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Amerikanitos, life during the japanese occupation of the philippines
Too often we learn about historical events from texts that were written after piles of
primary documentation have been scoured clean of the participants' voices, analyzed and a
story constructed from the scattered minutiae. This is done in part to assist others in the
understanding of a particular event through an attempt to focus on the more important
details and some effort made at impartiality. The following story is a departure from the
above. It is Aling* Leonie's story. She has been generous enough to be honest and
forthcoming about events that have touched her life during an important historical event
which she leaves to posterity. Her story honors the memory of those who suffered during
the war. We would like to add that her story does honor to herself as well. (Although her
story is told here in the first person, it is derived from interviews with her).
* aling is a Filipino term of respect for an elder woman who is not related to you.
So you want to know what life was like in the Philippines back then? Back under the
Japanese? Well, let me tell you what happened. I was a young woman then. The son of a
sergeant in the American forces. I was born in 1924, the second daughter of Marcelo
Faulve and Segunda Alborida. My story really begins with them:
A Courtship from Yesteryear
Even though Segunda was a young bride by our standards today, she had already been a
mother since she was tenyears old. It didn't happen the way you might surmise. Her elder
sister died during childbirth, and Segunda became responsible for the child for the eighteen
years, when she married. I'll tell you more about them later. From 1922 to 1945, my
parents had twelve children including me. All but two, who died during their infancy, are
still alive today [January, 1997]. I am the eldest surviving daughter.
Life Amongst the Philippine Scouts at Fort McKinley
In 1926 my father, Corporal Faulve of the Philippine Scouts, was transferred to Fort
[William] McKinley. He was given the nickname, "chicken doctor", because of the skills he
picked up after having studied agriculture at the Los Baños School of Agriculture [now the
University of the Philippines, Los Baños]. Before long he was promoted to Sergeant and
was given a new nickname. He boxed a higher ranking officer and was demoted for three
months before having his rank reinstated, but was also given the new nickname, "bully".
My father was a very industrious man, who was always trying to learn something new. He
was a high school graduate at a time when it was uncommon, he learned stenotyping at
Greg Institute, he studied baking so that he would be promoted to Staff Sergeant, and he
was placed in charge of the first motorized unit at the 14th Engineers of Fort McKinley after
studying automotive engineering at an army school in Manila.
It was nice growing up in the base at Fort McKinley. The children were all very close and
had no malice towards each other. School was segregated so the Filipino children were
educated in one place and the whites were educated in another. Our teachers were Filipino,
but there was an American army man who would occasionally visit the classroom to
supervise. There was a little rivalry between the American children and us and we would
tease and fight each other when they came to learn industrial arts which was in our part of
the school only. Sometimes we would play hooky so we could go pick blackberries on a
tree behind the "Prophylactic Station". We didn't know what "prophylactic" meant at that
time, but we knew how to read so we referred to the building by its sign. The military
police station was located next door to the Prophylactic Station and it overlooked a brook
which was our other favorite place to go when we played hooky so we had to be careful.
Sometimes we weren't careful enough and the MPs would grab us by our large collars and
haul us off to the principal's office.
Since my father was in the army, we had a very strict, regimented childhood. Every
morning before we entered our classrooms for school, a bell would ring, then we would
pledge allegiance to the American flag and sing "America the Beautiful." At 6 p.m. every
day, a bugler would play taps and everyone on the base would stop what they were doing,
place their hand over their heart and stand at attention facing the direction of the U.S. flag
which was being lowered. I never saw my father wearing anything other than his uniform
or his overalls which he wore when he was off duty. He had to sleep in the barracks when
he was on duty, but stayed with us in the soldiers' family housing when he was off duty.
Each house was allocated a small lot and we had a garden of sugar cane and vegetables, a
half dozen turkeys and a couple dozen chickens. My father would sell the chicken eggs in
Manila. The housing was divided into barrios just like the housing communities outside the
base throughout the Philippines.
