Note 58 — Chapter IX · Northern Leyte Valley: Part One

On the night of 23 October Col. Tatsunosuke Suzuki, the commanding officer of the 33d Infantry Regiment, led a raiding detachment, armed with rifles, sabres, grenades, and mines, into Palo from the southwest.58 Using Filipino civilians in front of them, the men of the detachment tricked the guards at the outpost into believing that they were guerrillas. The Japanese were thus able to capture two machine guns and a 37-mm. gun. They penetrated to the town square and charged, throwing explosives into houses, trucks, and a tank, and broke into an evacuation hospital where they killed some wounded. They then moved toward the bridge and mounted the captured machine guns on it,59 firing until their ammunition was exhausted and then abandoning the guns. The American guards on the other side of the bridge, however, were able to fire upon the bridge and its approaches so effectively that they killed fifty Japanese, according to a count made the next morning. The raid was completely broken up, and sixty Japanese, including Colonel Suzuki, were killed. The American casualties were fourteen killed and twenty wounded.