An Island of Killing and Slaughter: Anti-Guerrilla Warfare and Civilian-Targeted Violence in Panay,1943

The Imperial Japanese Army invaded and occupied Panay, an island in the Visayas region of the Philippines, for just over three years during the Second World War. In that time, Japanese occupation forces were confronted with fierce and stubborn guerrilla resistance which thwarted their efforts to consolidate control over the island and its people. In fact, Captain Kumai Toshimi, who was stationed there from October 1942 until the surrender of Japanese troops in September 1945, claimed that in Panay, they had faced the worst guerrilla warfare of the Pacific War. Indeed, the Panay Guerrillas, unique for their early organisation, stable leadership and for some striking military victories in 1942, were a relatively formidable force. ¹ Though not in a position to expel Japanese units from the island or to win decisive pitched battles, the guerrillas did significantly outnumber the Japanese occupation force in Panay and were a constant menace which, as detailed by Kumai in his memoirs, caused no end of suffering for the Japanese troops who were engaged in a protracted and increasingly brutal anti-guerrilla campaign. Panay was, in Kumai's words, transformed into an island of ‘killing’ (koroshi) and ‘slaughter’ (satsuriku). ² This was especially true of 1943 when Japanese forces, in accordance with orders from 14th Army Headquarters in Manila, carried out an intensive punitive campaign designed to finally suppress the resistance movement.

Over a period of six months, from July to December 1943, Japanese units in the island perpetrated large-scale and widespread atrocities that deliberately, and almost exclusively, targeted the civilian populace of Panay. These atrocities featured the massacre, torture and rape of civilians, the slaughter of livestock, the destruction of crops, the burning of houses and the looting of property. Thousands of civilians of all ages and genders were killed. Damage was extensive and the impact on living conditions was devastating. Death from starvation, privation or disease was a serious threat in the aftermath of this campaign. ³ These atrocities were investigated by the Allies and became the subject of thirteen of the post-war tribunals in the immediate aftermath of the war. While other cases like the Bataan Death March and the Manila Massacre have since become infamous symbols of Japanese brutality in the Philippines, the plight of civilians in Panay has received comparatively limited attention. This article offers a corrective by providing a detailed examination of civilian-targeted violence, that is, violence directed against the civilian population, by Japanese forces in Panay during the latter half of 1943.

An analysis of a new, under-studied case of Japanese brutality in Asia, particularly one which explores the links between anti-guerrilla warfare and civilian targeted violence, will add to existing scholarship which seeks to document and explain the perpetration of atrocities by Japanese forces during the Second World War. While much of this literature, as shown in the work of scholars like Hata Ikuhiko, Yuki Tanaka and Daqing Yang, has emphasised ideological, functional and structural explanations for Japanese brutality in its focus on the role of Bushidō and the Emperor system, the shifting perceptions of human rights, attitudes towards prisoners of war (POWs) and surrender, changes in the structure and culture of the Japanese military and the associated brutalisation of soldiers on the battlefield; few have explored in depth the strategic logic that influenced the decisions of some Japanese commanders to employ atrocities in the pursuit of military objectives. ⁴ Indeed, in Panay atrocities were purposefully directed at civilians as part of a ruthless anti-guerrilla strategy designed to suppress the guerrillas by severing their main source of support. This was not a case in which soldiers went ‘beserk’ as has been argued in defence of other Japanese wartime atrocities. ⁵ As such, through analysing the conduct of Japanese units as they engaged in anti-guerrilla warfare in Panay, it will be possible to develop an understanding of the circumstances under which commanders decided to target civilians and to employ more extreme measures as a means of achieving specific goals. In doing so, this article offers a valuable contribution to the ongoing study of Japanese war crimes by emphasising, and closely analysing, the strategic and systematic character that can be identified in some of the atrocities perpetrated by Japanese forces in Asia.

Over four months after the successful capture of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, on 2 January 1942, the Kawamura Detachment of the Imperial Japanese Army began a three-pronged assault on Panay Island. They landed at important strategic points in the provinces of Iloilo, Capiz and Antique on 16 April 1942, capturing the provincial capitals – Iloilo City, Capiz Town (now Roxas City) and San Jose, swiftly and peacefully. The 61st Division of the US Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), mobilised in defence of the island, had been in no position to mount an effective resistance. Two of its best units had been redeployed to Mindanao leaving behind an under-manned, ill-equipped and poorly trained force. In view of this, USAFFE commanders in Panay had opted instead to carry out a protracted guerrilla-style campaign. From December, preparations were concentrated on transferring arms, food and other supplies to secret caches in the rugged mountainous interior of the island, setting up communication installations and implementing a scorched-earth policy in and around abandoned towns. Their prospective guerrilla campaign failed to materialise, however. The 61st Division fought only a handful of small-scale engagements with Japanese troops before its commanding officer Colonel Albert Christie was compelled to abide by General Jonathan Wainwright's order to surrender following the Fall of Corregidor on 6 May 1942. ⁶

USAFFE forces officially laid down their arms in Panay on 24 May 1942. However, a small group of Filipino officers, led by Lieutenant Colonel Macario Peralta Jr., refused to abide by Christie's orders and, upon receiving his tacit consent, absconded to the mountains with army funds to continue the resistance. According to Lieutenant Colonel Leopoldo Relunia, Peralta's second-in-command, driving their decision not to surrender in May was an abiding concern that the Japanese would treat POWs cruelly, a long-standing and deep-seated desire to oppose foreign invaders and continued confidence in the US Government which, it was believed, would soon be sending reinforcements to retake the Philippines. At that time, the guerrilla leadership were anticipating having to hold out against Japanese forces for just three months, rather than the three years it would take General Douglas MacArthur to return. ⁷

