Written by John Duresky
After we ran our VBC Magazine piece asking “When is V-J Day?” I heard from historian John Duresky, co-author (with David Britt) of Relentless Hope: A True Story of War and Survival about Bataan Death March survivor Chester Britt. John noticed the radio in our V-J Day photo from 1945 matches a set he’s studied in a 1942 image from Bataan. Here’s what John had say about these two moments, America’s nadir in the Philippines and the war’s end.
Scratch the surface in any photo from WWII, and you never know what you will find.
I read the VBC Magazine post, “When Is V-J Day?”, and immediately recognized the radio in the 1945 photo of Marines crowding around a set for surrender news. I’d seen that radio faceplate before. Years earlier I’d studied a 1942 photo from Bataan showing soldiers hunched over a small receiver, straining for hope as the siege tightened. Same maker, same family of sets—two bookends to the war’s story.
Combat in the Philippines began only hours after Pearl Harbor. Weather delayed the Japanese strike there, but once it came, American soldiers, sailors, and airmen—and their Filipino allies—fought four months against the Empire’s air, sea, and ground power with almost no resupply or hope of reinforcement. They made do with what they had: outmoded weapons; World War I–era shells, bombs, and grenades that often failed to detonate; too little medicine; too little food. Few U.S. photos escaped the islands, and those that did mostly showed the grim faces of the defenders of Bataan and Corregidor.
In the Bataan photo I analyze, the radio is a Hallicrafters Sky Buddy S-19R. The dial is set near 570, where the men could pull in KGEI from San Francisco—the lone American station they could hear. That broadcast brought news, music, and a few minutes’ relief to men who were hungry, sick, and exhausted. One evening, war correspondent Frank Hewlett sat playing cards and listening to KGEI with 1st Lt. Reginald M. Polk of Texas; Hewlett later wrote the famous “Battling Bastards of Bataan” verse and survived the war, while Polk died with 1,772 others in the Arisan Maru hell-ship sinking on October 24, 1944.
Only one man in the Bataan radio photo is firmly identified: the soldier at left holding the M1 Garand, Capt. Albert Laverne “Duke” Fullerton, who survived the war. Given that roughly 40% of Americans held by Imperial Japan died in captivity, odds are that one or more of the other men in that picture did not make it home. This may be the only known Bataan or Corregidor image that shows Americans listening to a radio in real time.
The VBC V-J Day photo shows Marines bunched around another Hallicrafters, a Skyrider Marine 22R, tuning for word of Japan’s surrender. Same maker, similar layout, but the faces are different: elbow-to-elbow anticipation and relief instead of Bataan’s gaunt concentration. Placed side by side, the two sets link the opening months of America’s Pacific war to its closing moments, photographic bookends.
Two radios, two tables, two crowds. The first helped sustain men in the last days before Bataan fell on April 9, 1942; the second delivered the news that the killing would end.
To learn more, watch Dan Owen’s updated music video with annotated images, “The Battling Bastards of Bataan (Updated 2025)” and also explore the materials at our Facebook group, Philippines MIA Search and Recovery Project.
