Jan. 28 (Tribune News Service) — Pvt. Oscar Avery Cox and other Bataan prisoners of war endured harsh conditions during World War II, including a miles-long march through hell.

Despite the adversity, Cox and three fellow POWs decided it was worth risking their lives to protect a piece of fabric that meant more to them than life itself: the American flag.

While experiencing the 65-mile Bataan Death March in the Philippines, where the men dealt with sweltering heat and smelled death, they passed a folded American flag to one another. They moved from place to place, protecting it despite the inherent dangers they faced. After arriving at Fukuoka Prison Camp No. 17 in Japan, the group hid the flag in a coal mine they worked in, New Mexico Military Museum Director Laureta Huit said.

After the unconditional surrender of Japan on Sept. 2, 1945, Cox, realizing the camp was abandoned, picked up the flag, went to the center of the camp, took down the Japanese flag and put up the American flag, “solidifying American victory in the minds of all his fellow POWs,” she said.

The American flag Cox hoisted up at the prison camp, along with the Japanese flag taken down at the camp that Cox and the three other POWs signed, and a flag retrieved from camp commandant Asao Fukuhara’s cabin, will be part of a new New Mexico Military Museum exhibit titled “Flags of Freedom: Honoring the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Our Bataan Prisoners of War.”

Cox’s family donated the flags to the museum, and “we will display them and recognize the significance” of the sacrifices the men made, New Mexico Military Museum Foundation Board Chairman Jack Fox said.

“What we’re doing is recognizing the anniversary of the end of World War II and the release of Americans who were prisoners of war,” he said.

‘Really a New Mexico story’

Cox and his fellow POWs were a part of the 200th Coast Artillery that was made up of 1,816 New Mexico National Guard members.

The whole Bataan experience is “really a New Mexico story,” Fox said.

“It’s a horrific story,” he said, “but it’s also a story of courage and the American spirit.”

Along with Filipino troops, Cox and other American soldiers were defending the Bataan peninsula when it fell to the Japanese military in April 1942.

“Those soldiers fought for as long as they could,” Fox said. “Finally, there was no other option there. They were out of food and out of ammo.”

During the Bataan Death March and their subsequent imprisonment at places such as Fukuoka Prison Camp No. 17, 829 men from the regiment died or were missing. Though they were freed in 1945, a third of the survivors died within a year from injuries or disease, according to the New Mexico History Museum.

At 5 p.m. Thursday, there will be an opening reception at the museum, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, in Santa Fe. During the event, Huit and author Hampton Sides will talk about the liberation of the Bataan prisoners of war. One of Sides’ books, “Ghost Soldiers,” examined the raid at Cabanatuan in the Philippines. On Jan. 30, 1945, the U.S. Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas raided a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Cabanatuan, helping free hundreds of prisoners.

Several weeks earlier, the Palawan Massacre took place in the Philippines, where 139 American POWs were killed by Japanese soldiers, according to the Soldiers Memorial Military Museum. This caused U.S. forces to get nervous and to “develop a sense of urgency,” Huit said.

“The massacre triggered the urgency to (carry out) the raid and rescue at Cabanatuan, becoming the first significant event for the eventual release of other POWs and the end of the war in the Pacific,” she said.

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