Capas National Shrine now a pilgrimage site

CAPAS, Tarlac — The former Japanese concentration camp in this town is finally becoming a World War II pilgrimage site, which would earn this town and the province of Tarlac their rightful place in history, Gov. Jose Yap Sr. said.

Although it took the country 61 years after the war before the government and World War II historians nearly completed the list of veterans who died while in Japanese captivity and after the "liberation period," the governor said that efforts are underway in according due recognition to all those who fought in the first half of the 1940s.

Today, as the country celebrates the "Araw ng Kagitingan (Day of Valor)," Yap and local officials in the province will join President Arroyo, members of her cabinet, Armed Forces officials, US Ambassadors Francis Ricciardone and Japanese Ambassador Kojiro Takano, as well as the remaining surviving veterans in unveiling the Wall of Heroes in Camp O’Donnell here, now called the Capas National Shrine.

The Wall is made of black granite and surrounds the 100-foot high obelisk inside the 50-hectare memorial plaza. The obelisk’s three sections represent the Filipino, American and Japanese people who have "learned the lessons of war."

On the other hand, inscribed in silver on the Wall are the names of exactly 32,285 names of war heroes who died while fighting in Corregidor and Bataan, as Japanese prisoners-of-war (POWs) after World War II.

With the Wall, Yap said that due honor "has been concretized, literally and figuratively, to Filipino heroes, both living and dead."

But aside from this, he said the Wall has made the Capas National Shrine "attractive as a pilgrimage destination in memory of the brutality and heroism, the viciousness and bravery, and the other contrasting faces of World War II."

"It will not only be the surviving veterans of the war, may they be Filipino, American or Japanese, who can now look back with heartbreaking recollections on what took place in Camp O’Donnell," said Yap.

With the Wall, the governor said that every visit here by present and future generations of Filipinos, Americans and Japanese "will be a moving experience on how humanity should value freedom and life, because there came a time when our ancestors fought for these and learned their lessons in a very painful way."— Benjie Villa