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Home , 6th Cavalry Regiment, Aparri, Basilio Valdes, Fort Mills, Fort Stotsenburg, Francis Burton Harrison

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An for independence? The American roots of the

Meixsel, Richard Bruce, Ph.D.

The State University, 1993

Copyright ©1993 by Meixsel, Richard Bruce. All rights reserved.

UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106

AN ARMY FOR INDEPENDENCE?

THE AMERICAN ROOTS OF THE PHILIPPINE ARMY

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By

Richard Bruce Meixsel, B.A., M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University

1993

Dissertation Committee: Approved by

Allan R. Millett

Stephen F. Dale Adviser Williamson Murray Department of History Copyright by Richard Bruce Meixsel 1993 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All of the persons whose aid is sought in the course of conducting dissertation research do not respond to inquiries, which makes it all the more pleasurable to acknowledge the assistance of those who do. Of the many archivists and

librarians who suffered my impositions, I want to thank especially Edward J. Boone, Jr., Archivist of the MacArthur

Memorial Archives, and Dr. Richard J. Sommers, Archivist-

Historian of the Army Military History

Institute, for their advice and encouragement. To

Maximiano S. Janairo, USA, Ret., Colonel John E. Olson, USA,

Ret., Colonel Santiago G. Guevara, USA, Ret.,

Carmen F. Guevara, Maud Bowers Rice, Nancy Taylor Evans, and

Richard S. Schmidt go my thanks for sharing their memories of the pre-war . Finally, I want to acknowledge the support of the taxpaying citizens of the states of Georgia and

Ohio, who, however unwittingly, made it all possible.

11 VITA

November 12, 1955 ...... Born - Forbes A.P.B.,

1985 B.A., Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas

1988 ...... M.A., , Athens, Georgia

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: History

111 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... ii

VITA ...... iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... v

INTRODUCTION...... 1

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE MILITARY MISSION AND ITS P L A N ...... 26

II. DEFENDING THE INSULAR EMPIRE: -WAR PLANS ORANGE AND THE FILIPINO SOLDIER ...... 70

III. THE FILIPINO PHILIPPINE SCOUT OFFICERS OF THE UNITED STATES A R M Y ...... 126

IV. THE PROMISE AND PROBLEM OF THE PHILIPPINE SCOUTS ...... 167

V. "THE 'SPINE' OF THE NEW ARMEE": THE ROOTS OF THE PHILIPPINE ARMY . 217

VI. THE MISSION IN ACTION

Part One: Getting Started, 1935-38 ...... 266

Part Two: Changing Direction? 1939-40 . . . 312

VII. WPO-3 AND THE PHILIPPINE ARMY, 1940-41 . . . 336

CONCLUSION...... 369

APPENDICES

A. Philippine Defense Projects ...... 374

B. Philippine Defense Plans (Orange) ...... 375

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 376

IV LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ACS Assistant Chief of Staff

AG Adjutant

AGO Office of the Adjutant General

BIA Bureau of Insular Affairs

CGPD Commanding General

HPA Headquarters Philippine Army

HPC Headquarters

HPD Headquarters Philippine Department

JAG Judge Advocate General

LC Library of Congress

NA National Archives

Philippine Constabulary

iilippine National Guard

;■ ilippine Scouts

' icord Group

The Adjutant General

ÜSAMHI Military History Institute

USAFFE United States Army Forces

ÜSMA United States

WPD War Plans

WPO War Plan Orange INTRODUCTION

Government officials awaited apprehensively the approach of the Philippine Commonwealth's initial military registration period, scheduled for the first week of April 1936. Passed with much fanfare in December 1935, the National Defense Act

(Commonwealth Act no. 1) made "military service obligatory for all citizens" of the Philippines. Specifically, the detailed plan for the emerging nation's new army required all twenty- year old males to register for military duty. The "plan" was ready, prepared under the direction of one of America's most illustrious soldiers, former United States Army Chief of Staff

General Douglas MacArthur, but was the population? Influential citizens such as thought a comprehensive defense scheme unnecessary. "Radical elements" were said to be mobilizing "the masses" to oppose compulsory military training. So politicians rushed home to drum up support for registration, important landowners "urged" their workers to participate, and army spokesmen refuted the criticisms of the system's opponents.

By the end of the first day's registration, apprehension had turned into exhuberance. "Brisk scenes" characterized the 2 capital city's five registration sites, and surpassed

its quota by the evening of 4 April, only half-way through the registration period. Among the first to sign up was José

Malvar, grandson of the Philippine Revolutionary War hero.

General . , "supposed to be another hotbed of communists and agitators and where registration was predicted to meet with failure," witnessed "a record enlistment." Adjacent Province reported an enthusiastic response to registration, as did . Even young , thought to be in a state of virtual revolt over the draft, came forward in impressive numbers. The Philippines

Free Press suspended a write-in poll on the popularity of the military system. The large number of registrants, it said, was answer enough. By the end of the week, nearly 150,000 men had registered for military service. "I am beginning to think that, perhaps, there is more strength and more will power, more determination on the part of the Filipino people,"

Commonwealth President Manuel L . wrote to the American journalist Roy Howard, "than the world has suspected.

While this response was a gratifying demonstration of

Filipino willingness to bear the burden of independence, it said nothing about the appropriateness for an independent state of the military system vere being asked to

Quezon to Howard, 15 May 1936, Howard Papers, LC. Accounts of the registration are taken from the Philippines fiarald (2, 3, 6 and 8 April 1936), Manila Tribune (7 and 9 April 1936), and Philippines Free Press (11 April 1936). 3

support. A Military Mission headed by General MacArthur had

arrived in Manila in October 1935 with a scheme for the

defense of the archipelago in hand. Once there, members of the

Mission worked with local officials and rewrote "much of [the

plan's] language," while retaining intact "its basic

provisions."2 Such a plan had not been seen before in the

Philippines, nor in America. General MacArthur told a

journalist: "I think it's the world's best defense plan, because we had the opportunity to start from scratch and cut

through traditions and out-of-date methods that gum up a lot

of ."3 His observation was plausible in theory, but in practical terms, MacArthur could not avoid reliance on

Filipino and American military personnel and military/semi­ military organizations already present in the Islands. They,

of course, brought with them traditions and methods--out-of- date or otherwise--upon which the successful implementation of the Mission's plan would rely. Nor could he escape the

Robert H. Ferrell (ed.). The Eisenhower Diaries ( and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 1981), p. 10. This published version of the Military Mission's "official"-- although increasingly personalized--diary kept by Dwight Eisenhower, the Mission's chief of staff, during his four years in the Philippines (1935-39) represents only a fraction of the original. The bulk of the diary was long thought to have been destroyed but was rediscovered about a decade ago. Since then, it has been generally unavailable to researchers (including this author). The Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, has tentatively scheduled the entire diary for publication in 1993 or 1994.

^Article by Jim Marshall in Col lier's (5 September 1936) , copy in RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 1. 4 attitudes and relationships formed during the course of the three and one-half decades the United States Army had occupied the Philippines. They shaped the mental world of colonialism within which Filipinos and Americans would interact to articulate a comprehensive scheme of defense.

Few histories of American rule in the Philippines fail to observe that the United States did little or nothing to prepare the Islands militarily for independence.^ The failure to investigate the military dimension of American rule is partly a reflection of the belief in American particularism in colonial matters and partly a reflection of disinterest in military affairs. There was military activity during the course of American rule: Filipino cadets at West Point and

Annapolis, Filipino-manned in the army, formation of the Philippine National Guard during World War One, creation of the Philippine Constabulary under the command of

United States Army officers, and organization of the Reserve

Officers Training Corps at Philippine schools under the

A recent example is Theodore Friend, The Blue-Eved Enemy: Japan Against the West in Java and . 1942-1945 (Princeton; Press, 1988), pp. 15-16, 19. Typically, Friend is content to point out that, unlike other colonial powers, the American government paid all military and naval expenses in the Philippines (roughly 700 million dollars between 1902 and 1940), without explaining why the government followed this policy or what alternative policy might have been appropriate. In addition, the observation that other colonies did pay for military forces (a contrast forcefully made in Friend's boolc, since he is explicitly concerned with the differing nature of colonial rule in the Philippines and in Indonesia) implies that they developed substantial armies. As the events of 1941-42 demonstrated, this was not the case. 5 auspices of the Philippine Department. It can be argued that these activities and organizations involved only a few people or (like the National Guard) were short-lived. Philippine society was intimate, however; the activities or interests of an influential few could have great impact. A handful of

Filipinos graduated from the United States Military Academy, but in 1935 they were the only Filipinos with extensive military training; the National Guard was on active duty for only three months before disbanding, but it was the only modern example of a Philippine national army and thus could provide a model for future development.

Even to military historians, interest in the army's experience in what was once America's largest overseas colony ends with the close of the Philippine-American War in 1902 and resumes four decades later with the onset of World War Two

(with an occasional glance at the endemic fighting on

Mindanao). In the interim, or so the story goes, a small garrison of American soldiers and their families enjoyed a privileged lifestyle in which servants remained affordable and

Prohibition only a bad dream.

The army's peacetime experience in the Philippines was not so inconsequential. Acquisition of the archipelago had required a reappraisal of many aspects of traditional army

life and administration. New pay, promotion, and retirement

regulations, for example, had to accommodate, or even were dictated by, the requirements of foreign service. Problems of 6 distance, climate, and unfamiliarity with local conditions posed tremendous hurdles for the various staff departments to overcome. The surmounting of these obstacles and the coalescence of many lessons-learned into a coherent policy provided a perennial source of activity for army officers.^

An early and persisting dislike for Philippine duty made integration of overseas and home garrisons especially challenging. The insistence on short tours of duty, for example (limited to two years by Congressional mandate in 1915 over the opposition of many of the army's senior officers), demonstrated an unwillingness to assume the "burden" of empire. Arguably, it was this distaste for Philippine service as much as post-World War One economic retrenchment which pushed the army to open up military opportunities for Filipino soldiers in the 1920s. The army's conceptualization of

Philippine defense was forced into channels which emphasized the capabilities of indigenous manpower. Significantly,

Douglas MacArthur's much-vaunted "Philippine Years" largely coincided with the vastly changed environment of the post-war years.

The emphasis placed on Douglas MacArthur's role in devising and implementing the Commonwealth military system inevitably distorts the picture of the Philippine Army's

These issues are explored at greater length in Richard B. Meixsel, "United States Army Policy in the Philippine Islands, 1902-1922" (MA thesis. University of Georgia, 1988), passim. 7

development. Removed from the larger perspective of military

developments in the pre-Commonweal th era, the "history" of the

Philippine Army has become only a footnote to the career of

General MacArthur (and, to a lesser extent, Manuel Quezon).

Thus, the longest and most detailed published accounts of the

Philippine Army are to be found in biographies of MacArthur.®

Still, the centrality of MacArthur cannot be denied. There

would have been a Philippine Army, anyway, but MacArthur's

prestige and dominance pointed the Philippine Army toward

paths responsive to his own particular vision of America's

continued commitment to the Philippine experiment and

involvement in the Pacific. His analysis of the Philippines' military needs was also based on his professional and personal

experiences in the Islands.

During his first tour of Philippine duty in 1903-1904

MacArthur had been little more than a tourist. At a time when many soldiers faced the dreary prospect of having to serve two

See especially D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1 (: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), and Carol M. Petillo, Douglas MacArthur; The Philippine Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981). Suzanne Carpenter argues that Jones' [sic] persistently gloomy evaluation of the Philippine Army derived "from basic disagreement with the viability of the [defense] plan itself" which subsequently colored his interpretation of the army's development. Carpenter's claim has been generally ignored rather than challenged, but she is certainly correct in suggesting that too much of James' interpretation was a result of "successive reliance of secondary source upon secondary source." S.G. Carpenter, "Toward the Development of Philippine National Security Capability, 1920-1940: With Special Reference to the Commonwealth Period, 1935-40" (PhD dissertation. New York University, 1976), pp. 373-74, 464, fn. 94. 8 or three full tours of duty in the Islands, MacArthur managed to remain barely eleven months. He spent several months in the Visayas, directing engineering projects of no lasting value, before the army posted him to a more congenial billet in Manila.^ He left the Islands in October 1904, and eighteen years passed before his return. Perhaps it is too cynical to conclude that, had MacArthur been required to share more equally in the burden of Philippine duty, he would have been less likely to catch "the vision of his father and the little group of able and far-sighted men . . . who had determined to build [t]here in the Western Pacific a sturdy outpost of

American influence."®

A second tour (1922-25) began in controversy. Rumor had it that General John J. Pershing had exiled MacArthur to the distant archipelago in anger over MacArthur's marriage to Mrs.

Louise Brooks, a wealthy divorcee with whom the chief of staff reputedly had been involved. Pershing denied the accusation, but MacArthur was clearly a fifth wheel in the Philippine garrison.® His "District of Manila" command was specially

^Petillo, Douglas MacArthur. pp. 66-71.

®Frazier Hunt, The Untold Story of Douglas MacArthur (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1954), p. 35.

®Petillo, Douglas MacArthur. pp. 123-35, and James, Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, pp. 291-305. Neither author discusses an incident involving MacArthur's West Point roommate, Major George Cocheu, who had also been "exiled" to the Philippines only a few weeks before the announcement of MacArthur's orders. During the course of Congressional hearings. Senator Thomas Watson had accused Cocheu, appearing as a War Department witness, of attempting to browbeat him with frowns 9 concocted for the occasion. He was later promoted to more substantial positions, command of the 23rd Infantry Brigade and then, briefly, of the . MacArthur left the Islands in January 1925, to return as Commanding General of the Philippine Department in 1928. Service in the

Philippines during these years undoubtedly served as a catalyst for encouraging MacArthur's interest in Asian affairs and the future relationship of the country to the United

States.

As a senior officer in the Islands' garrison in the

1920s, MacArthur was intimately familiar with the process of war planning in the Philippines. This process, too, has been distorted in the secondary literature. Depictions of a generic "War Plan Orange" (war against Japan, in the army's color-coded war plans of the day) obscure the important distinctions between a variety of such plans. What is often missing from discussions of pre-World War Two regional defense planning is the emphasis the War Department placed on local participation in and guidance of that planning. Historian

Edward Miller recognized the personalized nature of war

and stares. Watson shouted and shook his fist at Cocheu, and a few days later the hapless soldier received orders for the Philippines. Despite War Department assertions that Cocheu's name (like MacArthur's) simply happened to be next on the foreign service roster, it was widely held in the officer corps that Major Cocheu was being punished. Possibly the same thinking was extended to MacArthur's case soon after. On Cocheu's ordeal, see (11 and 14 December 1921) . 10 planning in the pre-war era in his detailed examination of planning for war against Japan,and the same insight can be

extended to the nature of war planning in the Philippines.

When Quezon later asked General MacArthur to return to the Philippines as military adviser, he was acting within the historical context of army-Philippine relations. He understood the importance of a sympathetic and activist local area commander. Reinforcing this understanding was Quezon's awareness of a specific and telling example of the power and influence of a friendly army commanding general and his ability to assist or undermine the development of indigenous military forces. Quezon was intimately aware of the ordeal of the Philippine National Guard during the World War.

In the Philippines, an interest in military organization and its potential for strengthening Filipino claims to political equality predated America's entry into World War

One, and a month before the United States cast its lot with that of the Allies, the passed the

Militia Act, on 17 March 1917. Volunteers were expected to fill the ranks of a projected 25,000-man division, but the governor-general had authority to compel service if necessary.

The Act also established a Militia Commission to study "a system of compulsory military service." A second board of

^^Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange; The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan. 1897-1945 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991), pp. 9-10. 11

three officers was to travel to the United States to obtain

for the Philippine National Guard support similar to that

given state national guard organizations under the provisions

of the 1916 National Defense Act.

Subsequently, the Philippine National Guard had an

unhappy history. It was not called to active duty until a few

days after the war's end. Proposals to station the Guard along

the Mexican border or send it to came to nought. The

Guard simply trained for three months in Manila before

disbanding. Filipinos responded favorably, or did not, to the

call for volunteers, depending on the sources read. The PNG

exemplified Filipino political maturity and adherence to the cause of democracy, or the Guard saga was overblown and

Filipino enthusiasm for the war effort a myth, again depending on the book one reads.However ambiguous its other lessons, the ordeal of the PNG from 1917 to 1919 brought out very clearly the ability of the local United States Army garrison to help or hinder the development of local armed forces.

^^Manila lawyer and PNG veteran Alva J. Hill provided a memoir of service in the Guard in a two-part article, "The Philippine Army During the World War," in The Philippine Forum 1, no. 12 (November 1936):53-61, and idem 2, no. 1 (December 1916): 52-61. For a short history of the Guard, see also Ricardo T. Jose, "The Philippine National Guard in ," Philippine Studies 36 (1988): 275-99. Quoting from documents in the Quezon Papers, Jose concluded that the Guard faced great difficulty in recruiting both officers and enlisted men. An American-owned Manila hostile to the Guard nevertheless noted considerable enthusiasm for military service, both in the provinces and among college students. See Cablenews-American (11, 23 and 29 October, and 7 November 1918). 12

Officers of the army's Philippine Department were initially supportive of the effort to build a national guard­

like organization in the Islands. Hunter

Liggett, Commanding General of the Philippine Department, and his staff met with Governor-General Francis B. Harrison.

Harrison learned that there were 25,000 Springfield rifles held in reserve in the Philippines, and he counted on their use by the Guard. In other concrete ways, the army extended its support and guidance. Officers participated in training the potential Guard officers, and departmental staff members had already assisted in preparing the Militia Act. When

Liggett returned to the United States in April 1917, the new commanding general, Charles Bailey, was equally supportive.

In , the War Department was less than enthusiastic about a Filipino division. In mid-April 1918, PNG

Brigadier General Thomas Hartigan verbally outlined the accomplishments of the Philippine National Guard and its potential use to the American war effort in presentations to both Army War College and General Staff committees. He stressed the leading role played by Philippine Department officers in writing the Militia Act, which, he assured his listeners, conformed closely to the National Defense Act of

1916 and omitted objectionable features of state national guards. His audience was not sold on the PNG. Opposition to the Guard, Hartigan cabled Harrison, was "incredible and violent." He counselled the governor-general to consider 13 seriously Bureau of Insular Affairs Chief Frank McIntyre's proposal that the PNG be called to active duty for training purposes in the Islands o n l y .

Equally devastating was the reorganization of the army's

Filipino troops, the Philippine Scouts, from battalions into regiments. Harrison learned the first "definite news" of this development from Hartigan on 2 April. The Scouts' transformation greatly complicated the building of the Guard by reducing access to regular army officers, noncommissioned officers, and potential recruits. As Harrison cabled back,

"the increase of the scouts and the organization of division cannot go on satisfactorily at the same time."^^ The decision undermined the Guard's ability to obtain sorely needed professional leadership and training, and it appears to have been calculated to do exactly that.

The documents do not reveal why a new Philippine

Department commander. Robert K. Evans, took it upon himself to hinder the creation of the Philippine Guard

Division. The army had recalled Evans from retirement to command the Philippine garrison merely as an expedient to allow active duty officers to go to the front. Evans was even said to be a good friend and former neighbor of Governor-

^^"Notes for General Staff," 15 April 1918, and cable, Hartigan to Harrison, 24 April 1918, BIA 2275-119, RG 350, NA.

^barrison to Hartigan, 6 April 1918, BIA 2275-116, RG 350, NA. 14

General Harrison's father.Yet, according to James Woolard's study of Adjutant General records, Evans first proposed the reorganization of the Scout battalions into regiments soon after assuming command of the garrison in August 1917. When the War Department did not concur, he persisted in advising regimental status "in October and [again] in mid-December

1917."15

Evans' activity was well known to officers in the

Philippines. When Harrison accused Evans of being behind the

Scout regimental scheme, the Department commander replied disingenuously that he had merely responded to a War

Department inquiry by recommending Filipino Scouts replace

American soldiers recalled to the United States. That, retorted Harrison, was exactly the point: Evans had suggested an increase in the number of Scouts, not the War Department.

By implication, he could have recommended War Department support for the National Guard, as Generals Liggett and Bailey had done before him. Further, Evans had earlier recommended that the army not allow Scout officers to assist the Guard unless they could be replaced by American regulars from the

States. He claimed that this not only "implie[d] no opposition whatever" to the Guard but in fact pointed a way to allowing

^'^Ralph W. Jones, "The Truth About the National Guard," 24 , p. 18, BIA 2275-231A, RG 350, NA.

