Cry Slaughter!

Cry Slaughter!, first published in 1957 is a fictionalized account of guerrilla life in the central Philippines during the Second World War. Filipino author E. K. Tiempo (1913-1996), himself a member of the Filipino resistance to the Japanese occupation, paints a vivid picture of life under the Japanese, and the difficulties faced in deciding to surrender to the Japanese or take to the mountains and form a guerrilla force. As Tiempo states in the introduction to the book, 'Cry Slaughter! was based on actual situations, including the central situation of the shooting of the four envoys by the minister in the story. Many incidents in the novel were taken from They Called Us Outlaws, a non-fiction work which I wrote for the Seventh Military District of the Philippine resistance forces, as part of my work as officer in charge of the historical section. Parts of They Called Us Outlaws, (the Japanese labeled the guerrillas outlaws in those days) were used in the trial of Japanese war criminals in Manila after the war. The original manuscript of Cry Slaughter! was taken out of the Philippines in a submarine in 1943 under cover of a Philippine blackout; perhaps it was the only manuscript to successfully leave the Philippines' during the War.