Over June and July 1942, the resistance movement in Panay began to take shape. Since only 1000 of the approximately 8000 Philippine troops in Panay had turned themselves over to the Japanese at the end of May, Peralta was able to put together a sizeable guerrilla army. Having promised Christie that he would not launch attacks against the Japanese for the first two months lest such activity incite retaliation against those that had surrendered, the first priorities for Peralta's burgeoning organisation focused on: the recall and reorganisation of all non-surrendered officers and enlisted men; the induction and training of new recruits; intelligence gathering and monitoring of Japanese activities; the restoration of peace and order, which was particularly important since banditry had become rife in the turmoil of the Japanese invasion; the maintenance of civilian morale; and the gathering and storing of supplies of food, weapons, ammunition and fuel. ⁸ During this time, Peralta met with former Governor of Iloilo, Tomas Confesor, who having also refused to surrender, was then in the process of forming an administration to carry on the day-to-day functions of government in the unoccupied or ‘free’ areas of the island. ⁹ Together, Peralta and Confesor laid the groundwork for a stable partnership between the non-surrendered army and civil authorities in Panay which was instrumental in maintaining a united resistance movement, capable even of withstanding the eventual deterioration of Peralta and Confesor's relationship in 1944. ¹⁰

On 26 August 1942, Peralta's guerrilla army and Confesor's provincial guards, an armed unit created to act as a police force in ‘Free Panay’, began the first in a series of attacks against Japanese forces. Over the next two months, the guerrillas staged ambushes, launched hit-and-run attacks, wiped out small patrols, sabotaged roads, railways and bridges and on occasion raided under-manned garrisons to great effect. Having the advantage in manpower and catching the Japanese unawares, Peralta's army was able to force Japanese units to withdraw from garrisons in a number of localities. By the time besieged Japanese troops retreated from Pototan on 20 October, they held only four garrisons; the three provincial capitals and Santa Barbara in Iloilo province. ¹¹ These early victories bolstered the resistance movement and revived civilian morale following the surrender of USAFFE forces in May, but they were fleeting.

Just a month later, 14th Army Headquarters in Manila, responding to unrest not just in Panay but across the Visayas region, sent reinforcements with the intention, as stated in the Japanese-controlled Manila Tribune, of carrying out ‘intensive and general operations against these bandits and guerrillas to the end that these unruly elements may be completely wiped out’. ¹² Provided with extra reinforcements and air support, Japanese forces launched their campaign and, since the guerrillas refused to engage, quickly recaptured the towns they had been forced to abandon earlier that year. With ammunition stores running low, Peralta had ordered his troops not to defend the towns but to retreat and carry out a scorched-earth policy within a 5 km radius of Japanese garrisons as they went. The plan, as explained in letters to Relunia dated late November 1942, was to conserve ammunition by avoiding clashes with larger groups, sniping instead at small patrols that would inevitably be sent out foraging. ¹³ By the end of 1942, Japanese forces appeared to be in the dominant position. American aid had not arrived and the guerrillas had been forced to abandon their gains, scaling back their activity to sporadic sniping of small patrols that ventured into their territory. However, while no longer in a position to win striking military victories, the guerrillas were triumphing in a more important (at least in so far as prolonged guerrilla warfare was concerned) and ongoing competition for the sympathy and loyalty of the civilian population of Panay.

From the outset, the guerrilla leadership had recognised that it would be necessary to secure civilian support or, at the very least, to deny it to the Japanese. Peralta recalled after the war that this was ‘the first essentials for survival’. ¹⁴ He understood that the people, if mobilised effectively, could play a decisive role in a guerrilla-style conflict. Civilians could provide substantial material support in the form of food, clothing, money and other key supplies, could pass on vital intelligence helping guerrillas to stage hit-and-run attacks or to evacuate prior to an enemy operation, could offer shelter and camouflage allowing guerrillas to evade capture or could provide more passive assistance by simply refusing to cooperate with the enemy. Mao Zedong's analogy of guerrillas being like fish and a civilian populace the water in which they subsist, though oft-cited, is particularly effective in capturing the essence of the civilian-guerrilla connection and the importance of establishing a positive relationship. ¹⁵ For the Panay guerrillas, the people were thought of as the ‘backbone’ to their resistance movement, the ‘wife’ to the guerrilla ‘husband’ and, according to Lieutenant Pedro Serran, Peralta's foremost intelligence officer, whoever secured (and kept) their backing would ‘ultimately WIN [the] war.’ ¹⁶

