# ANGELS AT DAWN THE LOS BANOS RAID (Book Review)



## Danjanou (5 Jan 2004)

On the evening of September 22, 1945 the 2,000 plus internees of the Los Banos internment camp in the Philippines went to bed in a state of apprehension. Rumours about their future had been circulating for some time now. The war was going badly for their Japanese captors who in turn were taking it out on the American, Australian, Canadian, and European civilians who had the misfortune of being caught in the Philippines when the Japanese had invaded over three years earlier. 

The guards treatment of them had it seemed become worse as news of allied victories made it’s way to the isolated camp. They were now even forbidden to go outside when allied aircraft flew over. Their rations had been cut, yet again, and were now insufficient to sustain life. 

Starvation may have been facing them, but so was the fact that they may be transported from the Philippines to Japan as other prisoners and internees before them had. There was also the possibility that their captors planned on executing them in the immediate future. 

These troubling thoughts were on their minds as they lay in their cots that winter evening. The American forces were miles away stuck in heavy fighting around Manila and salvation seemed improbable. There was also the fact that recently several internees had gone missing. The possibility that they had tried to escape and been executed seemed evident. 

Dawn on February 23rd came as so many before it had. Those early rising internees were treated to the regular sight of the off duty guards forming up for their morning exercise. February 23, 1945 looked to be yet another day in the fight for survival that was life in Los Banos. 

Suddenly rifle and machine gun fire began to erupt all around the camp. Japanese guards, both those at their posts and formed for exercise began to keel over. The internees began to take cover in their barracks. Nine aircraft swept low over the camp and from them paratroopers began to jump. The operation to rescue the 2,000 internees had begun. Within minutes the camp was in allied hands. Within hours all of the internees were en route to allied lines and safety. 

Angels At Dawn, The Los Banos Raid is the true story of the efforts by elements of the 11th Airborne Division and Filipino guerillas to rescue the allied internees. The book was written by retired Lt. General Edward M. Flanagan Jr. who as a junior officer served with the 11th Airborne Division in the Second World War. 

General Douglas MacArthur the Supreme Allied Commander in the South West Pacific was well aware of the situation of the civilian internees at Los Banos and elsewhere in the Philippines and immediately after the successful invasion at Leyte ordered contingency plans prepared to rescue them. In early 1945 while American troops were stuck fighting the Japanese defenders near Manila, the commander of the 11th Airborne Division which was involved in the fighting was given the order to rescue the Los Banos internees before they could be removed to Japan and/or executed by an increasingly desperate Japanese military. 

Reports of the desperate situation amongst the internees and their possible fate had been provided by local Filipino guerilla units operating in the area. The guerillas were more than willing to attack and capture the camp by themselves if necessary, but lacked the resources to either hide or evacuate such a large number of civilians most of whom were ill and unable to travel under their own power. American logistical power would be needed for that phase. 

General Flanagan presents a detailed but concise account of the raid including the rather detailed planning needed to undertake what became a complex and multi faceted operation. And as in almost all cases in warfare the plans changed the minute the first shots were fired. 

The Los Banos raid is a tale of several groups of people whose lives converged in the early hours of February 23, 1945. There are the internees, the guards, the Filipino guerillas, and the American soldiers. 

Prior to the actual raid itself he presents a picture of life at Los Banos and the internees themselves. Several of their stories from the moments they were captured in 1942 and how they survived. Many were members of the clergy and or missionaries, including a large contingent of Roman Catholic Priests and Nuns. Others had run business in Manila and some including several merchant sailors had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Some time is given to the guard force, mainly made up of Japanese soldiers no longer fit for front line service. Some are kind to their charges, some remain professional, some do not. The weak and indecisive commander and his rather sadistic second in command are noted including a section on how the later was captured and eventually tried for war crimes and executed. 

The various Filipino guerilla organizations in the region were an integral part in the operation. Flanagan spends a lot of time showing how the various units were set up, and how they operated including their shortcomings. Many of the units while united against their common enemy were also rivals and sometimes cooperation between groups was hard to accomplish. 

Finally Flanagan looks at the main American forces involved, the 11th Airborne Division, including the main personalities involved in the raid from the General commanding down to the small unit commanders on the ground at Los Banos. One of the more amusing anecdotes regards a contingent of Filipino guerillas attached to one the Airborne rifle companies. It is the company tasked with actually jumping into Los Banos and the young guerillas who have never even seen a parachute are given a quick basic para course culminating with one real combat jump. 