In 1932, the army built new, duplex houses to replace the temporary housing that we all
lived in. We didn't have refrigerators so we had to get our daily ration of ice at noon from
the corner store to use in our ice box. The noncom [noncommissioned] officers were
given rations of fire wood. Doctors and medical men always inspected our homes for
cleanliness, sanitation, and fire hazards. One soldier's wife left something frying on her
stove when she went out to fetch her ice and the cogon (cogon is also known as "elephant
grass") caught on fire in her house. In the panic of the moment, her child grabbed a bottle
of clear liquid, thinking it was water, and sprayed the fire with gasoline. A couple of dozen
homes were destroyed in that fire including ours along with nearly everything we owned.
The only motorized transportation on the base at this time were these large 6x6 trucks (the
jeeps came right before the war). Whenever there was a typhoon the trucks would
transport us, but large molas [mules] were the most common form of transportation for
soldiers for most of the time we were at Fort McKinley. One time these white* soldiers who
were friends of my father put me up on top of one of these molas. They gave me an apple
and let me ride on its back as they exercised it. [* Filipinos commonly use the term "puti,
or "white," to refer to Europeans and EuroAmericans. This is most probably based on a
response to being called "brown" by the puti in the first place]
Rumors of an impending war with Japan began about a year or so before Pearl Harbor was
attacked and the Japanese invaded the Philippines. Japanese submarines had been seen off
the coast of Davao months or even a year before December, 1941. One day when my
mother was at the base store, she heard this incident unfold: A truck driver entered
through one of the gates of the base with a valid pass. The driver said he had to make a
rice delivery. The man who ran the store was a Chinese man and the driver of the rice
delivery truck and his passenger were believed to be Chinese as well for some reason, but
when the Chinese man at the store tried to speak Chinese to the two men they couldn't
understand him. He called the MPs and they took the two men away. I don't know if they
were actually spies or not, but there were many spies in the area at the time and the base
was almost defenseless because the soldiers were on maneuvers in Bataan for the annual
exercises held there.
[On November 26, 1941, the American military command in the Philippines was notified
that diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States were deteriorating rapidly
and that all troops should be alerted and prepared to meet a surprise attack.see below
The Wainwright Papers, Volume 1].
In August, 1941, my mother bore twin girls. It was a complicated delivery and she was
hospitalized for a period after the birth. My father was to be transferred to Mindanao in
early December and so he brought mother home from the hospital, but she was very weak
still. I did what I could to help and remember rocking back in forth on a chair at home with
the pair of twins, one on each arm and a bottle in each of their mouths. My father told us
that he expected a war to break out by March and that he had stockpiled some gasoline.
Before he left to Mindanao, around December fifth, my father was promoted to First
Lieutenant.
The Japanese Invasion
I was in Pasig, Rizal for my High School preliminaries [exams]. My friends and I had gone
to a Japanese run halohalo store [halohalo, or mixed up, is a traditional cold Philippine
desert] for our merienda [snack break] when we heard Harry Fenton's voice interrupt the
music we were listening to as he told us in English that the Japanese had bombed Pearl
Harbor. It was December 8th in the Philippines which is on the other side of the
international dateline from Hawaii [clocks in Hawaii are nineteen hours behind clocks in the
Philippines]. The attack announcement happened also to coincide with Fiesta, a religious
festival in honor of the local patron saint, and the streets were crowded with people. News
spread rapidly and the street scene evolved almost instantaneously from one of merriment
to panic, fear, and cries of "what to do?!" My first thought was that Fort McKinnley would be
attacked. Together with my friends I took the first streetcar I could. It was overflowing
with people who were in a hurry like I was to get home. I got off the street car when it ran
as close as the track did to the base and ran the rest of the way home. The MPs were on
alert and I saw cannons that I had never seen before, manned with soldiers who were
looking into the sky. I had never seen the cannons any place other than the two that were
positioned next to the flag pole for reveille. Some of the cannons were being loaded with
shells.
