Quick answer: What happened in the Palawan massacre?
On December 14, 1944, Japanese guards at Prison Camp 10-A on Palawan in the Philippines forced 150 American prisoners into air raid shelters and set them on fire, then killed most of the men who got out. In all, 139 died. Eleven escaped with help from Filipinos, and their accounts warned American commanders about the danger to other prisoners.
The 150 Americans at Camp 10-A had been captured on Bataan and Corregidor and had spent more than two years building an airfield for the Japanese Army. Late on the morning of December 14, 1944, the guards stopped the work and trucked them back to camp. When the air raid bell rang, they drove the prisoners into the trench shelters the men had dug and set the shelters on fire with aviation fuel and torches. A machine gun cut down the men who came out burning. Marines Rufus Smith and Glenn McDole had hidden an escape hole behind a sandbag in their shelter's wall, and they pushed men through it until nine reached the beach below the bluff. The Japanese hunted the escapees among the rocks for the rest of the day. After dark Smith swam across Puerto Princesa Bay, shaking off a shark that seized his arm, and Gene Nielsen and later McDole made the crossing too. Eleven men lived, sheltered by Filipinos from the Iwahig Penal Colony and the guerrillas of the Palawan Special Battalion, and their accounts reached MacArthur's headquarters. Knowing what had happened on Palawan, American commanders moved to free the thousands of prisoners still held in the Philippines. Rangers and Alamo Scouts, with Filipino guerrillas, raided Cabanatuan on January 30, 1945, and more raids followed until over 7,000 prisoners and internees were free in less than a month. In 1952 the Army buried 123 of the dead together in Section 85 of Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Missouri. The camp is now Plaza Cuartel, a memorial park in Puerto Princesa, where the city is rehabilitating the site and plans to put an amphitheater on the ground where the men died. The work turned up human remains in 2025 and was ordered stopped, and Chip Allgrove, a retired Army lieutenant colonel leading the effort to save the site, told John on October 13 that construction has resumed. John has written to Mayor Lucilo Bayron and asks readers to send short, respectful letters of their own and to sign the petition. The full essay includes his letter and where to send yours.
Why it matters for leaders: The survivors' firsthand reports gave commanders the warning they needed to act quickly for thousands of prisoners elsewhere, and the ground where those men died deserves the same care from the people who remember them today.
Q: How many American prisoners died in the Palawan massacre?
A: Of the 150 Americans held at Camp 10-A, 139 were killed on December 14, 1944, and eleven escaped. In 1952, 123 of the dead were buried together at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Missouri.
Q: What is John asking readers to do?
A: Write a short, respectful letter to Puerto Princesa Mayor Lucilo Bayron opposing an amphitheater on the massacre site, and sign the petition to save it. The full essay has the addresses and John's own letter.
Read the full essay on Substack → https://heroespath.substack.com/p/the-holes-at-their-fingertips