A World War II lecture and documentary screening brought around 200 people to the Bacolod City Government Center earlier this week as part of the Araw ng Kagitingan observance in the city.

United States National Archives head researcher Marie Vallejo discussed “Finding Our Heroes: The Brigadier General Francisco Licuanan, Jr. Memorial Collection, Philippine Guerrilla Files from the US National Archives;” and presented “Memories of our Heroes from World War II,” a digitized version of the Philippine Archives Collection at the National Archives.

“We want to [instill] a sense of nationalism through the untold stories in these records,” Vallejo said.

She added, 280,000 items of record have been scanned, uploaded, and made available to researchers, history teachers, and libraries.

Among those in attendance included veterans and their families, researchers, teachers, among others./WDJ