As might be expected of an army recruited primarily from the family members, friends and neighbours of the local people, the Panay Guerrillas held the advantage in respect to winning-over the civilian populace. The would-be leaders of the resistance movement had also taken the initiative early on, encouraging civilians to evacuate from the coastal and lowland towns by spreading stories of Japanese brutality prior to the invasion in April 1942. On his return from Manila in March, for example, Confesor had told of widespread and large-scale atrocities committed by Japanese invasion forces after they had captured the capital in January and had advised civilians that the best way to stay safe was to stay as far away as possible from Japanese troops. ¹⁷ Such tactics appear to have been effective. In his memoirs, Cesario Golez, who acted as the Deputy Governor of the 4th Administrative District in Iloilo, explained that as a result of these stories: ‘our hearts became hardened against the Japs. Long before they charged on the beach of Iloilo, we had formed the conviction that they were beasts and not human.’ ¹⁸ Romeo Lacorum, 10 years old during the occupation, recalled scenes of chaos and panic among civilians as they embarked on a mass exodus from Iloilo City prior to the arrival of Japanese troops. ¹⁹ Indeed, the vast majority of the populace evacuated to areas under guerrilla control where their movements could be monitored, their encounters with Japanese forces minimised and, more importantly, their exposure to Japanese propaganda limited. In the evacuation areas, guerrillas could spread their own propaganda which, aside from circulating rumours of Japanese atrocities, continually attempted to reassert faith in the US-Philippine relationship and, through the dissemination of positive war news, took pains to cultivate a deep conviction that American aid was ‘just around the corner’. The most important point stressed, however, was that the Japanese were on the losing side for ‘nobody liked being on the losing side’. ²⁰

Their propaganda campaign was carried out intensively; however, the guerrilla leadership recognised that they could not rely solely on propaganda to secure the support of the populace for long. The patience and generosity of the people would have its limits, particularly once the burdens of subsidising the guerrilla army began to exacerbate the expected pressures and hardships of wartime economic and social conditions. Accordingly, Peralta and Confesor implemented a series of policies and measures which included: printing emergency money; incentivising food production; providing loans to farmers; reinvigorating the ‘home industries’, such as weaving; establishing a system of requisition with promises of future compensation to prevent wanton commandeering of civilian resources by army men; and dealing firmly with the growing problem of lawlessness. ²¹ Their efforts ensured that for the duration of 1942, the civilian population remained mostly amenable to the presence of a guerrilla army in their midst.

That is not to say that the relationship between the guerrillas and the populace of Panay was always rosy. Peralta and his subordinates sanctioned policies that sometimes impinged on the day-to-day life of civilians whose activities and movements were restricted and closely observed. Violence was threatened to deter any manner of cooperation with Japanese forces and civilians were forbidden from visiting the occupied areas, even for trade purposes. The people of Capiz, for example, were cautioned that they would be shot on sight if they continued to ignore instructions not to approach Japanese-controlled towns and barrios. ²² Warnings of serious punishments and reprisals against spies, fifth-columnists or willing collaborators were widely circulated and, from late 1943, those that fell into those categories could be ‘liquidated’ as a matter of course by army men and provincial guards. ²³ Of greater detriment to the guerrilla-civilian relationship were abuses, most often related to the commandeering of civilian food and property, which became a persistent problem that, in spite of efforts by the leadership to instil discipline and punish crimes, plagued the guerrilla army for the duration of the occupation. ²⁴ Combined with the implementation of a scorched-earth strategy that, according to Confesor's civil officials, was at times carried out needlessly and ruthlessly, such behaviour created tensions and was one of the main factors that contributed to the return of some civilians to Japanese occupied areas during early 1943. ²⁵ Generally, however, the civilian populace was more willing to tolerate and forgive the excesses and intrusive policies of the guerrilla army than they were of similar measures carried out by Japanese forces.

Like the guerrillas, Japanese occupation units restricted civilian movement and enacted policies, like the imposition of curfews, which disrupted daily life. Forced to live off the land, they also added to the economic strife of the populace and used the threat and exercise of violence to preserve peace and order. According to an intelligence report from the 64th Combat Team which operated in Iloilo province, civilians in Japanese-controlled towns lived in fear of harsh corporal punishments which were meted out for even the most minor of misdemeanours. ²⁶ Lacorum, for example, who had stolen food for his family while employed by the Japanese in Iloilo City, remembered his terror at the possibility of being caught after witnessing a Japanese sentry gauge out the eye of a thief. ²⁷ As part of their anti-guerrilla strategy, Japanese commanders also warned that they would kill 10 men from the nearest locality for every Japanese soldier killed by guerrillas and regularly took the families or friends of guerrilla leaders hostage to compel surrender. ²⁸ Peralta's father, for instance, was captured in late 1942 and was forced to write letters to his son, later published in the Panay Shu-Ho (Panay Times) newspaper, imploring him to give up the fight. ²⁹ In their interrogations of guerrilla suspects, the kenpeitai (military police unit), one of the most hated and dreaded units of the Japanese Army, regularly used torture, as Kumai was shocked to discover when he witnessed the administration of the so-called ‘water-cure’ soon after his arrival in Panay in October 1942. ³⁰

However, though violence had been an aspect of anti-guerrilla strategy prior to July 1943 – the punitive operations of 1942 had featured the intermittent bombing of towns, the burning of some homes and instances of the summary execution of guerrilla suspects – it was generally kept to a minimum. While they were usually tortured for information about the organisation, guerrilla suspects were also typically released and the guerrillas were, in fact, responsible for most of the destruction of civilian property at that time. In the municipality of Barotac Nuevo, for example, Japanese units had burned 116 houses in 1942, whereas the guerrillas had burned 312 houses in the same period. ³¹ Guerrilla records also indicate that Japanese troops had largely refrained from the deliberate and indiscriminate targeting of civilian lives. Statistics compiled by the Office of Civil Affairs (OCA), a unit in the guerrilla army tasked with monitoring the civilian populace and liaising with Confesor's civil officials, show that though there were some civilian deaths at the hands of Japanese soldiers in a few localities during that period, those deaths were relatively low-scale and, since the victims were primarily men of military age, we can assume that they were fairly selective, targeting suspected guerrilla men rather than civilians. ³² In short, the Japanese approach to the people of Panay was reasonably conciliatory prior to mid-1943.

