A PAF HERO'S STORY: A great story of Anthony James Bautista (The son of LTC ANTONIO BAUTISTA, PAFFS/ PAFACES Class of 1958.

A PAF HERO'S STORY: A great story of Anthony James Bautista (The son of LTC ANTONIO BAUTISTA, PAFFS/ PAFACES Class of 1958.


prominent pilot of the Blue Diamonds ang Golden Sabres Aerobatic Teams and a hero of the AFP counter-insurgency operations in the early 1970s, the PAF Air Base at Puerto Princesa, Palawan was named after him in honor of his sacrifice) about his dad...

"To commemorate Araw ng Kagitingan allow me to tell a Love Story that speaks of courage, destiny, and Poetic Justice.

In 1942, During World War 2, there was a fenced internment camp holding Filipino and American POW's in Los Baños, Laguna. 

A small bread delivery boy used to crawl under the fence to hand over bread to the prisoners. 

This was dangerous because the Japs had this tendency of bayoneting bothersome children. 

The boy's mother pleaded with her son to stop, but the boy was brave and persistent and continued to defy the Japanese invaders in his own small way.

Jordan Thomas was an American prisoner interred at that camp in Los Baños.

 It is possible that he received bread from that boy back then. 

Later Jordan Thomas was transferred to Santo Tomas internment camp and sadly, died there.

 Jordan was survived by his wife and children who were kept safely away by guerillas in Negros.

 When the liberation forces arrived in 1944, Jordan’s legacy continued when his daughter, Alice Bess, gave birth to a bouncing baby girl.

Twenty Years later that brave young boy grew up, joined the Phil Air Force and became a renowned fighter pilot.

 As part of his duties as member of the elite Blue Diamonds aerobatic team he was assigned as escort in an Air Force sponsored Beauty Pageant. 

There he met and instantly fell in love with the beauty queen whom he was assigned to escort.

 Lovely lass from Negros, she was the granddaughter of the American prisoner whom he had given bread to all those many years ago!

It would be poetic justice to think that a starving American prisoner was once fed by a young boy, and the boy later grew up to marry his granddaughter. Alice Jane THOMAS-Rigor.

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