Ghosts and Angels of the Pacific

5 Books About the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines and Allied Resistance During World War II

U.S. Army nurses rescued from Santo Tomas Internment Camp, 1945

During my adolescent and young adult years, I was a World War II fanatic, but I focused primarily on the war in Europe. I bought dozens of books about the Holocaust and Nazi-occupied Europe at Scholastic book fairs and watched the HBO series Band of Brothers every year with my father, as well as just about any movie set during the Second World War. It wasn’t until recently that I’ve taken an interest in the Pacific Theater of the war. Bored to tears by the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific and disturbed by films such as Bridge on the River Kwai and Letters from Iwo Jima, I was put off for many years by the excessive cruelty of the Japanese towards civilians, POWs, and even their own people. As I’ve been reading more and more Asian history, I find myself motivated to fill in the gaps of my World War II knowledge. Reading about the atrocities committed by the Japanese military in the Pacific can be quite difficult and unsettling, but I believe it is important to learn and understand what American soldiers, nurses, non-combatants, and their allies endured to preserve our freedom and why such an extreme measure as dropping two atomic bombs to end the war was deemed necessary.

The following fictional and nonfictional books recount the tragedies and triumphs of the brutally abused POW “ghost soldiers” who survived the infamous Bataan Death March only to be mistreated and slowly starved to death in internment camps, the 77 Army and Navy nurses dubbed the “Angels of Bataan and Corregidor” who, likewise imprisoned, provided lifesaving care in civilian POW camps, the vast network of Filipino guerrillas and civilians and Allied spies who provided aid to the interned, and the U.S. troops who, in daring raids, eventually freed them.

1 | When We Had Wings: A Story of the Angels of Bataan Ariel Lawhon, Kristina McMorris, Susan Meissner

When the Imperial Japanese Army gains control of the Philippines in early 1942, three friends and nurses – one U.S. Navy, one U.S. Army, and one Filipina – are swept up in the chaos of the Second World War on the Pacific front. They are forced to serve under combat conditions and are eventually subjected to captivity and starvation in Japanese POW camps. They find inner strength to persevere through their hardships and hold onto to the hope they will one day be liberated and see their loved ones again.

The three main characters of this novel are fictional, but their stories are based on the real-life nurses known as the Angels of Bataan, the first American female prisoners of war. I found each of the narratives engaging and was invested in the three nurses’ storylines. Any historical fiction novel that inspires me to learn more about the true events of the historical backdrop rates high with me because the author (or authors in this case) has tugged on my heartstrings and made me care about a period in time and the people who lived through it that I previously knew little to nothing about. This novel was gritty and realistic without being overly graphic and inspirational without being sappy. This story is a perfect blend of everything I love in historical fiction.

My Goodreads Rating: 5 Stars

2 | Angels of the Underground: The American Women who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II Theresa Kaminski

Four American women residing in Manila on the island of Luzon find themselves caught up in the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1941, and each manages to avoid being interned alongside their fellow American civilians. Two of the women, Peggy Utinsky and Claire Phillips, become highly active in the local resistance movement, smuggling money, food, clothing, and medicine to POWs in Camp O’Donnell and Cabanatuan, as well as miliary intelligence through the “Miss U” spy network established by Utinsky. Yay Panlilo – a half-American, half-Filipina journalist with loyalties to both nations – joins the Filipino guerilla fighters. Gladys Savary, a restaurateur married to a Frenchman, also works to provide aid to the civilian Santo Tomas Internment Camp. Each of the women risk imprisonment, torture, and execution if caught but continue to make personal sacrifices to defy the Japanese occupation.

