dad that he was a senior veterinary officer in Luzon at that point. He was then promoted to full colonel, and he said, "Well, Colonel, fit in wherever he can. He was known throughout his college as Doc, Doctor Veterinary,. That Doc fit in wherever he could. But then he concocted a scheme to use his detachment.

"I think he had a detachment of about 30 or so, a handful of veterinarians and veterinary technicians. The technicians were primarily Filipinos, so he concocted the scheme to send the Filipinos in a guise as local farmers, through the Japanese line and to appropriate anything that they could get. Primarily, that was carrots. I suspect that there were a few horses and probably some goats and anything else that they could get a rope on, and they brought it again under the guise of local Filipino farmers back through the Japanese lines into the U.S. lines, and there Dad supervised again the slaughter and processing of everything that they could bring in.

"One of our colleagues on this trip I learned from that her aunt was an army nurse on Corregidor, on Bataan and then back to Corregidor. But we learned from her book that the fare that was served three meals a day was called Can Stew. And it consisted of horses, mules, carrots, monkeys, a few fish, and anything else that they could throw into the pot. It was breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And one of the mess sergeants put up a sign—no seconds.

"We were looking back on on the war, which Larry described, probably from about the first of March until the surrender on April 9. Those people subsisted on the Can Soup largely herded in there by Dad and his veterinarian group.

"At that point, all of the troops had been pushed down, as the story took us to Bataan and to Mariveles Bay, and to think of 60,000 troops wondering what's next. What are they going to do?

Referring back to his first trip to the Philippines, he said it took about four weeks to get to the Philippines. "My dad and the family and I, as I was nine months old, of course, associated and got to know some of the other partners on the ship."

Back to his story, "on the afternoon, of the eighth of April, my second birthday, Dad and some of his Filipino technicians had to make a decision. That story was he had three options. He could surrender with the others. He could go to Corregidor, and he in in his diary, he called that a firey hell, and he knew there'd be no escaping from there. But he and three technicians and one of his veterinarians decided they were going to go for it.

"My second birthday, April 8, 1942. I'm two. So it turns out that poor (name?), one of the nurses up in hospital number two, which we visited up in the jungle. Dad and all the nurses had been told to evacuate down to the beaches and to get to Corregidor Island. So Dad always-I can only imagine what he and his father could do to get out of jobs, if you will. And he had been told the night before by General King. He was on General King's staff. General King said, "Get a way to get out for good today because soon things are going wrong. So with that, Dad was preparing to leave. But these three nurses who had been working for about 48 hours to get from hospital number two through the jungle in a beat-up, run-down truck that had broken down, they finally arrived at the beach. By their own account, they were deceived and there was no boat ready.

And so in her book, she said that Dad took some time and somehow found these three nurses and maybe a few others too. So Patty and I then chuckled. We thought, well, maybe Dad saved their lives, but that was her story.

"Dad then late in the afternoon of my birthday mid-afternoon got together with four others, and their destination was any jungle south of them. They made it 18 hours, and at dawn on April the ninth, they were picked up by a Japanese sunchaser, a small warship, and taken prisoner at that point.

"But I'll just share one of the stories that Dad related. He and the five others were taken out. They were stood down and were asked, "Would you rather be shot or beheaded? And my dad or one of the others said, "We're not particularly alive." He expected to be beheaded, and they were kneeling down. And again, the officer with the samurai sword, had pulled it out. And his story was that there was a message that came in on the radio, and there was an exchange, and it was his impression that they saw the colonel medals that he was still wearing, and they decided, well, this guy might know something. Bring them all in. You know, question them. He thinks he came that close to losing his life that day.

"But he went on. He was then taken to Manila, and joined the rest of the people from Corregidor and Tara. From there he was joined by General Wainwright. And at that point, he was on General Wainwright's staff, and served through the prison camps in Tarak, Japan, Formosa, which is Taiwan, through Korea, and up into China in Manchuria, where he was still prisoner of war as of August of 1945. So that was his story.

"He came home in October of 1945, and and I can remember my first recollection of my dad was when he stepped off the plane at the Air Force Base in San Antonio. My mother and my brother and sister and I were there to meet him, and I remember, I think it was a C47. The stairs came up to the aircraft, and all these soldiers started getting off. And I'm five years old, and watching all of this like a five-year-old might. And I didn't know who I was looking for.

