60 mile trek honoring a survivor
By Dave Moller, davem@theunion.com
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12:01 a.m. PT May 8, 2008
A lot of people try to live vicariously through their children, but many don't follow in their parents footsteps anymore.
That isn't the case for Francisco Lovato, 60, of Nevada County, who will walk 60 miles to Sacramento starting Friday morning in honor of his father, a survivor of the infamous Bataan Death March and the atom bombing of Nagasaki.
"The death march lasted about 60 miles, and he didn't talk about it when I was growing up," Francisco said about his father, Frank Lovato, 87. "He would just put his head down and nod and say, 'It was hell.'"
A friend prompted Francisco to get his father's World War II story about 10 years ago and it culminated in "Survivor," a self-published book he is promoting through the walk. He figures it will take him three days to get from Penn Valley to Sacramento on mostly trails.
When Francisco began interviewing his father, who now lives in Albuquerque, N.M., he realized he was getting stories that were filled with gaps. After doing research on the march in the Philippines where an estimated 6,000 to 18,000 American and Filipino soldiers died from starvation, torture and beheadings, Francisco got a better feel.
The author also realized he had not captured his father's feelings about certain events and eventually went over everything with him again on a more emotional level. That's where he found out things like the night Frank and 17 other soldiers were lined up for possible execution because two other prisoners had escaped.
Angered at first, Frank was then gripped with fear and eventually calm, playing his harmonica before the inevitable. At dawn when the prisoners figured they were dead men, a Japanese soldier rode up on a bicycle and said a general had called the killings off.
"I got through with spirituality and a love of God and country," Frank said this week. "Blood was flowing like water. I saw so many people beheaded and killed."
He survived the march and terrible prison camp conditions.
Frank also was at Nagasaki when the second atomic bomb was dropped.
"I wasn't hit by the radiation because the wind was blowing the other way," Frank said. "I'm just fortunate to be alive."
The book arrived this week and Francisco hasn't had time to offer it to the area's many book stores. To order one, go online to www.survivorbook.com or call the author at 477-1519 or on his cell phone at 863-0988.