Indeed, although Japanese commanders like Lieutenant Hitomi Junsuke, who had experience with guerrilla warfare in Manchuria and China, were aware that civilian support for the guerrilla army was one of the main impediments they faced in the suppression of the resistance movement in Panay, civilian-targeted violence was incongruous with initial efforts to win-over the population through pacification techniques or what the guerrillas referred to as the ‘honey and sugar’ approach. ³³ Upon the successful invasion and occupation of Southeast Asia, the Japanese leadership had advocated a policy of cooperation and collaboration with local peoples. In the Philippines, the aim was to persuade the populace to join Japanese ‘liberators’ in their ostensible endeavour of creating a ‘Philippines for the Filpinos’. ³⁴ Propaganda corps, like Hitomi's unit which had been assigned to Panay in October 1942 after earlier successes in pacifying unruly areas in Luzon, were to cultivate Japanese-Philippine friendship through so-called ‘goodwill missions’. These missions involved staging music events, showing Japanese and Filipino movies, holding dances and banquets and arranging other public gatherings where Japanese culture was introduced and propaganda speeches from collaborators, surrendered USAFFE men and some prominent Japanese cultural figures were delivered. In Panay, however, pacification units faced a particularly challenging situation. Aside from natural hostility towards what were perceived as invaders, civilians were living in guerrilla areas where they were firmly under guerrilla control and were inundated with anti-Japanese propaganda. The populace was ambivalent and unfriendly, if not outwardly hostile, to the Japanese occupation of Panay. Thus, in his attempts to persuade guerrillas to surrender and to convince the civilians to return to Japanese-occupied areas, Hitomi took a more practical approach. He recognised that most of the people of Panay were more concerned with their day-to-day living conditions than with the lofty pan-Asian ideals espoused by proponents of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and, therefore, might be more easily swayed if they could be guaranteed security and a reasonable standard of living in Japanese-occupied areas. Hitomi's unit promoted relief measures, such as selling daily commodities, like soap and matches which were brought from Manila, at cheap prices, offering medical services and providing employment opportunities with promises of food and good wages. ³⁵ While such efforts resulted in some limited successes in early 1943, this appears to have been short-lived. The guerrillas enacted sometimes violent counter-actions and, with the war situation deteriorating, Hitomi's unit could not provide all it promised. ³⁶

The cumulative failures of pacification efforts facilitated a gradual shift in strategic thinking in early 1943. While not an advocate of violent extremes, Hitomi did grow sceptical about the value of continuing a conciliatory approach in Panay and warned in his report to headquarters in Manila in March 1943 that since the guerrillas were clearly winning the competition for control over the civilian populace, without some show of force pacification efforts would continue to meet with only limited success. ³⁷ Others like Captain Watanabe Kengo, another veteran of guerrilla combat in China, were coming to view Japanese tactics as too lenient and, during the brutal engagements of 1942, Kumai observed a radicalisation of soldiers’ attitudes in Panay. His account describes a continuous escalation of violence in which the strain of combatting guerrilla warfare and the constant fear of attack, in addition to the casualties and brutalities inflicted on fellow soldiers by guerrillas, contributed to mounting hatred, desire for retaliation and a ‘kill or be killed’ mentality. ³⁸ It was in the context of these radicalising attitudes, brought on by the frustrations of guerrilla-style combat and the commensurate failures of more conciliatory strategies, that commanders in Panay received orders to launch a second punitive drive in the island.

However, when the punitive operations began in July 1943, Panay was actually relatively quiet. The guerrillas were following a so-called ‘lie-low’ policy since, upon making contact with MacArthur at the end of November 1942, Peralta had received orders on 18 December 1942 to stop launching attacks against Japanese forces and to instead concentrate on the maintenance and growth of his organisation, while also extending and improving his intelligence network. ³⁹ They did continue to ambush small Japanese patrols to prevent them from seizing food supplies during a competition over the control of the harvest in January 1943, and there were some minor clashes in February and March but, from April 1943, guerrilla activity was negligible. ⁴⁰ The same was not true elsewhere, though. Guerrilla activity had intensified in other areas of the Philippines as formerly disparate guerrilla groups became more experienced, better coordinated and had overcome internecine struggles which had hindered their earlier effectiveness. The operations of 1943, then, were ordered as part of a wider effort to address rising unrest in the Philippines, especially important in the lead-up to the nominal granting of independence on 14 October 1943. ⁴¹

Panay became a focal point of these operations for, despite efforts to persuade the Japanese that they had disbanded during the punitive campaign of 1942; headquarters in Manila had come to view Peralta's organisation as particularly strong, a symbol of resistance in the Visayas region and, according to Lieutenant General Wachi Takeji, Chief of Staff for the 14th Army in Manila, in light of their regular contact with MacArthur, Panay was considered to be a crucial defensive weakness for the Japanese Army in the Philippines. ⁴² Hitomi had also reported in late 1942 that the Panay Guerrillas were a powerful force not to be taken lightly and, in March 1943, the guerrillas incited the ire of Lieutenant General Tanaka Shizuichi, commander of the 14th Army, when they sniped at and almost killed him during his visit to the island proving such in the eyes of the commanders at headquarters. ⁴³ Furthermore, although the guerrillas were ‘lying low’, their covert communications and activities were noticed and closely watched by the well-developed intelligence network established by Japanese forces in the island providing incontrovertible proof of their continued existence. ⁴⁴ Thus, in May 1943 upon the request of Tanaka, Lieutenant General Kono Takeshi, also experienced in guerrilla warfare on mainland China, took command of Japanese forces in the Visayas. The following month he was ordered by Tanaka's successor, Lieutenant General Kuroda Shigenori, to suppress guerrilla activity in the Visayas with a specific emphasis placed on Panay.