^5 James R . Woolard, "The Philippine Scouts: The Development of America's Colonial Army" (PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1975), pp. 173-74. 15

the Guard to obtain Scout assistance. This was sheer effrontery. As PNG Adjutant General Ralph W. Jones reminded the governor-general, under wartime conditions General Evans' suggestion "imposes conditions that are impossible to meet."^^

It took Harrison a full year to obtain Evans' removal.

A new commanding officer. Brigadier General Henry Greene, was more obliging. By late 1918, twenty-nine army officers served with the PNG, including ten Filipino Philippine Scout officers. Enlisted men of the Philippine garrison joined the

PNG also. General Evans returned to retirement and, five years later, in 1923, the War Department awarded him the

Distinguished Service Medal for his services in the

Philippines. He had, the medal citation read, handled "many difficult problems" with "rare judgment, tact, and great skill" while commanding the Philippine Department.^'

Evans to Harrison, 14 June 1918, and Harrison to Evans, 20 June 1918, BIA 2275-187, RG 350, NA; "Correspondence with Philippine Department re[.] organization of Filipino Division," BIA 2275-154/1-2, RG 350, NA. In his unpublished exposé, "The Truth About the National Guard," General Jones wrote that there were actually two General Evanses. One was "amenable to reason"; the other, under the baleful influence of the Department Adjutant, Colonel Edwin Landon, was an obstructionist. Landon, Jones claimed, was "the officer responsible for the difficulties interposed here in the Philippines," encouraged in his behavior by unnamed officers in the War Department. He cited many examples of how Landon undermined the Guard's organization. Copy in BIA 2275-321A, RG 350, NA.

1 7 General Orders 4, War Department, 1923. Citation quoted in Decorations, United States Army. 1862-1926 (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Adjutant General, 1927), p. 701. 16

Governor-General Harrison and others pointed the finger

of blame at United States Army Acting Chief of Staff (as he was then) Peyton March, but there seems little reason to

believe that the army reserved any particular animus for the

PNG, despite Harrison's complaint. Only the direst need for men on the Western Front would have turned the War

Department’s attention toward the Philippines, with the

inherent logistical (not to mention racial) difficulties to be overcome in making use of Filipino manpower. The Philippine

National Guard also represented the American amateur entrepreneurial military tradition which the army had

effectively suppressed in the United States. The regular army officer corps was no more sympathetic to the martial ambitions

of the governor-general and his staff of Manila merchants than

it had been to Teddy Roosevelt's volunteer division.

Federalized for one month for training purposes in

November 1918, the Philippine government then paid for another two months of training for the PNG. The Guard disbanded in

February 1919. Many of the enlisted men parleyed their Guard

experience into positions with the Philippine Constabulary and the , both of which had set up recruiting

offices at the PNG's Camp Claudio. In the wake of the Guard's demise, the Cablenews-American newspaper attacked the Guard in an effort to "get at the truth." The paper charged "graft and gross incompetence" in the purchasing of supplies, political influence in the awarding of commissions, and blamed 17 the "delay on federalization" not on Washington but on the desire of "a single individual" to obtain "a high commission."^

If indeed some politicians had treated the Guard as only another source of pork and had, in fact, foisted upon it "a number of inefficient and venal officers," it would be too cynical too conclude that the large number of young Filipinos who flocked to the colors were insincere in their love of country and willingness to serve. The junior officers of the

Guard's 9th Infantry , for example, were unequivocal in their expectation of active service in the war. And, like many others, they saw the PNG as the foundation of the military forces of a free nation.

Whatever the reality, the popular legacy of the Guard was

Filipino enthusiasm for military service, dedication to the cause of Philippine independence, and adherence to the concept of the citizen-soldier. If in truth most provinces had failed dismally to fill their National Guard quotas in 1918, many years later the mayor of City remembered things differently. The successful first mobilization test of the

Philippine Army in May 1939, Dr. Ramon F. Campos told the

Commonwealth's citizen-soldiers, reminded him of the many who

"^Cablenews-American (21 December 1918, and 20 February 1919), clippings in BIA file 2275A, RG 350, NA.

^®Ibid.; Feliciano P. Paterno (ed.). The Ninth Regiment of Infantry. Roster. First Philippine Division. USA ([Manila, 1919]), pp. 9, 62. 18

had volunteered for the Philippine National Guard twenty years

earlier.^

The National Guard experience held at least one clear

lesson for any attempt to develop a Philippine army in the

future. As long as Filipino leaders looked to the United

States Army for guidance in the building of indigenous armed

forces, the active support and sympathy of local commanders

were imperative. Generals Liggett and Bailey had made

available arms, equipment, and the participation of even the

garrison's more senior officers in the Philippines' army-

building endeavor. Operating under the same regulations and

similar directives, General Evans had obstructed the building

of the PNG for many months. He had clear orders to assist

Governor-General Harrison; the problem lay in his

interpretation of those orders. He needlessly raised "frequent

questions" with the War Departmentathat he already possessed

the authority to deal with locally, and he interpreted army

regulations in ways unfavorable to the Guard. This need for mutuality of effort and understanding in order for the

creation of Philippine armed forces to succeed could not have

been lost on Manuel Quezon when, only fifteen years later, he

asked former Philippine Department Commanding General Douglas

MacArthur (who had served with a National Guard division

^®Copy of Campos statement, dated 10 May 1939, in RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 2. 19

during the war) to be the Commonwealth government's military

adviser.

Such experiences along with the conceptual parameters

brought to Philippine defense planning contributed to the

ultimate design of the Philippine Army, but they may have been

less important than the fact that military organizations

already existed in the Philippines. The "new" Philippine Army had little option but to draw on the personnel and resources

of these organizations, the Philippine Scouts and the

Philippine Constabulary; the former funded by Washington and

commanded by officers of the United States Army, the latter the military-police arm of the Insular government.

Like other colonial powers, the United States had turned early to the use of indigenous manpower to coerce submission to American rule. The relative ease with which the use of these troops had allowed the United States to extend its authority throughout much of the archipelago suggests how thin was the veneer of . With the Islands largely quiescent by 1906-1907, the bifurcated development of the military forces raised by the United States accelerated.

On the one hand was the Philippine Scouts. Raised during the Philippine-American War to assist in supressing guerilla activity, the Scouts had by the 1920s become the mainstay of the Islands' external defense force. Philippine Scout and field artillery regiments replaced American regiments.

Scout infantry regiments composed the bulk of the Philippine 20

Division, and Scout coast artillery regiments served alongside

American coast artillerymen on the fortified islands of Manila

and Subic Bays.

Regrettably, the only in-depth study of the Philippine

Scouts limits itself to their formative years. James Woolard's

dissertation contains a wealth of detail on the battles waged

by these Filipino soldiers against America's enemies in the

field and the bureaucratic battles waged in the War Department

by opponents of the use of native troops. But his account

ends with the onset of the 1920s, the very time that the

Scouts began to assume the institutional configuration of a modern army. What is perhaps the most significant question to ask about the Scouts is why it did not become, as a unit, the nucleus of the Philippine Army's professional force. Enlisted men of the Scouts did serve with the training cadres at

Philippine Army provincial training sites, and Philippine Army

recruits received specialist training under the aegis of the

Scouts. Yet Filipino politicians showed little interest in

championing the cause of America's "Colonial Army" in the

Philippines. A study of the Philippine Scouts in its role as

a "regular army" suggests what Filipinos did not want in an

army for independence.

For better or worse, the professional military experience

of most of the Filipino officers who obtained high rank in the

21Woolard, "Philippine Scouts. 21

Philippine Army after 1935 was acquired in the post-World War

One Philippine Scouts. The personal histories of these men are even more obscure than that of their organization, to the detriment both of understanding and justice.Numbers and personal ambition indicate that their influence might have been pervasive, yet the general tenor of virtually all writing on the creation of the Philippine Army is dismissive of the role of these officers. There is no published biography of any

Filipino officer, nor is there any book or article which examines the collective identity of the officer corps. If nothing else, simple necessity ensured that these unheralded men would take prominent positions in the Philippine Army.

On the other hand was the Philippine Constabulary. Like

Woolard, the author of the only scholarly study of the semi­ military Constabulary limits his concern to the formative years of the organization.^* George Coats' dissertation examines the Insurrection-era origins of the Philippine

Historian Stanley Weintraub, for example, condemns former Scout officer Mateo Capinpin, who commanded the 21st Philippine Army Division during the Luzon campaign of 1941- 42, for ignoring the sound advice relative to the positioning of troops at Gulf offered by his American adviser. But the adviser had only two, not "twenty years of Philippine experience," as Weintraub writes, while Capinpin had over thirty years of infantry experience in the Islands during which he had repeatedly marched over the Lingayen area and presumably knew more about local terrain than his adviser (who returned to the Philippines only six weeks before the outbreak of war). Long Day's Journey into War: December 7. 1941 (New York: Dutton, 1991), pp. 484-85.

^'George Y . Coats, "The Philippine Constabulary, 1901- 1917" (PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1968). 22

Constabulary as an operational auxiliary of the United States

Army, albeit funded by the government in Manila rather than the government in Washington.

Like the Philippine Scouts, the Constabulary considered itself a "military" organization. Its training, recruitment, and patterns of service differed markedly and diverged even more widely as the nature of service changed with the population's submission to Manila's authority. The immediate need for trained "soldiers" in 1935, however, led the

Commonwealth government to convert Constabulary officers and men into Philippine Army officers and men overnight. The transformation of what was essentially a national police force into a national army posed problems for the government which eventually led to the re-creation of the Philippine

Constabulary in 1938. In the interim, the Constabulary experience contributed to a different vision of the proper military system for a new nation, one with which the public was, in reality, much more familiar.

Within the context of colonial Southeast Asia, America's military preparation of the Philippines for independence was not especially unsubstantial. Where all of the colonial military systems fell short, of course, was in contrast to that of the most likely foreign enemy, Japan. The size of the Philippine Scouts and Philippine Constabulary does not denote their insignificance. They were small, but they existed. In addition, the United States Army's historic 23

disinterest in the Philippines made it unlikely that it would

(as an organization) be a serious player in defining the

military needs of the colony on the eve of independence. Thus,

when the debate over the proper form of a military force for

a post-colonial Philippines began, these organizations had no

creditable competition.

The "appropriateness" of any military system, of course,

is contingent upon a multiplicity of factors. History,

geography, economics, culture, popular and elite perceptions of the meaning of military service, understanding of the international military and political environments, all these and more contribute to the success or failure (or something in between) of a military system. The 1930s Philippines' unique Commonwealth context complicated the matter further, necessitating the successful balancing of the needs of a soon- to-be independent nation with the continuing and very different security concerns of the metropolis.

From this rich mixture, this dissertation focuses on those pre-existing military institutions in the Philippine

Islands, the officers and men who filled th e i r ranks, and how their experiences contributed to the military system of the

Philippine Commonwealth. The initial chapter describes the formation of General MacArthur's Military Mission and suggests how the army's historical experience in the Philippines 24 contributed to both MacArthur's and Quezon's assumptions about the appropriate military system for an independent

Philippines. Chapter Two offers a comprehensive examination of United States Army war planning in the Philippines and the evolving perceptions of the Filipino soldier’s role in defending the archipelago.

The successful implementation of the Military Mission's plan of defense relied primarily on the officers available to carry forward the subsequent development of the Philippine

Army. Chapter Three presents a collective portrait of a significant body of those officers, the Filipino officers of the Philippine Scouts. Chapters analyzing the training, patterns of recruitment, and nature of enlisted service in the

Philippine Scouts and of the officer corps and enlisted force of the Philippine Constabulary follow.

Each of these topics combined to shape the course of the

Philippine Army from 1936 to 1940. Chapter Six describes the actual working of the military system, the challenges posed by the reality of conditions in the Philippines, the adaptability of the Scouts and Constabulary to meeting the needs of the new army, and the Mission's successes and failures in meeting the challenges. The increasingly hostile environment of Asia in 1940-41 lent an air of urgency to the

Commonwealth's military progress. A final chapter focuses attention on the interrelatedness of the Philippine

Department's planning for war with Japan and the development 25 of the Philippine Army as the luxury of peacetime experimentation gave way to the harsh demands of preparation for real war. CHAPTER I

THE MILITARY MISSION AND ITS PLAN

American soldiers who served with the United States

Army's Philippine garrison in the late 1930s dismissed the nascent Philippine Army as "MacArthur's creation,"^ and the figure of Douglas MacArthur does loom large in the history of the Commonwealth-era army. First arriving in the Islands as a twenty-three year old in 1903, MacArthur enjoyed further assignments in the archipelago in 1922-25 and again in 1928-30. By most accounts his interest in Asian affairs was genuine, and MacArthur's willingness to accept members of the Filipino upper class as social equals unusual among American officers. During his service in Manila in the

1920s, he formed close ties with members of the Filipino elite, including nationalist politician Manuel L. Quezon.^

The phrase is that of Seth R. Frear, an army dependent in the Islands in the 1920s and 1930s whose father was an officer in the Philippine Scouts. Telephone conversation with author, 23 April 1991. This perception was common throughout the military community. For example, see the comments of enlisted man Charles Willeford in Something About a Soldier (New York: Random House, 1986), pp. 85-86.

^"There is no record of MacArthur having met Manuel Quezon when he first came to the Islands in 1903," Frazier Hunt wrote in The Untold Story of Douglas MacArthur (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1954), p. 123, but Carol M. Petillo, Douglas MacArthur; The Philippine Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), p. 75, and D. Clayton James, The

26 27

Concerned about the country's future security and with the

Commonwealth presidency within his grasp by late 1934, Quezon

turned naturally to his good friend Douglas MacArthur to lead

a military mission to the Philippines.

This, at least, is the standard account of how MacArthur

came to be selected Commonwealth military adviser. In his posthumous memoirs, however, Filipino journalist and long-time political insider Carlos P. Romulo contributed a new and entirely unexpected dimension to the story of MacArthur's selection as military adviser. Romulo maintained that he

"remember[ed] very well that it was Roy Howard . . . who first suggested" to Quezon that MacArthur be approached about his willingness to return to Manila as military adviser with the inauguration of the Commonwealth.^

Roy Wilson Howard was one of America's best-known newspapermen. After working on several papers in the Midwest,

Howard became in 1906 the New York correspondent for the

Scripps-McRae . A year later, publisher E.W. Scripps formed United Press and made Howard its first general news manager. Howard was promoted to president of the UP in 1912.

In November 1918, his "false armistice" report from France (he

Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), p. 90, follow MacArthur's Reminiscences (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964), p. 30, in claiming that the general's friendship with both Quezon and Sergio Osmena began in the Manila Army and Navy Club during his first tour of duty in the Islands.

^Carlos P. Romulo, with Beth Day Romulo, The Philippine Presidents (: New Day Publishers, 1988), pp. 13-14. 28 brought the war to an end four days before the belligerents did so), subjected Howard to the jeers of fellow journalists but did nothing to hinder his rise in the news profession. By

1922 he had become chairman of the board of the renamed

Scripps-Howard Newspapers. Howard acquired The New York

Telegram in 1927 and combined it with The New York World and

The Evening World in 1931 to form the World-Teleoram.^

At some point, Howard met General MacArthur and became his firm supporter.^ in the course of a meeting with President

Herbert Hoover in early 1930, Howard pressed MacArthur's candidacy for chief of staff, not, he wrote to the Commanding

General of the Philippine garrison, because of his "feeling of very real friendship" but rather because of the "very real admiration which I have for you as an officer and a public servant." Howard was not sanguine about MacArthur's chances, however. President Hoover, he reported, felt that MacArthur had turned down "the greatest opportunity that could be

^There is no published book-length biography of Howard, but the School of Journalism, Indiana University, has published biographical sketches in two pamphlets, "The Roy W. Howard Archives" and "Roy W. Howard Public Affairs Reporting Seminar, 16-17 September 1991." There are extensive, unduplicated, collections of Howard's papers at the Library of Congress and the Roy W. Howard Archives at Indiana University. Howard's diaries remain in the hands of his son. Jack Howard, and were (as of 1992) unavailable to researchers.

^Howard apparently had close links to the army, which appears to have offered him a reserve commission in military intelligence in the mid-1920s. See letters. Joseph A. Marmon to Colonel James H. Reeves, 1 October 1925, MID 2774-3/84, and Reeves to Marmon, 14 October 1925, MID 2774-3/85, RG 165, NA. 29 offered to an army man . . .--the Mississippi reclamation

job." The President spoke with regret, however, not resentment.G Upon learning that General MacArthur had received the appointment, Howard depreciated his efforts on the new chief of staff’s behalf, but MacArthur responded with characteristic exaggeration, thanking the journalist for his weighty support. MacArthur expected Howard to be a trusted adviser. "You can count on hearing my knock on your door very frequently," the general effused.?

Roy Howard attracts little attention in biographies of

MacArthur, but Howard's manuscript collections reflect frequent contact with both MacArthur and Quezon during the

1930s. Howard had made a first journey to the Far East in

1925, visiting Japan, , Hong Kong, and the Philippines.

He toured the Islands with an "open mind" but was inclined to believe that the United States "had done [its] job . . . and should get out." First-hand experience changed his perspective, however. Howard thought Governor-General Leonard

Wood miscast--the ex-army general "would have made a corking fine military governor for some British nigger territory, where the demands of his government called for a rigid military type"--but the Philippines, he now saw, had great

^Howard to MacArthur, 13 May 1930, Howard Papers, LC.

^Howard to MacArthur, 8 August 1930, and MacArthur to Howard, 12 September 1930, Howard Papers, LC. 30 economic potential. And to leave the Islands would undo all that America had accomplished.®

Howard also met Quezon in 1925, and the two became better acquainted during a second visit to Asia in 1929. At that time, Howard later recalled, he tried, apparently with little success, to sell Filipino political leaders on the idea of

"dominion status."® In 1933 Howard journeyed for a third time to the Orient. Arriving in Tokyo in mid-May, his attitude toward the Philippines had changed completely. Now, he wrote to fellow publisher Robert Scripps, their newspapers should

"agitate consistently and persistently for the earliest possible evacuation of the Philippines."^® A few days later, he sent much the same message to Quezon. The United States owed its colony a better ending than Hare-Hawes-Cutting,

Howard admitted, but the sooner it gave independence to the

Philippines, the better. The United States should leave

Pacific waters "entirely . . . or at least remove itself insofar" as it appeared to pose a military threat to Japan.

Howard to "Uncle Bob" [Robert F. Paine], 7 December 1925, Howard Archives, Indiana University.

®In a letter to "Mr. Howard," dated 19 December 1930, Quezon recalled that the two had been on a ride together in Tayabas and "four or five" years earlier; Howard to "Arsenic" [Arsenic N. Luz], 31 December 1934, both in Howard Papers, LC.

^®Howard to "Bob," 19 May 1933, Howard Archives, Indiana University.

^^Howard to Quezon, 23 May 1933, Howard Papers, LC. 31

Howard moved on to China, arriving on the heels of yet

another Japanese attack. A meeting with Nationalist President

Chiang Kai-Shek began "a personal and professional friendship" which would last all of Howard's life.^^ Influenced by what he learned in China, in a lengthy letter to Quezon mailed from

Shanghai in mid-June Howard reversed himself completely.

Previous visits to the Far East had convinced him that talk of war between the United States and Japan "was mere blather."

Since 1929, however, Japan had undergone a complete metamorphosis. "Militaristic jingoists" controlled its government; a "Nipponese version of Nietzchian philosophy" gripped its people. Japan was now in such a state that "no argument will have appeal except the argument of force." In this environment, Philippine independence meant Filipino enslavement to Japan. Howard was "convinced of something that

[he had] never before been willing to accept as a fact, namely, that the lowering of the American flag in the

Philippines would be the certain preliminary to its ultimate replacement by the flag of Japan." He was certain that the

Filipino leader would convince his people that independence was therefore unwise, "even though it involved [Quezon's] political elimination."^^

^^"Frank Ford's Book on Roy W. Howard," Vol. 2, pp. 2-3, Howard Archives, Indiana University.

^%oward to Quezon, 12 June 1933, Howard Papers, LC; Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires (New Haven and London: Press, 1965), p. 173. 32

The depth of Howard's influence is open to question, and

cynics might respond that Howard did not know his man. Quezon

appears never to have put anything ahead of his own political

survival. In his letters, however, Howard leaves no doubt that

he believed Quezon had come around to his way of thinking.