I would have liked to give this work of nonfiction five stars, but I had several qualms which prompted me to knock it down one star (I considered knocking it down two stars because the ending left me with a rather bitter impression). While the narratives of the four women are engrossing, and the intricate web of espionage fascinating, I felt author Theresa Kaminski did a disservice to her subjects by over-emphasizing their faults to the extent that I felt she didn’t believe these women deserved the moniker of “angels.” Kaminski’s assertation that the four women, as well as others involved, were flawed human beings is entirely correct. Not everyone working for the resistance were saintly, noble people with indefatigable morals. Many had weaknesses including alcoholism, jealousy, violent tempers, and narcissism, which were only exasperated under duress. However, the majority of the book focuses on the heroic deeds of the American and Filipino resisters only to end on a low note of how broken and unhappy most of their lives became after sacrificing so much to the war effort.

I was particularly perturbed by how much of the book was dedicated to Claire Phillips’ wartime experiences, based on her memoir Manila Espionage, only to find out that FBI investigations determined many of her claims were unfounded, exaggerated, or outright fabricated. She had indisputably been part of the “Miss U” spy network and had been arrested and imprisoned by the Japanese for several months. I would have preferred the author to be more upfront about which information about Claire Phillips was unreliable rather than dangling hints and haranguing her at the very end, seemingly discrediting the work she did do for the resistance. Despite the lengthy rant, I still rate this book highly as it acknowledges little-known efforts of American citizens and sympathizers who served their country in horrific, dangerous circumstances.

My Goodreads Rating: 4 Stars

3 | Rescue at Los Baños: The Most Daring Prison Camp Raid of World War II Bruce Henderson

Following the Japanese takeover of the Philippines in 1942, American and Allied citizens are instructed to report to Santo Tomas Internment Camp. When the camp – unequipped to house 6,000 prisoners – becomes overcrowded, a new camp called Los Baños is opened. Thought to have better facilities and natural resources, many people volunteer to transfer to the camp, unsuspecting of the hardships that await them. Though fruit grows in abundance just outside the camp fence and local citizens continually try to bring aid packages to the internees, the Japanese guards refuse to provide their prisoners with adequate food and supplies in defiance of the Geneva Convention’s regulations on treatment of POWs. After years of starvation rations and inadequate medical care, many prisoners begin dying of disease and malnutrition. When the United States military gets wind of the existence of the camp, General MacArthur tasks the 11th Airborne Division with carrying out a daring rescue. With ample reason to believe the Japanese will execute all the prisoners if they suspect the camp is soon to be liberated, the rescue mission must be carried out as swiftly and secretly as possible with no room for error. This nonfictional book recounts the personal tales of various internees at Los Baños, the Filipino guerillas who coordinated with the U.S. military to plan and aid the rescue, and the American paratroopers who risked their lives to save their fellow citizens and allies.

Having read this book after the fictional novel When We Had Wings, I could tell it was used as source material for many of the incidents referred to in the novel. Real-life figures such as unassailable imprisoned U.S. Navy nurse Dorothy Still and bold camp physician Dana Nance are featured in Rescue at Los Baños and make appearances in When We Had Wings. The stories of other fascinating people like Pan Am mechanic Ben Edwards who, risking execution, continually escaped and re-entered Los Baños to provide intel and collaborate with the Filipino guerillas assisting the rescue mission flesh out the book and make it a fascinating read.

Internment camps were a reality on all sides of the Second World War. The most well-known are the concentration camps in Europe used by the Nazis used to exterminate Jews and other unwanted minorities and the Japanese internment camps in the U.S. which detained Japanese Americans citizens. Even as a life-long history buff, I only recently became aware that American citizens were also imprisoned in camps during the war and were treated abominably. This book brings to light the suffering Americans and other allied civilians endured in one of several prison camps in the Philippines and lauds the heroism of their rescuers, all war-weary from three years of killing and eager to finally do something valiant to save lives.

