Captured: The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines, 1941-1945

9. Angels and Tanks: Rescue Comes

Angels and Tanks Rescue Comes The cavalry arrived in February. From the out-of-the-jaws-ofdeath raid on Los Bafios camp to the simple retreat of the guards at Old Bilibid Prison, no rescue duplicated another, and, predictably, internee reactions varied widely as well. The threat to internee lives also seemed to shift, from the rumor of a Japanese "kill order" to an innocuous evaporation of guards. Santo Tomas internees (and, incidentally, those in Old Bilibid Prison as well) sat on the north edge of the Battle for Manila only one kilometer from the front lines at the Pasig River. Snipers, fallingshrapnel, and misplaced artilleryshells were a common danger, while later at STIC, over 240 internees ended up as hostages in order to secure safe passage to their own lines for the remaining Japa260 9 Angels and Tanks 261 nese in camp. Despite these differences, American-led forces liberated all three camps with very few Allied or guerrilla deaths and over 5,000 internees rescued, although the local Filipinos near the camps did not fare so well, especially at Los Banos. To realize the full significance of these numbers, it is important to understand in general what was going on militarilyat the time. Considered within this context, the rescues seem even more astounding in both their planning and their execution. June 1944 witnessed the approach of American troops to the Philippines. That month s Battle of the Philippine Sea, called by a former Japanese naval officer "a devastating defeat/' was the prelude to the actual invasion of the islands, and it cost the Japanese heavily in terms of trained personnel, especially valuable air crews (Koyanagi,357). October 1944 brought the U.S. landing at Leyte and later that month the Battle for Leyte Gulf, the 'largest naval battle in history/' and, according to Ogawa, the worst military disaster in the history of Japan, resulting in the crucial loss of most of the Japanese fleet, including two of the worlds largest warships (33). By mid-December 1944, U.S. Armed Forces had landed on Mindoro, just south of Luzon, putting the United States in position for the early January 1945 landing at Lingayen Gulf. The Battle for Manila followed, with U.S. troops fighting in the surrounding areas, as well as on the outskirts of the city, from street to street and, finally, from house to house. The battle began in early February and didn't end until early March with the first clearing of Manila Bay (Owens, xi-xii). The other islands with substantial Japanese forces fell one after the other: Palawan (February 28,1945); Panay (March 18); Cebu (March 26);Negros (March 29); Bohol (April 4); and Mindanao (April 12) (Pomeroy, 134). It was during this militarychaos and the Battle for Manila that the rescues took place. Combat veterans (such as the Eleventh Airborne Division) from New Guinea and points south of the Philippines, as well as those from other units, were pulled out of the fighting for Manila and sent to rescue the internees (Flanagan, "Jove >" 43-44). In light of the apparent strategic importance of Manila and the rest of Luzon to the strategy of MacArthur s Pacific War effort, it seems strange that MacArthur would deploy fully seasoned combat troops for rescue rather than for the continued reconquest of Luzon. Los Banos, for example, had little strategic importance; taking the camp would achieve nothing militarily (Bailey , 54). To deliver Santo Tomas, Bilibid Prison, and Malacanan Palace, a "flying column" of 700 men (an element of the Eighth Regiment, First Brigade , of the First Cavalry Division, motorized), of which 200 would go to Santo Tomas, would have to strike out ahead of the main body and risk being 262 Captured isolated and possibly surrounded by the Japanese (Bailey, 54; Williams, 207; Hartendorp, II, 531). Why did rescue operations have a higher priority than military needs? The answer lies inside one of the more opaque questions of the Luzon campaign: whether the threat of future Japanese massacres of internees and POWs was imminent. MacArthur himself seems to suggest the probability as he explains in his Reminiscences: I was deeply concerned about the thousands of prisoners who had been interned at the various camps on Luzon since the early days of the war. Shortly after the Japanese had taken over the islands, they had gathered Americans, British and other Allied Nationals, including women and children, in...