Bataan

Bataan was organized as a province in 1757 and guarded the approach to Manila Bay. Before the 1941 Japanese invasion, the Americans kept it as a military reservation for defending the fortress island of Corregidor, storing nearly a million gallons of gasoline and munitions there. The peninsula's military significance was fatally confirmed in 1941–1942.

Memory of the war is the central cultural fact of Bataan. The province marks April 9 as Araw ng Kagitingan with ceremonies at the Death March memorials, the Mount Samat National Shrine, and military cemeteries. Veterans organizations — dwindling now as the last survivors pass — have held the memory alive for decades.

Mount Samat

The Dambana ng Kagitingan (Shrine of Valor) atop Mount Samat is the dominant symbol of Bataan's war history. The 92-meter Latin cross visible from Manila Bay marks the summit, and a museum and memorial complex at the base documents the battle. The view from the cross arm, reached by elevator, covers the entire peninsula and Manila Bay.

Bataan Economic Zone

Post-war Bataan developed into an industrial corridor along Manila Bay. The Bataan Export Processing Zone in Mariveles, planned from 1969 on land where shipyard workers' communities had stood, brought manufacturing employment and migrant workers from across Luzon. The industrial character of the coastal towns contrasts with the forested interior and the memorial sites in the uplands.

Bataan's food reflects its position as a Central Luzon province with a long coastline on Manila Bay. Seafood — crabs, shrimp, fish — from the bay is central to local cooking. The province also has an agricultural interior producing rice, vegetables, and livestock.

Tagalog is the primary language of Bataan, spoken throughout the province. Bataan Tagalog has its own character — distinct from Manila Tagalog and showing some influence from the Kapampangan-speaking areas of Pampanga to the north.

Kapampangan, the language of about 4 percent of the people, is spoken in some communities in the northern municipalities bordering Pampanga; Kapampangans settled eastern Bataan before Tagalogs, mostly from Cavite, arrived. Trade and intermarriage have produced bilingual households in the border areas.

English has a strong presence in Bataan, partly because of the province's history with American forces and partly because of the export processing zones, where English is the working language for international business.

Bataan is a half-day drive from Manila and increasingly easy to reach via the SCTEX and BCLEX expressways. The province is manageable as a day trip from the capital, though staying overnight allows time for the shrines, the coast, and the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant tour.

Bataan's forested interior is protected in Bataan National Park, set up in 1945 and now covering 23,688 hectares around Mount Natib. It has rivers, springs and waterfalls such as Pasukulan and Dunsulan, flowers and ground orchids, and wild monkeys and birds, and BirdLife International lists it as an Important Bird Area. On the western coast, which faces the South China Sea, Bagac and Morong have beaches with coral reef in good condition, and hawksbill, olive ridley and green turtles nest there. The Ibong Dayo festival in Balanga each February celebrates migratory birds.

Olive Ridley Sea Turtle

Lepidochelys olivacea

Vulnerable

The pawikan most often seen nesting at Morong, which is its largest known egg-laying site in the Philippines. Females come ashore at night between about September and February and bury clutches of ping-pong-ball-sized eggs in the sand.

Field note: Never collect turtle eggs; report nesting turtles to the Pawikan Conservation Center or the DENR.

Philippine Long-tailed Macaque

Macaca fascicularis philippensis

Near Threatened (Philippine subspecies)

A subspecies of the crab-eating macaque, known as matsing or unggoy, found only in the Philippines. Wild monkeys live in the forests of Bataan National Park.

Field note: Do not feed wild monkeys; feeding makes them aggressive and dependent on people.

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The Turtles of Morong

On the beaches of Barangay Nagbalayong in Morong, the people who guard sea turtle nests once dug them up for a living. Since 1999, a community group of former egg collectors, Bantay Pawikan, has run the Pawikan Conservation Center there. Morong is the largest known nesting site of the olive ridley in the country: from about October, some 200 turtles come ashore over five months and lay around 19,000 eggs. Volunteers dig the eggs up, rebury them in a guarded hatchery, and patrol about seven kilometers of coast, in the same barangay as the nuclear plant that never ran. Every November, the Pawikan Festival celebrates the hatchlings' release.