My mother was still sick and resting when I got home. She hadn't heard the news. Of
course she was shocked and frightened, and suggested that we pray. Before nighttime fell,
we were told to "keep the lights out, and keep quiet." During the night the siren sounded
and then there was a drone of planes. All at once there was a flashing of bright lights and a
thundered of bombs exploding. I held one twin and my mother held the other as we sat
together on an army bed. The springs of the bed broke during the commotion and we both
fell through the bed. We got up to wake everyone else. The planes came and went
throughout the night. The air was filled with their droning noise, sirens, the cannons firing
at them, machine guns firing, and explosions. During the daylight hours the skies would
darken with Japanese planes and the sirens would sound again warning us to hide. We
were told to get under the house. The housing had been built on an incline so there was
quite a large gap underneath part of our house.
We sawed a hole in the floor of our house and slid down the hole using the piece of floor
set at an angle as the slide. We lowered a table through the hole in the floor and covered it
with a blanket so we could use a flashlight without the Japanese seeing the light. Then we
put galvanized iron sheeting in the front of our little hideout to slow the path of bullets
should the Japanese shoot at our house from the street. We also had firewood that was
rationed to us so we could cook there underneath the house. I snuck out once to get cans
of milk from the PX for the baby twins and saw the soldiers running around in a panic
looking completely unorganized.
[The Japanese invasion of Luzon consisted of air attacks from December 9 through the
12th. On the evening of the twelfth, the Japanese were reported to be landing at Vigan in
Northern Luzon and Japanese naval forces were sited off Pangasinan Province heading
south.]
After a while we were informed that it wasn't safe underneath the house because the
Japanese might parachute to the ground. We could hear gunfire, but I didn't know what was
happening. We decided to abandon the house and go sleep outside with numerous other
families (about fifty) on the grass away from the houses and other buildings. There were
lots of rumors about deaths of soldiers and everyone was praying. We heard that gas
masks were being distributed at the community store so I went to get some for our family.
When I arrived, I was told that each family was only to receive one gas mask so I went
back to where our family was and told my mother. She told me, "Don't take one then. If
only one will live, the rest will die. We might as well all die together. So we'll pray, and
God will protect us."
Evacuation to the Province
The Red Cross came to evacuate us. We were soldiers' families so we weren't told where
we were going. We just followed orders. All we were permitted to take with us was three
sets of clothes and some food, but no other property. They loaded us into trucks and we
were taken to the train station in Pasig. When we got into the train, we were told to pull
down the blinds so that the Japanese could not see us. We kids peeked out the windows
anyway and saw lots of parachutes falling from the sky and prayed they wouldn't drop too
close to the station.
The train headed south from Manila and we stopped in Calamba the next morning where we
were each given coffee and two pieces of pan de sal [a biscuit]. I asked my friends to get
some rocks. We had learned that we were going to be stopping in Santa Cruz, so I quickly
wrote a note: "Dear Uncle, The Red Cross is taking us to Santa Cruz, but we don't know
where we'll be staying." I wrapped the note around the stone I had and waited for the train
to pass the station in Los Baños. My godmother owned a karinderia [eatery] at the train
station there, so at just the right moment I threw the stone out the window, yelling my
uncle's name and saying that it was for him.
We stayed at a school house in Santa Cruz while we waited for a bus that was suppose to
take us to Quezon Province. My cousin met us there and told the family to come with him
by train back to Los Baños where we were to stay in my uncle's house. The rest of the
evacuees continued on to Quezon, but I don't know if any of them survived. You see, the
Japanese had landed in Mabuan, Quezon Province but the Red Cross didn't know that.
We arrived in Los Baños after Christmas, it had been bombed and the streets had been
strafed with machine guns. There was a train already at the station that had been bombed.
There were also undetonated bombs still attached to their parachutes hanging on wires
around the train station. We heard that Manila was an open city, but didn't understand what
that meant and neither did the Japanese. At night the skyline was a strange orangeishred
color in the direction of Manila. News spread on the streets and from household to
household: "women should hide, children should also hide."
