"Amerikanitos," Life During the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines

CULTURAL BRIDGE PRODUCTIONS

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
Marcelo was the youngest of four sons born to my lolo Faulve in the province of Capiz, in the Visayan Islands. His father owned lots of land and was a barangay captain [barangay and barrio are synonymous terms, one Tagalog the other Spanish, and are essentially administrative units smaller than a city (these terms are used interchangeably in this story)]. In 1917, when Marcelo was eighteen he left home and went to Manila to join the Philippine National Guard which was organized by the Americans. He was trained at Fort William McKinley [renamed Fort Bonifacio after the Philippines gained its independence]. After his training, he was stationed at Camp Eldridge in Los Baños, Laguna. Segunda Alborida was just sixteen-years old when Marcelo first saw her performing in the sarsuwela [or zarsuela, is a musical drama] at the town's Fiesta. She had very long hair and was brandishing a sword while she danced to the accompaniment of music. She had already had suitors when Marcelo approached her brother to ingratiate himself with the family. Back then, there was no such thing as dating so the man had to court the family of the woman he favored to convince them that he was a good match for their daughter and sister. Segunda's father had already passed away sometime before so her brother was the head of the household at that time. It was a bit difficult for Marcelo because he didn't speak Tagalog* very well. Since the man, in those days, was not permitted to date a woman he was interested in, he would ask the neighbors about the girl and sometimes try to do some work near the house to steal glimpses of her. There was also a saying, "Filipino women no touch, once you touch you have to marry." Segunda was young and naïve and didn't pay much attention to her suitors. Years later she told us that our father had caught her off guard and kissed her so they got married. [*Tagalog is the dominant dialect of Luzon Province at the time but not yet the national language. In fact Visayan, Marcelo's dialect, was more widely spoken than Tagalog]
Even though Segunda was a young bride by our standards today, she had already been a mother since she was ten-years 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 steno-typing 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 non-com [non-commissioned] 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 Euro-Americans. 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 halo-halo store [halo-halo, 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 night-time 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 orangeish-red 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. Pro-Japanese 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 pro-Japanese 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 thumb-sized 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 tree-house for me. He found a large santol tree, nearly as large as a three-story 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 tree-house holding my three-foot 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 horse-driven 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 co-workers 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 half-ripened 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, "This-one-is-for-you, this-one-for-Mr.-Ham. Do-you-under-stand? Do-you-know-Mr.-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 rear-end covered by the overturned bangka[fishing boat described above] was injured you-know-where.
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 ex-leper 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 German-American 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 eight-year 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 Anti-Japanese Army).
Hua Zhi (also Wha Chi, or Wah Chi were the Feilubin Huaquiao Kangri Zhidui, Philippine Chinese Anti-Japanese 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 fifty-two 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 Fil-American 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 Yuk-wa, © 1995, Hong Kong University Press. Examines the Chinese-Philippine 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 un-liberated 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.