My Goodreads Rating: 5 Stars

4 | Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission Hampton Sides

After four months of fighting with dwindling supplies and no reinforcements in sight, U.S. troops are no longer able to hold their position on the Bataan Peninsula of the Philippines. U.S. Major General Edward King surrenders his troops to the Japanese Imperial Army on April 9, 1942, in an attempt to avoid mass slaughter. Unbeknownst to King, he will be subjecting his troops to one of the greatest atrocities of the Second World War – the Bataan Death March. Due to the observance of the Samurai Bushido code, which values dying with honor and encourages the taking of one’s own life in the face of defeat to avoid shame, the Japanese Imperial Army holds no respect for soldiers who surrender and blatantly ignores the Geneva Conventions’ stipulations on how POWs should be treated. Over the course of the six-day 70-mile hike, already starving American and Filipino prisoners are offered little food or water. Those who fall behind are shot or bayoneted, as are Filipino civilians who offer aid to the marchers. An estimated 500 American and 2,500 Filipino soldiers are killed during the journey. After three years of captivity, around 500 of the weakest, sickest American and Allied soldiers are left in the POW camp Cabanatuan. As many as 9,000 Americans have passed through the camp. About a third have died there of starvation or disease, and the rest have been shipped out to Japan or other Asian countries to be exploited as slave labor. When the tide of the war begins to shift and American forces return to the Philippines, the well-trained but relatively new and untested 6th Ranger Battalion, in collaboration with local Filipino guerillas, is tasked with planning a rescue mission to liberate the remaining Cabanatuan POWs.

This nonfictional book was tough to read at times, but I respect the author’s level of detail and research in exposing the horrors of war in the Pacific which would later be overshadowed by events in Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Hiroshima. My one criticism is that author Hampton Sides seemed a bit too sympathetic to the Japanese soldiers during the Bataan Death March, offering thin excuses for their behavior. While I appreciate his humanization of the Japanese soldiers, who were not all bloodthirsty butchers, I do not accept the reasoning that somehow suffering from heat, humidity, and hunger precipitated malicious actions such as beheading a prisoner for trying to get a drink of water. Sides fails to mention that members of the Japanese 16th Infantry Division who committed heinous acts during the Bataan Death March were part of the same notorious division that, a few years prior, carried out the Rape of Nanking – a six-week killing spree resulting in the deaths of roughly 40,000 Chinese POWs and 250,000 civilians, as well as the systematic rape of up to 80,000 women. This group of Japanese soldiers was exceptionally vicious and held little regard for human life.

That critique aside, Ghost Soldiers is a fantastic read. Sides interjects unexpected slices of humor and irony as well as touching, poignant moments. I spent much of the final chapter tearing up as recollections of the rescued POWs were shared, recounting the astonishing amount of fortitude they found within themselves upon liberation and during their final “life march” to freedom within American-controlled territory. This book truly is a testament to American and Allied courage and endurance during World War II. The 2005 film The Great Raid depicts many of the characters and events described in this book and is likewise worth watching.

My Goodreads Rating: 5 Stars

5 | Angels of the Pacific Elise Hooper

This fictional novel follows two women through their harrowing and heartbreaking ordeals during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. Tess Abbott is an American Army nurse who serves on the Bataan Peninsula, retreats with her fellow nurses to the nearby island of Corregidor and, after surrendering, finds herself in the civilian internment camp Santo Tomas, where she becomes involved in smuggling information to the local resistance. Flor Dalisay is a native Filipina who provides care packages to the interned prisoners and joins the resistance movement, ending up on the other side of fence of Tess’s smuggling operation. The two women witness both terror and resilience and work towards ridding the Philippines of the Japanese Imperial Army.

I rounded up my rating of this novel to 4 stars from what would otherwise be 3.5 stars, in my opinion. The main character Tess Abbott is written as too young to be an Army nurse, and the romances interspersed throughout the book fell flat for me. I was also puzzled by the author’s odd choice to tell Tess’s story from a first-person perspective and Flor’s from third person. However, the events portrayed – particularly the largely-overlooked Japanese treatment of women – are gripping and intense and deserve to be acknowledged. Many of the fictional characters are based on real-life people, some of whom I recognized from Angels of the Underground and Ghost Soldiers. This is a story of loss and healing. I welcomed how the author devoted a few chapters at the end of the novel to explore how her main characters handle their re-entry into “normal” life after their tragic ordeals and find ways of achieving inner peace and reconciliation.

My Goodreads Rating: 4 Stars