PISTOL PACKIN' MAMA

These two are as yet unidentified

BUT THEY REMIND ME OF LUISA AND FELICIANO

After August of 1944, it was now the Japanese who had to fear for their lives. The tables had been turned.

That month, organized Japanese resistance to the incoming American forces had ceased, but hundreds of Japanese soldiers fled into the jungle to escape capture. These fugitives were still armed and dangerous. They were also desperate, coming out at night to grab food wherever they could find it, including people's homes and ranches. If you happened to be there at the same time, you could catch one of the few remaining Japanese bullets.

So the US military organized both soldiers and deputized civilians to patrol the island's interior, forcing the hiding Japanese into the open. But there also happened to be at least one Chamorro lady joining the effort, and she had every personal reason to chase Japanese. Her name was Luisa Baza Santos of Malesso'.

Just as the Americans were bombing the island in preparation for the invasion, the Japanese rounded up Chamorros in Malesso', including Luisa, her sister María Baza and her mother Rosa Baza. The Japanese told them they were being lead to a "place of safety." The Japanese instead put them with other Chamorro civilians in a cave at Tinta and threw in grenades. One Ramón Garrido dropped down near Luisa, hit with fragments. The Japanese cut his head off as he lay there groaning. Manuel Charfauros, the school principal, was hit with a sword. The Japanese thought he was dead, but he wasn't. When the Japanese left, he left Tinta cave injured but alive.

It started to rain and the Japanese left. Luisa's sister told her that their mother had not survived and that they should leave. Luisa's sister did not make it. She, too, died.

Luisa's foot had been wounded by an exploding grenade. Tomás Cruz had pulled her out of the pile of dead bodies, and then Luisa herself crawled out. She made it up a hill and lay there in exhaustion, hoping to remain undiscovered by wandering Japanese. She was there for five days.

Luisa was married, and had a husband named Feliciano. He, too, had been rounded up by the Japanese and put in a camp with other Chamorro men, their hands tied behind their backs for 48 hours. But his group was eventually told to go hunt for food, and Feliciano took advantage of this and ran away. In time, he climbed a hill and heard crying. It was his wife Luisa!

Some time after, both Feliciano and Luisa worked as clerks in a military camp. But Feliciano also hunted for Japanese stragglers. He had killed nine so far, putting a notch on his rifle for each one killed. But Luisa was willing to hunt for stragglers, too, and started practicing on a rifle. Due to the dangers of roaming Japanese soldiers, she never left the safety of the community without her carbine hanging over her shoulder.

Feliciano called her his "Pistol Packin' Mama."

A newspaper depiction of Luisa taking shooting lessons from husband Feliciano