World War II: Liberating Los Baños Internment Camp

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On the evening of February 21, some 36 hours before the planned attack, Lieutenant Skau’s recon platoon moved out by truck for the barrio of Wulilyos, where they met Filipino guides and the crews of three bancas (sailing vessels ordinarily used for fishing and trade in the coastal waters of the Philippines). The first banca moved out at 2000 hours with Skau and his headquarters group aboard. A second, larger banca set sail some 15 minutes later. The third was meant to sail right behind with the bulk of the platoon’s supplies and men, but the Filipino captain discovered that the rudder was broken. Repairs took two hours.

The trip across Laguna de Bay was planned to take two or three hours. But it was not until the wee morning hours that the first banca finally touched shore near Los Baños after an eight-hour journey due to light winds that failed to fill the sails. One of the bancas was still in the middle of the lake at daybreak and making little progress. The Filipino crew spent the rest of the day trying every trick in the book to get the heavily laden vessel to its destination, but it was well into the evening when the banca reached shore. The paratroopers of the recon platoon had spent most of the day crouching uncomfortably beneath the side rails of the ship to avoid being seen by the Japanese patrol boats that still ruled the waters.

After reaching shore with only a portion of his men, Skau began making plans to carry out his mission with the small force that had landed with him. While his men rested out of sight, Skau met with the guerrilla leaders and two escaped internees in a schoolhouse in the barrio of Nanhaya. Ben Edwards, one of the former prisoners, sketched the layout of the camp on the school blackboard for the paratroopers. Assuming that the last banca would arrive in time for the rescue, Skau broke his group into six teams and assigned from eight to 12 guerrillas to each one. Edwards and the other internee, Freddy Zervoulakos, each accompanied one of the teams. Late that evening, the third banca finally reached shore. Shortly after midnight, the recon platoon teams began moving out from their rendezvous point at the schoolhouse for their attack positions.

The amphibious element boarded amtracs and moved out at 0500 on February 23. Fifty-four amtracs from the 672nd Amphibian Tractor Battalion set out across Laguna de Bay from Mamatid, their noisy engines giving notice that the attacking force was on its way. In the pitch-black, pre-dawn darkness, a lack of landmarks forced the tractor drivers to navigate solely by compass.

At Nichols Field outside Manila, the paratroopers boarded nine C-47s at 0530. Half an hour later, the pilots started their engines. After takeoff, each of the jump planes orbited over the field until all nine were airborne and had joined the formation. At 0640 the C-47s headed southeast over Laguna de Bay toward Los Baños. Fifteen minutes later, the pilots signaled a six-minute warning by turning on the red paratrooper jump lights in the cargo compartments of their airplanes. At 0700 Ringler stepped from the door of the lead C-47; the Los Baños raid was in progress.

As the jump planes passed over the camp, the Japanese sentries were in the process of changing the guard, and the internees were lined up for morning roll call. The plan called for the recon platoon to attack the sentry positions and other Japanese strongholds as the troopers were floating to earth, but only two of the five teams were in position at H-hour. At the sight of the drop planes over Los Baños, the other three teams had to abandon stealth and rushed headlong for the camp. Nevertheless, the attack went off more or less as planned. By 0715, when Ringler had finished organizing his men and the first of the jump teams reached the camp perimeter, Los Baños was already under attack from three sides. A number of the guards, most of whom had turned out without weapons for morning calisthenics, were killed, while others fled for the hills.

By the time the amtracs arrived from the shores of Laguna de Bay, the gun battle was practically over. Guards of the overwhelmed Japanese garrison had either been killed, were hiding, or had fled. Among the latter was Warrant Officer Sadaaki Konishi, the tyrannical second-in-command at the camp. Largely because of Konishi’s policy of withholding food, the paratroopers found a starving horde of internees, many of whom weighed barely 100 pounds.

The original evacuation plan had been for a task force made up of men from the 188th Glider Regiment under Colonel Robert Soule to fight their way down National Highway 1 to Los Baños, then evacuate the internees overland to Manila. The amtrac battalion was only to deliver the bulk of Major Burgess’ paratrooper battalion, then return to Mamatid empty while the rescuers returned with the internees. After an hour at the camp, however, Burgess determined from the sound of firing that Soule’s task force was still at least three hours away from Los Baños. At the same time, he was well aware that thousands of Japanese troops were within striking distance of his location.