It was Christmas season, and although there was a war in progress around us, children
would sometimes play carelessly in the street. Japanese planes strafed the street when
they saw these children and some were wounded but luckily nobody was killed. I saw
bullets stuck in papaya and coconuts. Some bullets pierced the roof of my uncle's house,
went through the floor, and stuck in the bangka*. The local depot was looted and we got
our family's share of flour. Fox holes were dug under houses and in yards. When the
Americans arrived to liberate the internees in Los Baños they crushed some of the fox
holes, but nobody was in them at the time so nobody was hurt. [*a bangka is a single
outrigger boats used for fishing in the Laguna de Bay]
Before the Japanese soldiers came to Los Baños, we heard that a force of Koreanos, who
were said to be bigger and more fierce than the Japanese were about to arrive. I heard
that they were going to rape us, and kill us. We put black soot on our faces, messed up our
hair, dressed crazy, and acted crazy whenever we were in public so they would leave us
alone when they arrived. When we were home we would stay in a a foxhole we built on our
property.
The Japanese occupation forces arrived slowly. They took over some of the wealthier
residents' homes near the bay that were located on a hill overlooking Bayan [the civic
center of Los Baños] and setup there communications equipment there. More
communications equipment was setup in the center of our barrio, and soldiers setup camp
and supplies along the shores of the bay. Sometime later an internee camp setup at the
University of the Philippines Los Baños campus, but classes continued to be held in those
parts of the campus not taken over by the Japanese soldiers for use as the internee camp.
ProJapanese Filipinos were assembled into a force to assist the Japanese in the
administration of the barrios. We called them the "bamboo army" because they were only
permitted to carry bamboo poles as weapons. It was members of the "bamboo army" and
other proJapanese who would ridicule our family by calling us "Americanitos" ("little
Americans") and "Hah, when are your Americans coming?!" because they new my father
was an officer in the American army. [the "bamboo army" was formally referred to as the
Makapilis, see note at the end of the story]
Many of the Japanese officers knew how to speak English. The Japanese soldiers in our
barrio who belonged to the supply and command were well behaved. They even
encouraged the Filipinos to play games with them, learn Judo, fencing, and compete in
relays. Sometimes they would ask the Filipinos to teach them about our customs. When the
Japanese soldiers bathed at the barrio artesian well, they did so with only a strap of cloth
that went under their crotch and was wrapped at their waste. All the women were told to
stay at home out of site of the soldiers whenever this happened because we feared that the
soldiers might rape us. One Japanese officer married a Filipina and had two children with
her. He was killed during fighting at Bayan (the town civic center) at the end of the war.
Bataan Survivor
One day my sister saw a dirty man in rags, who she thought was a beggar, approach the
house. She ran inside and told mother who instructed her to have nothing to do with him
because they couldn't afford to take in all the beggars. The man didn't go away so mother
went to see for herself. When she saw him, she broke out in tears and ran to his aid
because she realized that is was her daughter's husband. He had escaped from the
infamous Bataan Death March and made his way Los Baños. His name was Santos Duenas,
and to this day his wife has never received a pension from the U.S.
Remember the story about the girl I told you my mother raised even before she married
my father? Well her name was Zoila. She went on vacation to visit some relatives in
Batangas and the story goes that she was already going to be in trouble with my mother
because she didn't return home when she was suppose to. She knew she would get in
trouble because my mother would know that she had done something wrong so she eloped
with Santos.
When Santos appeared at our house in Los Baños we had to hide him and mother knew that
she had to get him back to Batangas where he would be safer with his wife and family. She
took him on an arduous journey, by foot and horse, over the Mount Makiling to Batangas.
