More than fourteen hundred New Mexicans fought with the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment defending the Philippines and the Bataan Peninsula at the beginning of World War II. Before the war started, the War Department cited the 200th as the best anti-aircraft regiment in the United States Army, and the regiment later received the Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation with two Oak Leaf Clusters for its heroic performance during the battle. General Jonathan Wainwright credited the 200th with being the first unit to fire on the enemy and the last organized unit still fighting at the time of its surrender. After the ordered surrender in 1942, New Mexico had the highest per capita Japanese prisoner of war population in the nation. At Veterans Park in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the Bataan Death March Memorial Walkway includes barefoot impressions of thirty-eight survivors, made by pressing rubber castings of the men's bare feet into wet cement.