Three battalions carried out the punitive operations in Panay in 1943, though the Tozuka Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Tozuka Ryoichi, yet another who had prior experience fighting guerrillas in China, was primarily responsible for the perpetration of atrocities. Kono had ordered his subordinates to locate and capture key guerrilla leaders and radio equipment and, if we are to believe testimony given in defence at his trial, instructed them to treat civilians kindly in doing so. ⁴⁵ The decision to adopt a more extreme anti-guerrilla strategy during this campaign appears to have been made on the ground in Panay, not by Tozuka as head of the battalion, but by Watanabe Kengo, the operations and intelligence officer. In testimony given at the post-war tribunals, several of Watanabe's subordinates pointed to him as the main instigator of violence. Lieutenant Otsuka Noriyuki, for instance, testified that the executions he had personally carried out, in addition to those he had witnessed others commit, had all been done under Watanabe's direct orders. ⁴⁶ First Lieutenant Fujii Hajime, though acknowledging that, as a company commander, he had freedom to execute civilians at his discretion, claimed to have been forced to do so by Watanabe who advised his subordinates that punitive operations could not be carried out without killing and had ordered them to burn all enemy villages and kill all those who refused to surrender. ⁴⁷ Obviously this testimony must be treated cautiously, especially since Watanabe had been killed in Leyte in 1944. However, Allied investigations based on Filipino eyewitness testimony and guerrilla records also point to Watanabe as the driving force behind civilian-targeted violence in Panay. ⁴⁸ In his memoirs, Kumai also painted a less than flattering picture of Watanabe and his role in the 1943 atrocities. Apparently, Watanabe planned the campaign after studying anti-guerrilla methods employed by US forces during the Philippine-American War (1899–1902) and argued that the people of Panay must be ‘suppressed’ (danatsu) more ‘thoroughly’ (tetteiteki). ⁴⁹ He did, however, observe that Watanabe was under pressure from his superiors who made greater demands for results while seeming to turn a blind eye to his methods. ⁵⁰ Otsuka made a similar assertion in stressing that Watanabe, vainglory and severe, followed the orders of his superiors to the letter; ‘when orders were given that Japanese soldiers were to be nice to the natives, he was excessively so … This was because he did not in any way want to go contrary to the orders of his superiors, so that he could get his promotion.’ ⁵¹ Fermin Caram, governor of Iloilo City during the occupation, further testified that contrary to their claims, both Kono and Tozuka were aware of the atrocities committed in Panay for he had told them directly on a number of occasions. And yet, nothing was done to curb violence against civilians, Watanabe was not punished for disobeying Kono's professed orders to treat civilians kindly and actually did receive his promotion in 1944. ⁵² Watanabe seems to have made the initial decision to employ a more extreme anti-guerrilla strategy that allowed for violence against the civilian population of Panay. Nevertheless, he appears to have done so with the tacit consent of superiors who were, at the very least, turning a blind eye to his methods. The result was a trail of death and destruction left in the wake of the Tozuka Battalion as it moved about the island searching for guerrilla leaders and radio equipment and using violence against civilians as a primary means of meeting their objectives.

The first stage of operations began in southern Iloilo in July 1943 with an attempt to locate and capture Confesor who had based his operations in the Bucari Mountains, near Leon and Alimodian. The new, more ruthless character of Watanabe's anti-guerrilla strategy quickly became apparent. Guerrilla commanders, like Captain Eliseo Rio who led the 66th Infantry Regiment's 2nd Battalion in Aklan, were utterly shocked by the ‘fierceness’ of the campaign and the ‘unimaginable atrocities’ inflicted on the civilian population. ⁵³ Major Tomas de Castro, head of the OCA, described the following scene of seemingly indiscriminate and arbitrary violence as he witnessed it from his hide-out in Leon in a letter addressed to Relunia dated 26 July 1942:

small Japanese patrols go from barrio to barrio, house to house, destroying all visible supplies of the people, burning houses, wantonly shooting any person in sight who attempts to run and mercilessly hacking to death those captured irrespective of whether they are aged, women, or children.

De Castro also warned of a serious situation brewing as a result of the operations; since Japanese patrols continued to roam the area unmolested by guerrilla units, civilians who were in hiding were too terrified to return home, placing them in danger of starvation should Japanese troops remain in the area much longer. ⁵⁴ There was soon a respite for the people of southern Iloilo, however, as the Tozuka Battalion left for Guimaras Island in mid-August.

The ‘penetration’ of Guimaras in August proved just as ferocious. Echoing de Castro's observations, OCA field agent Ramon Leyritania noted in his fortnightly report for April 1944 that the people had ‘witnessed the burning of their houses to the ground, the shooting, burning, hacking and raping [of] young women’. He further observed that in view of the looting of civilian homes and the damage inflicted on their property and livelihoods, the people of Guimaras were in a dire economic condition having struggled to rebuild in the aftermath of the expedition and were suffering from starvation and regular outbreaks of serious illnesses. ⁵⁵ According to war crimes reports compiled by Allied investigators, around a quarter of the people rounded-up in the Buenavista region had been killed by soldiers who became increasingly frustrated by the failure to obtain useful information and to make progress in their campaign. ⁵⁶ Indeed, this phase had been thoroughly disappointing. Confesor had evaded capture, though only narrowly, and they had failed to seize radio equipment. The Tozuka Battalion, therefore, returned to Iloilo City, prior to embarking on the second stage of their campaign in early September 1943, with no substantial gains to report.