Life During the Occupation
We learned that father's ship had been sunk in the harbor at Mindanao and he had been
taken as a prisoner of war to Camp O'Donnell in Capas which he had helped build. My
mother and sister visited him there. The conditions were extremely harsh at the camp and
many men died of cholera and malaria. The daily ration of food consisted of a handful of
rice, a thumbsized piece of pork floating in water and three pieces of kangkong, a leafy
vegetable. They were given one can of water to wash themselves with. Father learned
Japanese and he was put in charge of the rice detail. He was given a patch with his name
written in the Japanese for his name and the title for general officer: Marusero Parubi
Shokan. The rice detail was permitted to leave the camp to go to a mill town near the
camp to pickup the rice. He was careful to arrange the detail to leave the camp when the
POW's family was nearby so they could see each other. The Japanese gradually released
some of the Filipino POWs who pledged their allegiance to Japan. My father was let out and
came to live with us, but kept a very low profile during the war. He was given a plot of
virgin forest to clear on a hill near Mount Makiling to grow rice and vegetables which he
tended during the occupation.
I didn't go to school during the Occupation. None of my brothers or sisters went either. The
Japanese controlled the schools so none of us believed there was any reason for us to
attend classes then. I spent much of the war working on our land on Mount Makiling. I
would get up at 5 a.m. and hike up Mount Makiling to begin a day's work at about 7 and
wouldn't return until sunset. Because it would be late and dark when I returned, and I
would be tired, my father made a treehouse for me. He found a large santol tree, nearly
as large as a threestory building, and placed tree trunk that he had split in two in the
branches. Then he made a simple roof and a way for me to climb up the tree [santol trees
have lots of branches making them a relatively "easy" tree to climb]. I would spend the
night in this santol treehouse holding my threefoot long bolo and a banga (a bolo is a
machete commonly found in the provinces of the Philippines; a banga is a club made from
the black, heart wood of a certain palm tree) which I could use to protect myself if I was
attacked by the Japanese soldiers. When I lay there at night, I could see the moon clearly
because there were no other trees too close. I could hear the whispering of the wind as it
pushed at the branches and their leaves, the water flowing over the stones in a nearby
stream, and the sounds of insects, animals, and birds. Usually I was so tired that the night
passed by peacefully.
What few motor vehicles existed in Los Baños were confiscated by the Japanese. Everyone
usually took the caribela(a horse driven coach) or walked to where ever they were going
during that time. Otherwise they would take a calesa(another horsedriven coach) or
bangka if they were going somewhere accessible by Laguna de Bay. People could take the
LTB bus or the train if they were going somewhere further like Manila.
I carried a knife in my purse during the war for my protection. I was on the bus and the
bus stopped at a Japanese checkpoint. A soldier was checking everyone for weapons and I
was scared to death that he would find my knife. I thought they would take me away and
kill me if they found it. When the soldier opened my purse he didn't look through it very
closely because he gave it back to me and moved on. I was extremely lucky.
One day I saw my high school art teacher, Mr. Fidel Ongpauco, walking on the street in Los
Baños. I found out that he was a guerrilla, and I began to get information from him that I
would sometimes pass on to guerrillas in the mountains. There were different guerrillas
though, and one time I was in the mountains and I heard horses galloping nearby. As they
came closer, I heard someone yell, "don't look Leonie, so you don't see anyone's face."
After the Japanese had occupied our barrio, I told a neighbor who was hired to cook for the
Japanese, "here take this poison and put it in their food." My sister Rose was hired as a
cook by a Japanese captain, who incidentally was a graduate of Harvard! She only worked
for him for a few weeks because one day she asked him, "How would you like your gurami
[Tagalog term for a certain fish] cooked?" Gurami was an underground term at the time
used for guerrillas so she was fired. We needed rice and sugar so I had to work for them
too, but I was laid off also. I worked in the production of castor oil that we had learned
was used for their airplanes. Instead of weeding in the fields, I would lay down underneath
the plants and read old editions of the Saturday Evening Post that my cousin had saved
from before the war. In the warehouse where we were told to pound the seed just to crack
it, I would pound on it and say over and over in a low voice, "I wish you die, I wish you
die." One of my coworkers reported to the Japanese that I was a rebellede and I was
fired. We survived in those times by selling produce, shrimp and dulong in the market near
Junction [an important intersection in Los Baños] or in the neighboring town of Bay.
If someone ever visited our house, usually soldiers looking for their families, the "bamboo
army" would come and take my mother away. She was subjected to questioning about the
visitor and had to sign something as a guarantor saying when the visitor would leave as
soon as possible.