"So all of a sudden, my sister yells out, 'Daddy, there's Daddy!' I'm probably thinking, I have no clue which one of these guys is going to be Daddy. So all of the soldiers came off and one of them came down and started hugging mom and the family, and so he picked me up, and I can still remember it. He said: 'But you don't remember me, do you?' And he was wearing a mustache, and that was the thing I remember. I wasn't prepared for Daddy to be wearing a mustache. He survived the war, and he passed away when I was 13. I never really got to know him except for those few years, and it was such a an experience for me to see him spend many days really focusing on his career in a way that I never had seen before. We had quite a time.

"His adventures, his trials in prison camp are summarized in a book, a diary called 'Hello, ???: A Diary of War in Captivity' which my late sister Frances, then worked on for years compiling and putting together, and in this book, his diary consists of a series of poems, poems that he wrote and memorized night after night for three and a half years.

"And so I'm reading a copy of this book to Larry. You know, it's a great honor. He asked me if I'm willing to come over here and honor his uncle. There's no greater honor in my mind than to pay tribute to all these veterans who fought and gave their all in the Philippines. I can tell you that in reflecting back on on what they did, what they were fighting, what they were fighting against, the atrocities, the unspeakable atrocities that happened over and over again, like to Jose Jaurequi and so many others. That was what they were fighting to keep off our shoulders. That's what the Japanese wanted to impose on our society. But thanks to Jose and thousands, tens of thousands of others, we're able to gather together today and to enjoy life, liberty, and pursue our happiness. Thanks for all of you."

Baca said he thought the the flag was ready for presentation.

He invited all the Jaurequi family members to come forward for the flag presentation.

New Mexico National Guard Brigadier General Romero presented the folded flag to Larry's older brother, John (?) Jaurequi.

Baca thanked everyone and said: "But we have one more presentation we'd like to make to the family from our LULAC national president, Juan Palomares. "

"Thank you. So, on behalf of our national board and our 550,000 members in 44 states, and those here with me today, when Larry called me a couple months ago about this event, I said, 'Yes, I'll be there.' So I want to present the LULAC National Presidential Medal, the highest honor that the president can bestow on any member or an individual or a family who has done something for veterans. So it's my honor to present this today to them."

Baca continued the program, and turned it over again to Larry Jaurequi.

"It's my honor to a lot of you who may not know about, in terms of advocacy, organization, outreach, and support. The American Defenders of Bataan and CorregidorMemorial Society is an organization that's been around for many years, and it's my honor to introduce a board member, and that is Miss Debra Bergbower-Grunwald."

"Good afternoon. My name is Debra Bergbower-Grunwald, and I am representing the American Defenders of the Bataan and Carregidor Memorial Society. I wish to thank the family of Uncle Jose for the opportunity to honor his dedication and service to our country. Our Memorial Society is an organization whose mission is to educate and preserve the history of those that were prisoners of war in the Pacific. The majority of our members are descendant—children and relatives of the POWs, and I would like to point you to the back to our ADBC memorial banner. If anyone has someone that served on Bataan or Corregidor, please come over afterwards and sign it.It is the 80th anniversary for your family. I fondly call Jose Uncle because he is a member of our great family that served so bravely in the Pacific, so far from home.

"Our family members shared many experiences during that time of war as POWs. My father spent some time also at Cabanatuan as a prisoner of war. In 2002, my father and I toured the Philippines. One of the internment camps included Cabanatuan. I very vividly remember Daddy reading the names of P.O.W.s he knew and and reverently referring to them as 'the boys,' because you see, that's how he remembered them.

"On that visit, I realized how blessed my father felt that he had survived the nightmares of war and incarceration. Throughout his life, which spanned 99 and a half years., my father made it a point to honor fellow POWs and veterans like Uncle Jose. As Dad stated all the time, 'Freedom is not free.' The POWs, service personnel, we have lost veterans and those who are still serving, are testament to those time-honored phrases: 'Freedom is not free.' May we, as a society, continue to honor them by keeping their deeds, sacrifices, and names alive. To that end, I invite you to join the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor and help us to preserve and tell the stories of these men and women, such as Uncle Jose, who defended the Philippines and other Allied outposts in the Pacific during World War II, and in doing so became prisoners of war.