The next and most intense phase of the punitive operations targeted the northern part of Iloilo and the south-eastern part of Capiz where it was known that the headquarters of the Sixth Military District (as Panay was known after contact with MacArthur in late 1942) and the command posts of both the 61st and 64th Infantry Regiments were located. Given the concentration of key guerrilla bases in this area, Japanese forces anticipated far greater successes than they had found during the first phase of their operations. At first, however, this phase seemed to be progressing in a similarly unsatisfactory fashion. As District Adjutant, Lieutenant Maximo Salvador explained in his memoirs, Japanese units did not have the manpower to comb the entire sector and were easily identifiable in their army uniforms. Thus, aided by the populace who provided information on Japanese movements, the guerrillas were able to stay a step ahead, albeit a narrow one, by remaining mobile and simply evacuating to areas where Japanese patrols were not in operation. ⁵⁷ As a result, Japanese units rarely encountered guerrilla men and when they were able to locate bases, usually found them deserted. Some solutions to these difficulties involved Japanese soldiers dressing in civilian clothing, moving at night and utilising Filipino collaborators and spies to help them move more swiftly through unfamiliar and difficult terrain. ⁵⁸ For the most part, however, the Tozuka Battalion's tactics featured threat and intimidation directed at the local populace for according to Kumai, Watanabe and others took a harsh attitude to civilians during this phase of the campaign and more readily employed violence as means of achieving desired results. He relates, for example, how civilians were beaten and tortured for information and, if this were not forthcoming, example executions, sometimes of individuals and sometimes of whole groups, were used to compel cooperation. Under threats against their lives and families, civilians were forced to point out guerrilla men and to act as guides by leading Japanese troops to local bases. By terrorising local civilians, Kumai reflected, Japanese troops were able to extract more information and began to make better progress. ⁵⁹

One of the main impediments, however, was that in accordance with guerrilla instructions, civilians were also evacuating to pre-selected hiding places when they heard word of advancing Japanese troops, meaning that towns and barrios, particularly in areas of guerrilla bases were deserted. ⁶⁰ An unnamed undercover agent who had infiltrated the Japanese garrison at Dao and had won the confidence of its commander, Captain Terasaki, discovered that in order to address this issue, Japanese soldiers were being ordered to burn all vacant houses, to kill all who ran and all who were found in hiding. ⁶¹ Though civilians were promised safety should they remain at home, this was only guaranteed if local officials formally surrendered. The Tozuka Battalion threatened, and if unheeded, unleashed indiscriminate violence, including mass killings and wanton destruction of property, to compel deputy governors, municipal mayors and barrio lieutenants to surrender and form what the guerrillas referred to as ‘puppet governments’. The damage caused by such tactics was immense and the death tolls were high, especially in areas, like Ajuy and Sara in Iloilo, which were hotbeds of guerrilla activity. ⁶² For example, of the aftermath of the Japanese expedition in Sara, Salvador wrote in his memoirs that: ‘our former paradise became a wasteland, a vast graveyard, in which tears and blood commingled, and where hope became a memory in the presence of fear’. ⁶³ Japanese units gave deadlines for surrender and publicly announced that there would be wholesale massacres should civil officials refuse to comply. They also spread stories of atrocities so as to incite panic and encourage civilians to put pressure on their leaders to give themselves up. ⁶⁴ It worked. Guerrilla documents indicate that in numerous localities civilians pleaded with, and at times, even threatened civil officials or local guerrilla units until they surrendered. ⁶⁵ Once they had, Japanese commanders mostly kept their promise and violence stopped abruptly, civilians were left unmolested and the so-called ‘honey and sugar’ pacification approach was employed to maintain loyalty. ⁶⁶ Essentially, once civilian-targeted violence had achieved its goal of bringing civilians under Japanese control, it was no longer a useful strategy.

The tactical nature of violence employed by Japanese troops in 1943 was noticed by Peralta. In reading numerous reports submitted by intelligence operatives, OCA agents and civil officials, he discerned a pattern to the seemingly indiscriminate and arbitrary application of force and used his observations to enact policies designed to minimise the suffering of the civilian populace. For example, he instructed Lieutenant Valentin Grasparil, commander of the 66th Infantry Regiment in Capiz, who had been advising civilians to evacuate in anticipation of atrocities, to tell civilians to remain at home instead and to evacuate only those areas where there had been a guerrilla base, for it was mainly those areas that were at risk of large-scale violence. ⁶⁷ He and Confesor also agreed to sanction the policy of their subordinates in allowing the surrender of civilians and civil officials, without risk of reprisal provided that they remain inwardly loyal. They were encouraged to deny any knowledge of the guerrilla organisation, to hide incriminating items like guerrilla printed money and to fly either Japanese or white flags as a show of surrender. ⁶⁸ In October, against Confesor's wishes, Peralta also authorised a strategy that allowed civil officials to establish so-called ‘puppet governments’ with some caveats. Those who were to head these governments would be chosen by guerrilla leaders to ensure loyalty and would act as double agents by providing intelligence to the organisation, feeding disinformation and delaying the implementation of Japanese policies, such as the establishment of ‘Neighbourhood Associations’, within their localities which could hurt the organisation. Intelligence officers were to be stationed in each locality to monitor the ‘puppet officials’ to ensure continued loyalty and retribution was promised for betrayal. ⁶⁹

