Abel Ortega

Courage on Bataan and Beyond: Memories of an American Pow Who Was a Slave of the Japanese During Wwii for 3 1/2 Years Abel Ortega

"Courage on Bataan and Beyond" is a comprehensive story about Abel F. Ortega's life during the Bataan Death March and Japanese imprisonment written by his son. Abel will take the reader with him from his childhood days when he would sit in a rocking chair and dream about the Far East to defending the Bataan Peninsula in a last ditch effort to keep the Japanese from taking the Philippines. Abel narrates how his family's prayers and his faith in God helped him to survive the infamous Bataan Death March, three-and-a-half years as a POW and two Hell Ship Voyages. This book will evoke both laughter and tears as one follows Abel from captivity to liberation. In his three-and-a-half years as a POW, he endured near starvation, hard labor, torture and the indescribable and inhumane cruelty from his captors before being set free August 15th, 1945. There were very few POW's who survived the Japanese brutality of Bataan and their following captivity, and of these, not many are still with us. Today at 85, Abel feels his story needs to be told so that the brave soldiers of Bataan will not be forgotten once again.