The job of rescuing the hostages was handed to General Swing on February 3. At that time, however, the airborne troops were locked in combat at Manila with the Japanese, who were stubbornly defending the former U.S. bases at Nichols Field and Fort McKinley, just south of the city. Swing ordered his staff to come up with a plan and refine it, so it could be implemented at the earliest possible time.
The unit selected to conduct the mission, the 1st Battalion, 511th Airborne Regimental Combat Team under Maj. Henry Burgess, was pulled off the so-called Genko Line—a system of Japanese-occupied pillboxes and antitank fortifications—on February 18 and sent to the Parañaque district to rest and refit. Two days later, they were ordered to prepare for the raid. The aid of local guerrillas was also enlisted.
The Joint U.S. Army-guerrilla plan that was devised consisted of four phases. Phase One called for the 11th Airborne’s Provisional Reconnaissance Platoon, together with some twenty Filipino guerrillas, to row native bancas across Laguna de Bay two nights before the raid. There, just prior to the attack, Skau’s five recon teams under lead scout Terry Santos and Sgts. Martin Squires, Cliff Town, Leonard Hahn, and Robert Angus would deploy. Hahn’s team, using colored smoke grenades, would mark the landing beach on the lakeshore, as well as the drop zone for the paratroopers. As the C-47s carrying the airborne troops arrived, the other recon teams were to attack the five Japanese defensive positions outside the camp, taking them out and killing the enemy guards.
Phase Two involved airborne troops of B Company, led by Lt. John Ringler and supported by Lt. Walter Hettinger’s Machine Gun Platoon, parachuting onto the drop zone, linking up with guerrillas and the recon teams, and assaulting the camp.
In Phase Three, the rest of 1st Battalion, riding across Laguna de Bay on fifty-four amtracs of the 672nd Amphibian Tractor Battalion under Lt. Col. Joseph W. Gibbs, would come ashore at the landing beach marked by Hahn and his recon team, and travel the two miles overland to the camp, arriving as the attack was under way. The internees would be loaded onto the tracked vehicles and taken back across the lake to safety.
The fourth and final phase called for the 188th Glider Infantry Regiment, minus one battalion, along with Company C of the 637th Tank Destroyer Battalion and elements of the 472nd and 675th Field Artillery Battalions, to move forward on Highway 1 to act as a diversionary force and to engage the Japanese 8th “Tiger” Division. This would facilitate the escape by protecting the internees’ flanks.
Casualties were expected to be high, but all agreed it was a risk that had to be taken.
* * *
On February 10, recovered from his wounds following Cabanatuan, Alamo Scout Tom Rounsaville was sent to the Los Baños area, setting up radio networks around the barrio of Pila on the southeast shore of Laguna de Bay. His job was to report on Japanese escape routes from Manila. Along with Lieutenant Skau—the two were friends from Rounsaville’s 11th Airborne days—he organized guerrilla activity in the area and fed intelligence concerning Los Baños to the 11th Airborne’s G2 officer, Lt. Col. Henry Muller. They also observed the internee camp and estimated Japanese strength at 250 men.
Two days later, on February 12, a nineteen-year-old Greek-Filipino named Freddy Zervoulakas slipped out of the camp and made contact with the guerrillas. Told that a rescue attempt was being mounted, he was sent back to the camp to spread the word. The internee committee decided that it would be best for the prisoners to do nothing, lest they alert the guards.
In the meantime, Skau and Santos, who spoke Tagalog and was the platoon’s ranking NCO, had already reconnoitered the camp; for Skau, this was his second trip. This time he planned to locate a landing zone for the amtracs as well as a drop zone for the paratroopers. Initially, Skau suggested taking the entire platoon, but Santos thought otherwise.
“I think it’d be foolish to take the whole platoon,” Santos told him. “We’d make too much noise. I think the two of us can do it alone.”
Climbing into a banca, the two men paddled across the wide lake. The trip took nearly five hours because the Americans had to steer in a wide arc around Alamba Island, where the Japanese had a patrol boat base, blocking the direct route to Los Baños.
