One time a captured American soldier was buried alive up to his neck. Guerrillas had propped open the soldier’s mouth with a stick and sprinkled a trail of sugar into the woods. “Millions of ants,” one report noted, “had done the rest.” American troops retaliated, unleashing a reign of terror upon Filipinos that would mirror the horrors executed by the Japanese a half-century later. Soldiers waterboarded suspected guerrillas, herded them by the thousands into concentration camps, destroyed food supplies, and torched villages and towns, the latter referred to by Hughes as “black paint.” “You
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