The Japanese would also requisition labor from us. A man from every household had to
report for labor in shifts, but my oldest brother, Junior, would go instead of my father. Men
increasingly stopped returning from the labor camp when the U.S. advance was coming
closer near the end of the war. It was rumored that they were killed. We could hardly
believe the stories, but we knew it was possible.
Once when I went to visit my grandmother in Santa Rosa, my cousins and I had to wait in
line to use a mill for the palay (unhusked rice) we had harvested. The mill was next to a
school compound that we later learned had been turned into a Japanese garrison, and we
could hear cries and pleading of people from the other side of the wall. There a lot of
MAKAPILIS in the Barrio Aplaya where my relatives lived. They knew we were children of a
U.S. Army man so we had to be careful about everything we said. Even my grandfather
kept his distance from us, but my Aunties and my cousins made us feel at home.
Resistance
The Japanese also setup zonas. Once they were looking for guerrillas amongst the
townspeople they gathered all the men and made them sit under the scorching sun at
Batong Malake (a barangay near UP Los Baños where the Japanese were utilizing some of
the buildings) where they conducted a roll call. Then they marched them to UP Los Baños
where they were put in small buildings for nine days without food and only a very little
water to get them to talk. The people were told that the families of any man who did not
report for the zonas would be killed. My father was able to help the others that were
housed with him based on his experience having survived at Camp O'Donnell. I think it was
on the ninth day, that the Japanese let my sister, Rose, go and feed the men. She had
learned to speak some Japanese from the time she was a cook for the Japanese officer.
My father was once protected by the mayor, I can't remember his name now, because he
knew my father and they were friends. This same mayor was killed by the Japanese later,
but I don't know what were the particulars. So many people were killed during the war.
Sometime during the rice harvest, I think it was in November, 1944, I was walking through
a cane field on my way to the mountain when I saw a plane with dark smoke trailing from
it. It was sputtering as if it had engine problems and I noticed it was an American plane. It
crashed into the mountain and burst into flames. Before long the Japanese were rushing to
the area of the crash in swarms. I learned that the pilot was rescued by a Filipino who had
seen the crash. He lived in one of a handful of homes that were located on a plateau
nearby and was busy farming when the plane crashed. He carried the pilot to the safety of
a cave and then rested at a pond. He had a pack of American cigarettes in his pocket and
took one out to smoke. Japanese soldiers found him and questioned him, but somehow
didn't make the connection between the cigarettes and the pilot so they moved on. The
soldiers questioned me too. I had just harvested some bananas that were only half ripe
and the took them from me but otherwise left me alone (I probably got even with them
after they ate those halfripened bananas), but other people weren't so fortunate. The last
I heard, the pilot was rescued by guerrillas who took him away. The Japanese gathered the
men from the households that were located on the plateau, which included the farmer who
had come to the aid of the pilot, and took them away to kill them before setting fire to the
houses. The families were now husbandless and fatherless.
By this time, my father had built us a cabin on the mountain where we could sleep at night
and where we could store our harvest. We had a neighbor who lived in a bahay kubo (a
hut). Sometime within the week that the airplane crashed, the Japanese burned down the
bahay kubo and the old man who resided there was never seen again. I think the only
reason our cabin was spared was because it was concealed by sugar cane stalks.
