Norman Reyes
He had been bedridden for several months following a stroke.
Reyes was one of two men who operated a guerrilla radio station in Bataan, west of Manila, to rally Filipino and American defenders of the peninsula against Japanese invaders.
His was the voice heard by Filipinos and American soldiers that announced the fall of Bataan on April 9, 1942.
"Bataan has fallen. The Filipino and American troops on this war-ravaged and blood-stained peninsula laid down their arms," he said. "With heads bloodied but unbowed, they have yielded to the superior forces of the enemy."
A recording of Reyes' announcement was played repeatedly Jan. 8 on Manila television stations to mark his death.
The Philippines, then a U.S. colony, was among the first targets of Japanese invasion after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Overwhelmed by the onslaught, American commanders in the Manila area decided to retreat to Bataan, west of the capital, believing that U.S. reinforcements would soon land along its shores.
But the U.S. fleet never came, and the peninsula instead turned into a trap from which the starving American and Filipino troops could not escape.
After their surrender on Bataan, about 70,000 U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war were forced by Japanese soldiers to make the nearly 160-kilometer (100-mile) "Death March" to a prison camp in Capas in Tarlac province. Only about 54,000 made it. Many were randomly killed, sometimes decapitated, by the Japanese or fell dead from fatigue and illness along the way.
Reyes was captured and taken to Tokyo, where he was compelled to do war propaganda for Japan. He was tried in the United States on suspicion of being a Japanese spy, but was cleared of the charges.
He later became an American citizen, returning to the Philippines in 1996.
His cremated remains were to be taken back to his home in Honolulu by his wife, Farida.
