Courage On Bataan And Beyond

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.

Abel Ortega Jr., the second youngest of seven children of Naomi and Abel F. Ortega, was born in 1964 and raised in San Antonio, Texas. As a child growing up, he would enjoy listening to his father's POW experiences from WWII not fully understanding the true meaning of those stories. As he became a man, he finally understood and realized what his father went through. Those stories brought forth an obligation out of respect for the man he calls his "Hero" to compile his father's experiences in a book so that they would not be forgotten. Those feelings would inspire him to spend two-and-a-half years researching the Prison Camps and Hell Ships. Abel Jr. currently lives in San Antonio with his wife Lorrie and two sons, Justin and Austin.