PALAU, 1991, the centenary of Christianity in Micronesia, Scott 288c
from a miniature sheet of six stamps

After the outbreak of World War II in December 1941, these three Jesuit missionaries to Palau, Fr. Marino de la Hoz, SJ, Fr. Elías Fernández González, SJ, and Br. Emilio Villar y Blázquez, SJ, were confined to Koror by the Japanese. They carried on work there as best they could, but as the Americans began approaching in July 1944, their captors ordered them out of the mission quarters and moved them first to Ngatpang, then later to Babeldaob. Their fate after that is unclear, but it seems that in mid-September they were they were either beheaded or shot, then buried in a mass grave. Their bodies have never been discovered. The stamp above hails them as the Jesuit "Martyrs" of World War II. More

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