Exchange Supports Marchers Who Honored Bataan Heroes

HR’s Jasmin Galceran, right, from Fort Bliss, Texas, helps serve customers in the White Sands Missile Range troop store.

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. – Against the backdrop of the San Andres Mountains, Exchange associates from Fort Bliss, Texas, and New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range supported a record 8,600 people from throughout the world who marched 26 miles through the high desert with one message: Remember the fallen of the Bataan Death March.

This year’s Bataan Memorial Death March, which was open to the public last month, drew active-duty service members, retirees, Wounded Warriors and civilians who participated to honor heroic military members who defended the Philippine Islands during World War II before being overwhelmed by the Japanese.

The Battle of Bataan was the first major military campaign of the Asian theater in World War II after the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Bataan Death March in 1942 was the forcible, 65-mile march of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war to confinement camps throughout the Philippines. More than 1,000 Americans to 9,000 Filipinos died during the march.

Stocking up 

The Exchange’s White Sands troop store arranged for the delivery of extra merchandise and with vendors for product demonstrations and giveaways for the influx of extra customers.

HR’s Jasmin Galceran and Bertha Hilleary from Fort Bliss helped associates at the troop store with stocking, bagging and running cash registers to ensure they met the needs of so many customers.

“White Sands is so remote and isolated that this weekend is their equivalent to Black Friday,” said General Manager Michael Brennan, who oversees Exchange operations at Fort Bliss, Holloman AFB, N.M., and White Sands. “We are very proud of how the team came together to support the installation.”

Sales at the troop store for the three-day weekend topped $75,000, compared to nearly $69,000 last year and $51,000 in 2016.

View photos of how the Exchange supported this year’s Bataan Memorial Death March. In addition, view photos in the Exchange’s Flickr history album of exchanges in the Philippines after the country was retaken from the Japanese. Go to the “post-World War II” category.