When Howard learned that Quezon expected to reject the Hare-

Hawes-Cutting Act obtained by the Osmena-Roxas independence

mission, he concluded that the United States would probably

remain "in the Islands for sometime to come."I*

Howard had also championed Quezon's case before President

Franklin Roosevelt. Interviewing the President in September

1933, Howard discovered that Roosevelt was "quite cold on

Quezon and much more inclined to give weight to the opinions

of Osmena and Roxas." The White House's new occupant "had

been sold on the idea that Quezon [was] rather slippery in matters political," and Howard did his "best to disabuse

[Roosevelt's] mind on this score. "Slippery" was an accurate enough adjective to apply to Quezon, and possibly Roosevelt was privy to his predecessor's experience with the Filipino politician. As Howard later learned, former President Hoover

had "worked out a deal"--in writing--whereby Quezon would agree to the continuance of the Philippines' current status

^"^Howard to Robert Scripps, 31 July 1933, Howard Archives, Indiana University.

^"Confidential memorandum of conversation with President Roosevelt, the White House," 19 September 1933, Howard Archives, Indiana University. 33

in return for "a very considerable extension of local

autonomy." Quezon then returned home to discover that Senator

Harry Hawes had whipped up independence sentiment during a

trip to the Islands, and Quezon felt compelled to repudiate

his agreement with Hoover.

Howard and Quezon met in New York in March 1934, soon

after Quezon had managed to obtain a modification to the

Hares-Hawes-Cutting Act. Quezon returned to New York on 10

October 1934 and spent several days in late October and early

November in the Johns Hopkins University hospital in

Baltimore. Possibly he met again with Howard, who may at this

time have suggested MacArthur as the perfect soldier to guide

the Commonwealth's military development. Aside from the

suppositions of some of MacArthur's biographers (writing for

the most part before the publication of Romulo's memoirs),

there is little evidence that Quezon arrived in the United

States already determined to seek General MacArthur's aid in

establishing a Philippine military system. In fact, Quezon

gave his approval in late 1934 to measures which suggested

support for making the Philippine Constabulary the army of the

^®"Memorandum of conversation with ex-President , enroute to New York," 9 February 1935, Howard Archives, Indiana University. This agreement may have been made in spring 1931, when Quezon travelled to Washington "in the hope of working out an administration solution to the Philippine question." According to Friend (who did not cite this memo), Quezon met with War Department officials and businessmen to discuss dominion status for the Philippines. Between Two Empires, pp. 58, 74. 34

Philippines. War Department documents imply that MacArthur had no foreknowledge of involvement in any scheme to build a

Philippine army before November 1934. The decision to turn the

Philippines’ military future over to General MacArthur seems to have been made, and consummated, virtually overnight.

Planning for war against Japan and studies on the military value of the Philippines kept MacArthur informed on

Philippine matters in the early 1930s, but if he maintained close links with Quezon or any other Filipino political leader between the time he left the Islands in late 1930 until sounded out about becoming military adviser in late 1934, his biographies do not reflect such contacts. MacArthur biographer

D. Clayton James mentions no Filipino in his account of

MacArthur's chief of staff years. Carol Petillo's biography

James writes that Quezon’s purpose in coming to the United States in late 1934 was "to discuss with political and military leaders the problem which he considered paramount at the start of his commonwealth, namely, national defense." Yet the sources cited in support of this conclusion are letters written by Quezon in mid and late November 1934, more than five weeks after he had arrived in the country. Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, pp. 479, 688, fn. 1. According to biographer Carlos , Quezon returned to the United States for medical reasons. In contrast to all other sources, however, Quirino claims that Quezon arranged MacArthur's assignment as military adviser in March 1934, not during his return visit to Washington in November. Quirino, Quezon: Paladin of Philippine Freedom (Manila: Filipiniana Book Guild, 1971), pp. 263-65, 268. In a six-page "draft" describing (among other things) the origins of the Military Mission, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote that before visiting Washington in late 1934, Quezon had "through correspondence already expressed to General MacArthur a hope that the General would come to the Philippine Islands as 'Military Adviser.'" No such correspondence was found. Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers, DDE Diaries Series (Ann Whitman File), Eisenhower Library. 35

of the general is far more enlightening concerning MacArthur's

personal life, but she discovered no continuing contacts

either. MacArthur and Quezon "had often discussed the problem

of Philippine security" during the general's Manila assignment

in the late 1920s, Frazier Hunt wrote, but then Quezon

"suddenly appeared" in the War Department in mid-1935 [sic]

to ask General MacArthur to become military adviser.^® A brief mention of Quezon occurs in a letter from the chief of staff to Philippine Governor-General , Jr. in

April 1932. MacArthur commented that he had "not heard from

Manuel Quezon for some time.

MacArthur's aide. T. J. Davis, later recalled that Quezon "first approached" the chief of staff seeking his services as military adviser during a trip to Washington in

"the late fall of 1934."^® Encouraged by MacArthur's response,

Quezon formally requested the assistance of a military mission. He pointed out to Secretary of War George Dern that one of the Commonwealth government's first and "most pressing responsibilities" would be "the initiation and development of a sound national defense system accurately adjusted to the strategic situation and defensive needs of the Islands." The

^®Hunt, Untold Storv. p. 167.

^ ^MacArthur to Roosevelt, 16 April 1932, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Papers, LC

^^Davis to Jorge B. \Vargas, 29 February 1936, Thomas J Davis Papers, Eisenhower Library 36 government "must have," Quezon argued, "for a period of at

least five or six years, the friendly counsel and exclusive use of professionally trained military leaders of wide experience."

Quezon proposed that an existing 1926 law which allowed military and naval officers and enlisted men to assist other nations in the Western Hemisphere be modified to include the

Philippines among the list of those eligible for assistance.

The War Department duly sought Congressional support for

Quezon's (more probably, MacArthur's) request. The position of the Philippines was not, of course, analogous to that of the American nations which had received United States military missions. Lest any in Congress question why some of the army and navy officers already in the Philippines could not provide the necessary guidance (and upon arriving in Manila, MacArthur would promptly ask for the services of several) and why special legislation was required to authorize the sending of more officers, the War Department admitted that there was no legal need for legislation to create a mission. However, it asserted, the "definite approval" shown by amending the law would "signify to the Filipino people the deep and friendly interest of our Congress in the difficult problems facing the new government." And although Quezon had mentioned the need for a military mission for only a few years, the War

-^Quezon to Dern, 19 November 1934, Quezon Papers, microfilm ed., reel 18. 37

Department also justified his request with the argument that

it would allow the military mission to remain "as long as

necessary," even after independence.^^ With little fanfare.

Congress approved the requested legislation.

MacArthur knew what he was up against in attempting to

implement the Philippine defense system in opposition to

disinterested or actively hostile officials. He was therefore

concerned with possessing a basis of authority independent of

the local garrison commander, and the 1926 law allowed what

existing legislation dictating policy in the Philippines did not: acceptance of higher local military rank, both for himself and other officers who might wish to transfer into the

Philippine Army (who in fact would not agree to do so without higher rank). In addition, as much as the grade of he subsequently obtained may have satisfied his amour propre, it also ensured that he had clear seniority in the military hierarchy of command and was not just one of five or six local general.^3

^^Acting Secretary of War to James J. HcSwain, Chairman, House Military Affairs Committee, 12 February 1935, RG 18, MacArthur Archives.

'^MacArthur accepted a field marshal's baton from Quezon, but he denied that he wore a "specially designed sharkskin uniform to do so," as James claims (Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, p. 505). MacArthur wrote that he had "never worn and never expect to wear any other than the uniform of the United States Army." Letter to Editor, Times-Desoatch (Richmond), 11 February 1938, RG 1, MacArthur Archives. 38

In other ways, MacArthur acted to ensure himself a free hand and to establish his preeminent authority. In December

1934, he advised against approval of a national defense act recently passed by the Philippine legislature. A few months later, when Major General refused to vacate the

Santa Lucia military quarters that General MacArthur wanted as his headquarters, MacArthur strutted his knowledge of

Things Filipino and put Parker in his place, informing the

Philippine Department commander that Santa Lucia had originally been "the Constabulary Club and [its] title still rests with the Insular government." The quarters were to be

"cleared and ready" by mid-October. ^4 More important was

MacArthur's letter of instructions to Parker. Under the army adjutant general's signature, General Parker received a letter ordering him to furnish any personnel, reserve material, and

"every possible help" in "accomplishment of the mission of establishing an adequate native national defense for the

Commonwealth." The head of the Military Mission was "empowered to use his own judgment" in demanding "whatever assistance he may require.

Announcement of the decision to bring the army chief of staff to the Philippines was to have been a closely held

^4parker to TAG, 1 July 1935, and memorandum to TAG from MacArthur, 2 July 1935, RG 18, MacArthur Archives.

^^Brigadier General E.T. Conley to Commanding General, Philippine Department, 18 September 1935, RG 1, MacArthur Archives. 39 secret. MacArthur did not expect Quezon to publicize the decision until after elected Commonwealth president, but a

"leak in Manila" forced his friend's hand. MacArthur later

learned that the leak was Quezon himself, who had supposedly been forced into revealing the information to counteract accusations by General Emilio Aguinaldo and other political enemies of "'selling out to Japan.

Quezon would later assert that the idea of asking

MacArthur to return to Manila was his alone: it "came originally from me and nobody whether American or Filipino ever suggested the thought." So at least the belief existed that he had been put up to seeking MacArthur's assistance by a third party. Critics charged that MacArthur's Mission was

"proof that the National Defense Plan aimed to give the United

States a big army in the Philippines."^^ Whether or not Roy

Howard was instrumental in directing Quezon's attention toward

MacArthur's usefulness as military adviser, he would later have "long confidential talks about the Philippine defense situation" with both men, and there was little doubt in his mind that the three shared a common purpose. "With the lapsing

Memorandum, signed "McD" (Colonel Donald C. McDonald) and dated 12 January 1935, BIA 28864-1, RG 350, NA. MacArthur provided the information in this memorandum, which he said he had received from "other sources."

*)1 Speech before The Foreign Policy Association, quoted in Philippines Herald (5 April 1937); Aruna Gopinath, Manuel L. Quezon: The Tutelary Democrat (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1987), p. 155. 40 of the naval treaty next year," he wrote from Manila in

November 1935, "our hands will be freed, and since Japan is unquestionably going ahead with her naval building program, there will be nothing to prevent our modernization of

Corregidor and our building of an adequate naval base and dry- dock in the Islands, which two actions combined with the development of an adequate Filipino land force, would completely change the present picture.This was a vision--

"an adequate [American] naval base" backed by "an adequate

Filipino force"--which the Military Adviser would share with others repeatedly over the next few years.

To accompany him to the Philippines, MacArthur chose as his assistants Majors Dwight D. Eisenhower and James Ord. The chief of staff's long-time personal aide. Captain Thomas

Jefferson Davis, and army doctor Major Howard J. Mutter rounded out the original membership of the Military Mission.

Davis was a native of South Carolina whose military service had begun as an enlisted man with the Georgia National Guard in 1916. He had then served along the Mexican border and seen action with the 31st Division in France during the World War.

He had remained in with the Army of Occupation until its withdrawal in 1923. Davis had been one of MacArthur's aides in Manila from 1928 to 1930 and had continued in that

^^Howard to "Deak" [G. B. Parker], 23 November 1935, Howard Archives, Indiana University. 41 role after MacArthur became chief of staff.In addition to serving as the general's aide in Manila, Davis would play an important role in establishing the Philippine Army's adjutant general's department. Major Mutter, a 1916 graduate of the

Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia, had joined the army medical department via the Officers Reserve Corps soon after the United States entered the World War. He had cared for MacArthur's mother during an illness in 1922-23, and since the elder Mrs. MacArthur would be travelling with him to the

Islands in 1935, the chief of staff asked Doctor Mutter to join the mission.Mutter would also advise the Commonwealth government on matters of sanitation, hygiene, and general public health.

Eisenhower was working in the War Department, assigned to the office of the Assistant Secretary of War since November

1929, when MacArthur assumed the army's highest post in 1930.

"Ike" had then been in the army fifteen years. Sent to Texas after graduating from West Point in 1915, Eisenhower had been disappointed at not being allowed to join General "Black Jack"

Pershing's Punitive Expedition in 1916. The nation’s

/Q Davis may, as James implies, have first become MacArthur's aide in Manila, but Davis had earlier worked under MacArthur when the general led the American team to the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. Davis had been the team's transportation officer. See Report of the American Olympic Committee (New York: American Olympic Committee, 1928), p. 35, and Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, p. 332.

^%unt, Untold Storv. p. 115; James, Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, pp. 300, 485. 42 participation in the World War only added to his frustration.

Despite being at the forefront of the development of tank- warfare tactics, Eisenhower received orders for France just days before the war ended.Later, in the War Department,

MacArthur became increasingly reliant on Eisenhower's analytical skill and writing ability and early in 1933 made

Eisenhower his "senior aide," giving him responsibility for completing "confidential or special missions.Eisenhower hoped to receive a troop-duty assignment upon MacArthur's departure from Washington in 1935, but MacArthur pressured him to join the Military Mission as its chief of staff. Eisenhower reluctantly acquiesced.

Unlike MacArthur, Ord, and Davis, Eisenhower had not served in the Philippines, although he had requested an assignment to the Islands upon graduating from the military academy twenty years' earlier.His obligatory "foreign

^Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower; Soldier. General of the Army. President-Elect. Vol. 1 (New York; Simon and Schuster, 1983), pp. 56, 65, 88.

^^Ibid., pp. 92, 99; "Red Diary," entry dated 15 March 1933, Kevin McCann Papers, Eisenhower Library.

^According to Ambrose, Eisenhower was excited about the thought of service in the "exotic" East and "a chance to see the world," but Eisenhower explains only that he was attracted by the lower living costs in the Islands. His classmate implied that Eisenhower--like most officers (including Bradley)--was trying to avoid duty in the southwest, where many soldiers were being sent in 1915. Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1967), pp. 111-12; Ambrose, Eisenhower. Vol. 1, p. 55; and Omar N. Bradley, with Clay Blair, & General's Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 36. 43 service" (as the army phrased it, although almost all such service took place in United States-governed territories) had been performed in the Canal Zone in 1922-24. Nonetheless, he was certainly familiar with army thinking on Philippine issues. As a student at the Army War College in 1927-28, he had undoubtedly participated in the school's free-ranging if predictable debates on Philippine defense planning. In

December 1931, Eisenhower "completed a report on the

Philippine Islands," under the direction of the chief of staff. The report was destined for the Secretary of War, and

Eisenhower noted with pride that MacArthur "was very much pleased with it," as was Secretary Patrick Hurley. The report--the army's official response to the call for

Philippine independence--denied the "ability of Filipino masses to express intelligent opinion" on independence and advocated the continuance of the political status guo.^*

Major James Basevi Ord was the Mission's deputy chief of staff. Current histories and biographies suggest that friendship with "Ike" and ready availability at the nearby

Army War College led to his being selected as a member of the fission. That he happened to speak Spanish added to his value.

In fact, Ord played an instrumental role in developing the

Philippine military system and was uniquely qualified for the task at hand. Since Ord's premature death in an airplane crash

^^"Red Diary," entry dated 1 December 1931, Kevin McCann Papers, Eisenhower Library. 44 near in January 1938 has obscured his role in the

Mission, his life is worth examining at greater length.

If Ord and Eisenhower were good friends, their friendship was presumably of that peculiarly military kind, extending to hearty greetings and a catching up on old times when the two officers happened to meet, but not to correspondence or even

Christmas cards. However, their paths had crossed several times since graduating with the West Point Class of 1915 (Ord five places behind Eisenhower, both in the middle of the class). Both were infantry officers who found themselves at

Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, training officer cadets in 1917, and both attended the Command and General Staff School one-year course at Port Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1925-26 (where both finished as honor graduates). But with one egregious exception, no biography of Eisenhower, nor Eisenhower's autobiography, mentions Ord until he was asked to join the

Military Mission to the Philippines. The exception is historian Stephen Ambrose's biography of Eisenhower, in which

Ambrose erroneously places Ord as an instructor at the Army

War College (at the then non-existent "Fort McNair") when

Eisenhower was a student there in 1927-28. He writes that the two were neighbors in Washington, D.C.^^ In fact, Ord was completing the second year of a tour of duty in the Philippine

Islands at the time.

^^Ambrose, Eisenhower. Vol. 1, p. 85. 45

Contrary to the role historians have given Ord as little

more than Eisenhower's shadow in the Military Mission, his

selection appears to have been based on more than availability

and acquaintance with Eisenhower. Since graduating from the

Military Academy, Ord had pursued a fairly unorthodox army

career. Aside from six-month's duty with the 6th Infantry

Regiment in 1915-16 and service with the 31st Infantry in

Manila from 1926 to 1928, Ord's entire twenty-three year

military career was spent as either a student or an instructor

in military schools or on detached duty.^® Ord had also become

acquainted with General MacArthur before 1934: He had

accompanied the chief of staff on a visit to French army maneuvers in September 1931.^^

The Ord family was prominent in military circles. James

Ord's grandfather, Edward Otho Cresap Ord, was an 1839 graduate of West Point, a prominent surveyor in , and an officer on General Grant's staff during the Civil War.

An uncle. Lieutenant Jules Gareshe Ord, had led the men of the

6th Infantry up San Juan Hill during the Santiago Campaign.

There he had been shot dead, the first man to reach the hill's

S^Details of Ord's career up to 1928 are taken from "Biographical Sketch of James Basevi Ord, Major of Infantry," prepared by the Adjutant General's Office, War Department, 10 April 1928, MID 2550-129, RG 165, NA.

James, Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, p. 372. 46

c r e s t . 38 Ord's father, James Thompson Ord, had also fought in

the Spanish-American War, as had another uncle, Edward O.C.

Ord, Jr. A first cousin, James Gareshe Ord ("J. Gareshe"), had graduated from West Point in 1909 and went on to retire as a major general. The progenitor of the family in America,

James Ord, had been a navy midshipman and then a regular army

officer during the War of 1812. The senior Ord was once well known for his firmly held belief that he was a son of King

George IV by the English monarch's morganatic marriage to

Maria Fitzherbert (a belief not shared by His Majesty's biographers, h o w e v e r ) . 38 Born in Monterey, in 1892, Ord was also related to the prominent Trevino family. General

Geronimo Trevino of Monterey was a relative, as was (more distantly) General Jacinto Trevino, Venustiano Carranza's commander of the Army of the Northeast at the time of the

American army's incursion into M e x i c o .

Ord saw his only combat during the Punitive Expedition's drive into Mexico in 1916. Detached from the 6th Infantry,

Ord was serving as an interpreter with the 13th Cavalry

3^0.J.A. O'Toole, The Spanish War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), p. 318.

38Renry W. Shoemaker (ed.). The Memoirs of James Ord of Ord Rancho, California (Altoona, Penn.: Altoona Times Tribune, 1920). The "Genealogical Succession" chart in the Register of Graduates and Former Cadets. 1802-1990 (West Point, N.Y.: Association of Graduates, 1990), does not reflect James B. Ord's relationship with General E.O.C. Ord (ÜSMA 1839).

40New York Times (2 May 1916). 47

Regiment scouting ahead of the main body of the expeditionary force when the Americans came under fire from a much larger force of Mexican soldiers near Parral on 12 April. Wounded himself (shot through an ear lobe), the young lieutenant dismounted to assist an injured soldier from the field under heavy fire. Recommended for the , Ord later received the Distinguished Service Medal for his conduct that day.4]^ Directing refugee camps in and Texas and brief service with a reserve officers training camp in Georgia followed before Ord arrived at West Point in late 1917 to join the Department of Modern Languages, where he taught French.

In 1918 Ord embarked on an assignment which would comprise much of the remainder of his years in the army. In

December of that year he arrived in The Hague, capital of the

Netherlands, to become one of the American Legation's seven military attachés. (The continuance of an official state of war between the United States and the former Central Powers prohibited accreditation of military attachés to those countries, so the officers congregated at The Hague, much to the ire of the Ambassador.) Ord served as one of the assistant attachés until December 1920 and continued at The Hague as

Military Attaché until October 1922.