At the last minute the plans were changed–Burgess decided not to wait for the task force. The internees were to be evacuated by amtrac, and the paratroopers would return to Manila with Soule’s task force. Burgess directed the amtrac commander, Lt. Col. Joe Gibbs, to order his men to load their vehicles with internees, then evacuate them to Mamatid and shuttle back and forth until both the internees and members of the raiding party were all withdrawn to safety.

Organizing the liberated prisoners, most of whom were milling about the camp with little sense of order, was a problem; the internees were ecstatic about being rescued, but were hardly in a mood to fall into any kind of formation. Major Burgess observed that the internees seemed to be drifting in advance of fires that had been started in some of the barracks during the raid, so he ordered his men to set fire to the camp in such a manner that the fires would lead the internees in the direction of the main gate, where the amtracs were waiting.

By 0900, two hours after the commencement of the raid, some order had begun to appear among the internees. Those who could do so had begun the two-mile walk to the beach, while those who were unable to make the hike were loaded aboard amtracs for the journey. After the infirm were evacuated, several amtracs began to aid the walking by providing a lift to the beach.

As the internees moved out of the camp, Major Burgess and his troopers began a systematic search to ensure that all internees were accounted for and that none were still in the camp. The soldiers did as thorough a job as possible. Because many of the Filipino guerrillas disappeared into the jungle after the raid, many Americans liberated at Los Baños never knew to what extent the irregular troops had contributed to their release.

By mid-day, the Soule task force had advanced in the face of enemy resistance to a point just outside Los Baños. By then the evacuation by amtrac was proceeding quite well, as the officers of the task force could see from activities on the lake. Colonel Soule elected to halt his advance at the San Juan River and to maintain a bridgehead in the event the paratroopers had to withdraw by land as planned.

From Los Baños, the internees proceeded to the village of San Antonio, where the head of the marching column arrived at about 1000. From there, the amtracs, filled with evacuees, formed up into columns of three and slid into the waters of the lake for the two-hour journey to Mamatid. While on the lake, several of the amtracs came under fire from Japanese shore positions. Little damage was done, although one amtrac had to offload its cargo of evacuees and be towed to shore by another vessel.

By noon the remainder of the internees and the rear guard of the 1st Battalion had reached San Antonio. Burgess still had not made contact with Soule, nor was he in contact with the 11th Division headquarters. Essentially, he was on his own. Around that time General Swing flew over the beach in a light liaison aircraft. After Burgess advised the general by radio that the raid had been successful and that he planned to evacuate the remainder of the group and his own men with the amtracs that were on their way back to San Antonio, the young major was flabbergasted at his commander’s reply: Could he perhaps liberate the entire town of Los Baños, then move west to link up with the 188th and keep possession of the territory they had gained?

Burgess was in the middle of contested territory with what, for all practical purposes, was a raiding party, and with strong enemy forces within easy striking distance. He did not answer the general’s request, but after carefully considering his situation, he simply switched his radio off and did not acknowledge that he had received the message.

At around 1500 the last amtrac shoved off from San Antonio with the final load of internees and troops. At Mamatid the internees moved to the former New Bilibid prison, where they prepared for the journey to their homes in the United States and elsewhere.

While the liberation of the internees from Los Baños went off without a hitch, there is a dark epilogue to the story. After the 11th Airborne Division paratroopers left the area, the Japanese moved back in. Ironically, the first Americans to re-enter the vicinity of Los Baños were the same paratroopers who had liberated the camp only days before. What they found in the barrios surrounding the camp this time was both nauseating and pitiful. Whole families had been tied to the stilts supporting their houses, then the dwellings had been set ablaze, collapsing around their helpless former inhabitants. Burgess estimated that more than 1,500 Filipinos had been cruelly killed, evidently in retaliation for the rescue of the internees.

There is some question as to the identity of those who did the killing. The Japanese in the area were reinforced by pro-Japanese Filipino units commanded by Japanese officers and NCOs. Many of the villages in the region were pro-Japanese ‘Makapili’ as well–residents at odds with their countrymen who favored a return to American control.

One Japanese soldier later identified as having played a part in the reprisals in the area–including the murder of an American family that had lived near Los Baños and had not been interned–was Warrant Officer Sadaaki Konishi, the sadistic second-in-command of the camp at Los Baños. After the war, Konishi was implicated by certain Filipinos, tried for his crimes, and then executed as a war criminal.

This article was written by Sam McGowan and originally appeared in World War II magazine. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today!

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, World War II

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