Efforts to mitigate the suffering of the people worked for a short-time. According to Relunia, due to the policy of allowing surrenders:

massacre has been much reduced in scale, because the enemy was greedily satisfied to see a lot of their Rising Sun flown in vacant houses, except for a few killings which they intended, perhaps, to subjugate and inculcate fear in the minds of our civilians and Army hiders, such expediency has produced result. ⁷⁰

Kumai also noted that it became much harder to interrogate civilians once they had begun ‘voluntarily’ surrendering. ⁷¹ However, members of the Tozuka Battalion soon began to see through these ‘tactical surrenders’ and the third and fourth phases of operations, which targeted north-western Capiz and northern Antique (from mid-October) and the Romblon Islands (from mid-November), respectively, were no less violent. Of this stage of the campaign, Kumai writes of an infuriated Watanabe who had begun executing several young men daily and imposed ‘heavy sacrifice’ (tadai gisei) on the civilian population. ⁷² The OCA documented extensive atrocities during this period including incidents of what appeared to be unprovoked and unbridled rage unleashed on local peoples, like at Banga where Japanese troops opened fire upon civilians who had already surrendered. ⁷³

In December 1943, the Tozuka Battalion brought six months of operations to a close with a final two-week expedition in the rugged and difficult terrain of the interior of the island where they were directed to locate and capture a group of American civilians, including Louise Spencer and her husband, who had been in hiding there since December 1941. The Spencers, having heard rumours that Japanese troops were looking for them, were among a group who were able to evade capture and were later evacuated by submarine to safety in Brisbane. ⁷⁴ Others were not so fortunate. A total of 17 US civilians were captured and executed on 20 December 1943. ⁷⁵ This incident marked the end of the 1943 punitive operations, although it was not an end to civilian-targeted violence in Panay. Atrocities continued into 1944. However, with the exception of another short punitive expedition carried out in southern Iloilo between January and May 1944 which involved massacres of civilians in Miagao, Igbaras and Guimbal, these were sporadic occurrences and on a much lower scale than in 1943. ⁷⁶

From the Japanese perspective, the punitive operations were considered to be a triumph. While they had not captured any prominent figures within the resistance movement, the Tozuka Battalion had successfully compelled significant numbers of civilians, civil officials and army men to submit. Since the handover of weapons was a requisite for surrender, Watanabe was able to report the seizure of large quantities of arms, in addition to some radio equipment and a few important guerrilla documents which were left behind in abandoned bases. The commanders of the Tozuka Battalion were praised for their achievements in Panay and both Kono and Watanabe received promotions as a result of the campaign. ⁷⁷ Most importantly, in bringing civilians under Japanese control, where they could be monitored and exposed to pro-Japanese propaganda, the Tozuka Battalion had struck a blow at the guerrillas' primary support base and, for the first time during the occupation of Panay, had, albeit temporarily, gained the upper-hand in the competition for control of the civilian population.

Indeed, the 1943 punitive operations had a paralysing impact on resistance in the island. The surrender of large numbers of civil officials in various localities dangerously impeded the effectiveness of government in ‘Free Panay’. In Capiz, for instance, local government had collapsed in the wake of the operations of October 1943 and ceased to carry out basic functions adding to the misery and discontent of the people. ⁷⁸ The guerrilla army was also in a temporary state of chaos. Units had dispersed in order to avoid capture and though they were to reassemble at designated places, it soon became clear that large numbers of soldiers were AWOL, while others had completely deserted. Despite the guerrilla leadership's warnings against surrender for army men, there were considerable numbers who did give themselves up to the Japanese when offered amnesty, especially if their family members had been taken hostage. Indeed, despite Peralta's instructions to put aside family connections and remember their duty to the ‘cause’, some guerrillas, like Major Imperial, became reluctant to continue resistance with their families in danger. ⁷⁹ Morale among the men was low, but the morale of the people who had suffered the brunt of Japanese operations, was shattered. Civilians were ‘jittery’, ‘panicked’ and distraught at the loss of life and the destruction visited upon their communities. ⁸⁰

According to guerrilla records, the total number of deaths primarily of civilians, was anywhere between 5000 and 10,000 killed, not counting many more who died due to the indirect effects of the campaign. Property damage, destruction of crops and the slaughter of livestock was extensive and widespread, exacerbating wartime hardships and detrimentally impacting the living conditions of the people. ⁸¹ Fearing for their lives, farmers had been reluctant to tend their lands during the campaign which, combined with seasonal typhoons, insect infestations and bouts of crop disease, added further to food shortages and rising prices. Poor health and sanitation caused epidemics and increased the risk of starvation which loomed large in the aftermath of the punitive operations. The fortnightly reports from OCA field agents monitoring the situation across Panay painted a dismal picture for civilians living in the unoccupied areas for 1944. ⁸²

The resistance leaders’ rigid adherence to the ‘lie low’ policy and the seemingly indiscriminate nature of Japanese actions added to the fears, anger and mounting discontent of the people who lost faith in an army which appeared both unable and unwilling to shield its civilian population. In some areas, like the 9th Administrative District of Iloilo, the people became uncooperative with the guerrilla army, refusing to give supplies or shelter to local units. Summarising the numerous reports he was receiving from his field agents and from communications with the civilian deputy governors, de Castro wrote in a letter to Confesor dated 30 November 1943 that ‘the fight has become a struggle for control of civilians and unless something is done soon, we may find ourselves in an unfortunate situation, where the civilians may not only refuse cooperation but may actually become hostile’. ⁸³ This was the situation that was emerging in Capiz where civilians were willingly giving information about the whereabouts of guerrilla command posts, of army hide-outs and pointing out guerrillas and their family members to the Japanese. ⁸⁴

