You could fill many books with the full account of the massacre of Filipinos by the Japanese occupation troops. Document No. 2726 at the War Crimes Trial in Tokyo, Japan, contains 14, 618 pages of sworn affidavits from various eyewitnesses and victims. Each witness described a brutal atrocity committed by the Japanese. The Sons of the Rising Sun were brutal with acts of unbelievable savagery.
Documented Sworn Statements of Japanese Atrocities
- Isabelo Compania was beaten in the face by a hammer and his penis burned with a cigarette.
- Inayo Velez, an elderly man, was hit in the face with the butt of a Japanese rifle and was not allowed to eat for six consecutive days.
- Attorney Crispin Labaria was nearly killed by a severe beating and bayonet wounds because he refused to tell the Japanese where guerrillas were hidden.
- Manuel Awatin, sixty years old, was the lone survivor of a group of fourteen who were lined up on a river bank. Two were mothers each carrying a small child. Awatin saw the two children snatched from their mother’s arms and smashed against the trunk of a coconut tree. Then they bayoneted the mothers along with the other twelve men, including Awatin. He alone survived this ordeal.
- Francisco Dominisce was roasted alive. His hands and feet were tied, then a pole was passed through the openings of the hands and feet and placed over an open fire.
- Esteban Fernandez was caught hiding in a box. The Japanese shut the lid, locked it and threw him into an open fire.
- Felipe Mendes’s feet were tied with wire and one end of the wire was attached to the aft end of a Japanese launch. Mendes was thrown overboard and dragged behind the launch. He managed to move his legs and thus kept from drowning. The Japanese officer ordered him hauled aboard, neatly chopped off his legs and threw him back overboard. He was last seen being attacked by a large shark.
- Jose Reyes had a wire passed through his cheeks like a halter and led around for three days as an example to others. After those three days he was bayoneted.
One of the most infamous of the massacres was committed at De La Salle University in southern Manila. It was here that fifty civilians were bayoneted to death in the college chapel.
The list is long. Thousands were killed in cold blood either by being shot or bayoneted. In Manila 800 men, women and children were machine-gunned on the grounds of St. Paul’s College. In the barrio of Calamba, 2500 Filipinos were shot or bayoneted.
These brutal murders are the legacy the Japanese left in the Philippines.
Sources:
Guest of the Emperor: The Personal Story of Ex-POW Frank O. Promnitz, USMC by
Lee K. Bergee, Four Freedoms Press (1987)
Document No. 2726, Tokyo War Crimes Trial, May 3, 1946 to November 12, 1948,
The Other Nuremburg Trial: The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, Brackman, Arnold C.,William & Morrow & Co.,New York (1987)
Lee Bergee - * Retired-U. S. Marine Corps * Fought in World War II and Korea-1950 (wounded twice) * Forty years experience as a war history ...
