May 4 – World War II: Last-Minute Deliverance from Execution
Psalm 62:7: My salvation and my honor depend on God; He is my mighty rock, my refuge.
Blanche Appleby and Rena Baldwin were two of nine Assemblies of God missionaries and children who were interned in December 1941 by the Japanese military on Luzon in the Philippine Islands. The U.S. Army rescued seven of the missionaries and their children on February 23, 1945, from a prison in Manila. This is an excerpt from Blanche Appleby’s article that appeared in the June 16, 1945, Pentecostal telling of their remarkable rescue from the Los Banos prison camp some 40 miles south of Manila. Full stories of the rescues are in the spring and summer 1985 issues of A/G Heritage.
It was on Friday morning, February 23, just before the roll call at 7 o’clock that the American planes went over us. We had not heard that we were to be executed that day, but we learned from authentic sources afterwards that an order had come from Tokyo that we were all to be killed. And the machine guns were already placed on the hill above us. We afterwards heard that the orders were that we were to be shot at 7 a.m., but at two minutes to 7:00 American parachutists began descending into the enemy lines from the sky. These paratroopers were dropped 25 miles within the enemy lines.
We heard firing and suddenly the word went forth, “Look, there are American soldiers.” A company of American amtracks — amphibian tractors — had come into the camp, and the soldiers cried to us all, “Get out of here. Take all you can in your two hands, and get into the amtracks!”
I was the last one to get into the amtracks, and the only place I could find was a little space crouching beneath a machine gun. There was only one road out of the camp and the Japanese were by this time all alert and tried to intercept us, but the general had given orders that the Americans were not to go out by that road but make a way across the fields to a lake; so that the Japanese who had their guns trained on that road were foiled. They began to fire on our party and three persons in our amtrack were injured. One of the gunners of the machine gun just above me let fly at the Japanese and the hot shell cases were coming down my back and burning me, but someone put a coat over me to protect me.
We were soon out in the lake and it was a wonderful sight to see those amphibian tractors making their way across. They dropped us on the other shore and went back to rescue the rest in the camp. There were 2,121 in that camp at that time, and those American boys rescued everyone, so that no American, Dutch, or British lost their lives, not one. The general in command had counted on only rescuing about 80 percent, but they rescued 100 percent.
General McArthur’s comment was, “Surely God helped us that day.” It was one of the most marvelous rescues in history. Looking back on those days [in the internment camp], I praise God that we always had hope. Though at times we just lived on squash leaves and blossoms, beans picked from acacia trees and tomato leaves, and more than 80 percent in the camp were sick from malnutrition, our confidence was in Him who never fails to watch over His own.
It seems as if Psalm 107 was especially written for folks in an internment camp: “Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distresses.” Blanche Appleby
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