SOCIAL SCIENCES

Rescue at Los Baños: The Most Daring Prison Camp Raid of World War II

by Bruce Henderson
Morrow. Mar. 2015. 384p. photos. bibliog. index. ISBN 9780062325068. $27.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062325082. HIST
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Journalist and veteran Henderson, author or coauthor of more than 20 nonfiction books (Hero Found; Down to the Sea), provides greater recognition of the gripping story of the recovery on February 23, 1945 of 2,146 mostly American, mostly civilian men, women, and children imprisoned in a Japanese-run internment camp in the Philippines. Both the U.S. 11th Airborne Division, tasked by General MacArthur, and a diverse group of Filipino guerillas released the deliberately starved and medicine-deprived internees from a repurposed college campus on Luzon set ironically in a lush agricultural area. The author uses oral interviews, written and photographic documentation, and secondary sources for historical context (endnoted but without page references) in this heartrending tale of abusive treatment and ultimate survival.
VERDICT This narrative of one event depicting the horrors of war and its resolution should broaden the perspective of general readers of 20th-century military history. Although a monument, a ceremony, and a joint U.S. congressional resolution honored this liberation on its 60th anniversary, the event was underpublicized at the time since Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph of the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima taken the same day received more media coverage. [See Prepub Alert, 9/14/14.]
Reviewed by Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC , Mar 15, 2015
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