Araw ng Kagitingan
By Rudy Arizala
Sixty-eight years ago today, we heard the Voice of Freedom announced:
"Bataan has fallen: The Philippine-American troops on the war-ravaged and blood-stained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody and unbowed, they have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the enemy . . .Bataan has fallen, but the spirit that made it stand - a beacon to all the liberty-loving peoples of the world - cannot fail."
The late S. P. Lopez who later on after the war became Philippine Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, then a soldier in Bataan, wrote said announcement which was read by another Bataan defender soldier Norman Reyes over the radio "Voice of Freedom".
Today, 09 April 2010 is observed as "Araw ng Kagitingan" and rightly so, for the spirit of freedom - "a beacon to all the liberty-loving peoples of the world - cannot fail." We must, despite seemingly unsurmountable obstacles, go on defending and upholding freedom, for the spirit that made our soldiers who "have fallen in the night" stood their grounds and shed their blood cannot fail.