Ibid. ; Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr., The Great Pursuit (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 135; and Frank Tompkins, Chasing Villa (Harrisburg, Penn.: Military Service Publishing Co., 1934), pp. 141, 144. Major Tompkins was the officer who recommended Ord for the Medal of Honor. 48

For the next four years, Ord attended a succession of prestigious military schools, beginning with the Ecole

Supérieure de Guerre from 1922 to 1924. In 1925 he graduated from the Infantry School Advanced Course at ,

Georgia, and in 1926 from the Command and General Staff

School. As his name approached the top of the foreign service list (the army did not equate attaché duty with service in one of the major overseas commands), Ord attempted to be posted to China, preferably on the army's Chinese-language detail or, failing that, with the China Expedition's intelligence office. 42 Ord's reluctance to go to one of the more substantial overseas posts, those in the Philippines, , or the , may have reflected a genuine desire to serve in China (he had earlier planned to take a course in

Chinese language study at Leiden University) or merely a wish to avoid service with troops, the almost inevitable outcome of assignment to any other foreign command. The Military

Intelligence Division informed Ord that no vacancies existed on the China detail, although the officer who responded implied that a posting to the Japanese-language detail might have been possible, had Ord not stipulated Chinese. Like many before him, Ord found himself bound for the Philippine

Islands.

42ord to Colonel Pegram, and Lieutenant Colonel Boswell to Ord, 18 December 1925, MID 2550-122, RG 165, NA. 49

During his tour of duty, Ord served as a battalion

commander with the 31st Infantry. The regiment was the only

army unit stationed in the city of Manila and the only line

regiment composed of American soldiers. Despite difficulty

in finding affordable housing in Manila, where most officers

assigned to the Post of Manila lived on commutation, the

billet was generally considered an enviable one. Certainly

Ord, who appears to have had little liking for the routine of peacetime garrison soldiering, would have thought himself

fortunate to live in the Islands' cosmopolitan capital city.

While completing his tour in Manila, Ord received an offer to become one of the assistant military attachés to

France. After ensuring that attaché duty would not limit his eligibility for subsequent assignment to the Army War College, he accepted the offer and reported to the American Embassy in

Paris in November 1928.43 jjg remained there until late 1932, when he reported to the 1932-33 class at the Army War College.

After graduating, he continued at the War College as an instructor, until joining the Military Mission and once again departing for Manila in 1935.

Ord outlined the attache's duties as "the observation of troops, the study of army organization, and training and preparation for war" when he first applied for assignment to

43t a G to Ord, 22 March 1928, and Ord to TAG, 27 March 1928, MID 2550-122, RG 165, NA. 50 the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre in 1920.'*^ His work as an attaché bore out his interest. He authored (or translated and annotated) studies on Dutch cavalry and artillery training and prepared a well-received report on "The Training of Dutch

Infantry Recruits," products which Ord appears to have had some hope the War Department would publish.*5 While at the

Ecole Supérieure, Ord pursued his interest in army organization, preparing reports on the French Army described by his superiors as "excellent." Later, as the assistant military attaché in Paris, Ord both translated lengthy studies and offered commentary on French military developments, primarily those related to recruitment, conscription and mobilization. In addition, Ord was keenly interested in colonial military systems. At one time, he unsuccessfully attempted to gain authorization for an investigatory tour to the Netherlands East Indies to study that colony's local military forces.

Already conversant in several foreign languages, Ord's service in allowed him to become "one of the most accomplished linguists in the Army, speaking French, Spanish,

German and Dutch with the greatest fluency."'*^ Knowledge of

Spanish, of course, was an element in his selection to

^^Ord to TAG, 10 , MID 2550-80, RG 165, NA.

^^Ord to Colonel Sherman Miles, 23 December 1919, MID 2550-14, RG 165, NA.

'^^Army and Navv Journal (5 February 1938). 51 accompany the Military Mission. Spanish was still widely used in the archipelago, especially among the Filipino elite. The

Diario de Sesiones--the "Congressional Record" of the

Philippine legislature--continued to be printed partly in

English and partly in Spanish, as did some newspapers. And while Commonwealth President Quezon spoke English fluently,

Sergio Osmena, the Islands' second-most important political leader, was never comfortable in the language. Spanish- language capability was much more than merely an added convenience in considering whom to select for participation in the Military Mission.

Of course, the preparation and transmission of reports on local military forces and visits to military posts and manuevers comprised the routine of all attachés, but Ord embraced the task with marked enthusiasm. In a confidential personal evaluation. Colonel Edward Davis, the then American

Military Attaché to the Netherlands, wrote that "Major Ord came to The Hague in not very good condition as to discipline and was inclined to hasty undertakings of jobs beyond his

experience [but] correction of general faults was undertaken

and success in this procedure was gradually attained. Major

Ord has unusual energy, is very industrious and is devoted to

his undertakings. [He] makes friends rapidly [and] is an

excellent 'go getter.'" Ambassador William Phillips became an

admirer of Ord's and asked why Ord was not made the Military 52

Attaché, since he was doing most of the work.'*^ Ord eventually

obtained the post.

Attaché duty, on which Ord spent a total of eight years,

was not the normal path to a general's stars, and Ord's

insistence that he remain eligible for the Army War College

reflected this awareness. Both the army and navy held attaché

duty in low repute, its requirements seen as the possession

of "excessive social graces and personal wealth" rather than

leadership ability or combat prowess.Ord may have, like

others who sought attaché duty, "fatalistically accepted the very faint hope of attaining high rank in the peacetime Army

anyway" and have seen in the assignment an "opportunity to escape the drudgery of garrison duty, and perhaps the occasional rigors of field training with troops.

Even before receiving official sanction for the Military

Mission, MacArthur put Majors Ord and Eisenhower to work on planning a military system for the Philippine Commonwealth.

Later, in 1936, MacArthur himself wrote that the Philippine military plan had taken shape under an Army War College

^^MID file 2550 contains numerous laudatory references to Ord. See especially MID 2550-32 and 2550-53, RG 165, NA.

^®Calvin L. Christman, "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Craft of Strategic Assessment," in Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (eds.). Calculations: Net Assessment and the Coming of World War II (New York: The Free Press, 1992), p. 235.

^^John N. Hart, The Making of an Armv "Old China Hand": A Memoir of Colonel David D. Barrett (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies, 1985), pp. 3-5. 53

"special committee" directed by college president Brigadier

General George S. Simonds.^® At the same time, American High

Commissioner to the Philippines complained that

the plan had been "prepared in a staff school as a solution

of an academic military problem. Both had reason to be

disingenuous, MacArthur in an effort to legitimize the project

as the War Department's own, rather than his alone, and thus

deserving of Washington's support; the High Commissioner to

delegitimize the project, and thus MacArthur's independent

authority, by positing its supposed distance from the reality

of local conditions.

The surviving records of the Army War College do not

reveal the existence of any such committee, although similar

committees were not unknown. Also in November 1934, for

example, a "special committee" of War College students prepared a study titled "Modernization of the Army" at the behest of the War Department's G-3 division. The faculty added

comments and passed the study along to the General Staff.^2

Contributing to the difficulty of identifying further details of any Philippine army or military system committee is the

^^MacArthur to Craig, 9 July 1936, AGO Central Files, Philippine Islands, 1926-39, RG 407, NA.

^^Murphy to Dern, 8 May 1936, included in WPD 3251, RG 165, NA.

^^Harry P. Ball, Of Responsible Command; A History of the U.S. Army War College (Carlisle Barracks; The Alumni Association of the United States Army War College, 1983), p. 228. 54 fact that many of the college's records were destroyed in

1939. In "The Crime of '39," a board of three officers selected numerous records for burning, including most of those contained in file number 283, the "General File, Philippine

Islands." Furthermore, guides to project assignments and committee membership are sparse and infrequent. Nor is the designation of a topic for study and a listing of committee members proof of their existence, since projected studies were sometimes cancelled (such as the overseas garrison defense projects in the 1925-26 course).At any rate, Ord's assignment index card does not reflect participation in a special committee dealing with Philippine Commonwealth military plans in 1934.

The Army War College was nonetheless the logical place to turn for such a study. Located since 1907 only a few miles from the War Department at Washington Barracks in southwest

Washington, each September eighty to ninety student officers arrived at the school to begin the year-long course of instruction. By the time Eisenhower attended the college in

1927-28, according to one biographer, it had become "a reward rather than a challenge," a "pleasant sabbatical" from the rigors of less exalted but more demanding army schools.A

^^"Orientation and Outline of the Course, Lectures, Committee Reports, [and] Studies," 2 September 1925, Vol. 10, AWC Course 1925-26, WPD, Documents 1-29, USAMHI.

^^Ambrose, Eisenhower. Vol. 1, pp. 85-86. 55 member of the 1929-30 class, Major Frank Clark, acknowledged that the school's combination of instructional method and tempo was intended "to avoid the sort of compulsive strain that was involved in the Leavenworth system." He nonetheless found the coursework "stimulating and informative."^^

By late 1933, the college's new commandant had begun to erase its gentlemanly patina. The class of 1933-34 arrived to find that no longer could students "take things rather easily." Brigadier General George S. Simonds "stepped up" the requirements to where most officers found themselves "doing a considerable amount of work.It may not be coincidental that while the army's Annual Report showed ninety officers assigned to the class of 1934-35, the class directory listed only seventy-six army graduates.

Certainly, General Simonds' arrival as the Army War

College's head in May 1933 would have encouraged the chief of staff to seek the college's assistance in preparing a military plan for the Philippines. A close friend of MacArthur's,

Simonds was also his superior's choice to be the next army

^^Frank S. Clark, The Chronicle of Aunt Lena (Charlotte, N.C.: By the Author, 1962), pp. 212, 218.

^^Leslie Anders, Gentle Kniahtt The Life and Times of Major General Edwin Forrest Harding (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1985), p. 141.

Annual Report of the Secretary of War. 1935 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1935); Directory, Present and Former Staff and Faculty. 1905-1987 (Carlisle Barracks: U.S. Army War College, 1987). 56

chief of staff The War College commandant was sympathetic

to increasing Filipino military strength. In concluding

remarks to an unusually well-informed discussion of Philippine

defense planning and the merits of using Filipino troops in

1933, General Simonds offered his "personal view" that,

contrary to what he took to be majority opinion, the army

should make greater use of Filipino manpower. Native soldiers might not be the equivalent of American troops, but Simonds

retained "a very distinct recollection of one Aguinaldo, Pilar

and Luna and some more of them making a lot of trouble for

one-hundred thousand American soldiers," of which he had been

one. If the army could not "make equally as much trouble"

with Filipino soldiers united against a common enemy, Simonds

concluded, "there is something wrong with us.

Studies of the Philippines had been a staple of the War

College curriculum from the school's founding. The withdrawal

of army forces from the archipelago and their replacement by

Philippine Scouts and Constabulary was a problem studied by

the first War College session (1903-1904). Involvement in

James (Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, pp. 444, 493-94) repeats a story that President Roosevelt extended MacArthur's tenure as chief of staff specifically to deny Simonds, who would no longer then have the necessary years of active duty left before retiring, the top army post. Of course, it would have been very useful to MacArthur while in Manila to have had a close supporter as chief of staff.

^^"Course at the Army War College, 1933-34: Report of Committee no. 1, Subject: Manpower," 17 October 1933, AWC 401- 1, USAMHI. 57

Philippine defense planning and War Plans Orange followed soon

after.®® Before passage of the National Defense Act of 1916 put a stop to the practice, the college had acted as a

"working subdivision of the General Staff," insuring a uniformity of knowledge and purpose between the work of

"students" and army headquarters.®^ In addition to self­ generated studies, the college invited outside opinion by officers with special knowledge of Philippine conditions. For example, at the request of one of the college instructors.

Major Robert C. Richardson submitted an account of Philippine

Department thinking on the use of Filipino manpower in time of war. Richardson had been the personnel officer at Fort

Santiago from 1921 to 1923 and was intimately aware of the contents of the 1923 Philippine Defense Project. The War

College printed Richardson's study and made it available to future committees studying the same issue.®^ In the 1920s and

1930s, virtually every class generated studies of manpower mobilization in the Philippines and of the current defense project for the Philippine Islands. While to a large extent these reports became routinized and formulaic, they

George S . Pappas, Prudens Futuri; The U.S. Armv War College. 1901-1967 (Carlisle Barracks: The Alumni Association of the U.S. Army War College, [1967]), p. 37; Ball, Of Responsible Command, pp. 95, 109, 120.

®^Pappas, Prudens Futuri. p. 82.

®^Major R.C. Richardson, Jr., "Manpower of the Philippine Islands in Time of War," dated 31 July 1923, AWC file 160-18, reprinted as memorandum 273A-2, AWC Course 1923-24, USAMHI. 58

nonetheless created a shared body of knowledge about the

Philippines, Filipinos, and the army's thinking about

Philippine defense.

Preparation of the Commonwealth defense scheme therefore

took place within the context of a long established army

intellectual environment concerning the role of the

Philippines in the army's defense posture and the potential

of Philippine manpower. Ord did not have to accept the army's

conclusions, but he did learn from them.Ord, however, was

able to place this understanding within a broader conceptual

framework by drawing on his familiarity with European military

organizational precepts. His extensive service in Europe gave

Ord a close awareness of those systems and an appreciation of

the difficulties surrounding their implementation.

Major Eisenhower also maintained that MacArthur had given

the immediate task of preparing a detailed plan for a

Philippine military system to a committee at the War College,

of which Major Ord was named chairman. The committee was composed of "several of the ablest officers of the army"

(unfortunately unnamed). Eisenhower provided this account in

a brief "draft," apparently written in mid or late 1935. He modified this picture for the Mission's official diary, giving more credit for preparing the Philippine army plan to Ord, who

®^See, for example, Ord's comments on HPD War Plan Orange in "Overseas Possessions Study no. 3, Philippine Islands, 9 March 1935," AWC File 5-1935-15, AWC Curricular Files, USAMHI. 59 received only "intermittent assistance" from other officers at the c o l l e g e . 64 Possibly, the War College's contribution was less extensive than had originally been expected.

Following MacArthur's instructions to base the military training system on conscription and to make "preliminary military training" a "definite function [of the] public school system," Ord and the committee had, at first, a "free hand in working out the problem." Ord prepared "tables of administrative and tactical organization; progress charts showing in detail the anticipated growth of the new army; and maps showing the location of each unit to be raised." His preliminary work also included drafts of appropriate laws for implementing registration for military service and induction procedures and "a system of military instruction in public schools. "65

The United States had never implemented a peacetime conscription system, and therefore few officers were familiar with the details and imperatives of a successful conscription apparatus. Ord was one of the few exceptions. His long years

of service as military attaché in Paris gave him an intimate

and unique awareness of French conscription policy. Ord almost

certainly drew on knowledge of French practice to prepare the

Philippine defense plan. There were few other systems from

64see footnote 17, and Robert H. Ferrell (ed.). The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), p. 9. 65ibid. 60 which to choose: the Treaty of Versailles limited Germany to a professional force of one-hundred thousand; Russia remained an unknown quantity; Britain, like the United States, relied in peacetime on a small volunteer force. MacArthur would repeatedly refer to the Philippine Islands as the " of Asia," but the analogy referred more to a shared philosophy of defense, rather than the specifics of military planning.

"The principal features of the Philippine defense plan,"

Eisenhower would later write, "were developed in Washington beginning about the first of November, 1934.A memorandum

(now in the MacArthur Archives) dated 2 November 1934 directed the chief clerk of the Army Library to give Major Eisenhower five manuscripts dealing with French military organization:

1) "Law Governing the General Organization of the Nation for

War"; 2) "General Organization of the Army"; 3) "Recruiting

Law for the French Army"; 4) "Law Governing Effectives of the

French Army"; and 5) "Law on the Organization of the Air

Army." These were reports prepared by the French Ministry of

Defense and translated (with annotations) by American military attachés in Paris.

The French system required the compiling each year of a list of every male aged twenty and those "who will reach it during the calendar year." These "classes" of men were then

^^Ibid.

®^Memorandum for Chief Clerk, 2 November 1934, RG 18, MacArthur Archives. 61

"called to the colors one-half at a time during the year

following the census for the draft" (that is, at age 21), in

accordance with in which half of the year they had been born.

This was, of course, the same practice followed in the

Philippines. Analysis of Ord's own writings on the French military provide other clues to the mechanics of the

Philippine military system. In one report, Ord drew attention

to French mobilization practice. Nearly 500 regional mobilization centers covered the country, Ord observed, allowing for rapid mobilization of reserves but requiring the dispersion of much of the regular force for training purposes at the many mobilization points. Ord recognized that this procedure provided a means for training individual soldiers but complicated "the collective training of units and their commanders." (It was apparently an insight he was unable to act on in the Philippines, since the Philippine Army would suffer the same problem.) Ord was especially impressed by the

French Army's "innovation" of establishing training schools for reserve noncommissioned officers, an innovation which the

Philippine Army would come to s h a r e . ( F r e n c h conscripts during World War One, it turns out, had even been paid a

^^French Mobilization report dated 17 October 1929, MID 2015-801/29, and report no. 12792-w, 5 October 1927, HID 2015- 901/5, RG 165, NA. 62

nominal five centimes a day; Philippine conscripts would

receive five centavos a day.^9)

Economy and the need for numbers were the overriding

concerns of General MacArthur in devising the Philippine military system. Thus, the decision was made to rely on

conscription. Only through conscription could a sizeable

number of troops be raised at little cost. According to the

official diary, MacArthur "recognized, from the beginning, the

impossibility of developing a defensive force in the

Philippines capable of concentrating its full potential power at any threatened point of attack.In part, MacArthur's plan

relied on an understanding of the difficulties inherent in an amphibious operation. Influenced by Britain's disastrous

experience at Gallipoli during the World War, MacArthur believed that an invader would attempt to "use his power of maneuvering by water so as to land in undefended areas." The superiority of defending forces at the beach was too much for an enemy to overcome, even with "careful preparation [and] continuous bombardment."^^ This was the rationale for ultimately hoping to defend all parts of the archipelago.

Bentley Mott, Twenty Years a Military Attaché (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 296.

^Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, p. 9.

^^Prank C. Waldrop (ed.), MacArthur on War (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1942), p. 345. This collection of MacArthur's writings reproduces his Report on National Defense in the Philippines (Manila, 1936). 63

The Military Mission wisely decided to begin small.

MacArthur's grand rhetoric disguised the modesty of the

initial concept, which called for only six thousand conscripts

to be trained in 1937. The size of the semi-annual intake would be increased each year until 1942, when 20,000

conscripts would report for training each session. By the end of the first ten years, seven reserve divisions and one

regular division would exist, totalling respectively 63,000 and 20,431 soldiers. Only at the end of thirty years would

there be "the additional divisions necessary to adequate security," some twenty-one in all. The original plan

emphasized the training ol officers and enlisted instructors.

The "trainee contingent" was to be just large enough "to provide a practical field in which leaders could become experienced, and from which selected men could be chosen as noncommissioned officers." This was the plan the mission took to the Philippines.^!

MacArthur’s papers leave little doubt that he viewed the

ultimate status of American-Philippine relations as still

unresolved. The United States, he felt certain, would

eventually recognize the importance of continued formal links

with the Islands. Construction of a major naval base in the

^^"Expansion of Plan" (undated, unsigned memorandum), RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 1; "Memorandum for His Excellency, the President of the Philippines," 8 August 1940, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers, International Series (Ann Whitman File), Eisenhower Library. 64

Philippines would consolidate such ties. This belief contributed to MacArthur's approach to the development of a

Filipino-manned army.