Arriving near the village of Nanhaya, about ten miles from Los Baños, Skau and Santos, led by Filipino guides intimately familiar with the terrain, began their overland trek. The walk took about another four hours, passing through rice paddies and jungle. As they drew near, the first order of business was to locate a landing zone for the amtracs. After a brief search, and with the guide’s help, they discovered a clear strip of beach at Mayondon Point near the barrio of San Antonio, close to the road that led directly to the prison compound two miles to the east. Marking the location on a map, they headed for Los Baños, not so much to observe the camp as to find a drop zone for the paratroopers. A suitable field was found nine hundred yards east of the camp.
“This should work,” Skau told Santos. “It’s not too far, yet not close enough to make the Japs panic and open fire on the internees. Let’s get back to HQ.”
* * *
Santos and Skau had no sooner returned than a civilian engineer named Pete Miles escaped from Los Baños. In talking with the 11th Airborne’s Lieutenant Colonel Muller, Miles revealed details of the guards’ daily routine that could prove valuable to the troops making the assualt.
“Every morning at about quarter ’til seven, the Japs do half an hour’s worth of calisthenics,” Miles said. “Their arms are stacked and they are dressed only in loincloths.”
If true, this meant an assualt at that time could minimize the danger to the internees and GIs alike. But it had to be confirmed. Muller called for Skau.
“Muller told me, ‘I’m assigning this to the recon platoon to verify,’ ” Skau told Santos.
“Like hell he is,” Santos replied. “He’s assigning it to the two of us.”
That night they again made the long journey, first by banca, then by foot, to Los Baños. They waited until morning and confirmed Miles’s information.
* * *
The assault on the camp was slated for seven a.m. on Friday, February 23. On the night of February 21-22, the recon platoon, down to twenty-two men instead of the usual thirty-two because of casualties and illness following its operations on Luzon, was broken into five assault teams. Loaded onto three bancas, they pushed off from shore for the long voyage across Laguna de Bay. The guerrillas, alerted by the Bamboo Telegraph, a series of runners and native drums, would be waiting for them when they arrived at Nanhaya.
The first banca, the HQ boat, held Skau and five men. Santos and five more men rode the second boat, with the rest of the platoon, ten men, aboard the third and largest banca. The bancas, piloted by natives, traveled individually, to arouse less suspicion. Despite the moonless night, however, a Japanese patrol boat spotted Santos’s craft. Santos heard its engine some distance off, and then saw the craft as it cruised toward them from out of the gloom. Santos made his way to where the helmsman stood.
“If you don’t tell them what I told you to say before we left shore, you’ll be the first man I’ll kill,” he said menacingly. “And speak only in Tagalog.”
Then he turned to the other recon men.
“Stay low,” Santos said. “If they try to board us, I’ll fire the first shot.”
He pointed to one of the two men with the .30-caliber grease guns.
“You aim for the deck and cut down everyone you see,” he said, then looked at the other submachine gunner. “You aim for the boat’s waterline. If that doesn’t stop them, we’ll all cut loose and throw grenades.”
As the patrol boat pulled close, its commander shouted out a challenge. At Santos’s direction, the Filipino helmsman explained that he had been out fishing late because he had struck a good catch. Santos heaved a sigh of relief when the Japanese officer accepted the explanation, and steered his boat away. Shooting it out with the Japanese might have scrubbed the entire mission.
The rest of the
trip was uneventful and Santos’s banca reached Nanhaya and linked up with Skau and his men. The guerrillas of the 45th Hunters-ROTC Regiment were there, too. Then they waited for the third banca. At dawn they were still waiting, and as the sun climbed into the sky, heralding the start of another hot, oppressive day, there was still no sign of the large boat.
“If they don’t show up,” Skau told Santos, “we still go, only we break up into smaller units and take the same targets.”
At last the third boat made its appearance. It had broken a rudder shortly after departure and had to turn back for repairs. The men on board were parched and sweat-soaked after the cruise across the lake under the broiling sun.
“OK, we’re back to Plan A,” Skau said. “Let’s go.”
Each assault team, including guerrillas, contained about twelve men, but as Skau led his column on the long four-hour march to Los Baños, many of the Filipinos melted away. Later, Santos discovered that the guerrillas expected the Americans to do the fighting, while they planned to be the first liberators into the compound.