The raid as eventually planned by the staff of the 11th Airborne and Filipino guerillas was a four phase operation involving guerilla insertion behind “enemy lines”, and an airborne and amphibious assault. Initially the Division‘s thirty man Scout Platoon was infiltrated some twenty five miles behind Japanese lines to link up with the various guerilla units. 

The Scout Platoon and guerillas had several tasks. First they were to confirm the locations of all guard posts and barracks containing the internees. They were assisted in this by several internees who had escaped from Los Banos and been hiding with the guerillas. Some of these men had been smuggled through to the US lines and assisted the 11th Division planning staff. 

Secondly they were to mark and secure a paratrooper drop zone immediately beside the camp. Thirdly they were also to secure a nearby beachhead a couple of miles from the camp. Los Banos was located near a large lake and the far shore was behind US lines. 

Finally selected groups of guerillas and Scout Platoon members would actually initiate the raid by attacking the guard posts and killing the guards as the paratroop transports approached the drop zone. 

The second phase of the operation would be the dropping of a reinforced airborne infantry company into a field beside the camp at the exact same time as the guerillas opened fire on the guards. These paratroopers would then rush the camp and assist the scout platoon and guerillas in overpowering the guards. 

Phase three would involve an airborne battalion (minus the company dropped onto the camp) supported by engineers and artillery transported across the lake in 54 amphibious tracked vehicles overnight. They would then land on the beach at the same time as the paratroopers were exiting their aircraft. The vehicles would then race the couple of miles to the camp and organize the internees for evacuation and help defend it from any Japanese counter attack. 

The final part of the plan involved another infantry battalion form the 11th Airborne heavily supported by tanks and two artillery battalions smashing through the Japanese front lines twenty-five miles away and driving towards the camp, securing the route along the way. With them would be sufficient trucks to evacuate the raiders and all the internees. The camp would not be held as an estimated 8,000 enemy soldiers were within an hours drive away. 

It was a complex plan involving the coordination of various units and split second timing. There was no time to rehearse anything and many of the units involved were only pulled out of combat hours before hand to quickly rest and be briefed on the upcoming mission. 

Despite this the first three phases went off almost flawlessly. The camp was quickly captured and the guards either all killed or driven off in mere minutes. No Americans and only a handful of Filipino guerillas were killed. 

The commander on the ground however decided that it would take too long to wait for the relief column. All the internees and raiders (guerillas aside) were instead evacuated across the lake by the amphibious vehicles. 

Flanagan is his description of the planning and the actual raid makes an interesting observation. While everyone from General MacArthur on down had an interest in the outcome of the raid they did not interfere in the planning or conduct. MacArthur assigned the operation to the commander of the 11th Airborne and left him to it. The Divisional commander in turn had his staff plan the operation and then assigned the battalion that would execute it and left the direction of the operations to the rather junior Major in command of that Battalion. 

In fact during the initial minutes of the raid, command, including the decision to abort or go ahead, was vested in the Scout Platoon commander and then later the commander of the company that dropped onto the camp, both Lieutenants. 

He compares this trust in subordinates to carry things out to the micro management by senior staff and politicians in military operation in Vietnam and since. One gets the feeling at least according to Flanagan that had the los Banos raid been done during Vietnam or the Gulf War it would have failed. 

Were this a movie the tale would have ended with the amphibious tracks full of jubilant internees sailing across the lake to freedom while the credits rolled. It was real though and Flanagan does not end the tale there. The Americans and Filipino guerillas could not hold the Los Banos area and had no orders to do so. 

After they left, the Japanese troops returned to the area including some of the guards who had escaped being killed. There were several villages in the area and the inhabitants had over the years tried to help the internees. 

The Japanese troops burned farms and villages and murdered an estimated 1,500 Filipinos in retaliation for the raid. That’s not a large number when compared to the estimated 100,000 civilians that died during the fighting to liberate Manila that was going on at the same time, but it is one that should be remembered. The camp second in command was executed as a war criminal for his part in this and his actions at the camp. 

Overall Flanagan’s account is worth reading. As noted he covers the events leading up to and following the raid including an afterward telling what happened to many of the characters, raiders, internees, and guerillas after the war. Also included are a couple of appendices covering life in the camp and a list of all of the internees by nationality. It is interesting to note that imprisoned along with the Americans, British, Canadians, Australians and persons from Neutral countries was a large contingent of Italians. 

My one minor complaint at least with the copy I read are the maps included. They are rather limited, small and lack any detail and really don’t assist in following the operation. There are also a couple of black and white photographs which don’t do more than offer some faded blurry shots of some of the raiders. These shortcomings aside though it’s still a good account of a rather fascinating little known operation in the dying days of the Second World War.


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