Courage on Bataan and Beyond

Courage on Bataan and Beyond is a comprehensive story about Abel F. Ortegas 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 familys 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 POWs 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.