"I would now like to read a letter. I would like to now read a letter from our president, Jan Thompson: Dear Dr. Larry Edward Jaurequi. On behalf of the board of the American Defenders ofBataan and Corregidorr Memorial Society, we stand with you, your family, and the League of Latin American Citizen Council 8003 to honor Private Jose G Jaurequi. Few Americans know the tragic story of the time in Corregidor, the battles, and the largest surrender in American military history, and then the imprisonment of prisoners of war. The Philippines are on the other side of the world, and few history books teach this history. Memorializing the death of a former prisoner of war of Imperial Japan is a deeply meaningful act that honors not only a single life but the resilience and sacrifice of an entire generation. Such remembrances ensure that the hardships endured in captivity, often marked by courage, endurance, and unbreakable spirit, are not forgotten with time. As we remember Private Jose Jaurequi on the anniversary of his death, we are acknowledging his story. We preserve an important chapter of history. We express gratitude for the strength demonstrated under unimaginable conditions. These acts of commemoration serve as a bridge between past and present, remembering the cost of freedom and inspiring future generations to value peace, dignity and human perseverance. Rest in peace, Private Jose Jaurequi. We have not forgotten you and your sacrifice. Signed by Miss Jan Thompson, President.

"I also want to add one more word in that yes, Senate Bill 4933 for the gold medal went in on Thursday by Senator Heinrich's office. If you would like to see if your state senator is signed on, please come see me. Both of the New Mexico senators have signed it, but only 27 other senators have signed on, so I know in Arizona only Senator Mark Kelly has signed on, not the other one. So please see me if you would like to know if your state senator has signed the bill. Thank you very much. It has been an honor to be here."

The next speaker was John Duresky, introduced as an expert and a celebrity, who was just was featured in a series on TV that week on the Hell Ships.

"Okay, first of all, I'm not a celebrity, but if I am, I'm selling autographs for $25 a month," Duresky said to chuckles from the audience. "S little bit about myself. I don't have any relatives from Bataan or Corregidor. I'm going to give you a quick background on myself and how I got here, which is kind of interesting in itself.

"In 2019 I happened to buy four yearbooks from my high school, Logan High School in La Crosse, Wisconsin, because they were the war years, 1942 to 1945, and I wrote to my little high school classmate group. I graduated in 1967, and I said, 'I bought these yearbooks. Would you like me to look up some of your relatives while I'm in the airport?' Well, that was a mistake because I got flooded with requests. That was in about July 2019.

"A couple months later, a friend of mine, Steve Parr, writes an email to me and says, 'Did you know your friend Dave Britt's father was in the Bataan Death march?' I said, 'No, I didn't,' and wrote to Dave, and Dave wrote back to me and said, "Yes, he was on the Bataan Death March. He sent me his family's brief history that he had written, kind of summarizing what his parents had gone through, and it was quite interesting. It was an eye opener.

"In 2019, I literally couldn't have found the Philippines on the map. In this family history, Dave wrote about his father fighting on Bataan. He commanded some artillery groups. He graduated in 1940 from West Point and went over to the Philippines with about 22 other men, 11 of whom didn't return from the Philippines, either dying in combat or in POW camps or Hellships. And that also, that little thing that Dave sent me was the first time I'd ever heard of a Hellship in my life. Fast forward a little bit. Dave and I then started working on a book together. I've got one copy of it over on the desk there. It's titled "Our Relentless Hope: A True Story of War and Survival" by David Britt. I did most of the research for it. A friend, another classmate of ours, ?? did the editing. In the process of doing that, I'm going to bring up some things. If you don't believe in miracles, by the time this is done, you will.

"Okay, 200 plus. We're going to get to this at the end of my little presentation, 200 plus and zero. So, in the process of doing the research for the book, I did rely a lot on our hometown newspaper called the La Crosse Tribune. I went through it. By this time, I can't even count the number of hundreds of old newspapers I've read through, and his father was liberated after the war, and that's kind of where Larry and I actually kind of got going over in the Philippines because I went over there with Dave, and Dave was talking about his father, and he ended up getting liberated in Manchuria. After he got liberated, he was interviewed by the hometown newspaper. In there, he made a little interview point that his son was born September 21, 1941, after his wife Grace got evacuated back to the United States, September 21, 1944, he was working in a field outside of the Cabanatuan camp, and for the first time since 1942, he saw American planes flying over it. First time, say September 21, 1941, September 21, 1942, and this is a little highlight connecting these two September 21 dates by three different years. It was sitting there, and that's in my little bit of memory thing. We finished the book in August 2021.

"By this time, I was totally hooked on the whole story of Bataan and Corregidor, and one thing I'd like to point out is there's a lot of focus on the Bataan Death March. I like to also focus on the incredible heroism of the men of Bataan and Corregidor for four months, five months fighting off untold forces with no resupply from the United States, no reinforcement, nothing. It's just an incredible story of courage against all odds.

