Chapters 7-9 Summary

The Japanese high provincial command on Mindanao is "outraged" by the highway ambush and Major Ieyasu Matsudaira demands that 43 Filipino males from the surrounding area be hanged for the massacre of Japanese soldiers. Captain Saikaku cautions that the emperor's policy is to promote the support of people in the Philippines; hanging innocent civilians would be counter to that objective. The major insists that U.S.-led forces, including Filipinos, are guilty because of the copious American shell casings and other debris left behind.

Saijaju says it would be better to arrest all the able-bodied Filipino males within a five-mile radius of the ambush site and subject them to intensive interrogation, rather than commit a mass execution, because of the effect on the Filipino population. A Japanese colonel calls Saikaku's idea "very interesting" and says he wants to consider it. Cryptographers tell...