The Japanese military, for its part, fell back on a painfully familiar set of repressive techniques. It blocked movement in and out of towns. It tortured suspects, using among its techniques the infamous “water cure.” And it established reconcentration zones. Yet there was one trick Japan tried that the United States hadn’t. It decided to grant the Philippines independence. Not to promise independence—the United States had done that, eventually—but to actually grant it. On October 14, 1943, that’s what Japan did.
