February 23, 1945: The Raid on Los Baños

February 23, 1945: The Raid on Los Baños is carried out. It is one of the most heroic operations of World War II.

A combined U.S. Army Airborne and Filipino guerrilla task force liberated 2,147 Allied civilian and military internees from an agricultural school campus that the Japanese army had turned into an internment camp.

General Douglas MacArthur, having "returned" to the island nation with which he had such an emotional connection, and it with him, ordered it, out of concern that, staring defeat in the face, the Japanese might take the attitude of, "If we're going down, we're going to take as many of the enemy with us as we can." "The enemy" being Americans and Filipinos.

In exchange for 2,147 Allied prisoners, the 300 U.S. paratroopers lost just 3 men; the 800 Filipino guerrillas, only 2. The Japanese lost around 80 men.

The raid has been celebrated as one of the most successful rescue operations in modern military history. It was the second precisely-executed raid by combined U.S.-Filipino forces within a month, following on the heels of the Raid at Cabanatuan, at Luzon, on January 30, in which 522 Allied military POWs had been rescued.

Despite the success, no feature film has ever been made of the raid. In contrast, on the same day, U.S. Marines raised the American flag on Iwo Jima (I have a separate entry for that event), and 5 films have have been made about that battle, most notably Sands of Iwo Jima, in 1949, starring John Wayne.

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February 23, 1945 was a Friday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And there were no games scheduled in the NHL. So there were no scores on this historic day.