This introductory section describes how the editor came across the memoir of Mr. Kennosuke Nakajima, a Japanese soldier who was stationed in Biliran town, and how this account fills a gap that was covered up by existing American-oriented historiography of World War II in Leyte. Later additions to the text will describe the other chapters of the book.


Chapter 1. SUNSET IN BILIRAN

This chapter from the memoir of Mr. Nakajima largely provides an ethnographic description of the town of Biliran and a few other places in northern Leyte in early 1944.


Chapter 2. ORDERS ARE ORDERS

This chapter from Mr. Nakajima's memoir describes the hectic six-months long preparation of the Japanese military prior to the predicted landing in Leyte of the Allied Forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur in October 1944. It also provides graphic descriptions of the inhumanities of war suffered by Filipinos guerrillas and civilians and Japanese soldiers in Leyte in 1944.


Chapter 3. SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYS TO BILIRAN ISLAND

In 1976 Mr. Nakajima and his team recovered the body of a Japanese pilot who crash-landed his figher plane in Naval in October 1944, was captured by the guerrillas, and executed and buried behind the Naval Central School Building. The story of the only Japanese soldier assigned in Biliran to have survived World War II, taken from Nakajima's second book of memoirs titled An Elegy in Leyte.

This chapter was researched and written up as part of an undergraduate thesis of a Filipino seminary student, Mr. Menardo L. Lumapak, in 1957. It provides a Filipino point of view of the war years in Biliran town. The data were largely derived from oral interviews, presumably of local residents who had lived through the war years.


Chapter 5. A LONG VACATION

This chapter (yet to be written up) recounts the teenage years during the war of a woman native of Biliran town. "It was a long vacation," she said.


Chapter 6. NENE'S SISTER

Mr. Nakajima made mention of Nene, a lady Filipina friend of the Japanese who was executed by the guerrillas in her hometown of Leyte-Leyte. This chapter (yet to be written up) tells of the tragic fate of Nene and her family from the viewpoint of a surviving sister.


Chapter 7. A LOVE STORY DOOMED BY WAR

In time of war, Mana Azon was engaged to marry an officer of the Japanese Imperial Army, a man she only knew as Captain Sasaki. But the Battle of Leyte intervened, and she never heard from her fiancé again. She only learned about his fate early this year, 54 years after the victorious return of the Allied Forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur in October 1944.