As they neared the camp, Hahn’s squad was detached to mark the landing beach for the amtracs. The rest continued on.
About a quarter mile from the compound, the recon platoon came across a Japanese outpost, a windowless shack open on one end. Cautiously and in complete silence, Santos made his way to the OP and peeked inside. A Japanese sentry was seated, propped against one wall, his rifle and a field phone by his side. The man was sound asleep. Santos realized this soldier would be the “easiest kill in the world,” but if his headquarters called him and he did not respond, they’d be out to check on him. So Terry Santos slinked back to the group, and they gave the OP a wide berth as they moved on.
After reaching their attack position, the group split up and headed for their objectives. Santos and his three men, Vince Call, Larry Botkin, and Barclay “Mick” McFadden, were assigned to knock out two pillboxes guarding the camp, bamboo-reinforced gun emplacements side by side, with machine guns jutting out from them. Between the pillboxes and the jungle were about seventy yards of uneven but relatively open ground, with minimal cover.
Inside the camp, all seemed quiet. The men could see prisoners milling about but, from their position, not the guards going through their morning calisthenics.
As seven a.m. approached, the drone of planes could be heard overhead as the nine C-47s carrying B Company roared toward the camp. At three minutes before seven, as Santos and his team reached the bank of Boot Creek, just outside the camp, a Japanese sentry hunting among the bushes near where Santos and his men were hiding fired at an animal. Mistaking the shot for the signal, a guerrilla, wielding a machete, leaped from the underbrush and hacked the man to death.
With no choice but to attack early even though they were not quite in position, Santos and his men opened fire on the pillbox. The Japanese responded, and pandemonium broke out as lead slugs split the morning air. The machine guns in the pillboxes raked the Americans’ location. Slugs from the first burst hit Call in the shoulder and grazed Botkin’s face. Both men were down. Santos, his Garand smoking, turned to McFadden.
“Mick, stay with the wounded,” he said. “I’m taking the pillboxes. If I don’t make it, it’s up to you.”
Flat on his belly, Santos snaked his way forward, knowing the closer he got to the enemy the safer he was, since the Japanese could only depress the barrels of the machine guns so far. He slinked from cover to cover, taking advantage of uneven terrain features as bullets tore up the ground around him. When he got to within range, Santos took a phosphorous grenade from his belt, yanked the pin, and tossed it. He followed the Willie Peter with a fragmentation grenade. The deadly combination blew both gun pits apart. But Santos was not out of jeopardy yet. Another machine gun located on a slight knoll near a large tree to his left opened up on him. Taken by surprise by this unreported strongpoint, Santos hugged the ground close. Then, as before, he began to slowly make his way in the gun’s direction. Drawing as close as he dared, Santos tossed a Willie Peter, again followed by a fragmentation grenade. The fiery explosion silenced the gun. Then, from the smoldering position emerged a Japanese soldier, his clothes afire from the phosphorous grenade, staggering and screaming in a gruesome dance of death. Santos leveled his Garand, which he always kept loaded with armor-piercing rounds, and, without aiming, fired. At close range, the devastating, high-powered, steel-jacketed AP bullet hit the screaming soldier, whose upper torso literally exploded at the impact.
“Jesus Christ,” Santos muttered in awe.
As Santos dealt with his objectives, Sergeant Town’s squad raked several guardhouses along the perimeter with weapons fire. A Japanese patrol charged him, and his men chopped them down with a vicious fusillade. The guerrillas, meanwhile, had reemerged, overrunning part of the camp. They battled Japanese guards at the rear of the compound, while at the front gate Lieutenant Skau’s team fought their way into the camp, exchanging fire with the guards.
By now the paratroopers of Lieutenant Ringler’s B Company were arriving. Carried from their starting point at the recently recaptured Nichols Field on C-47s of the 75th Troop Carrier Squadron, their flight had been unmolested by either enemy fighters or antiaircraft guns. Arriving over the well-marked DZ, the troopers hastily leaped from the Skytrains at just five hundred feet and drifted toward the battle.