"I forget what gentleman mentioned it. These men were surrendered. They take great pride in saying they were surrendered. These men did not surrender. Their commanding general said, "It's up. They're out of food. They're out of ammo. They're sick. They just have nothing left. These guys have done all they can for months and months.' I've got to give it to them. Nobody foresaw the Bataan Death March coming. So we finished that one.

"Okay, June last year, and for the first time today, I happened to find out that the GoFundMe page for the family started June last year, 2025.

"After we did the book, in the process of doing it, we happened to discover that one of the Hellships called the Oryoku Maru. Gabriel's father was on it, and it was attacked by not only by planes from the USS Hornet, but also by planes from the USS ??. And in the process of that happening, a young pilot from North Carolina, Lieutenant John Frank Thompson, was shot down in ?. A couple years after we wrote the book, I got going with a group from the Philippine and the Hellship Memorial Foundation, and we just decided to make it a process to look for the pilot of this plane. We thought it would be fairly easy. Well, it's 2026. We still haven't located this plane.

"Last year, in June, well, June 5, a couple of guys from our group are doing some underwater searching, and they found a wreck in Subic Bay. Now, basically, you've got the Bataan Peninsula like this, Subic Bay here. There's another peninsula like this, and then this is the west coast of Luzon going up here. They were over here in SubicBay.

"They saw this. And I speak Japanese. I lived in Japan for some years, and as I like to point out, how incredibly useful in the Southwest speak fluent Japanese. But they pointed it out to me, so I went into the Japanese archives and I was looking around for information on this wreck in Subic Bay, kind of nondescript, right? And as I'm looking through it, I happen to spot an article, a document dated September 21, 1944. Remember, September 21, Chester Britt Jr. is born, 1941, September 21, 1944, ?? here is watching planes overhead in the middle of Luzon. This is about a ship that is being attacked in a convoy, written in a Japanese report. I dig into it when I realize suddenly that I discovered a Hellship not where it's supposed to be, 30 miles south of that location, holding about 800 UK and Dutch POWs. And I contact my guys over there, whom I'm working with. They happen to know a wreck in the general area that everybody thought was just a trader sunk off the coast. It's holding 800 dead heroes from Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, and so we're sworn to kind of a NDA of secrecy by the Dutch and the UK governments. And I sort of kept the secrets, not real well at times as some friends may have heard about it, but we kept that as well as we could, and then this year it was finally shown on the Discovery Channel last week. They have some some pretty good takes on it. They show some things.

"So the only reason I found this was because of this crazy coincidence of two September 21st dates. So this is what the Japanese report was like. This is showing the Hellship Oryoku Maru holding about 1,000 POWs, and about three minutes later, about 800 of them are dead. And if you go to the Discovery Channel, Josh Gates Exploration Unknown, I think you can get it on Hulu now. There are interviewing a couple of the guys up on this island here, looking this way. And as I like to point out, it looks very tranquil now in that documentary. Blue water, nice clouds. While this was going on, there were being attacked by about 50 different American planes, bombers, fighter planes, everything else, and the boat was sunk. And it was about 30 miles south, and we're looking at north to south. Everybody thought it was up about 30 miles north.

"Now, what had happened was after World War II, they interviewed a bunch of the survivors of that incident, and the survivors were all experts on Singapore and Dutch East Indies. They knew nothing about Philippine geography. They were estimating it was something in Subic Bay. They were estimating something 100 miles north. Somebody in the Navy selected a point 30 miles north of this as a convenient location, and that has been the reported location ever since.

"This photo, which is not in the documentary, this is showing about 200 Dutch men that are killed by a bomb dropped by an American plane. Okay, right at that moment, so we got all these photos from the archives and everything else. Now we discovered this. We're sitting on the stuff, but I didn't want to just sit on this discovery. It dawned on me that if it was this wrong for 80 years about the location of this ship, what about other ships?

"So I started doing a lot of research, and I'm pretty sure I've located the resting place of probably about six different Hellships holding up to 10,000 members.

"Now, of course, it's going to get real interesting for the New Mexico group here. This is my Google Earth map of the Pacific, and all these are pins and pins and pins all over the place. So if we go and zoom a little more, this is showing where the ship was that we found, and that's 30 miles north of where the Navy located it 1947. Now I'm going to zoom in a little bit more. Let's zoom over there. Now we go down to island called Mindanao. September 7, 1944, a hell ship called the Shinyo Maru was sunk. The Shinyo Maru, unlike the Oryoku Maru, is holding about 600 American POWs, and I started digging into that report in a different way. This time, I'm doing it deliberately. I'm not just stumbling into it because of a couple of dates happening to match up. Which that's what I'm saying. If you believe in miracles, that's it. I mean, it's just crazy that three. Okay, that's what I'm saying. If you believe in miracles, the three September 21st dates line up like that, or it's the trifecta of dates. It just doesn't happen because it just was launched a whole lot of other things, so we start.

