Angels Over the Pacific: The Los Banos Raid

“I doubt that any airborne unit in the world will ever rival the Los Banos prison raid.”  General Colin Powell

July 2024

Many times, my father told me that he was glad that he never had to fight in the Pacific. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, he wondered if he would be summoned to be part of the invasion of the Japanese homeland. Paratroopers would be needed, and ultimately, the lead unit in the dreaded invasion was to be a Pacific-based division, the 11th Airborne.

While not as famous as my father’s 101st Airborne, the paratroopers of the 11th were highly-trained and played a vital role in the liberation of the Philippines. Forced to evacuate Corregidor Island in 1942, MacArthur declared to the Philippine nation, “I shall return,” and the 11th Airborne was called upon to fulfill that promise.

In late 1944, they fought near Leyte Gulf and Luzon. During the fighting in November through December, losses were high with some companies reporting up to ninety percent casualties. In one story, the exhausted Commander of D Company, Captain Cavanaugh, chastised his First Sergeant Farnsworth for terribly low attendance after the order was given for all paratroopers to assemble. Farnsworth sadly informed his boss, “Sir, that’s all there is.” D Company lost one-third of its soldiers. In early 1945, they were part of the bitter battle for Manila.

Perhaps, the paratroopers’ most impressive operation was the raid on Los Banos prison. Los Banos was not a prison for criminals or enemy combatants. It was used to hold captured civilians from the nearby city of Luzon. They were Americans, British, Canadians, Dutch, and others from Europe. These prisoners were men, women, and children who were held for three years while conditions grew increasingly harsh.

Included in this population were 300 Catholic missionaries, many of them priests. They were kept in a separate part of the camp known as “Vatican City,” while the rest of the camp was called “Hell’s Half-Acre” by the lay population who lived and suffered there.

One priest was heard to say, “If we are going to get out of this alive, we will have to pray.”

A nun replied, “If we are going to get out of this alive, God will have to send the angels.”

Among the other internees was a young American girl whose father worked in the Luzon area. Margaret Whitaker, who was born in Spokane, Washington, spent three years in Santo Tomas and Los Banos prisons watching people die of starvation and suffer brutal treatment. As the battle raged outside her walls, she wondered if she would survive long enough to be rescued. At the time of the raid, Margaret was seventeen.

Unbeknownst to the souls imprisoned in Los Banos, efforts were afoot to stage a daring rescue. In December 1944, a farmer from Mindanao reported to the 11th Airborne’s G2 (Intelligence Officer), Lt. Colonel Mueller, that conditions in the camp were worsening. Mueller and his staff began to work with Filipino guerillas to gather more intelligence.  

On February 12, 1945, the 11th was ordered to plan and execute a raid to liberate the camp. Because the division was heavily engaged in combat operations in Manila, it requested and received the okay to postpone the mission. The fighting was harsh and very difficult. The Los Banos internees could hear the battle forty miles away and while they were hopeful that victory was coming, they were increasingly afraid that it would not come quickly enough to help them. One woman wrote “We prayed that God would send his angels and all the hosts of heaven to rescue us.”

More concerning reports claimed that the Japanese were preparing to kill all the Los Banos internees, possibly on February 23.

Then, on February 19, an escaped prisoner from the camp arrived and provided key intelligence. The camp’s soldiers held physical training every morning from 0645 to 0715. Their weapons were set aside for safe keeping, and only a small cohort of armed guards were posted. The decision was made to invade at 0700 on February 23.

As planning moved forward, an 11th Airborne reconnaissance team known as a “ghost platoon” was deployed. One of its members was Sergeant Martin Squires, a twenty-four-year-old from Forks, Washington. While Margaret Whitaker clung to hope, Sergeant Squires was working the problem. Along with Filipino allies, Squires and the team were identifying weak spots and best approaches, getting as close as three feet from the camp.

The assault began three minutes before the scheduled 0700 start time. A Japanese soldier fired a shot at an animal at 0657. Responding fire rang out and the fighting was underway. The ghost platoon and the Filipino soldiers struck the camp along with the incoming paratroopers who jumped from a dangerously low altitude of 400-500 feet. A diversionary blocking force was also deployed to divert 8000 Japanese “Tiger” Division forces only a few miles away.

The raid was fierce and swift. Timing was near-perfect. The guards were quickly dispensed and the Japanese soldiers neutralized. Internees reported that “Guerrilla troops were all over the place. They seemed to rise out of the ground, and I can vouch for the fact that they showed no mercy against the enemy.” While some escaped, almost all Japanese soldiers were killed. Two American and two Filipino raiders were also killed.

Time was of the essence, and the soldiers had to coax some of the prisoners to move out!

One woman questioned a paratrooper. “Are you a Marine?”

“Hell no, I’m a paratrooper.”

“All of my days at Los Banos, I have dreamed of being rescued by a Marine, and you’re not a Marine.” The young soldier rescued her anyway.

A priest dropped to his knees to pray, and a soldier tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get the hell out of here, Father.”

Sister Louise Kroeger later commented, “We thought each soldier an angel, and a giant one at that.”

Angels indeed. The Angels of the 11th Airborne. One of those Angels was Sgt. Squires, part of the advance party that so quickly dispatched the guards. Somewhere, in the middle of the fighting, Margaret Whitaker was rescued.

It was decided that the mission would be deemed a success if one-third of the prisoners survived. As it turned out, the “G**damned fightingist outfit I have ever seen” moved fiercely and quickly and not one prisoner was lost. Margaret Whitaker, weighing a mere eighty-three pounds, was taken to nearby Bilibid prison for care and nutrition. Margaret went back to Washington to attend college. A few months later, Martin’s mother insisted that her son reach out to the young woman whose family was covered in a local news story about Los Banos. He did and the two started dating, were later married for fifty-three years, and had three children.

No one was more grateful for the success of the Los Banos raid than Margaret Whitaker, except possibly her husband, Sergeant Martin Squires who wrote in a letter to author Jeremy Holm that she “was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

*Special thanks to Jeremy Holm, author and unit historian, for sharing this story with me on his website www.11thairborne.com and in his book “When Angels Fall: From Toccoa to Tokyo.” He was even gracious enough to share the terrific photo.