As the troopers bore in on the camp, the rest of the recon platoon had already burst into the compound, where they encountered the guards, many still in loincloths, from their exercise period, scrambling for their weapons. The recon men opened a devastating fire, mowing down the guards in heaps, and sending the rest fleeing into the jungle.
The shooting was over in less than twenty minutes and Santos yelled for McFadden to bring the wounded men forward. As he did, the amtracs began rumbling into the camp.
The next problem was getting the internees onto the vehicles. Many refused to go without their personal possessions, and some wanted to drag extra clothes and other articles with them. The order was given to torch the barracks buildings, cruelly, but out of necessity, burning out the prisoners and forcing their evacuation.
As each of the fifty-four amtracs was loaded with internees—only about half, primarily the sickest, along with women, children, nuns, and twelve U.S. Navy nurses, could be taken on the first trip—the armored vehicle drove back to the lake and chugged across the water.
After the last amtrac had departed, the GIs herded the rest of the people toward the lakeshore to await their return. As they neared the beachhead, the distant rumble of tracked vehicles could be heard. Fearing it might be approaching Japanese reinforcements, panic swept the internees as the Americans yelled for them to “scatter and take cover.” All sighed with relief as the first of the returning amtracs rolled around a bend in the road.
Time was of the essence. While the Americans had killed many of the Japanese garrison, another ten thousand men were less than ten miles away, and might even now have been alerted and were racing toward Los Baños.
Even as the GIs were loading internees into the amtracs, gunfire was heard in the distance, off to the north. The fire was part of the 188th Glider Infantry Regiment’s diversion. Elements of the diversionary force had rolled out Highway 1 and attacked Japanese positions just across the San Juan River. Heavy fighting took place around Lechería Hills, some of it hand-to-hand, and troopers J. C. Doiron and Virgil McMurtry were killed, as were two guerrillas, Pfc. Atanacio Castillo and Pfc. Anselmo Soler. Despite the losses, by mid-morning the troopers had cleared the area and were marching toward Los Baños, thus cutting the road between the Japanese Tiger Division and the internment camp. From his position on high ground, the commander, Colonel Soule, the expedition leader, could see the amtracs loading the internees and heading across the lake like water bugs. When the last vehicle had cleared, he ordered a defensive withdrawal back across the San Juan River.
At lakeside, a Japanese machine gun, which had somehow reached the LZ, o
pened fire on an amtrac, its 7.62mm slugs bouncing off the vehicle’s steel sides. Cpl. Dwight Clark of the 672nd Amphibian Tractor Battalion, manning the amtrac’s .50-caliber machine gun, spotted the enemy position inside a wooden hut and opened fire. The heavy lead slugs tore the shack apart and silenced the gun before it could inflict any casualties.
Santos and the recon platoon boarded the last amtrac to leave Los Baños. His four-man team had suffered the only American casualties among the men who had raided the camp. The number of Japanese killed was not known, although it was probably between eighty and one hundred. No internees were killed or injured.
The raid at Los Baños had freed 2,147 internees, including Lois Kathleen McCoy, who had been delivered three days earlier in the prison infirmary by U.S. Navy nurse Dorothy Danner and was now being carried to safety by her mother, Mildred, an American schoolteacher who had been working in Manila, and her father, Oscar, who had been the Philippines representative of Republic Steel of Ohio.
Santos was awarded a Silver Star for his actions during the operation, the first of two he would win.
One objective was left unaccomplished. Los Baños’s supply officer, Lt. Sadaaki Konishi, had been especially brutal to the internees. Orders had gone out to capture the man if at all possible, but despite rumors that he had been killed, he had, in fact, managed to escape into the jungle.
However, sometime later he was observed working as a Filipino laborer by a former Los Baños internee. The internee notified the local police, who jailed Konishi. After the war, he was tried for war crimes and sentenced to prison.
The raid at Los Baños, one of the most successful rescues in American military history, went almost unnoticed by the public back home in the States. That was because on the very same day, February 23, 1945, hundreds of miles to the north on the stinking, steaming volcanic island of Iwo Jima, five U.S. Marines and a navy corpsman raised a flag atop an extinct volcano called Mount Suribachi. That image, captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, became a powerful symbol of the war effort in the Pacific.
Shadows In the Jungle Page 28