Historical Overview

 From the invasion of China in 1937 to the end of World War II, the Japanese military regime murdered near 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most probably almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war.....

.... On the Philippines (lines 336 to 342), better estimates than for any other territory are available. After the Japanese defeat on the Islands, special American units tried to document the massacres committed by Japanese forces and secret police. Still, different and inconsistent figures are given (lines 336-340), taking into account the number of American civilians (line 336) and American and Filipino POWs (lines 73, and 78-82) captured and killed. Most likely this is due to the difficulty of estimating the toll of many recorded and unrecorded massacres and atrocities. In any case, a minimum of 90,000 Filipino civilians killed seems solid.

-Statistics Of Japanese Democide: Estimates, Calculations, And Sources, By R.J. Rummel. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM

 Any soldier captured before the surrender was executed.
The Bataan Death March -- 7,000 surrendered men died. Those that could not keep up the pace were clubbed, stabbed, shot, beheaded or buried alive.
Once the prison camp had been reached, disease, malnutrition and brutality claimed up to 400 American and Filipinos -- each day.

-WW2: Little Known Facts: Acts of Terrorism and Atrocity by Japanese. http://www.marshallnet.com/~manor/ww2/atrocity.html

 The Philippine people were left to fend for themselves against the Japanese Imperial Army. The Japanese came under the guise of “Asia for Asians” and with propaganda for stamping out Western Imperialism. American schoolbooks were destroyed and schools later shut down. Any American troops and their families who had been left behind were interned as prisoners of war. Houses were commandeered by the Imperial Army. Food became dangerously scarce and the civilians starved. The barter system came into play as people foraged for food to save their families. Families hid in cellars to avoid any suspicion of being guerrilla fighters and later to survive the battles and the bombings.

-Excerpt from When the Elephants Dance, Author’s Notes.

 Books 

1.      Dowlen, Dorothy Dore (2001). Enduring What Cannot Be Endured: Memoir of a Woman Medical Aide in the Philippines in World War II. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN: 0-7864-0851-0.

This is the story of a woman who was forced to witness most of her family slaughtered by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War Two. Acting as a medical aide in Mindanao, and then as a second lieutenant for the U.S. forces as a teenager, this memoir portrays, from a child’s point of view, what life was like in the Philippines under the Japanese occupation. 

2.      Escoda, Jose Ma. Bonifacia M. (2000). Warsaw of Asia: The Rape of Manila. Manila: Giraffe Books. ISBN: 971-8832-37-8.

Dubbed the “Manila Holocaust”, this book is a series of oral histories collected by the author about the last month of the liberation of Manila. The work is arranged chronologically, with a day-by-day recording of events. One hundred and seventy-five pictures are also included of scenes of horrific deaths of Filipinos, Americans, and Japanese.  

3.      Garcia, Joaquin L. (2001). It Took Four Years for the Rising Sun to Set, 1941-1945: Recollections of an Unforgettable Ordeal. Manila: De La Salle University Press. ISBN: 971-555-402-4.

This book is a personal narrative of a boy growing up during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. It provides a first-person account of how civilians were caught in the middle of the war between the Japanese and the United States in the Philippines.  

4.      Holthe, Tess Uriza (2002). When the Elephants Dance: A Novel. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN: 0-609-60952-1.

This is a work of fiction inspired by oral histories to the author by family members who had survived the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. The opening pages refer to the elephants dancing and the chickens being careful, the elephants signifying the Americans and the Japanese, and the chickens the Filipinos.  

5.      Ishida, Jintaro ( 2001). The Remains of War: Apology and Forgiveness. Quezon City: Megabooks Co.

This is a very courageous work, originally written in Japanese, by a Japanese man who has traveled both to the Philippines and his own Japan interviewing survivors of World War Two. He interviews the living members of Japanese Imperial Army who were commanded to kill Filipino civilians. Many interesting answers come about from his inquiries, including the fact that, although many Filipinos attest to the Christian value of forgiveness, many have a hard time forgetting.  

6.      Montinola, Lourdes R. (1996). Breaking the Silence. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. ISBN: 971-542-128-8.

This is a series of journal entries by the daughter of the Far Eastern University founder, Dr. Nicanor Reyes. In response to the difficult questions asked to her by another author about life as a non-combatant victim of the battle for the liberation of Manila, the author here has written down her memories.  

7.      Polo, Elena P. (2000). The Negating Fire vs. The Affirming Flame: American and Filipino Novels in the Pacific War. Philippines: University of Santos Press. ISBN: 971-506-125-7.

This author divides and compares the varying differences between American views of the War in the Pacific to those views of Filipinos in terms of novels that have been written by both parties. Part One, American Novels of the Second World War in the Pacific, contains such chapters as “The ‘Affirming Flame’”, and “The Futile Quest”, whereas Part Two, The Philippine Novels on the Second World War, contains chapters like “Guilt, Remorse, and Purgation” and “Designs for Survival”.  

8.      Syjuco, MA. Felisa A. (1988). The Kempei Tai in the Philippines: 1941-1945. Quezon City: New Day Publishers. ISBN: 971-10-0347-3.

This book focuses on the Kempei Tai, or the Japanese Military Police organization in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation. The book goes on to explain how the Kempei Tai used both positive and negative means to win over the Filipinos in order to maintain peace and order.

Journals 

9.      Boling, David (1995). Mass Rape, Enforced Prostitution, and the Japanese Imperial Army: Japan Eschews International and Legal Responsibility? Occasional Papers/Reprints Series in Contemporary Asian Studies, 3 (128). ISSN: 0730-0107.

This is a reprint of a study done by a lawyer of the trials brought before the Tokyo District Court. Two groups of women, Korean and Filipina, sued the Japanese government for the human rights abuses against women that the Japanese Imperial Army committed in Asia during World War Two. This article was first published in The Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, Volume 32, Issue 3.