The Los Baños Raid, 1945

This one came up in passing as I was getting ready for WHWFest this year, and I have had a note to come back to it for Substack for a while.

In December 1944, MacArthur returned to the Philippines. You can read about his humiliation there in 1941 here:

ARTICLE: The Fall of the Philippines, 1942

And more broadly about the return here:

ARTICLE: Philippines, 1945

But the short of it is, by January 1945, the Americans had landed on Luzon, the most important of several thousand islands that make up the Philippines and home to Manila. Japan had lost this battle, and they knew it, but as was their normal modus operandi, they would fight bitterly and without any expectation of survival, spending as much enemy blood as possible.

This included massacring prisoners, word of which had already got back to MacArthur. Time was a factor, and he had the liberation of one camp, stuffed with civilian men, women and children, in his sights.

Los Baños was named so because of the hot springs in the area. 25 miles behind enemy lines, with an estimated 250 guards, that it itself was a daunting prospect on which to plan a rail. However, two miles away was a Japanese company armed with significant firepower, and worst still an entire division was parked some seven miles away. That’s about 10,000 men, a battalion of which could be march to Los Baños in 90 minutes. Other factors made the prospect of a rescue mission bonkers. The Americans had no idea how many internees were there, or precisely what condition they were in.

The 11th Airborne, ‘The Angels,’ were somehow going to have to make this work. They had been busy laying siege to the Genko Line, south of Manila, but that was only about a third of the contingent that would take part in the raid. The rest were brave Filipino guerrillas, willing to risk their own fate and that of their countrymen by participating in the American staged mission and antagonising the occupying Japanese.

The rescue was set for 23rd February 1945, four days after the Americans landed on Iwo Jima. 26-year-old, Major Henry Burgess had grown up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. had been in command of 511th Parachute infantry regiment, only 412 men strong, for precisely fifteen days when he received orders for the raid.

And he had never heard of Los Baños…