David Tejada

David Tejada was born on December 22, 1922 in Pangasinan, Philippines to Loreto and Julianna Tejada and spent most of his early life at Fort McKinley where his father was in the Philippine Scouts. He enlisted in the Scouts right out of high school and WWII soon broke out. At 19, David and his father survived the Bataan Death March and were held as POWs at Camp O'Donnell, witnessing many atrocities that would remain with him his entire life. In the camp he and his father fell ill with malaria and dysentery. He and his father ultimately were released due to illness. David worked for the Red Cross when he was captured again by Japanese forces to work in a mine. He would escape and join the guerrillas until the end of the war. After the war, he learned that his father had been killed.

In 1946, while in Leyte, Tejada met his wife, Herminia. They married that year and would have five children together.

Tejada suffered terrible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) most of his life, yet provided for Herminia and their children. When he retired after nearly 40 years as an electrician with the Military Sealift Command (Department of Defense), he started volunteering at the VA Hospital in San Francisco. He loved bringing donuts to patients, and spending time with them. From there, his volunteerism and veteran advocacy grew.

In his late 60s, he joined a PTSD group at the VA. 40 years after the war, he was finally getting help. He then sought out other Filipino veterans to join the group, driving many of them to the meetings. He would get them to volunteer and join him as he got active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, American Ex-POWs, Philippine Scouts Heritage Society, and Bataan Legacy Historical Society. He helped them apply for benefits, often driving them to appointments and helping them complete paperwork.

Mr. Tejada was profiled by the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGATE in 2014:

David Tejada… started talking about his Bataan experiences a few years ago, after he sought treatment through the Veterans Administration for post-traumatic stress disorder. Talking to other veterans has been enormously helpful, he said.

He saw pregnant women bayoneted, girls raped, friends and relatives executed, and countless others starved to death. But it's not those incidents that gave him nightmares in later years, or what drove him to seek help.

It was a brief incident on a boxcar at the end of the march. He was jammed on the train with more than 100 other men, packed so tightly and in such excruciating heat that many died on the train, wedged among their fellow prisoners. The train slowed for a minute, and a woman ran over with a basket of cooked chicken. She gave it to Tejada and said, "Can you give this to my son?"

"I grabbed it and 100 other guys also grabbed it," he said, his face wincing at the memory. "I took two pieces and gave the rest to the group. I never gave it to her son. I didn't even know who her son was. But I felt so guilty - I thought maybe he died because I never found him. I had nightmares about that for 40 years.

"But then the psychologist at the VA said I didn't need to feel guilty anymore," he said. "He said I probably saved my own life. ... I think we all just wanted to survive."