SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. (KGUN) — There’s a remarkable history behind a veteran who just passed away in Benson. Paul Kerchum died just short of his 103 birthday. He lived a long life of service after surviving World War Two’s infamous Bataan Death March.
The Veterans Cemetery near Fort Huachucais where the Army and the Air Force came together to honor one of their oldest veterans who survived one of the deadliest parts of World War 2 and went on to a long military career.
A motorcycle escort, an A-10 flyover, Honor Guards from the Air Force, and from the Army
Honored the remarkable life and service of retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Paul Kerchum.
Kerchum is believed to be the last American Serviceman who endured the Bataan Death March in World War Two. When the Japanese took that Phillippine Island, troops were already weak and starving after four months of the enemy blocking supplies of food and medicine.
The Japanese forced 13 thousand American Troops and 63 thousand Filipino soldiers to march 65 miles to a prison camp. Anyone who stopped would be killed.
The Army estimates between seven and ten thousand soldiers died on the march.
Troops who survived were pressed into slave labor, sometimes moved by ship to other locations.
Jeremy Gypton was teaching history in Vail when Paul Kerchum would visit and share the hard history he lived.
"My students would always ask him, ‘Why do you think you survived’? And there was something about him once you talk to him for five minutes. There was a kind of positivity and a spring in his step. There was a life and you just recognize that's the guy who would make it through something as horrible as that.”
The Air Force recorded Kerchum describing how the Japanese later put him and many others on a ship headed to a labor camp—a ship American forces did not know had American Prisoners of War on board
Kerchum said, “We spent 18 horrendous days and nights running all over the South China Sea being chased by American submarines.”
After Kerchum was freed he re-enlisted, this time in the Army Air Corps, which later became the Air Force. There he rose to Chief Master Sergeant before he left the Air Force and built a life in Cochise County.
Steve Chavez was one of the American Legion motorcycle riders who felt honored to escort Paul Kerchum’s hearse.
He says, "He was just a good guy. I mean, just a precious person. Somebody that you meet once in a lifetime. And that's the kind of guy he was, you'll never forget him once you met him.”
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