Letter to the Editor: Recounting 1945 Rescue From Los Banos Internment Camp
Letters to the editor can be submitted to letters@chronline.com. Posted Monday, March 6, 2023 2:17 pm As dawn broke over the Los Banos Civilian 'In...
Letters to the editor can be submitted to letters@chronline.com. Posted Monday, March 6, 2023 2:17 pm As dawn broke over the Los Banos Civilian 'Internment' Camp at 7 a.m. on Feb. 23, 1945 (1 p.m. Feb. 22, 1945, U.S. Time) about 25 miles south of Manila in the Philippine Islands, it held 2,142 starving Allied civilians who were still alive, living on a diet of a bug-filled, watery rice mush, papaya tree roots, fried banana peels, slugs, rats, edible weeds, dogs and cats. Unknown to us at the time, the trenches that had been dug by our guards were destined to be our graves, as all of us were scheduled to be executed that very morning.