“Just pray to God,” Father Tanquilot told him. With brutal efficiency, the Japanese led teenagers and even grandfathers into the kill room, like sheep to the slaughter. The executioners worked with the competence of an assembly line—kneel, chop, fall; kneel, chop, fall. The sweat Bayot noted that soaked the executioner testified to the physical stamina required to decapitate so many men, to wield a sword over and over again with the power to cut bone. Down below in the dark, the handful of survivors moaned in agony; others gurgled and choked. “This is my house,” one of the victims cried out,
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