BATAAN LEGACY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Bataan Legacy Historical Society (BLHS) was founded in 2012 to address the lack of information on the Filipino veterans of WWII in the Philippines. It became a 501(c)(3) in 2014 (Federal Tax ID 46-5373351). Its goals are to include WWII in the Philippines in the history/social sciences curriculum in high schools throughout the United States and the Philippines.

Since 2014, BLHS has worked successfully with the California Department of Education to include WWII in the Philippines in the U.S. history curriculum framework in high schools in California. This was approved for inclusion in the Grade 11 U.S. history (part of Chapter 16) on July 14, 2016. California now leads the rest of the country in teaching this seminal part of U.S. and World history to high school students. BLHS aims to replicate this in other states and in the Philippines.

In 2017 BLHS started the next phase of its project to help implement the WWII in the Philippines curriculum. Sample lesson plans using primary documents were created by California high school history teachers in accordance with the California Common Core Standards. These are now available through the BLHS website.

BLHS also organizes annual events to educate the public about WWII in the Philippines.
Since 2012, it has organized the Bataan Death March Commemoration in the Bay Area around April 9 and since 2015, it has organized the annual WWII in the Philippines Conference in San Francisco. It also organizes exhibitions to educate the public about WWII in the Philippines.