An undated draft speech among MacArthur's papers spells out clearly the general's thinking on future United States-

Philippine relations and the role of the Philippine Army in supporting that relationship. MacArthur argued that "to play a part in the shaping of events in the Far East," the United

States "must have an adequate base that will permit the continued presence of elements of her fleet in [Pacific] waters. For the future Philippine nation, the mere presence of the navy of the most powerful nation in the world would be an asset of inestimable value. A naval base must have adequate protection from possible land attack." The Philippine Army,

General MacArthur asserted, could fulfill that need. "By

1946," he continued, the army would "be capable of guaranteeing the safety of any land installation in the

Archipelago. "73

MacArthur never tired of repeating this theme in his personal correspondence. "Now," he wrote from Manila to his old comrade Major General , "an

Copy included in RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed. , reel 3. The Quezon Papers (microfilm ed., reel 18), includes an undated (but early 1935) draft of a speech worded similarly to the above. Its author--presumably Quezon— explained that the Philippines would provide "manpower" to develop "a program of land defense" in coordination with the building of an American naval base in the Islands. 65 adequate Navy base can be maintained here with perfect security." To Lieutenant Colonel John C . H. Lee, MacArthur was even more explicit. Enclosing copies of his later report on Philippine national defense and a speech by President

Quezon on the same topic, MacArthur suggested that it would be clear to the fellow Corps of Engineers officer "what neither of them contained": that "in addition to other purposes," he was building up the "left wing" of America's

Philippine defense line. The United States should have a base in Alaska and the Philippines, MacArthur stated, and the

Philippine Army would defend the latter. "I hope, sooner or later," MacArthur wrote, that "there will be enough of a glimmering of intelligence in those in control of the American government to understand and comprehend what is taking place. "74

To what degree MacArthur shared this expectation with his

Filipino patron can only be suggested, but there is ample evidence that Quezon did not consider the question of his country's ultimate politico-military relationship with the

United States settled by Tydings-McDuffie,^^ Indeed, the

^MacArthur to Moseley, 7 October 1936, and MacArthur to Lee, 29 September 1936, RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 3.

75 On the growing consensus that Quezon favored continued political/military links with America, see Michael P. Onorato, "Quezon and Independence: A Reexamination," Philippine Studies 37 (1989):221-31, and Bonifacio S. Salamanca, "Quezon, Osmena and Roxas and the American Military Presence in the Philippines," Philippine Studies 37 (1989): 310-16. 66

wording of the act left open the possibility of a continued

American naval presence in the Islands, and President Quezon

repeatedly made statements which although typically ambiguous

indicated support for establishing an American naval base in the Philippines, whether or not the Philippines obtained

formal "independence,"

In the military-strategic context of Asian politics, the difference between "military" and "naval" bases in the

Philippines would seem irrelevant. Indeed, a naval base was far more provocative than a land-force base. In the context of the army's historical relationship with the Philippines, however, Quezon had ample reason to make the distinction.

Although friendly with individual officers (too friendly with some of their wives, it was said^®), his experience with the army community had been largely negative.

"The greatest obstacle to American and Filipino approximation is racial prejudice," Quezon had once written to Henry Stimson,^^ and the army in Manila played a central role in maintaining that obstacle. "The extent of the suffering of the educated Filipino from the humiliation caused by his social status under American sovereignty," one army officer wrote, "has been recognized by very, very few

Americans." His fellow citizens, he continued, were "smugly

^%omulo, Philippine Presidents, p. 17.

^^Quezon to StimsStimson, 25 August 1930, Stimson Papers, microfilm ed., reel 80 67 blind" to the impact of their conduct. HPD defense planning aptly demonstrated this obtuseness. The 1923 Brown Plan, for example, dictated that Filipino officials be treated with equality in their official status but that their "social status" be strictly maintained. The army was also to use all legal means to discourage inter-marriage and other "intimate social relations" between American soldiers and Pilipinas. At the same time, the Department should "strengthen and increase

[the] loyalty of native troops." Apparently, the enlisted tao wore his race consciousness more lightly.^® In response, "the average Filipino was more than glad to be noticed and pathetically anxious to be accepted," a Filipino author recal 1 ed.

The passage of Tydings-McDuffie had done little to change the army's attitude. Following the court-martial of a young officer charged with having made "offensive public comment upon Philippine independence" in June 1934 (he was acquitted),

Philippine Department Commanding General Frank Parker felt compelled to send a circular letter to post and station commanders drawing attention to the need for proper conduct

^^Lieutenant Colonel Paul R. Hawley, "The Probable Effect on the Natives of Luzon, P.I., of an Exclusively Close-in Defense of ," 28 January 1939, No. 7-1939-69, ANC Curricular Files, ÜSAMHI; and "Basic Plan--Brown, Philippine Department, 1923," Special Projects, Harbor Defense, Philippines, RG 407, NA.

^^Alfonso Felix, Jr., Introduction to The American Half- Centurv. 1898-1946. by Lewis Gleeck, Jr. (Manila: Historical Conservation Society, 1984), pp. xv-xvii. 68 during "these critical and trying times.Parker himself was hardly more acceptable: Former Governor-General Harrison noted

Quezon's repeated "irritation" with the garrison commander in

1935.81 Fortuitously, Parker's two-year tour ended late that year, and MacArthur's friend Charles Kilbourne would command the garrison for a few months.

MacArthur's approach to constructing a military system for the Philippine Islands also reflected large doses of wishful thinking and egotism. When a Philippine legislator asked for a list of books on military topics to purchase for the National Assembly's library, MacArthur included Harold

Lamb's Genghis Khan high on the list. This biography of the

12th century conqueror should be in every military library,

MacArthur responded, because it showed that "great military machines can be developed from the most hopeless beginnings, provided there is brought to bear the genius of leadership and the will to conquer."8^ It was an image with which the 20th

88prank Cocheu to Parker, 20 June 1934, and Governor- General Frank Murphy to Parker, 14 July 1934, Frank Parker Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC.

01 *^Michael P. Onorato (ed.). Origins of the Philippine Republic: Extracts from the Diaries and Records of Francis (Ithaca, New York: , Department of Asian Studies, Data Paper no. 95, 1974), pp. 11, 22. Onorato identifies the "General Parker" about whom Quezon complained as "Frank LeJeune Parker," but this is probably incorrect. Brigadier General Francis LeJ. Parker was then commanding general of .

8^MacArthur to Juan L. Luna, 5 August 1939, RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 2. 69

century general could identify. Soon after arriving in Manila,

MacArthur wrote to his friend "Cal" O'Laughlin: "The mantle

of Lafayette has fallen on my shoulders insofar as the

Filipino people are concerned and my activities and position

are treated on a higher plane of almost veneration and

reverence."^

®^MacArthur to O'Laughlin, 9 December 1935, John C. O'Laughlin Papers, LC. CHAPTER II

DEFENDING THE INSULAR EMPIRE: WAR PLANS ORANGE AND THE FILIPINO SOLDIER

For one month of each year of their two-year-long tours

of Philippine duty, the United States Army permitted its

officers and men to vacation at Camp John Hay, the military

hill-station abutting the Islands' summer capital of Baguio

in the of northern Luzon. Amid cool breezes

and pine forests, soldiers and their families enjoyed golf on

one of the world's finest courses (Bobby Jones played there),

hiked to nearby mountain tops, sampled the exotica of local

markets, or simply lounged before the novel warmth of a cabin

fire-place, their pleasure lessened only by the awareness that

soon they must return to the enervating heat of the tropical

lowlands. As Charles Willeford observed after arriving

at Baguio from his duty station at Clark Field in 1936: "Camp

John Hay proved that, if the Army wanted to, it could do

something right.

For Brigadier General Stanley D. Embick, the hospitality

of John Hay did not disguise the harsh strategic reality posed

by America's occupation of the Philippine Islands. Vacationing

^Charles Willeford, Something About a Soldier (New York: Random House, 1986), p. 114.

70 71 at the camp in April 1933 as the end of the first year of his

Philippine tour-of-duty approached, the Commanding General of the Harbor Defenses of Manila and Subic Bays authored a pessimistic appraisal of the Philippine garrison's chance of surviving a war with Japan. Evaluating America's military posture in the Far East, Embick labelled "'an act of madness'" the current army-navy war plan "'with its provisions for the early dispatch of our fleet to Philippine waters.'" In light of the "feeble defenses then available," he favored a restricted "defensive perimeter" along the Alaska-Hawaii-

Panama axis.^

His was a view shared by many "responsible officers" who over the years had protested repeatedly "against the inconsistency of professing defense of the Philippines as a national policy, while maintaining there forces insufficient to provide a respectable defense.But Embick's solution, the abandonment of the archipelago, was only one response to this perennial problem. Another "responsible officer," Douglas

MacArthur, stated the other extreme. The historical problem of defending the Philippines, General MacArthur reminded a

^Quoted in Mark Skinner Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations (Washington D.C.: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1950), pp. 414-15. The original memorandum, Embick to Major General E.E. Booth, dated 19 April 1933, is found in WPD 3251-15, RG 165, NA; Ronald Schaffer, "General Stanley D. Embick: Military Dissenter," Military Affairs 37, no. 3 (October 1973):89.

Batson, Chief of Staff, pp. 414-15. 72 group of officers at his headquarters in 1936, was

lack of numbers. "The professional soldier and sailor," he declared, thoroughly understood that the Islands could not be defended "with its present garrisons." The Commonwealth's military adviser pointed out that the training of sufficient numbers of Filipinos resolved the dilemma of Philippine defense.4 Earlier army officers had been unsuccessful in

realizing the creation of Filipino forces adequate for the

Islands' defense, but their plans nonetheless laid the conceptual basis for the building and acceptance of a

Philippine army in a politically more auspicious era.

From the start, army planning for the defense of the

Philippine Islands had been an exercise in hesitancy and contradiction, in spite of the massive resources in men and money once dedicated to the archipelago's occupation. In 1908,

ten years after the army had first arrived in the Philippines,

six years since the Insurrection had been officially

suppressed, and a year which opened with nearly thirty percent

of the army on duty in the Islands, the Chief of Staff, Major

General J. Franklin Bell, admitted that the War Department had

yet to make a "thorough and systematic study" of the needs of

Emphasis MacArthur's in "Notes of An Address by Field Marshal Douglas MacArthur Delivered to a Group of Officers Today, August 3, 1936," RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed. , reel 1. Reprinted in Miguel R. Cornejo (ed.), Cornejo's Commonwealth Directory of the Philippines. 1939 Encyclopedic Edition (Manila: By the Author, 1939), pp. 579-84, with the incorrect date of 3 July 1936. 73 the overseas garrison, a fact he blamed on the government's failure to articulate a definitive policy toward the

Philippines.5 Nonetheless, over the next decade the army's strategic posture in the Philippines came to center on the fortifying and occupation of the Peninsula and the islands of Manila and Subic Bays. General Staff officer Major

Munroe McFarland observed before an Army War College class in

1915 that "practical unanimity" existed among army officers that "Corregidor must be held to the last and in order to do this Orange must be prevented from placing his heavy guns in the folds of the Mountains [on Bataan] within range of the batteries on Corregidor."®

Pre-World War One plans, however, did not call for placing "the main body of the defense forces in Bataan." Then-

Major John McAuley Palmer recalled from his own assignment to

Corregidor in 1914-15, as a battalion commander with the 24th

Infantry Regiment, that the drawbacks to garrisoning the peninsula lay in its lack of a "natural line of defense" and an inadequate transportation system which would magnify the

U . S. Congress, House, Hearings Before Committee on Military Affairs on Army Appropriation Bill for Fiscal Year 1908-09. 60th Cong., 1st sess., 1908, p. 40, microfiche ed., HMi 60B.

®Army War College, Session 1914-15, Part III, "Blue and Orange Series, and Blue and Black Series," Vol. 55, pp. 123- 40. In these pages. Major McFarland analyzed Map Problem No. 30, Defense of the Philippine Islands. AWC Files, USAMHI. 74

supply problem.7 At the War College, McFarland spoke of

holding Bataan "with a reasonable force" while positioning

most of the mobile army "both north and south of Manila." It

would withdraw to Manila before Japanese pressure forced a

final retreat to Corregidor. II confirmed this

emphasis on concentrating the Islands' defense on Corregidor,

a policy he credited to General J. Franklin Bell. Hagood, who

arrived in the Islands in early 1913 at the general's request,

claimed that Bell intended to place 7500 soldiers on

Corregidor and to take the rest "up into the Valley,

and operate against the flanks of the enemy as well as he

could, in the meantime raising native troops and living off

the country."B

I. B. Holley, Jr., General John M. Palmer. Citizen Soldiers, and the Armv of a Democracy (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), p. 229. Palmer remembered that the army "correctly anticipated that an enemy would select the area for his main landings," but McFarland foresaw a major landing at , with the local garrison sending a small delaying force north to Lingayen. AWC, Session 1914-15, Vol. 55, p. 137.

®Johnson Hagood II, "Down the Big Road," pp. 114-15, 147, 169. Unpublished autobiography, USAMHI. There is no in-depth study of pre-World War One planning for the defense of the Philippines, and Bell's role remains obscure. Nor has Bell found a biographer, and his lengthy service as commanding general of the Philippine garrison--at three years and three months (January 1911 to April 1914), longer than any other's before or since--awaits further study. Hagood's words should not be taken as the final answer on Bell's achievements. A contemporary, James G. Harbord, observed that Bell spent most of his time at Camp John Hay and had turned over the running of the garrison to his subordinates. "He seldom goes to Manila and more seldom goes to his office when he is there," Harbord wrote in a letter to the Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, adding "I think his mind is failing." Harbord to Brigadier General C.R. Edwards, 22 March 1913, "Private 75

Essentially, the problem was one of numbers. The United

States could not— would not— man the Philippine garrison at the strength required to resist a Japanese onslaught. Not unnaturally, given the recentness of the war between the

American and Philippine Republics and recurrent military action in the southern islands, few officers looked to the most obvious source of manpower, the Filipinos themselves. But as Bell's policy indicated, the use of troops raised in the

Philippines played some part in even the most forlorn plans.

From the earliest period of American occupation, placing greater reliance on local manpower did have its champions, both in and out of the army. Even the editor of the Armv and

Navy Journal of the Philippines, who usually denounced the

"miserable, vicious ingratitude" of Filipino political leaders and declared the Philippines "no country for a white man," supported Filipino participation in "the defense of the country against invasion."* Major William Johnston, who had commanded the Philippine Scout battalion which took part in the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, argued that Filipinos had proven themselves in the field and should no longer be restricted to police or local garrison duty. Recruited to their statutory limit of 12,000 men and formed into regiments

Letters of J.G. Harbord, Maj. Gen., U.S. Army," Vol. 4, James G. Harbord Papers, LC.

*Armv and Navv Journal of the Philippines 1, no. 18 (4 ); idem, no. 19 (11 October 1913); and idem, no. 27 (6 December 1913). 76 under white leadership, the Philippine Scouts could take the place of army regulars as the latter rotated home. And since the Philippine coasts were "absolutely without defense," authorization should be given to raise Scout strength to

25,000 or more. Indeed, Johnston’s martial ambition for the

Filipinos was unbounded. He foresaw locally raised troops rushed to the Asian mainland and added that "if when inevitable war causes an expedition to foreign [i.e. Chinese] soil, and battle losses are announced, such blood shed be that of Filipinos, the American public will view the enterprise with much less discontent than if each death vacated a place at an American fireside.

Major Johnston shared his vision in a number of articles, but such cynical exuberance remained uncommon. The far more influential W. Cameron Forbes articulated a different but equally ambitious goal for an indigenous military force when he was governor-general of the Philippines from 1909 to 1913.

Forbes envisioned "a mountain militia" of some 30,000 tribesmen from northern Luzon who would undergo two years of compulsory military service following completion of a military

W . H . Johnston, "Employment of Philippine Scouts in War," pt. 1, The Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States 38, no. 139 (January-February 1906): 67- 77, and pt. 2, idem, no. 140 (March-April 1906): 289-98. Major Johnston was a frequent commentator on many aspects of army duty in the Philippines. See his articles "First Battalion, Philippine Scouts," Infantry Journal 1 (April 1905):28-39, and "Philippine Infantry: A Plea For Our Little Brown Brothers," Infantry Journal 3 (May 1908):861-75. 77

school. Thus prepared, these "worthy savages" would then

assist the regular garrison in preventing insurrection or

invasion. Forbes later immodestly recalled that General Bell

had been so impressed by the scheme that he thought the

governor deserved a general's commission. Bell's own plan

suggests that he may indeed have seen merit in Forbes' idea.

A turning point in the military development of the

Philippines for both Americans and Filipinos came with the

United States' entry into the European conflict in April 1917.

Entering a war that had already taken the lives of several

million soldiers, the army had under arms less than 130,000

men, and nearly 12,000 of those served in the Philippine

Department. Consequently, most regular army soldiers returned

to the United States, their ranks taken by an increased number

of Philippine Scouts.

The new Commanding General of the Philippine Department,

Brigadier General Charles Bailey, immediately began evaluating

his forces to determine which could be returned for duty in

the United States. In June 1917, Bailey notified Washington

that over four thousand men could be spared. Of course, he

expected to accompany the troops back home and even named a

capable man to replace him as commander of the Islands'

forces. Subsequently, the War Department ordered most of the

Cameron Forbes Diaries, Vol. 4, pp. 66, 363, 386. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, LC.

^^Bailey to TAG, 22 June 1917, AG 2629091, RG 94, NA. 78

garrison's regiments to return to the United States. From a

high of 20,112 officers and men in June 1917, the Philippine

garrison stood at only 14,446 the following February.

This depletion of the Department's American troops

encouraged the army to expand Filipino participation in the

garrison. Lengthy debate within military circles concerning

the extent to which the Philippine Scouts could be used

culminated in authority to form four provisional Scout

infantry regiments and one artillery regiment in April 1918.

From a strength of less than six thousand in June 1917, nearly

eight thousand Filipinos filled the Scout ranks by December

1918.13

Although the Philippines remained untouched by the

fighting (other than to provide American soldiers for the

Siberian expedition), the lessons of the war as imbibed by the

General Staff would have a strong impact on subsequent military developments in the Islands. One lesson was that an

army built on regiment-sized organizations was inadequate to

the demands of "modern war." Secretary of War Newton Baker

informed the members of a House subcommittee that "the

tactical unit of a modern army was the division." An army

organized by divisions allowed the soldier to be trained

adequately for maneuver on the modern battlefield and, more

13james R. Woolard, "The Philippine Scouts: The Development of America's Colonial Army" (PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1975), pp. 169-84. 79 importantly, provided "the higher command” with the experience

"necessary to manage and coordinate the activities of great masses of men. As amended in 1920, the National Defense Act called for the assignment of one regular army division to each of the nation's nine corps areas. The primary role of these regulars. John J. Pershing testified, was "to develop the National Guard and Organized Reserve and to establish a national training system.

The army fully intended to include its overseas garrisons in the new reorganization scheme. Outside corps jurisdiction,

Hawaii and the Philippine Islands nonetheless already had enough men to justify--on paper at least--the creation of divisional organizations. Chief of Staff General Peyton March explained that a division would also be formed in the Panama

Canal Zone, although at the time less than six thousand troops were stationed there. With adequate funding, the army planned to build the Hawaii and Philippine garrisons up to over twenty-thousand men each and to place over 17,000 soldiers in the Canal Zone.^®

U.S. Congress, House, Armv Appropriation Bill, 1922: Hearings Before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations. 66th Cong., 3rd sess., 1920-21, p. 13, microfiche ed., H257.

^%.S. Congress, House, War Department Appropriation Bill . 1923: Hearings Before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations. 67th Cong., 2nd sess., 1922, p. 1490, microfiche ed., H313-1.

^^Armv Appropriation Bill, 1922. p. 29, H257. 80

Thus, the Philippine Division, a tactical organization subordinate to the Philippine Department (and which should not be confused with the Philippines. Division, the pre-1913 title of the Philippine Department), took shape. Confidential instructions of 11 October 1920 informed the Commanding

General of the Philippine Department that the division would consist of four Philippine Scout infantry regiments and two field artillery regiments with appropriate support elements.

With ten thousand men, the Filipino-manned units would outnumber the American troops by some two thousand soldiers.

American military units in the Philippines would include a lone cavalry regiment (the Ninth at Stotsenburg) and little more than a single infantry regiment (the Thirty-first in

Manila and one battalion of the China-based Fifteenth). Coast artillery companies and a growing air element would comprise a larger portion of the dwindling American contribution of about eight thousand men to the garrison.

Major General Francis Kernan, whose assignment to the command of the Department in November 1919 had brought to an end the wartime expedient of assigning once-retired or short- tenured brigadier generals and to the post, responded sourly to these instructions. The reorganization of the garrison's mobile units into a division, wrote Kernan in his

^Appendix A to Philippine Department, "Annual Report, Fiscal year 1921," AGO Project Files, 1917-1925, Philippine Islands, RG 407, NA. 81

annual report for 1921, was neither feasible nor desirable.

