The Lady Who Silently Slayed 200 Japanese Forces in WWII

The Lady Who Silently Slayed 200 Japanese Forces in WWII

NIEVES FERNANDEZ

The Silent Killer; The School Teacher Who Killed 200 Japanese in WWII

Nieves Fernandez was a school teacher in Tacloban. Her life was upturned when the Japanese invaded the Philippines in 1941. 

Her students call her “Miss Fernandez,” and she was very protective of them.

 Her fierce motherly instincts reared to the fore when the Japanese threatened to kill her students. She turned from motherly school teacher to stealthy lone assassin, credited for downing more than 200 Japanese soldiers in World War II.  

When the Japanese arrived in the Philippines in 1941, they took away all the possessions of Filipinos. 

No one was allowed to own businesses, and no one was allowed to teach anything except those approved by Imperial Japan. 

In her hometown of Tacloban, the Japanese forced business owners into submission by drenching them in scalding water. 

“When the Japs came, no one could keep anything,” Fernandez told a reporter from the Lewiston Daily Sun in November 1944. “They took everything they wanted.”

Fernandez decided to take matters into her own hands after the Japanese took away her possessions and small business and threatened to take away her students as well. 

Fernandez became known as “The Silent Killer.” Alone and dressed in all-black attire, she would set up ambushes in the jungle armed only with a makeshift shotgun, which she made out of a gas pipe, and her bolo. 

For two and a half years, Fernandez carried out ambushes on her own. She would head into the jungle barefoot, taking out dozens of enemy troops alone. 

From Teaching Kids to Training Guerrillas

Eventually, her heroics inspired a following among Tacloban’s men.

 Fernandez shifted from teaching the alphabet to schoolchildren to training men how to kill silently. 

From being called “Miss Fernandez” by her pupils, she earned the title “Captain Fernandez” among the 110 guerrillas under her command. 

Her small guerrilla army became so efficient and deadly, the Americans were astounded a woman led them. In fact, Fernandez was the only female guerrilla commander in the Philippines during World War II. 

P10,000 Bounty on Captain Nieves Fernandez

The Japanese grew so weary of Fernandez they decided to put a P10,000 bounty on her head in the hopes that her fellow Filipinos would betray her. 

But no one did. 

Throughout the war, Fernandez and her 110-strong company would liberate prisoners of war, sabotage Japanese supplies, and conduct hundreds of raids on the Japanese Imperial Army in the Philippines. 

Toward the end of World War II and when the Americans arrived on Leyte in 1944, Fernandez and her guerrilla forces had already liberated many villages from the Japanese and freed dozens of comfort women. 

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