SOFREP Radio

On this week's special podcast SOFREP senior editor and SOFREP Radio host Steve Balestrieri talks with Mindy Kotler Smith of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society.

Steve and Mindy talk about the Prisoner of War (POW) experience and the ordeals POWs underwent in the Pacific Theatre during World War II.

Perhaps the most well-known is the Bataan Death March. The Death March has gone down infamously in history for the cruelty of the Japanese captors and the resilience of the American and Filipino captives. Nevertheless, there were many other lesser-known similar events such as Corregidor and Palawan Massacre.

As Mindy Kotler Smith says, death marches and cruelty by the Japanese in the Pacific were systemic, and contrary to later Japanese claims, they were not isolated incidents. 

The American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society was founded in 1946 by Sam Moody.

Moody was a POW who had survived the Bataan Death March and then had to endure slave labor in mainland Japan. Moody understood that the only ones who could really connect to other POWs were POWs themselves as they had undergone the same hardships.

Tune in to a somber and revelatory SOFREP episode.

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