The designated troops were "scattered in many parts of the

Islands and China" and their physical concentration into a

division was unlikely, while the Department’s paucity of

soldiers made the creation of a divisional staff an

unnecessary burden. Furthermore, the forming of a combat

division, Kernan thought, would only "divert attention from

the main military problem in the Philippines, which was the defense of by means of Corregidor, and would shift

that attention over to the land defense of the Island of Luzon and the city of Manila which was an impossible proposition."^*

Kernan also opposed the Filipinization of the Islands'

forces. Asked to study the "military viewpoint" of future

Philippine policy in preparation for the arrival of the Woods-

Forbes Mission in May 1921, he submitted a memorandum to the

War Department in which he counselled extreme caution in placing too heavy a reliance on native soldiery. Taking into

account the thousands of ex-Scouts and ex-Philippine

Constabulary troops living in the archipelago, the real ratio

of American to native troops, he wrote, was less than one to

five. Kernan reminded his superiors of Lord Robert's

conclusion regarding the cause of the Indian Mutiny in 1857.

In the years immediately preceding the great sepoy rebellion.

^®Ibid., and Hagood, "Down the Big Road," p. 280. At the time, army forces in China (known as the "China Expedition") were administratively a component of the Philippine Department. 82

the number of Indian troops rose to 257,000 while the

effective British force in India fell to 36,000 men. This

state of affairs, Kernan extracted from Lord Roberts'

comments, helped "'to inflate the minds of the sepoys with a

most undesirable sense of independence.'" Kernan warned that

considering "the strength, composition, and disposition of

Federal troops in these Islands," the army tended "to forget

history" and view the garrison's requirements only in light

of the potential for "aggression from the outside" rather than

still-possible insurrection.^*

The commanding general's views flew in the face of

developments in the United States, however. "America in the

1920s," as one historian has written, "was dedicated . . . to

the dream that wars had ended forever" and wedded to the

"fetish of economy in government." Neither trend bode well for

the army. In 1921, Congress reduced the authorized strength

of the army to 150,000 and in the following year shaved

another 13,000 men from the rolls.The Philippine Islands did not escape attention either. Amid the general euphoria

surrounding the signing of the arms limitations treaties arising from the Washington Conference of 1921-22 which

"Appendix to Report of Wood-Forbes Mission to the Philippines," 27 April 1921, copy filed with WPD 3389-26, and Kernan to TAG, 25 November 1921, AGO Project Files, 1917-1925, Philippine Islands, RG 407, NA.

^bussell F. Weigley, History of the United States Armv. enlarged ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 400-401. 83

restricted military activity in the Pacific, it was publicly

reported that the War Department contemplated the reduction

of the Philippine defenses to nothing more than a "police

force to support the authority of the insular government.

As Kernan's complaints made clear, the army planned nothing

of the sort, but the decline in its overall strength aid necessitate drastic changes in the organization of the

Philippine garrison.

The financial and diplomatic limitations placed on the

United States Army in the early 1920s thus led it to take a sympathetic look at the utilization of Filipino troops. This reappraisal started at the top. The army chief of staff.

General Pershing, was a soldier of extensive Philippine experience who had first landed in the Islands in 1899 and had subsequently spent eleven years in Asia, nine of them in the

Philippines. Most of his service had been in the southern Moro

Province, but he had also commanded Fort McKinley and had served briefly in Manila as commanding general of the

Philippine garrison in 1910-11.

Pershing informed a new Philippine Department commander, former West Point classmate and division commander in the

American Expeditionary Forces Major General William M. Wright, in May 1922 that "any American force" would be inadequate for the Islands' defense; the General Staff was therefore

^'New York Times (17 February 1922). 84 considering "training, organizing and employing native troops

in the defense of the country." Pershing's justification is worth quoting in full:

It seems to me [Pershing wrote] that we have a distinct obligation to prepare the Filipinos for the exercise of an increasing measure of self-government and to prepare and to employ them for the defense of their country to the greatest extent possible and consistent with safety and our political aims. It would appear to our advantage to utilize all available means to the end of training such numbers as may be deemed desirable and to build up a sound organization under Federal control along the lines of the organized reserves now being created in this country.

Unimpressed with General Kernan's performance in France during

the World War, the chief of staff now rejected Kernan’s

analogy with British rule in India, asserting that neither

"now [n]or at the time of the Mutiny," were the American and

British colonial positions comparable.^* Pershing may have

been only accepting the inevitable, but he later admitted that while he had "not any too high an opinion of the ability of

the Filipinos to govern themselves," he felt that they had

nonetheless "made material advancement."^*

22pershing to Wright, 23 May 1922, WPD 331-2, RG 165, NA.

^^Ibid. Pershing had fired Kernan, the "indolent" Commanding General of the Services of Supply, in September 1918. James G. Harbord, Leaves From a War Diarv (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1925), pp. 339, 349.

*^Letter, Pershing to Representative J.M. Wainwright, 8 May 1924, Pershing Papers, LC. Wainwright, a first cousin of General J.M. Wainwright, had passed along a memorandum on Philippine affairs written by a Colonel Robert Leonard which apparently was highly critical of Filipino abilities. No copy of the memo was found. 85

The new governor-general of the Philippines, former army

Chief of Staff , also supported a greater Filipino role in defense plans. Travelling through the Islands in

August 1921 preparatory to becoming the governor-general, Wood had observed that there was "no adequate local organization of the Philippine people for defense of the islands against aggression." The United States government. Wood believed,

"should at once take the necessary steps to organize, train, and equip such a force.Presumably, he meant to rectify the situation.

Wood became governor-general at the same time a navy­ voiced reappraisal of American planning for an Orange war seemed to suggest that the Philippine garrison would be abandoned to its fate. Wood protested vehemently and argued in favor of "the progressive development of organized reserves" with the eventual goal of creating "at least one active and two reserve" Filipino divisions, numbers probably derived from a study prepared in early 1921 by Philippine

Department intelligence officer Major John P. Smith. Smith had recommended an increase in mobile forces to "consist of three infantry divisions of native troops under American officers.

nc ^-'Report of the Special Mission on Investigation to the Philippine Islands (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1921), p. 23.

^^ood to Wright, 4 August 1922, WPD 331-2, RG 165, NA. Smith's report is filed with "Appendix to Report of Wood- Forbes Mission to the Philippines," 27 April 1921, WPD 3389- 26, RG 165, NA. 86

Once the "General Staffs of the Army and Navy" came to

understand "the possibilities of organizing and developing the military strengths of the Philippine forces in the Regular

Army," Wood surmised, they would have confidence in the

garrison's ability to withstand an enemy attack.

Wood did take some concrete steps to fit Filipinos for military service. He assisted in establishing a Department

of Military Science and Tactics at the University of the

Philippines, for example, a feat one American critic thought to be Wood's only worthwhile accomplishment during his long years as governor-general.^* However, it would be an exaggeration either to credit the determination to create

Filipino reserve forces to Leonard Wood or to conclude that the governor was overly enthusiastic about broadening Filipino participation in military affairs. Wood repeatedly emphasized the need for more American troops in the Islands, to such an extent that the War Plans Division finally recommended that the War Department no longer respond to his letters on the subject.29 Wood's proposals for the participation of Filipino soldiers in the defense of the archipelago were cautious and

22wood to Secretary of War John W. Weeks, 5 February 1923, WPD 532-5, RG 165, NA.

Josephine and Austin Craig, Farthest Westing; A Philippine Footnote (Philadelphia: Dorrance and Co., 1940), p. 169.

^^Memorandum, Acting ACS/WPD to Chief of Staff, 6 November 1923, WPD 532-8, RG 165, NA. 87

incremental.

Before examining the details of army planning for the defense of the Philippines and the role of the Filipino soldier, it is necessary to provide an overview of the army's approach to war planning. To begin with, the War Department drew a clear distinction between what it termed defense

"Projects" and defense "Plans." In a memorandum dated 26

November 1919, the War Plans Division explained that the former indicated "policy and usually form[ed] the basis of estimates and legislation." The latter stipulated schemes "for attaining some definite end and consist[ed] of a detailed and methodical arrangement of the means or successive steps believed to be necessary or conducive to attainment of the object in view." The War Department prepared projects;

"responsible territorial and tactical commanders" prepared plans. 30

This War Plans Division memorandum set the stage for a two-decades' long series of Philippine Defense Projects and

Philippine Defense Plans. In reality, the Department staff authored both projects and plans. The projects, however, required War Department evaluation and approval. While plans also made the rounds of War Department staff bureaus for-- sometimes very critical— comment, they were neither approved

30office of the Chief of Staff, War Plans Division, memo, no. 2, "Defense Projects and Plans," 26 November 1919, WPD 1798, RG 165, NA. 88 nor disapproved, merely noted and filed for record and future reference. "The plan of defense which is concerned with the actual defense on the ground, tactical and strategical," as the Assistant Chief of Staff, War Plans Division, Colonel

LeRoy El tinge explained the distinction between plan and project, "is a function of the Commanding General of the

Philippine Islands and is not ordered or in any way directed from Washington."^ The distinction was not always as clear cut as these directions suggest. Projects often included information which should have been restricted to the plans, a fact irritating to War Department officials but beneficial to scholars. The army retained copies of several "projects"; few "plans" remain in their entirety.

A second point often obscured in the available literature on American military and naval planning for war with Japan is the distinction between plans for such a war. Any could legitimately be labelled "War Plan Orange," but an "Orange" plan devised by navy or army headquarters or the Joint Board in Washington would not specify action to be taken by forces headquartered in the Philippines. The important point is the significance placed on local authority. The resources in men and equipment which the Philippine Department could bring to bear on solving its military problems were limited by decisions made in Washington, but how the available resources

^better, Eltinge to Arthur Fischer (a Philippine government official), 5 December 1924, WPD 1799-4, RG 165, NA. 89

were used was entirely up to the commanding general of the military forces in the Philippines.

In July 1922 the War Department informed Major General

Wright that the "project for the defense of Manila and Manila

Bay [was] several years old" and required revision. The letter

instructed the Philippine Department staff to prepare a "Basic

Project" which would include a "brief estimate of the

situation" followed by "a statement of the project, troops

required, distribution of troops" and any necessary maps and

photographs. Accompanying "appendices," one for each staff

section (G-1, G-2, etc.), and "annexes," one for each supply

or technical service involved (Engineers, Air Service, etc.), would elaborate on the basic project.

In fact, this required no mere revision of any existing

project but necessitated a comprehensive study of the Islands'

defense. Nearly a year later, on 18 June 1923, the Philippine

Department completed the "Project for the Defense of the

Philippine Islands." The War Department acknowledged that the

project was "well-prepared" and commended its authors but also

informed HPD that the project needed to be rewritten. The

Joint Board had reappraised military and naval missions in the

Philippine Islands, in the process modifying the premises upon

which the project had been written.

^^TAG to CGPD, 20 October 1923, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA. 90

It does not appear that the Philippine Department

perceived there to be any changes in its understanding of the

1923 defense project's premises (and in fact the army's

official mission statement for forces in the Philippines

remained unchanged from 1916 to 1928).^^ The officer under whose authority the project had been prepared, Major General

George W. Read,^^ responded to the War Department's directive with little enthusiasm. He did not believe the "new" mission warranted "any alteration in the mobilization features of the project," and major elements of the 1923 project (as they can be recreated from assorted comments and memoranda, since no copy of the project remains) do not differ from those in the

1924 project. In fact, new wording in Joint Board-designated

"missions" for the army in the Philippines were essentially meaningless. The War Department would emphasize repeatedly that the Commanding General of the Philippine Department was

^^Cable, TAG to CGPD, 11 October 1916, spelled out the "joint mission" as "to defend Manila and Manila Bay." Quoted in letter, TAG to CGPD, 14 March 1921, JB 303, serial 169-A, Records of the Joint Board, microfilm ed., reel 4. Despite the hoopla of the early 1920s concerning changes in the Philippine forces' "mission," the wording of the mission statement remained unchanged until 14 June 1928, with the approval of JB 303, serial 298, copy in Records of the Joint Board, microfilm ed., reel 4.

^'^The commanding generalship changed frequently in 1922. General Wright was in command from 6 March to 11 September 1922 (when he was relieved of duty at his own request due to illness) and General from 11 September to 4 October. General Read became CGPD on 4 October 1922 and remained in that post until 18 November 1924. 91 free to use his resources as he saw fit.^S if Manila Bay could be best defended by withdrawing the army into Bataan, so be it; if defending likely invasion points elsewhere on Luzon was the best way of safeguarding the Bay, the Department commander was free to pursue that option.

General Staff officer Major J.J. Bain journeyed to Manila in early 1924 to advise the Philippine Department staff on the rewriting of the 1923 project. Although he confirmed that the

Joint Board's policy on Philippine defense had "changed the premises of the Philippine Project fundamentally,"^* a major purpose of Bain's visit was to obtain Manila's view of the defense projects and plans and to help coordinate the views of the War and Philippine Departments. The War Department seems to have used the 1923 project primarily to crystallize its thinking about the form and content of these new, formal, defense projects.

The 1924 Basic Project was wide-ranging in its analysis of the defense needs of the Philippine Islands. "A study of the fundamental causes of all Filipino uprisings since 1574," its authors wrote, "indicates that in almost every case the

See, for example, ACS/WPD to TAG, 12 February 1924, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA, and ACS/WPD memorandum for Chief of Staff, 25 June 1928, WPD 3022-8, RG 165, NA.

^®"Inspection of Philippine Department made by Major J.J. Bain, General Staff," report dated 25 August 1924, AG 1917- 25, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA. Bain was in the Islands from 17 March to 3 May 1924. 92 causes of the uprisings were the oppressive acts of the sovereign power, levies of heavy taxes, labor and supplies, etc." Despite the antics of ungrateful political agitators, the Filipino people had no reason to oppose the Americans. Of potential external threats, Britain was friendly, and Russia did not possess the naval power to approach Manila. China was politically chaotic (and anyway, America was its "closest friend"). No other power was "of enough consequence" to consider--except Japan. Location, ability to wage war, and conflict of interest in the Pacific and Far East made "Orange" the most probable enemy. Japanese war-making potential underlay the defense needs stipulated by the project, and because Japan was the only creditable threat (and any plan to thwart a Japanese attack would be equally valid against another aggressor), the Philippine Department's only defense plan was "War Plan Orange. "3?

Bearing in mind the Joint Board-dictated mission of maintaining control of Manila Bay (a task implicitly defensive in nature), the project's authors' accepted that "the mission of the command implie[d] the strategic defensive" but further asserted that it would "be executed by energetic offensive

Brown (action in case of domestic insurrection) and Yellow (presumably an expedition to China) Plans also existed. National Archives records include several copies of Plan Brown, but no Plan Yellow was found. Just as there were different Orange plans, there were versions of Brown authored variously by HPD, the Hawaiian Department, and the War Department. The latter were responsible for sending reinforcements to the Philippines in response to insurrection. 93

tactics." In effect, Kernan had been right. The establishment

of a tactical mobile division had led to more aggressive

planning, but the very decision to create the Philippine

Division had been a result of the army's doctrine of offensive

war. The project's authors not only pointed out that

Philippine geography alone made "purely defensive measures"

futile but argued that a defensive posture sacrificed "the

advantage of operation on interior lines and [was] contrary

to too many of the Principles of War and to the Doctrine of

W a r . "38

Like the 1923 project, the 1924 project emphasized the

development of Filipino reserves. American forces would serve

as only the nucleus for the "necessary native reserve forces."

The project stipulated the need for a peace garrison of 17,427

officers and men (most of whom would be Philippine Scouts)

expandable to a wartime strength of 96,582 formed into two

Philippine Scout divisions and three independent infantry

brigades. The total war garrison, including civilians.

Constabulary, and replacements, would amount to 145,708.39

The "Basic Project for the Defense of the Philippine Islands, 1924" is found in box 87, Special Projects, Harbor Defenses, Philippines, RG 407, NA. The appendices and annexes to the 1924 project, however, are filed in boxes 86 through 89, AG 1917-25, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA.

3^1924 Basic Project, G-1 Appendix, p. 15, AG 1917-25, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA. The 1923 project had called for similar numbers: a peace garrison of 17,427 growing to nearly 100,000 in time of war. See Chief of Staff, HPD, to TAG, 23 June 1923, and Read to TAG, 27 December 1923, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA. 94

The army, like Leonard Wood, was adamantly opposed to the creation of a Filipino militia. If the War Department dismissed General Kernan's fears of native insurrection, it nonetheless shared his belief that a Philippine militia or national guard "would be worse than useless and ought not to be encouraged in any way. General Wright subsequently outlined a proposal for the creation of a Filipino reserve in keeping with the army's wish to prevent local, outside influence over Filipino troops. (That any such influence would be detrimental was, to the army, the "lesson" of the

Philippine National Guard.) "It seems to me," he wrote in response to General Pershing's suggestion, "quite practicable gradually to perfect, under Federal control and supervision, a system of insular reserves, officered in part by Americans and largely by Filipinos, with a scheme of military training imposed and regulated by our government." These reserves could, in time of emergency, be used to bring regular army units up to war strength and then to form native divisions.^-

To augment existing forces in the Philippines, the army looked to part-time military training programs similar to those in vogue in the United States after World War One. In the Philippines, "military training"--if only an hour or two

'^^Kernan to TAG, 25 November 1921, AGO Project Files, 1917-1925, Philippine Islands, RG 407, NA.

^^Wright to Pershing, 16 August 1922, WPD 331-2, RG 165, NA. 95 of infantry-style drill each week--had been a part of school

curricula for several years. Antonio C. Torres, who would serve as a lieutenant colonel in the Philippine National

Guard, had organized "cadet battalions" at the Ateneo de

Manila and the Liceo de Manila in 1906-1908,^^ In 1912, the

Board of Regents of the University of the Philippines had made participation in "military drill" a requirement for graduation.43 And General Pershing had encouraged the teaching of "military drill as a means of discipline" in public schools in when he had served there as Governor of the Moro

Province from 1909 to 1913.44

These early efforts at military training in Philippine schools roughly paralleled developments in the United States.

The National Defense Act of 1916 had given statutory authorization for an Officers' Reserve Corps (ORC), an

Enlisted Reserve Corps (ERC), and the college-based Reserve

Officers Training Corps (ROTC). The wording of the act restricted ROTC participation to American citizens, and only persons "eligible for enlistment in the Regular Army" could enter the ERC. Since Filipinos were not citizens of the United

States and the Philippine Scouts, into which Filipinos could

4^Cornejo, Commonwealth Encyclopedia, pp. 2183-84.

43çitizen Armv (March 1941): 9.

44peter Gowing, Mandate in Moroland: The American Government of Muslim Filipinos. 1899-1920 (1977; reprint, Quezon City; New Day Publishers, 1983), p. 215. 96 enlist, was not considered to be part of the "regular" a r m y ,^5

Congressional legislation was needed to commence the building of Filipino-manned reserve forces. However, the 1916 National

Defense Act had stipulated that "citizens of the Philippine

Islands" could be members of the ORC.

In December 1922, Secretary of War John Weeks informed the chairmen of the Congressional Committees on Military

Affairs of the General Staff's conclusion that American forces alone would never be adequate to defend the Islands.

Conditions were such, however, "that a loyal and dependable force of native troops" could be established. With some modifications. Congress had "simply" to extend existing reserve legislation to the Philippine Islands.

The Secretary of War did not mention that the War

Department had already implemented portions of the reserve system in the Philippines. In March 1922, Captain Chester A.

Davis, a former enlisted man himself commissioned through the pre-war ORC, had arrived in Manila to become the first

Or so the Judge Advocate General initially determined before apparently being persuaded to change his mind. See Judge Advocate General, HPD, memorandum for CGPD on "Applicability to the Philippine Islands of Section 55, National Defense Act," 14 August 1928, included as an enclosure to "Report on the Defense of the Philippine Islands by Major General , August 21, 1928," in box 9, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA.

^^eeks to James W. Wadsworth, Jr., Chairman, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 8 December 1922, WPD 331-4, RG 165, NA. The major change to existing legislation was a provision limiting pay to that enjoyed by the Filipino officers and enlisted men of the Philippine Scouts. 97

Commandant and Professor of Military Science and Tactics at the University of the Philippines. Aided by a grant from the

Board of Regents, surplus property of the army and the

Philippine National Guard, and the assignment of several other

Philippine Department officers and NCOs, Davis directed a program of one-thousand cadets when the school year opened in

June 1922.47

Two, nearly identical, bills "to provide for the organization of the Organized Reserves in the Philippine

Islands" were introduced in Congress soon after receipt of the

Secretary of War's letters, one in the House and one in the

Senate. The bills sought to extend to the Philippines "all existing laws pertaining to the Organized Reserves of the

United States" in order to ensure "a more adequate defense of the Philippine Islands and in order to prepare the Philippine people for an increasing measure of self-government." The bills also made Philippine citizens equally eligible for membership in reserve organizations in the United S t a t e s . 4®

Neither the Senate nor House military affairs committees responded favorably to the War Department's appeal for support for reserves in the Philippines. Committing funds to insular reserve forces would only reduce the amount needed to put the

4^Letter, (President of the University of the Philippines) to Secretary of War, 22 March 1924, BIA 28003- 11/A, RG 350, NA.

