“Good evening, everyone everywhere. This is the Voice of Freedom broadcasting to you from somewhere in the Philippines.
“Bataan has fallen. The Philippine-American troops on this war-ravaged and blood-stained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody but unbowed, they have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the enemy. The world will long remember the epic struggle that the Filipino and American soldiers put up in the jungle fastnesses and along the rugged coasts of Bataan. They have stood up uncomplaining under the constant and grueling fire of the enemy for more than three months. Besieged on land, and blockaded by sea, cut off from all sources of help in the Philippines and America, these intrepid fighters have done all that human endurance should bear. For what sustained them through these months of incessant battle was a force more than physical. It was the force of an unconquerable faith — something in the heart and soul that physical adversity and hardship could not destroy. It was the thought of native land and all that it holds most dear, the thought of freedom and dignity and pride in those most priceless of all our human prerogatives.
“Our men fought a brave and bitterly contested struggle. All the world will testify to the almost superhuman endurance with which they stood up until the last, in the face of overwhelming odds.
“The decision had to come. Men fighting under the banner of an unshakable faith are made of something more than flesh, but they are not impervious to steel. The flesh must yield at last, endurance melts away, and the end of the battle must come. Bataan has fallen! But the spirit that made it stand — a beacon to all the liberty-loving people of the world — cannot fall!”
The above was the message broadcast from the secret radio station Voice of Freedom in Malinta Tunnel in Corregidor on April 9, 1942 that informed the Filipino people and the world that “Bataan has fallen.” It was written by Captain Salvador P. Lopez, who was at the time assigned to the headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE). The broadcast was delivered by 3rd Lieutenant Normando “Norman” Reyes.
Mr. Lopez, who had earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1931 and a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy in 1933 from the University of the Philippines, was teaching literature and journalism at the University of Manila before the war. He was also a daily columnist and magazine editor of the Philippines Herald. When war broke out, Lopez was drafted into the Philippine Army as captain and assigned to Gen. MacArthur’s headquarters on Corregidor. He was captured by the Japanese when the island fortress fell on May 6, 1942.
After the war, he served as adviser on Political Affairs, Philippine Mission to the United Nations, becoming Charge d’affaires, and subsequently Acting Permanent Representative. He was also assigned to diplomatic posts in a number of European countries. President Diosdado Macapagal appointed him Secretary of Foreign Affairs. President Ferdinand Marcos named him ambassador to the United States in 1968 but he appointed him president of the University of the Philippines the following year. It was during his presidency that UP students became political activists, staging mass protest marches and rallies against the Marcos regime right from the First Quarter Storm in 1970.
Mr. Reyes, born to a Filipino father and an American woman, was studying in the American school H. A. Bordner when war broke out. When schools closed, Reyes worked full time in Station KZRH in Manila until the end of December 1941 when the Japanese closed in on Manila. He was drafted into the Philippine Army as a 3rd lieutenant and sent to Corregidor as a broadcaster.
Lt. Reyes was the voice on radio that told of the story of Capt. Jesus Villamor shooting down two Japanese planes from his Boeing fighter plane, and of a “mile-long convoy” of US ships with troops, arms, ammunition, and food on its way to Manila. That was the convoy that kept the spirit of the beleaguered, shell-shocked, wounded, starving, and tropical disease-ravaged troops in Bataan afloat and kept them fighting. Unknown to the gallant soldiers in Bataan, the convoy had been ordered to divert to Brisbane, Australia as the port of Manila and the US Naval bases in Sangley Point and Subic, where the troops and cargo were to be disembarked, had all been destroyed by Japanese bombers.
Lt. Reyes was captured along with the 11,500 men and women of the USAFFE on Corregidor. After several months in prison, he was shipped to Japan.
The Voice of Freedom was a makeshift radio station in Malinta Tunnel in Corregidor. It was set up by former Radio KZRH technicians Wallace “Ted” Ince and Simeon Cheng out of components of their station, which was shut down along with all Manila stations on orders of Gen. MacArthur. The objective of the Voice of Freedom was to broadcast favorable news for the Allies. It first went on the air on Jan. 2, 1942 and fell silent permanently with the Fall of Corregidor.
KZRH was put up by Samuel Gaches, the owner of H. E. Heacock Co., a department store in Escolta, Manila. It was the fourth commercial radio station in the Philippines. It went on air on July 15, 1939. On Dec. 8,1941, KZRH was the first station to announce the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
After World War II, the Elizalde brothers — Federico, Joaquin, and Manuel — bought KZRH. They transferred its operations to the Insular Life Building in Plaza Cervantes. On June 12, 1946, the Elizaldes established the Manila Broadcasting Co., the country’s first radio network, with KZRH as its flagship station. The station returned to the airwaves on July 1, 1946. When the Philippines separated from the American broadcasting milieu in 1948, KZRH changed its callsign to DZRH.
That Voice of Freedom broadcast on April 9, 1942 was the cause of the irony that the April 9 holiday was. The broadcast extolled the valor of the “Battling Bastards of Bataan.” We are supposed to remember on April 9 of every year “the epic struggle that the Filipino and American soldiers put up in the jungle fastnesses and along the rugged coasts of Bataan.” But for many years we remembered instead the Fall of Bataan — the mass surrender of Filipino and American soldiers to the Japanese Imperial Army. That was because the broadcast opened and closed with the statement “Bataan has fallen.”
In April 1961, President Carlos P. Garcia signed Republic Act No. 3022 into law, declaring April 9 of every year as “Bataan Day.” Only in June 1987, did President Corazon C. Aquino put it right when she issued Executive Order No. 203 referring to the April 9 holiday as “Araw ng Kagitingan.”
Oscar P. Lagman, Jr. is an avid reader of Philippine history.