michaelkerr 's review for:

Rescue at Los Baños: The Most Daring Prison Camp Raid of World War II by Bruce Henderson

3.0

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3.5 stars. The rescue of civilian detainees at Los Banos in the Philippines is truly remarkable. Henderson wisely chooses to focus on a limited number of participants (both prisoners and rescuers), giving a variety of perspectives and an immediacy to the events as they unfold. The raid itself is textbook--though it was far from clear that it would go off as well as it did--and the epilogue gives final after-war details of what happened to the people he spotlights. It's a good read, though I found a bit too much time was spent on the planning and events leading up to the actual rescue. A Japanese point of view is missing also; this might have pushed the narrative into the range of fascinating.