4®See H.R. 13296 and S. 4274, 67th Cong., 4th sess., introduced on 9 December 1922 and 3 January 1923. 98

reserve system in the United States on a firm basis, and the

unsettled political status of the Islands made Congress wary

of providing additional support. The War Department continued

to press for passage of favorable legislation, but by early

1925 it had to admit failure. Attempts to legalize the reserve

provisions of the National Defense Act for use in the

Philippines would have to await "a more propitious time.'*'*®

The army did what it could to further the reserve program

in spite of an unsympathetic Congress, The Judge Advocate

General, for example, ruled in February 1924 that army

officers could serve as military instructors at Philippine

schools despite the lack of Congressional authorization,

"because such details are in furtherance of the military policy of the United States. The "ROTC" in the Philippines

continued to grow (and to receive the support of the

Philippine Department), but it never shared the legal status

or federal support of the ROTC program in the United States and its territories. To put the problem of creating reserve

forces in the Philippines in perspective, it should be noted

The attempt to extend the reserve system to the Philippines can be followed in WPD 331, RG 165, NA. See especially ACS/WPD memorandum for Chief of Staff, 1 September 1923, and ACS/WPD memorandum for TAG, 6 March 1925.

"^Memorandum for CGPD from Judge Advocate General, HPD, "Applicability to the Philippine Islands of Sec. 55, National Defense Act," quoting Judge Advocate General, War Department, opinion dated 15 February 1924, enclosure to "Report on the Defense of the Philippine Islands by Maj. Gen. William Lassiter, August 21, 1928," AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA. 99

that the organized reserve did not fare well in the United

States either. Despite the legitimization of federally-

controlled reserve forces with the passage of the 1916 and

1920 National Defense Acts, the much maligned National Guard

continued to be the mainstay of the nation's military reserve.

The 1924 project was completed in May of that year, but

thereafter the mid-1920s witnessed a hiatus in new defense

planning. Since the War Department did not destroy its copies

of the 1924 project until July 1929 (transferring one

remaining copy from War Plans Division to the Adjutant

General's Office), presumably there were no projects completed

in the intervening years. (General Lassiter's 1928 project,

to be discussed later, does not seem to have had the status

of a formal "project" within the meaning of the 1919 War Plans

Division memorandum. The failure to fund the reserve system meant that, inevitably, the garrison's defensive posture

remained concentrated on an in-close defense of Bataan and

Corregidor.

The Philippine Department had only three commanding

officers during those years. Major General James H. MacRae

commanded the garrison from Read's departure in November 1924 until mid-1926, when he was replaced by Major General Frank

Sladen, who remained in the Philippines until April 1928. The

See ACS/WPD memoranda dated 19 July 1924, 12 July 1929, and 27 August 1930, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA. No reference to any "Philippine Defense Project" for the years 1925, 1926, or 1927 was found. 100

limited documentation available concerning General Sladen's

tenure reflects mostly a concentration on the pleasures of

Philippines duty. When reminded by a friend that the command

brought with it "two houses, a yacht and many other

prerequisites" in addition to being "remote from the War

Department," Sladen acknowledged that he was indeed "very

glad" to get the assignment and looked "forward to a pleasant

tour. "52

General Sladen revealed the distance from his ambitious

predecessors when his views were sought in preparation for the

Joint Board's reappraisal of the army and navy missions in the

Islands. Agreeing with the findings of a "local joint planning

committee," Sladen responded that holding "that portion of

Manila Bay covered by the Harbor Defenses" was sufficient.

Nothing should be done by "our present small forces," he

continued, "to attempt any operations prejudicial to the best

defense of these a r e a s . Sladen's response seemed to presuppose the Joint Board's rewording of the army's mission

in the Philippines. Until June 1928, "the primary mission of

the Army forces," according to the then current Joint Board directive, was "to defend Manila and Manila Bay in conjunction

Major General Robert C. Davis to Sladen, 3 December 1925, and Sladen to Davis, 8 December 1925, in Sladen Family Papers, USAMHI. Most of this collection of once numerous papers has been returned to the Sladen family.

5^31aden to TAG, 26 March 1928, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA. 101 with the Asiatic Detachment by operating on the offensive- defensive against enemy forces in the Luzon Area." As the

result of a reappraisal of the Army-Navy Joint War Plan Orange to allow greater time to advance across a Japanese-controlled

Pacific, the Joint Board revised the mission to read "to hold the entrance to Manila Bay." This was the "primary" mission; the new Joint Board directive promulgated a "secondary" mission as well, which was "to hold the Manila Bay area as

long as possible consistent with the successful accomplishment of the Primary Mission.

It is not clear, then, what motivated the War

Department's renewed interest in aggressively defending Luzon in the late 1920s. D. Clayton James interprets the new Joint

Board directive as dictating "a more restricted mission for the Philippine Department. Edward Miller argues that "after the frenzy to save Manila of 1923-25 abated, the planners [of war with Japan] began to recognize the constraints that U.S. leaders were to face in counterattacking . . . [and] scrapped the irrational fantasies of saving Manila City or even

^^Louis Morton, "War Plan Orange: Evolution of a Strategy," World Politics 11 (January 1959):233, and JB 303, serial 298, dated 14 June 1928, Records of the Joint Board, microfilm ed., reel 4.

^^D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), pp. 334-35. 102

Bataan. Yet the years 1928 to 1930 saw a resurgence of

Philippine Department Defense Projects and Plans, again

relying on the indigenous manpower potential of the Islands.

Those were the years of Douglas MacArthur's command in Manila,

but the resurgence did not begin with him.

En route to the Philippines as the Islands' new governor-

general in early 1928, Henry Stimson stopped to spend January

26th at Chicago/s Blackstone Hotel. Among the visitors who

called on him there was Major General William Lassiter, the

local corps commander and a friend since 1911, when Stimson

had been President 's Secretary of War.

During his meeting with Stimson, Lassiter either agreed, or

offered, to follow the governor-general to the archipelago as

Sladen's replacement. Stimson later wrote that until the meeting in Chicago, he had had "no idea that General Lassiter was willing to give up his post in Chicago and come out to the

Islands," implying that had he known, he would have asked for

Lassiter's permanent assignment to head the Philippine

Department.

As it was. General Lassiter followed Stimson to the

Philippines only to hold the commanding generalship there open

^^Edward Miller, War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan. 1897-1945 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991), p. 139.

^^Stimson to Lassiter, 20 January 1928, and Stimson to Chief of Staff Summerall, 15 July 1928, both in Stimson Papers, microfilm ed., reels 74 and 76. 103 for Major General Douglas MacArthur, who was publicly reported to be expected in Manila within "a few months. But General

Lassiter had no intention of remaining a caretaker commanding officer. Aboard the troopship to Manila, Lassiter met General

George Simonds, who told him "that there was no Project in the

War Department for the Philippines and that one was desired at as early a date as practicable." Perhaps Lassiter's rather sudden departure for the Islands had prevented the War

Department from imparting this seemingly vital piece of information itself, but Lassiter lost no time in renewing the

Islands' defense plans.

Two months after arriving in the Philippines, Lassiter reported to Chief of Staff Charles P. Summerall that he had deferred preparation of a new project in favor of first reworking the discredited existent plan, upon which "nothing had been done . . . for several years. General Lassiter concluded that centering the Islands' defenses on Bataan and

Corregidor was ill-founded, no matter how the Joint Board worded the mission of the Philippine garrison. "The Bataan

Peninsula is an extremely malarious locality," Lassiter reminded General Summerall, and more importantly, if the army

"isolated [its] mobile troops there, the enemy . . . would probably content himself with taking the rest of Luzon and

^^Khaki and Red 8, no. 4 (April 1928):4.

S^Letter, Lassiter to Summerall, 6 July 1928, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA. 104

taking Corregidor by air." To Lassiter, who had headed a War

Department aviation board in 1923 which had "urged long-range efforts" to strengthen the army's aviation capability, ^0 air power had vitiated the significance of Bataan. The importance of Bataan lay in the mountain slopes on its southern end, the

control of which allowed an enemy to emplace heavy artillery in a position to dominate the island fortress of Corregidor.

Possession of Corregidor was therefore purposeless without

control of southern Bataan. But the growth of air forces negated this equation. "Upon analysis," Lassiter wrote, "it does not appear that an enemy on the Bataan Peninsula

constitutes a really dangerous menace to Corregidor. The real dangerous menace is air attack." The strength and ability of

the garrison's mobile forces thus acquired new importance.

Aside from purely tactical considerations, Lassiter

believed that the deliberate isolation of American forces in

Bataan would forfeit "the psychological advantage of having

the natives on our side." The Department commander argued that

"the events of 1896 and 1897 and of 1899 and 1900" amply

demonstrated the fighting meddle of the Filipinos. It was

crucial that the United States pursue a policy of "getting

the natives on our side" and harness that ability in defense

of the Islands. Although he applauded the "fine looking

cadets" he had reviewed in Manila, Lassiter proposed to

^^Weigley, History of the United States Armv. pp. 412-13. 105 establish a reserve system and military training program more ambitious than the limited one already in place.

In response, the chief of staff acknowledged that

Lassiter had "presented the utilization of Filipinos in a more comprehensive way than had heretofore been considered."

Summerall further agreed on the necessity of ”incorporat[ing] them in our potential military force" and ordered Lassiter to investigate means by which the Civilian Military Training

Camps program could be extended to the archipelago and the local Reserve Officer Training Corps program strengthened.®^

The chief of staff shared the belief that "the only sound policy of creating an adequate defense in the Philippines is that of making responsibility rest upon the population." By extending the army's reserve system to the islands, Summerall wrote, "considerable man-power" could be mobilized at minimum expense. He even outlined a modest military system for the archipelago. A reserve force "of partially trained men" would be 150,000 strong in ten years. Divisions "might be numbered in the order of consecutive years until ten" had been raised.

"With such a force," Summerall suggested, "it is believed that any country would find an effort to overcome Luzon too expensive to warrant the undertaking."®^

®^Summerall to Lassiter, 6 August 1928, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA.

®^Chief of Staff memorandum, "Defense of the Philippines," 1 October 1928, WPD 3251-1, RG 165, NA. 106

Within a few months of his arrival, Lassiter had

completed both a "Report on the Defense of the Philippine

Islands" and a new "Basic Plan Orange," the last finished only days before his departure from the Islands. His report reinforced his early thinking on the problems of Philippine defense: the importance of air power and the tactical and political poverty of being too defense-minded. In his accompanying War Plan Orange, Lassiter rejected "holding the southern part of Bataan" with the army's "small quota of mobile troops." The "only possible course of action," he concluded, was to strike the enemy while it remained in troop transports or as it landed on the beach.

The army's periodic enthusiasm for assuming a more comprehensive military stance in the Philippines corresponded to the governors-generalship of like-minded civilian executives. However much Henry Stimson's personal style differed from that of the now deceased Leonard Wood, they shared a conviction that America was in the Philippines to stay. It did not follow that Stimson, any more than his predecessor, desired a "Filipino army." But not long after

Lassiter had arrived in Manila in April 1928, Stimson cabled

General Summerall requesting the cancellation of MacArthur's orders and asking for an extension of Lassiter's tour. Stimson noted that Lassiter "had already demonstrated the value of his

63IIBasic Plan--Orange," 24 September 1928, WPD 3251-1, RG ICC 107 presence," and the general's continued availability offered a "unique opportunity for study and cooperation between his office and mine." In a follow-up letter, Stimson was more forthright. He explained to the chief of staff that "the situation in the Far East" required the cooperation and mutual understanding of the governor-general and his local military and naval commanders. He had "already established close personal relations with [Mark L.] Bristol," commander of the Asiatic Fleet, while his "close, sympathetic and satisfactory" relationship with General Lassiter was not apt to be equalled. "My conferences with both of them," Stimson wrote, "have satisfied me that on all essential matters of national policy in the Far East we stand on absolutely common ground." Stimson concluded by pointing out that the Philippine assignment was too important to "be decided solely upon the accident of equal distribution of tropical service." MacArthur was a "young officer" who would have "abundant years hereafter

. . . to hold this important command.

The governor-general's request exasperated the chief of staff. Lassiter had clearly been transferred to the Islands with the understanding that he would remain only until

September 1928. MacArthur had apparently lined up his return to the Philippines long before, perhaps as far back as late

1927, and as both the chief of staff and the chief of the

®%timson to Summerall, 3 May 1928, Stimson Papers, microfilm ed., reel 75. 108

Bureau of Insular Affairs, whom Stimson had also contacted,

responded, the cancellation of MacArthur's orders would at

this late date be unjust and embarrassing. If Stimson had

requested Lassiter's assignment before going to the

Philippines, Summerall replied, "the matter could have been

adjusted to meet your wishes." But now, he pointed out, if

MacArthur did not go the islands, "the public generally would

conclude that, through the influence of his father-in-law or

other influential friends, he had succeeded in evading foreign

service," and this would injure his career "irreparably."®^

Given the recentness of his last tour, MacArthur's assignment "caused the usual comments and whisperings."®® The general's biographer, D. Clayton James, comments merely that

MacArthur "received orders to go to Manila" a few weeks after returning from the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in August 1928.®?

MacArthur may have sought duty in the Philippines, another biographer persuasively suggests, to escape the collapse of his first marriage, to Louise Brooks.®® He had returned from

®®Summerall to Stimson, 16 June 1928, Stimson Papers, microfilm ed., reel 76; Carol M. Petillo, Douglas MacArthur; The Philippine Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), p. 145; New York Times (25 October 1930), and idem (1 September 1931).

®®Frazier Hunt, The Untold Storv of Douglas MacArthur (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1954), p. 122. Unfortunately, Hunt does not explain what the "usual comments" were.

®?James, Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, p. 332.

®®Petillo, Douglas MacArthur. p. 141. 109 the Philippines in 1925, and it is unlikely that MacArthur would have received unwanted orders to return to the archipelago only three years later. During previous assignments to the Islands, MacArthur had already held the other senior posts of brigade and division commander. Now, only the top position would do.

MacArthur arrived in Manila on 1 October 1928, only hours after Lassiter had set sail for Australia and New Zealand.®®

If the new commanding general had been made aware of the full contents of Stimson's May 3rd letter to the chief of staff, his relationship with the governor-general would have been less than cordial. Not content with lauding Lassiter's abilities, Stimson had disparaged MacArthur's. "To be perfectly frank," he had confided to Summerall, "from such knowledge as I have of MacArthur, I do not think he is to be compared with Lassiter for ripe breadth of view in meeting such a situation as exists here today." His acquaintance with

MacArthur also dated back to President Taft's administration, and few comments could have been better calculated to anger

MacArthur.^

^General Lassiter insisted that he was not trying to avoid meeting MacArthur. Rather, the peculiarities of ship scheduling meant a considerable delay if he did not depart on 1 October.

^Stimson to Summerall, 3 May 1928, Stimson Papers, microfilm ed., reel 75. 110

whatever motivated his return, MacArthur immediately began an ambitious reappraisal of Philippine defense needs.

MacArthur, or so Brigadier General Johnson Hagood II, recalled, was "very much embarrassed" by the "same old stand and run plans" of his "immediate predecessor (not Sladen).

MacArthur's criticism was extreme and not shared by the War

Department. "General Lassiter," Brigadier General Simonds, the

Assistant Chief of Staff for War Plans Division, pointed out,

"asked not for the ground troops which he desired but for the ground troops which he thought there was some possibility of getting." Simonds believed that MacArthur's plans were "along the same general lines" as Lassiter's.

The War Department responded to MacArthur's modifications with an "Army Strategical Plan for the Defense of the

Philippine Islands--Orange," which it stated was based on the

"War Department's understanding" of the Philippine commanding general's program. Washington directed MacArthur to now formalize his own "Plan for the Defense of the Philippine

Islands" and to prepare a "Project for the Defense of the

Philippines." The plan, "as well as the actual defense of the

Islands," would be entirely in General MacArthur's hands. The project, a "comprehensive statement" of the objects to be

"^Johnson Hagood II, "Down the Big Road," pp. 457-58, Hagood Family Papers, USAMHI.

^^Memorandum for the Chief of Staff, "Defense Plans for the Philippine Islands," 6 November 1928, WPD 3251, RG 407, NA. Ill

accomplished in defending the archipelago and how the means

to do so could be obtained, would "serve as the basis upon

which the War Department will make its requests for

appropriations from year to year.

The results of MacArthur's labor were "Basic Project,

1929" and "Basic War Plan--Orange, 1929." General MacArthur's

revision of Lassiter's plan placed even greater reliance on

Filipino troops. Lassiter's one division of Filipino soldiers

was not enough, the new commanding general explained. His plan

called for at least three divisions. The United States would

bear the cost of this expansion at first, but the Insular

government would progressively take over support of the

Filipino troops. In this, MacArthur insisted, he had both the

cooperation of the governor-general and of the leading

legislative and business leaders. "All," he informed the War

Department, "pledge heartiest support.In addition. General

MacArthur believed that control of these troops could remain

in the hands of the army, even as the Philippine government

assumed a large share of the costs.

The War Department saw the effort to create a viable

manpower reserve in the Philippines as a collaborative effort

^^TAG to MacArthur, 26 February 1929, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA.

^^MacArthur to TAG, 19 October and 1 December 1928, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA.

^"ACS/WPD memorandum for Chief of Staff, 6 November 1928, WPD 3251, RG 165, NA. 112 between Washington and Manila's political and military chiefs.

"Starting a reserve system in the Philippine Islands" was

"extremely complicated" and had to be "worked out to a large extent" in the Philippines itself. The time was finally propitious, thanks in large part to "the personalities of the

Governor General and the Department Commander[:] They could do a great deal to make this dream a reality and to insure to the United States in the years to come a properly protected

Par Eastern base which would be of inestimable value to it."

Having expended a great deal of effort in 1923 and 1924 to get ROTC extended to the Philippines without success, the

War Department was leery of attempting to do so again only five years later. The War Plans Division recommended that the army concentrate on developing the enlisted reserve through application of CMTC. Officers could be acquired through the existing military training programs in the Islands’ colleges and universities "without formally associating these schools with the ROTC." The Adjutant General's office instructed the

Philippine Department to complete plans for training three thousand men on Luzon in 1930-31.

As finally determined upon, the proposed training would concentrate on infantrymen only. Unlike CMTC in the United

States, the Philippine program was to avoid training college students and to focus instead on "men of lower educational qualifications" destined to become "privates and non­ 113 commissioned officers rather than o f f i c e r s . MacArthur pressed forward with a plan to conduct CMTC training at Fort

McKinley in 1931 and continued to urge that the local ROTC- style program be put on an equal footing with the program in the United States.

Little came of the reserve programs stipulated in the

1929 project. In August 1930, the War Department informed

MacArthur that Congress had eliminated CMTC funds for fiscal year 1931. The army had considered approaching Congress about the extension of ROTC to the archipelago, but refrained after the Division of the Budget pointed out the futility of doing so, since any such proposal would be in conflict with

President Herbert Hoover's financial program. The War

Department could only console the Philippine commander and insist that "plans for such training be retained."^®

MacArthur departed Manila on 16 September 1930, leaving behind more expectation than accomplishment. His successor.

Major General John L. Hines, a veteran of three previous tours of duty in the Philippines and a former army chief of staff

(1924-26) who had spent the past four years overseeing ROTC

^ACS/WPD memorandum for ACS/G-3, 24 January 192 9, WPD 3251-2, RG 165, NA.

^^Khaki and Red 10, no. 10 (October 1930):29; MacArthur to TAG, 19 June 1929, and F. LeJ. Parker (BIA Chief) to TAG, 28 June 1929, both in BIA file 28003, RG 350, NA.

^®TAG to HPD, 15 August 1930, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, N A . 114 and CMTC programs in the United States, pledged "enthusiastic support" for MacArthur's proposals. And, he felt, as the army's new chief of staff, MacArthur would be able to lend strong assistance to furthering those goals.

