For aging veterans, recognition long overdue.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

By all rights, Omar McGuire of Eugene should have died in World War II.

He was stationed in the Philippines, serving in the Army Air Corps when the Japanese bombed the island nation. He lived, only to be taken prisoner and forced on the horrific sojourn that became known as the Bataan Death March.

He survived, only to come down with dysentery and malaria in a camp where hundreds died. He regained his strength and was shipped to Japan where he worked in a massive steel mill, a compound the size of Eugene and Springfield combined. There he was bombed and injured by U.S. planes.

McGuire at 85 is still broad-shouldered and tall, though age is having its way with him now, turning his once-dark hair white and slowing him down some. Though the war is a long-gone chapter in his life, there's a piece missing: He never received the medals that marked his service, the Purple Heart for his injuries and the medal acknowledging his years as a prisoner of war.

That will change on Tuesday. At a ceremony in Salem, Gov. Ted Kulongoski, with help from McGuire's wife, Lucy-Le, will present him the medals. The 1 p.m. observance will happen in Kulongoski's ceremonial office.

McGuire joined the service in November 1940, a year before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. After boot camp, he was sent to an air base just outside Manila in the Philippines.

It was a worse place to be than Hawaii. After the Japanese had bombed the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor, they moved on to the Philippines and, instead of attacking and leaving, they attacked and then attacked some more. Despite spirited defense by U.S. and Filipino troops, the Japanese won out after months of fighting.

"It was hard fought to the last battle. The Japanese overcame us. They had us outnumbered. We surrendered rather than face wholesale annihilation," McGuire said.

The 1942 journey that became known as the Bataan Death March is only 65 miles as the crow flies, McGuire said, a distance a good soldier could cover in a day. But the soldiers had survived months on half- and then quarter-rations during the fighting. The Japanese didn't seem to care whether they lived or died.

"They were merciless," McGuire said. "They would shoot people who wanted to get water, or bayonet them for no reason."

While some details of that ordeal have faded with time, others are still crystal clear.

McGuire recalls one night being packed into a shed made of corrugated metal. It was small, perhaps the size of a two-bedroom house, but the Japanese shoved hundreds of prisoners inside, packed so tight they couldn't sit or lie down.

Worried that there might not be enough air, McGuire stayed close to a wall where two pieces of metal siding came together with a gap that provided him whiffs of fresh air.

He still recalls the desperate sounds of the men that night.

"I would not be able to describe it," he said. "A lot of them were trying to talk and not able to do it. It was a kind of animal sound. It sounded more like animals than people."

On the march, McGuire saw the best and worst of men. Fellow soldiers tried to steal his canteen of water. Other soldiers propped up men so weak they could no longer walk, knowing that to fall was to be shot.

Life in prison camps was tough but McGuire discovered that work brought food. Even as he battled malaria and dysentery, he helped build bridges and pave runways. He eventually wound up with other prisoners on a ship to Japan, where he would work in a steel mill in the city of Kokura.

It was there that he was wounded when U.S. bombers attacked the steel mill in 1945.

"I was walking into this building when the whole world blew up," he said.

But the attack that injured him was also a blessing in disguise. The steel mill fires sent dense smoke over the city, obscuring it from the bomber assigned to drop the second atomic bomb. The pilot flew to his second-choice target, Nagasaki.

The war ended shortly after that and the prisoners were shipped to the Philippines, where they were processed for home.

McGuire could have requested medals then. But all he wanted was to get stateside and get on with his life.

Back home in Pasadena, Calif., he met his wife at a dance. "There was this pretty little redhead," he said. "She was feisty."

They married. He got a job as a postal carrier. They had five children, all boys, two of whom served in the Army during the Vietnam War era - one in Iceland, the other in Germany.

McGuire isn't sure how or why he survived, but it was a subject that engrossed the prisoners, he recalled.

`We discussed among ourselves, what is it going to take to live through this? One fellow said, `It's your attitude,' and I agreed.'

An optimist by nature, McGuire found that his natural disposition was helpful. "No matter how desperate the situation, there is almost always some ray of hope, some reason to keep on going," he said.

McGuire hasn't talked a lot about his war experiences. He's not reticent. He'll answer if people ask. But the medals - the Purple Heart for his injury, the POW medal for his time in captivity - they're a bit of a legacy, he said, and he looks forward to receiving them.

"It's a nice thing to pass on to the grandchildren," he said.

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