"I started digging into it, and here's where it gets very interesting. The 1947 report places the sinking of the Shinyo Maru up here. That's where everybody's been looking since 1947. I looked at the Navy report of the Shinyo Maru and sinking by the USS Paddle, and I don't know how the heck they did it, but the report that they point for sinking is actually where the submarine saw smoke over the horizon about eight miles away. It's not where the ship was sunk, and if you follow that around, that ship is not laying up here. It's lying over here.

"Okay, now that holds about 800 Americans. Out of that are about 44 men from New Mexico. Somebody was reading off the list of the men today. So when I came in here, I went over that list there, and I already identified that ship is holding Alfred William Albrecht. It's holding Arthur Griffin, and it's holding Melvin Harsh from that list over there, as well as another 41 men.

"We've already begun the process of starting to look for the ship. Now we know pretty close to where it is, but now what we have to do is start going over there. We've already made one trip and interviewed some local people, the mayors and stuff, and we've found some other information that tells us we're on the right track to find this ship, and if we can find it, now we start being able to notify DEAA, which is the Defense POW MIA accounting agency, where they can go down and if it's in shallow enough water, try to retrieve these bodies and bring them home. So there is a fighting chance that these men that are missing can, in future years, be located and brought home.

"Now I brought some statistics here on what we're trying to do. Right now, we've got about $30,000 of seed money to do this search. I kind of went through some of the major sporting events, and I took one of the lowest-paid players from each of these four sports. One player of each sport, they would bring in in a year $3,713,000 We need, in order to do this search properly, getting the right sonar equipment and other equipment about $50,000 which works out to about 1.35% of the pay of the four lowest paid players in these sports, or about five days of pay for each one.

"That's how little it takes to do a proper search. So I am asking if anybody cares to, I've got a QR code over there. That's for the Hell ShipMemorial Foundation for soliciting donations to get the proper equipment to do the work. Yes, we're not asking for much.

"Now this is the start. If we find that these men, and we will. I've already got a third Hellship lined up off the coast of Japan, holding men from Australia, the United States. UK and another one, and after that, I've got other ones. I can't give you all the details, but finding Oryoku Maru and things afterwards has literally unlocked a treasure trove of being able to try to bring 1000s of men home, or at least give families closure to where they are.

"Larry, thank you for this time. It is absolutely humbling to be amongst families that have lost so much in the past. It's I can't tell you the emotional toll that's had on me over the last six years to get to know so many families, so much lost, so many young men like Jose. They're just countless, and every one of them are heroes. What they did just amazes me.

" I want to get through. I think it's my last slide. I'm also the co-administrator for the Philippines MIA Search and Recovery Project. If you want to go there, follow us, please do. I think you'll find a lot of interesting information coming out.

"Okay, 200 and zero. This is the number I like to quote. 200 plus zero is the number, approximately, of movies about superheroes made since about 1980, or as I put it, actors in spandex doing make-believe hero stuff. Okay, zero. That is the exact total number of movies made about combat on Bataan and Corregidor and about the Hellships since World War II. Exactly zero. Now, a lot of good movies out there about D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, and other things. I don't slight them in the least, but man, somebody needs to get to Hollywood and say, where have you been not telling this story of what these guys did for four and five months all on their own, when everybody else was being very comfortable back in Washington. They were going through absolute hell, and it started before the Bataan Death March, and it ended long after the Bataan Death March. They had about a 40 percent death rate for the POWs of the Japanese, and about the 1% rates of the POWs of Nazi Germany. Many different reasons that illness, disease, everything else helps that. So, thank you. I hope this is starting something big as they say.

"My beautiful wife is sitting back there. We live between Alamogordo and Cloudcroft. We've got a little convenience store, and that's where I am."

Bergbower-Grunwald announced:"Real quick. the Discovery Channel, Part 2 under the Expedition Unknown on the Discovery Channel. Part two [would air] July 1. The series is Expedition Unknown. The title is Hunt for World War II Hellships, and the first one was very informative, and I cried."

The event stopped for a break, but more came after the break.

The next article will complete the event.

To read the preceding article, and see the photos, please visit https://grantcountybeat.com/home/news-articles/memorial-reception-for-private-jose-g-jaurequi-062826-part-1-and-photos-of-the-event