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CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
≈ The raid on the empty homes of Faculty Hill, followed by the burning and bayoneting of one hundred Philippine civilians in and around the village church, occurred in the early hours of February 25.
The leader of this raid was Lieutenant Sadaaki Konishi, of the guard garrison at Los Baños.
Konishi survived the paratroopers’ raid, along with roughly a hundred others. He hid in the jungle surrounding the camp, emerging after midnight. He found his way to the slopes of Mount Makiling, where he located the camp commandant, Major Iwanaka. The commandant ordered Konishi and his ten-man remnant to join a larger Japanese force, also on Makiling, the Saito Battalion.
According to Flanagan, Angels at Dawn, page 226, this battalion, under Captain Ginsaku Saito, received orders “to kill all guerrillas, men, women and children in Los Baños,” and “to prepare to kill a hundred thousand men, or seventy men for each of us. Also, each man must destroy one tank before he dies.”
Konishi obeyed these orders to the best of his ability.
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CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
≈ The slaughter of the village of Anos took the lives of several hundred Philippine citizens. The massacre was one of a series of raids conducted by the Saito Battalion as reprisals for the rescue of the internees. Lieutenant Konishi was known to have taken part in many of these attacks.
≈ Hank Burgess and his 1st Battalion of the 511th were the first American soldiers to view the slaughter of the Philippine civilians in the villages around the camp. Burgess estimated that fifteen hundred civilians were burned, shot, or bayoneted to death by the Japanese retaliation raids. The discovery was made while the 1st Battalion was moving east through Los Baños, on March 3, eight days after the rescue.
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CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
≈ In July of 1945, Lieutenant Sadaaki Konishi was spotted by a former internee, Henry Carpenter, at the partially restored Wack Wack Golf Course outside Manila. Carpenter, formerly a Colgate-Palmolive executive in Manila, picked Konishi out of a gang of Japanese POWs laboring at the course.
Konishi was tried from November 23, 1945, through January 15, 1946, by the War Crimes Commission. On June 17, 1947, he was hung for atrocities committed against Los Baños internees and Filipino citizens.
That same day, before his execution, a Maryknoll nun, Sister Theresa, baptized Konishi.
Broken Jewel - [World War II 05] Page 47
