Nov 11 2012

Today we went to our first stake conference at the Marikina Philippines Stake building it was a very good meeting. It was all in English so we understood all the talks. the first speaker was the stake President Jose G Manarin he urged the members to attend the temple and pray for inspiration concering there callings in there wards then he told of his vision for the stake and how he prayed before going to the temple then he talked about how he would like the stake to move in the direction that the lord had inspired him . Sister Kayla H Delamare spoke to us she is the wife of the President of the Quezon city mission then President David Delamare spoke to us. Then sister Marcia Nielson  spoke to us she is the wife of Elder Brent H Nielson of the Quorum of the seventy they both gave excellent talks we felt like our time there was well spent. We latter in the day went to the American War Memorial Cemetery it is a beautiful memorial to the men who were kill in the wars that took place in the Philippine islands Ann and I took out camera but when we got there we found out that batteries were dead so our friend Alice Jones emailed me some of the pictures she took so I will try to get them on this blog tomorrow.
The Manila American Cemetery and Memorial is beautifully landscaped and well maintained it is very moving to realize the terrible destruction and lose of life that took place here and on the islands of the pacific
Simultaneous Japanese surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines led to the war. Japanese forces conquered parts of Asia but were set back in the Philippine Islands. Fierce defenses by US Army and  Philippine Army and Philippine scouts held off Japanese assaults for six months and enabled the start of the US offensive operations in the Pacific. one of the horrible stories we read about was the Bataan death march. the US forces surrendered in Bataan on March 9 1942 the next day 76,000 prisoners of war including 12,000 Americans made a brutal 65 mile walk to a prison camp, thousands died on the march.
the death rate of POWs was extremely high .Of the nearly 30,000 Americans captured in the Philippines more than 11,000 died in captivity.It was terrible to read all the names of soldiers most of which were missing in action there are 36,286 who gave there lives in in the service of there country, including 21 metal of honor recipients.