The guerrilla leaders recognised that a dangerous situation which, if left unchecked, would seriously threaten the future of the resistance movement was brewing in the wake of the punitive operations. Faced with the possible loss of support from civilians, a large proportion of whom were now residing in Japanese-controlled areas, both Peralta and Confesor threatened some extreme measures of their own. Peralta advised his subordinates to seize food forcefully and that, if necessary, they would do some ‘terrorizing of their own’, while Confesor issued a memorandum on 23 February 1944 in which he cautioned the people that ‘should they become non-cooperative for fear of the Japs, the units would come back and do some shooting as the Japs do’. ⁸⁵ However, records indicate that, for the most part, they were conciliatory in their approach to a populace that had borne the brunt of the punitive operations and had been pushed to its limits. ⁸⁶ Over the next few weeks, Peralta relaxed his ‘lie-low’ orders, allowing his troops to engage Japanese patrols who were committing atrocities; he reinvigorated the propaganda campaign and established a civilian relief fund to provide financial aid to victims. ⁸⁷ In their efforts to win over the populace, the guerrillas were assisted substantially by favourable developments on both the European and Pacific war fronts, which resulted in a reduction in the number of Japanese troops in Panay and saw an increase in goods and arms brought into the island covertly through Allied submarine drop-offs. Accordingly, OCA reports show that by mid-1944, civilian confidence in the army had been restored and morale was back to pre-July 1943 levels. ⁸⁸ In anticipation of the impending ‘Battle of Panay’, the resistance leadership was able to successfully mobilise civilians to aid their preparations for large-scale offensives to be launched against Japanese units in the island upon the arrival of US forces in October 1944. Having regained the backing of the people and with the wartime situation deteriorating for Japan causing resources and manpower to be redirected away from Panay, Peralta's operations in late 1944 progressed favourably against a greatly diminished occupation force. By the time the USAFFE returned in March 1945, most of the island (including the whole of Capiz province) had been liberated, Japanese units were concentrated in a handful of garrisons and the people were beginning to rebuild their communities. While US troops had fought tough, destructive battles in Leyte and Luzon, American forces met little resistance in Panay upon their arrival and were able to recapture Iloilo City in just two days, although they did have to contend with guerrilla resistance from Japanese troops until their eventual surrender in September 1945. ⁸⁹

Between July and December 1943, violence directed specifically at the civilian population of Panay became central to the efforts of local Japanese forces to suppress guerrilla resistance in the island. This violence was exercised as part of an anti-guerrilla campaign in a systematic and controlled manner, though the intensity of violence varied according to interactions with local people and the mutable conditions on the ground. The atrocities in Panay were not the result of soldiers ‘going berserk’; they served a purpose. Vacant homes were set alight and civilians who fled or went into hiding were killed to ensure that the majority returned to and stayed in their homes where Japanese units could interrogate them for information about the guerrilla organisation and the location of its bases. Torture was utilised in the extraction of this information and exemplary executions were carried out to terrorise local people into giving up their friends, family members or neighbours. To compel civil officials to surrender their towns and barrios, bringing them under Japanese control, wholesale massacres and comprehensive destruction of property, livestock and crops were threatened, and if ignored, carried out. In short, there was a strategic logic to the civilian-targeted violence in Panay.

The decision to employ violence in 1943 was one made by commanders on the ground. Those men had experienced brutal combat with guerrillas in 1942, were well aware of the Panayans' animosity towards the Japanese occupation of the island and understood that civilian support was sustaining and enabling the resistance movement. Their sentiments towards the people of Panay had grown more impatient and unforgiving, and several men were reportedly becoming frustrated with lenient policies that yielded no real, lasting results. Thus, when headquarters in Manila ordered the punitive drive against unrest in the Philippines, singling Panay out as an unruly area, if not a dangerous threat, commanders in the island were already open to a more extreme strategy for dealing with the guerrilla problem with which they had contended for almost a year. Accordingly, Watanabe, who was eager to impress and under pressure from superiors who overlooked his methods, planned and implemented an anti-guerrilla punitive campaign that would remedy past failures by targeting civilians as the main impediment, and as such the main solution, to the successful suppression of Peralta's guerrilla organisation. Ultimately, Japanese military strategy radicalised in 1943 as a result of the dynamic interplay between these factors, which facilitated the adoption of civilian-targeted violence as a viable solution to a problem that had plagued Japanese units in Panay for months. Comparable patterns of abrupt and extreme radicalisations in Japanese military strategy, especially in response to resistance from local populations, can be identified in other cases of mass atrocity perpetrated by Japanese forces elsewhere in occupied Asia. ⁹⁰ While the number of atrocities had significantly reduced in Panay by late 1944, for instance, in Luzon violence against civilians drastically escalated in the closing months of war as Japanese commanders employed a similarly ruthless and highly destructive defensive strategy predicated on achieving results through extreme violence. The analysis presented in this article indicates then, that in order to further enhance our understanding of atrocities of this kind, we must take into consideration and explore more closely the strategic logic behind the exercise of civilian-targeted violence by Japanese forces during the Second World War.