The internment camp at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila was overcrowded so the
Japanese decided to transfer the prisoners to a new prisoner compound* at the Los Baños
School of Agriculture. Today these same fields are often used for the Philippine ROTC and
CAT (Citizens' Army Training) exercises. Sometimes I could see the internees when I
passed by on my way up the mountain. They were only wearing undershirts, shorts and
sandals. Their bodies were emaciated and their skin was dark. I could see they were
getting skinnier and skinnier. There was a time when they were reduced to eating wild
grass roots. I did what I could to help out one prisoner, Mr. Ham [Hugh Mack Ham], who
was an American businessman. His wife was a Filipina named Ester. Ester's neighbors were
the families of soldiers who new my father so when she learned that the internees were
taken from the city to UP Los Baños she contacted my family for help. Ester was able to
visit her husband, but no one else was. Whenever I came down from the mountains, I
would go to the gate of the camp with some fruit. I would tell the Japanese soldier
guarding the gate, "Thisoneisforyou, thisoneforMr.Ham. Doyouunderstand? Do
youknowMr.Ham?" He would eagerly respond, "yes, yes" bowing his head each time and
smile. I know Mr. Ham got the fruit because he found me after the war. He wanted to take
me to America, but I was in medical school at the time studying to be a doctor so I could
not go. [*In May, 1943 over 2000 men, women, and children; primarily Americans, along
with British and British Commonwealth subjects, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish and Italian
internees were transferred to the compound in Los Baños that the internees themselves
constructed on the sporting fields between the permanent buildings].
Liberation of Internees and Attempt at Escape
My high school teacher who was a guerrilla was an extremely reliable source of
information. One day he told me "the Americans are in Leyte." Later, he told me to "be
prepared the Americans are coming and the Japanese are sure to massacre." Very early
one morning we were awakened by a droning sound coming from the bay. The sound
became increasingly louder and soon crunching sounds coming from the street. Unable to
keep concealed in our house any longer, we went outside and saw my father talking to an
American in an amtrac. He told us that he had to go with the other soldiers and that we
should go hide in the fox hole we had built. When the American planes began bombing in
the area in anticipation of the operation which led to the liberation of the internees at UP
Los Baños, two of my brothers had been injured by shrapnel from one of the bombs
dropped by these American planes. One brother had shrapnel stuck in his leg while the
other one had who had all but his rearend covered by the overturned bangka[fishing boat
described above] was injured youknowwhere.
After the Americans and allies liberated the internees from UP, they left and the Japanese
came down from the mountains from where they were hiding. My father was left with two
hand grenades. The massacre began with the dogs. I had a suitor at the time who had been
visiting me. He was just leaving my house one night and began walking down the steps
outside our front door when we heard the most sorrowful howl come from a dog. He came
back in the house frightened and said, "What was that? That's a sign that someone is going
to die. Better take care." The next morning we learned that all the dogs had been killed.
They were bayoneted that's why the massacre was so silent. [The real massacre occurred
later. Men, women, and children were tied to the foundation posts of homes nearest the
internment camp and these house were set afire. A graphic accounting of what the
returning American forces discovered can be found in The Los Baños Raid by Lieutenant
General Edward M. Flanagan, Jr., more information can be found at the end of this site. ]
We decided to make our way to safety aboard the bangka. There was about twenty of us in
all on the bangka: family, relatives, and friends when we pushed off from the shore to go
to Calamba where the Americans were by this time. Before we had gotten too far a chain
that held one of the outrigger's poles to the hull broke and the bangkabegan to sink. One of
my sisters jumped into the water in panic she didn't know how to swim and was saved by a
friend who grabbed her by her long hair. Most of the passengers could not swim, my
mother was pregnant, my baby sister was on board, and the boat was mortally wounded.
We were able to get the boat stabilized so that it would not sink any further, but the water
level was near to the top of the hull and all we could do was hang on and float in the
Laguna de Bay. We were too far from the shore to hope to make it there. At dusk we could
see that the sky above Bayan was lit up orange from fire and the water smelled of
kerosene. To make things worse, the wind was blowing hard and the water was choppy. My
uncle was saying prayers in Latin and my sister, Aurora, clung to a statue of Saint Anthony.
By sunrise the next day, the wind had died down and our bangka was closer to shore so we
started to kick with our legs to move it even closer. We saw a bag of money but had no
hope of getting it and we saw pieces of our belongings float by. We were finally aided by an
exleper who was my father's kumpare [a godfather of one of his children].
Retaliation
The Japanese had fled to the mountains in escape from the advancing Americans by this
time but they had tried to destroy anything they left behind. When we reached shore and
began walking along it we saw lots of dead people littering the shoreline. There were burnt
carabao that looked like black boulders.
Later we learned more of what had happened before the Japanese retreated for good.
There were three GermanAmerican sisters: Agnes, Helen, and Mary living in Los Baños
who happened to be relatives of our next door neighbors at Fort McKinnley. Their brother
was in the navy. They had been able to avoid being placed in the concentration camp at the
University only because they convinced the Japanese they were of German descent
(remember the Germans were allied with the Japanese). When the Americans were already
in Calamba, and the Japanese began rounding up everyone at Bayan, Agnes, who had blond
hair, was caught trying to escape. Thirteen men raped her and then cut her to pieces. We
also learned that Filipinos were lined up in rows by the Japanese soldiers at Bayan (these
were a different group from the ones from the supply and command group who fraternized
with the Filipinos in my barrio). Then they were bayoneted one by one. An eightyear old
boy had survived by moving further down the line after one, then another was slaughtered
and he eventually escaped to later tell how it had happened. One mother saved her child.
She knew that there was to be one bayonet stab in her abdomen and then another into her
lung after she fell so she held her baby away from where the bayonet struck her. Agnes's
sister, Helen was the one who led the Americans into Los Baños.
Some of the participants in the final battles of Southern Luzon, including groups along with
the Americans, involved in the liberation of Los Baños, the internment camp there, and
other towns nearby:
Makapilis (Makabayang Katipunan ng Pilipino, or Philippine Nationalist League;
sometimes derisively referred to as the "Brown Japs") were formed sometime in
1944 at the instruction of the Japanese occupation government though officially
established in December 12th of that year. They fought alongside the Japanese in
Rizal, Laguna and Bulacan provinces against the American forces and its allies.
Hunter's Guerrillas (or Hunter's ROTC Guerrillas) were former cadets of the
Philippine Military Academy other ROTC students and college undergraduates who
waged a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese in the countryside by hunting (from
which they received their appellation) and fighting them.
PQOG (President Quezon's Own Guerillas).
Hukbalahap (Hukbo Ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, the Philippine People's AntiJapanese
Army).
Hua Zhi (also Wha Chi, or Wah Chi were the Feilubin Huaquiao Kangri Zhidui,
Philippine Chinese AntiJapanese Guerrilla Force). At the beginning of the war, non
assimilated Chinese were the largest alien group in the Philippines making up about
71% of the 165,813 foreign citizens located there. Still they represented only .7% of
the population. Formed from a Chinese leftist organization, the Hua Zhi was
established on May 19, 1942 and consisted of fiftytwo men with seven rifles and two
side arms who were designated as Squadron 48 of the Hukbalahap. They, along with
other guerrilla groups, increased their arsenal by collecting weapons left behind by
the FilAmerican forces in Bataan and Zambales. By some accounts their number
grew to seven hundred by the end of the war, though their contingents fighting in the
Los Baños area were much smaller.
SOME BOOKS DEALING WITH THESE EVENTS:
The Huaqiao Warriors, Yung Li Yukwa, © 1995, Hong Kong University Press.
Examines the ChinesePhilippine Guerrilla Movement during World War II.
The Japanese Military Administration in the Philippines and the Tragedy of
General Artemio Ricarte, Setsuho Ikehata; translated by Elpidro R. Santa Romana
© 1991, National University of Singapore. A pamphet that examines the Philippine
collaboration with the Japanese focusing on the involvement and efforts of a Filipino
nationalist who had emigrated from the Philippines to Japan after the Spanish
American War and returned to his home only after the Japanese Occupation began.
The Los Baños Raid, Lt. General Edward M. Flanagan, Jr. USA (Ret.), © 1986,
Presidio Press. Examines the raid on the internee camp from the American
perspective and some of the consequences of the event on unliberated locales in the
following days. Also has a list of all the names and nationalities of those interned at
the Los Baños concentration camp.
The Wainwright Papers, Volume 1, Edited by Celedonio A. Ancheta, © 1980, New
Day Publishers. An American military description of the Invasion of the Philippines
good for its general chronological information.
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