MacArthur soon found himself distracted by more pressing matters in Depression-era Washington. Now, the Philippine defense plans and projects reflected the pessimism of new area commanders. As Morton observed of the early 1930s in the

Philippines, to senior officers "the idea that the weak garrison could hold out against a powerful Japanese attack until reinforcements arrived seemed nothing less than self- delusion."®^ Brigadier General Embick, Commanding General of the Harbor Defenses of Manila and Subic Bays, was no champion of empire, anyway. In 1932 Embick was a veteran of thirty- three years in the army who had not served a tour of duty in the Philippines until arriving to command a coast artillery regiment on Corregidor in 1923.®^ He had visited the

Philippines, sent to the Islands by the War Department with

(in Booth's words) "instructions to determine the character

79 For statements by General Hines of support for Filipino military development, see Khaki and Red 10, no. 10 (October 1930):29, and idem, no. 11 (November 1930):40. A short account of Hines' earlier Philippine service (tours of duty in 1900, 1903, and 1911-12) can be found in Cornejo, Commonwealth Directory, p. 1802.

®®Morton, "War Plan Orange," pp. 236-39.

®^Embick commanded the 59th Coast Artillery, then the only American-manned regiment on Corregidor, from 1923 to 1925. 115 and location of the defenses at the mouth of Manila Bay" at the time of the naval base controversy in 1907. Duty with the

General Staff and the War Plans Division had familiarized him with war plans dealing with Asia. Embick felt that the United

States had legitimate interests in the Far East, but "the

American economy, he was sure, could easily survive if foreign commerce stopped.

A year after arriving in the Islands, General Embick prepared for the Department Commanding General, Major General

Ewing E. Booth, his famous analysis of America's military position in Asia, in which he decried the "madness" inherent in the army's and navy's joint war plan. "The Philippine

Islands have become a military liability of a constantly increasing gravity," Embick wrote. He could see only two

"broadly opposite" options: the constructing of huge naval facilities and the placement of a fleet in the Philippines, or the neutralization of the Islands and the withdrawal of military and naval forces. Unsurprisingly, he had no hesitation in recommending the latter. His much-quoted memorandum has survived precisely because it so closely

^^Booth to TAG, 25 April 1933, WPD 3251-15, RG 165, NA; Schaffer, "Military Dissenter," p. 89; and Dr. Louis Morton interview with Embick, 21 April 1948, Louis Morton Collection, USAMHI. In the interview, Embick stated that he and Lieutenant Colonel F. V. Abbot (misspelled "Abbott" in the interview transcript) had had a broader mandate in 1907: to determine whether coastal defenses should center on Subic or Manila Bay. They chose Corregidor. 116 matched the views of the department commanding general.®^ The

localized and personalized nature of military planning ensured that new projects and Orange plans would reflect the apprehension of Generals Booth and Embick.

Major General Hines (who retired in May 1932) had continued to follow MacArthur's lead, authoring plans which called for confronting the enemy on the beach, but it is instructive that the war plans prepared under his successors were the only ones to include the words "first phase" in their titles. Clearly, their authors had little patience with the

Filipino divisions mobilization scheme incorporated in earlier plans. Subsequent "projects" continued to outline the garrison's enlargement through four mobilization phases, from phase one during which the garrison expanded from peace to war strength, to phase four, by which time presumably a 3rd

Philippine Division would exist with a total war garrison numbering close to eighty thousand soldiers. General Booth included data on these subsequent phases in his defense projects. In prioritizing the garrison's needs to meet the goals of the project, however, he listed support for manpower

reserve programs (upon which third and fourth phase mobilizations were predicated) last, after meeting every other objective, including even construction funds for the peacetime

®^Embick to Booth, "Military Policy of U. S. in Philippine Islands," 19 April 1933, WPD 3251-15, RG 165, NA. 117

garrison's quarters.

The companion war plans mirrored the complete lack of

confidence in constructing a reserve system in the

Philippines. In the 1934 First Phase, Plan Orange, Philippine

Department planners conceded that the enemy was most

vulnerable at the landing place but feared that an enemy

amphibious assault on Bataan might quickly cut off a mobile

force dedicated to maneuvering across the Luzon plain. The mobile troops were thus to concentrate along "a defensive

position in southern Bataan." Only "if time permit[ted]" would

a negligible portion of the Philippine Division contest the

Japanese advance elsewhere and only if doing so did not

jeopardize retirement to the Bataan defensive area. The

American 31st Infantry would proceed immediately to Corregidor

for beach defense. The Philippine Department commanding

general was to be guided in all his actions by the primary

goal of defending the Harbor Defenses "to the last extremity."

Filipino reserves had no place in these plans.

questioned even the reliability of the existent Philippine

Scouts. "A large percentage" of the Filipino soldiers were

aged and physically unfit for the rigors of field service. Nor

could they match the Japanese soldier in loyalty to the cause

for which they would be called upon to fight, the pessimistic

^‘^Basic Document, Philippine Defense Project (1932 Revision), dated 1 October 1932, Special Projects--War Plans "Color," 1920-1948, RG 407, NA. 118

planners concluded.®^

Embick's articulation of the case against defending the

Philippines carved for him a small niche in army history, but

army authorities at the time remained unimpressed. Assistant

Chief of Staff for War Plans Division, Brigadier General

Charles Kilbourne, Embick's predecessor as commander of the

Harbor Defenses and a soldier of vast experience in the

Philippines, did not let his close friendship with Embick keep

him from pointing out that the new Philippine defense plan

gave "missions for existing units only." What had become of

the Filipino-manned divisions envisioned by previous

commanders, asked Kilbourne?®® He also questioned the sudden

emphasis on the immediate retreat to Bataan, a provision de­

emphasized in earlier war plans.

When Booth's successor as Commanding General of the

Philippine Department, Major General Prank Parker, continued

in the same vein, Kilbourne prepared a sharp response for

® G-3 Estimate of the Situation— Philippine Department, First Phase, Plan Orange, 1934" and "Harbor Defenses, First Phase, Plan Orange, 1934." Copies in Special Projects--War Plans "Color," 1920-1948, RG 407, NA. No copy of the 1934 Basic Plan was found, but the Harbor Defenses plan includes "extracts in substance" from the 1934 WPO.

®®Memorandum, Kilbourne to TAG, 17 November 1933, WPD 3251-14, RG 165, NA. Kilbourne acknowledged that the defense plan was entirely "a responsibility of the Department Commander," but since HPD had asked for comment, he felt free to respond. In a 1964 interview with historians William and James Belote, General Albert Wedemeyer described Embick and Kilbourne to be "as close as brothers." The William and James Belote Collection, USAMHI. 119

HacArthur's signature reminding Parker that he, like Booth, had not "studied and weighed the solutions" to the Philippine

Department's perennial problem of few men and overwhelming

Japanese strength. At the very least, Kilbourne wrote, "By organizing and equipping Filipinos, under natural leaders there were possibilities of harassing and delaying operations not only embarrassing to the invaders but tending to encourage the population in an attitude of loyalty that would be lacking if it were made immediately evident that we meant to abandon everything except the fortifications and southern Bataan.

Acceptance of the Tydings-McDuffie Act by the Philippine legislature in May 1934 required an abrupt reappraisal of the army's traditionally obstructionist stance on Philippine independence. In late July, Kilbourne— with MacArthur's approval— had a cable sent to the Commanding General of the

Philippine Department asking his view on the "organization, strength, equipment, distribution, duties and financial support of Commonwealth forces, release of reservations to the

Commonwealth for use of such forces, [and] relations [of] federal forces and Commonwealth forces." At the same time "all

General Staff divisions. Chiefs of War Department Branches, and the Judge Advocate General" were asked to provide the War

^^Kilbourne to Chief of Staff, 21 April 1934, WPD 3251- 17, RG 165, NA. 120

Plans Division with their thinking on the same topic.

General Parker responded in mid-August with a modest proposal to combine eventually the Philippine Scouts with the

Constabulary to produce a ten-thousand man force "organized for both military and police purposes." He saw "no possibility of adequate defense against aggression by a powerful nation."

The Philippine government need only concern itself with ensuring domestic tranquility. Parker, however, shared the view of those who saw the Philippines as America's commercial entrepôt in the Far East. He wanted "Corregidor and its system" transferred to the navy for retention by the United

States. "Under no circumstances or conditions," he declared,

"should this installation be relinquished."®®

Kilbourne was unimpressed. The army should instead, he told the chief of staff, use the transition period "to exert an influence on the nature of the forces to be raised by the

Commonwealth and to be maintained by the subsequent Republican government." During this "period of tutelage," General

Kilbourne believed, the army could guide the Filipinos through

"every phase of the question of their national defense." He

“°ACS/WPD memorandum for Chief of Staff, 23 July 1934, WPD 3251-20, RG 165, NA.

®®Parker to TAG, 17 August 1934, WPD 3251-22, RG 165, NA. Parker repeated his views— minus those on the future of Corregidor--in a letter to Major Regino Padua of the Philippine Reserve Officers Association dated 13 September 1934. Copy in Frank Parker Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC. 121 also opposed the retention of a naval base in the Islands. It could only be "a constant source of friction" and complicate any "international guarantee of Philippine independence."

Like most independent nations, he observed with a measure of common sense which seemed strangely beyond the grasp of many other American military and civilian officials, it was unlikely that the Philippines would "consent to having no regular army." Kilbourne suggested something similar to the national guard as the basis for a Commonwealth army. With

"generous details of Regular Army personnel as commanders

[and] inspector-instructors," a creditable military force would exist by 1946. The army could further build-up a

Philippine army by releasing for military service to the

Philippine government all men of the Scouts who could be spared and by leasing "for a nominal sum" the necessary military reservations for training and housing the Philippine army.^

MacArthur did not approve General Kilbourne's memorandum.

Since his approval of the query to branch chiefs and to the

Philippine garrison commander concerning the Philippines' military future in July, he had been approached by Quezon to become Commonwealth military adviser. His interest in the opinions of others therefore had slackened. The chief of staff handed back Kilbourne's memorandum and dictated a much

®®ACS/WPD memorandum for Chief of Staff, 22 November 1934, WPD 3251-22, RG 165, NA. 122 different response. "No action will be taken," the War Plans

Division chief subsequently informed General Parker, "which could effect, in any way, the initiative of the Filipinos in determining the character of the defense forces to be developed. . . . Should they ask advice or assistance, you will inform them they should submit [a] request to the War

Department for the detail of the necessary officers."

MacArthur approved this cable for transmission, after deleting the latter sentence. When Kilbourne raised the issue again soon after. General MacArthur responded with a handwritten note which read, in part, "Take it easy and do not force developments in this matter. We may be there [the Philippines] ten years--we may even be there indefinitely."^^

General Embick assumed Kilbourne's position as head of the War Plans Division in 1935, and Kilbourne returned to the

Philippines to become Commanding General of the Harbor

Defenses, a post he had also held from 1930 to 1932. In

Washington, Embick lost little time acting on his conviction that army forces could serve little purpose in the

Philippines. Embick thought General MacArthur was neither

"objective [n]or realistic" when considering Philippine defense planning and was instead "guided by his vanity and

^ACS/WPD memorandum for TAG, 6 December 1934 (modified and approved by General MacArthur, 7 December 1934) and ACS/WPD memorandum for Secretary, General Staff, 14 December 1934 (note signed by General MacArthur, dated 17 December 1934, attached), both in WPD 3251-22, RG 165, NA. 123 his emotions." Convinced that the growth of air power and

Japanese possession of the mandated islands had irrevocably undermined the once-sound (pre-World War One) Philippine defense plans. General Embick worked with navy planners to devise a more cautious plan to defeat the Japanese navy and return American authority to the Western Pacific. The army and navy war plans divisions determined upon a scheme to

"advance in progressive stages" across the Pacific, a plan which would inevitably delay relief of the distant garrison.

Embick sold MacArthur on the revised plan for war against

Japan, "disingenuously" maintaining that the war plan in substance remained unchanged. MacArthur, according to Edward

Miller, the author of the most detailed study of the episode, bought the new plan and in doing so "signed the death warrant of Bataan and Corregidor."^3 According to his own testimony

(not evaluated by Miller), however, MacArthur was not unaware of the implications of the Joint Board's War Plan Orange; he simply placed no value in the plan. Some years later, in 1939,

MacArthur explained his thinking to Bonner Fellers, a former member of his military advisory group: "I recall my complete

^Morton, "War Plan Orange," pp. 240-41; Miller, War Plan Orange. p. 183; Embick interview, 21 April 1948, Louis Morton Collection, USAMHI.

^Miller, War Plan Orange. p. 183. Miller is, of course, incorrect in stating that MacArthur "then retired and set out for Manila." If Miller's analysis of Embick's duplicitous (as Miller portrays it, perhaps unintentionally) action is correct, it would seem more logical to conclude that Embick "signed the death warrant of the Philippine garrison." 124 disagreement with the Orange Plan when I became Chief of

Staff, but I realized at once that I would be wasting my time in trying to educate others to my own point of view. I, therefore, short-circuited [the normal planning process] by seeing the President personally." The chief of staff informed

President Franklin Roosevelt that the army had every intention of defending the nation's overseas possessions, and the

President concurred. "This being the case," MacArthur continued, "the Orange Plan was a completely useless document.

The military system subsequently devised for the

Philippines by American army officers did not, of course, replicate the provisions of the Philippine Department's War

Plans Orange. Attitudes and insights formed over the course of two decades of "project" and "plan" writing, however, did contribute to the Military Mission's understanding of the purpose and needs of a Philippine defense force. As Military

Adviser, MacArthur would explicitly link his defense plan to

"years of study of the problem while serving successively as a Brigade, Division, and Department Commander of United States forces in the Islands.For their part, Filipino leaders

^MacArthur to Fellers, 1 June 1939, RG-1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 2. Hunt reprinted this letter in Untold Story, p. 138, but he identified the recipient (Fellers) only as "a brilliant young regular officer."

^^Memorandum from MacArthur to President Manuel Quezon, 8 December 1939, RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 2 . 125 cannot have helped but notice the importance of local participation in and guidance of that planning. Army officers in the Philippines played instrumental roles in defining the extent of local involvement in defense affairs and therefore in limiting or expanding military service opportunities for

Filipinos--all the more reason to choose the most sympathetic officer of all to return to the archipelago to direct and guide the development of the Commonwealth's army. CHAPTER III

THE FILIPINO PHILIPPINE SCOUT OFFICERS OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

In late January 1936, the Commanding General of the

Philippine Division paused near Lingayen, a city at the

southernmost end of the gulf of the same name, to pose for a

photograph with his divisional staff. Earlier, troops of the

Division's 23rd Infantry Brigade had left their cantonment

near Manila and moved north in two columns to the gulf, the

first time the brigade had visited that "strategic area" since

1931. Along the way, soldiers of the 23rd and 24th Field

Artillery Regiments and the non-divisional 26th Cavalry, all

from Fort Stotsenburg, joined the march. Brigadier General

Alfred T. Smith and the officers of his staff had reason to

look satisfied. The Division's all-Filipino units, motorized

only the previous year, had engaged in a highly successful

display of tactical mobility over the difficult terrain of the

Central Luzon plain, long considered a likely field of

operations in a war against the .^

^Information on the photograph and march is taken from "'Siaue Dagupan,' The 1936 March of the Philippine Division," by Major J. Lawton Collins, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3, Philippine Division, in J. Lawton Collins Papers, Eisenhower Library.

126 127

Of equal interest is what the photograph did not show.

In January 1936--birth-n\onth of the Philippine Army— the

Philippine Department included twenty-six Filipino officers.

Born and raised in the Philippines, they had also spent the

entirety of their military service, and for several that

amounted to twenty to thirty years' of service, assigned to

Filipino units in the islands. Several had risen to major or

lieutenant colonel, yet not one appears with General Smith in

the picture of the Philippine Division staff.% The

establishment of the Philippine Army thrust these officers

into prominence soon after. Their experience and professional military training, however unappreciated by the United States

Army, made them the leading contenders for commanding

positions in the military forces of their native land.

As early as October 1899, within weeks of recruiting his

first company of Macabebe volunteers to fight alongside the

Americans, Matthew Batson had sought permission to appoint two Filipinos as in his new

command. At this further proposal to use native soldiery in

the service of the United States, Eighth Army Corps Commanding

^All divisional staff positions except that of commanding general and chief of staff were held by lieutenants colonel and majors. See list of officers in "U.S. Army, Philippine Department, Department Headquarters Personnel, and Stations and Troops (As of March 20, 1937)," reprinted in Miguel R. Cornejo (ed.), Cornejo's Commonwealth Directory of the Philippines. Encyclopedic Edition, L i l i (Manila: By the Author, 1939), pp. 730-65. One Philippine Scout officer was on the staff. Lieutenant Colonel Seth Frear, the signals officer. 128

General Elwell S. Otis "drew the line. American officers supportive of the use of native troops held native officers in low regard, suspecting that they would be untrustworthy,

lack initiative, and prove disloyal.^

Still, a handful of Filipinos succeeded in gaining commissions in the early Scout companies. The Army

Reorganization Act of provided for the appointment of native officers, and three Filipinos obtained commissions as second lieutenants in 1902.^ By the end of

World War One, the army had commissioned six others from civilian life or the enlisted ranks. These "commissions," like

James R. Woolard, "The Philippine Scouts: The Development of America's Colonial Army" (PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1975), p. 13. Woolard portrays a cautious but open-minded Otis authorizing the arming of Macabebes after discussing Batson's proposal with his division commanders. Majors General Henry Lawton and Arthur MacArthur. Ibid., pp. 8-9. Stuart C. Miller claims that Secretary of War , who had been sold on the idea by Lawton, forced Otis to recruit Philippine natives for military service. See Miller, "Benevolent Assimilation": The American Conquest of the Philippines. 1899-1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 81.

^Woolard, "Philippine Scouts," p. 225; Clayton D. Laurie, "The Philippine Scouts: America's Colonial Army, 1899-1913" Philippine Studies 37 (1989): 183-84. Laurie writes also that Chairman William H. Taft thought "it would be unwise for Filipinos to lead Filipinos," but he misreads Taft's words. In the testimony which Laurie refers to, Taft supported a "mixture of Filipino officers and American officers." He specifically opposed Filipino leadership of a regiment of one thousand native soldiers. See Henry F . Graff (ed.), American Imperialism and the Philippine Insurrection (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1969), p. 121.

^Woolard, "Philippine Scouts," pp. 226-27. These were Crispulo Patajo (retired 1922), Jose Maria del Rosario (discharged 1903), and Pedro Lora (died 1903). 129 those granted to the American Philippine Scout officers, were four-year appointments as lieutenants of Philippine Scout companies. They were renewable upon satisfactory service and the needs of the army.

The success of these few native officers was reflective of an anomaly in the army's institutionalized racism. While the army viewed Filipinos, as a group, as unworthy of commissioned status, individual military officers might extend patronage to individual Filipinos whose mettle excited their admiration. This phenomenon appeared in the army's dichotomous approach to the commissioning of black officers, the most noted example being "America's First Black General," Benjamin

0. Davis. A commissioned veteran of the 10th United States

Volunteer Infantry Regiment and sergeant in the regular 9th

Cavalry, Davis impressed several of the regiment's officers with his education, bearing, and experience. They supported his effort to obtain a regular commission, and in 1901 Davis became one of two black soldiers to do so.^

The pattern for these early Filipino officers may have been similar. Philippines Division Commanding General William

P. Duvall, for example, interceded to advance the careers of

Filipino Lieutenants Crispulo Patajo and Ygnacio Abelino after

Marvin E. Fletcher, America's First Black General: Beniamin O. Davis. Sr., 1880-1970 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), pp. 24-27. 130

they had failed to qualify for promotion to captain.^ Patajo,

one newspaper article later claimed, had been more feared by rebels during the Phi 1 ippine-American War than "any other man in the islands except Funston."®

However sympathetic some army officers may have been to granting local military commissions to a few Filipinos, it remained for civilian William Howard Taft to set in motion the creation of a professional Filipino officer corps. Taft had arrived, reluctantly, in the Philippines as chairman of the

Second Philippine Commission in June 1900. With the departure of military governor General Arthur MacArthur a year later,

Taft remained to become the first civil governor (a title later changed to governor-general) of the American-occupied archipelago. While Taft shared the common belief that the

Filipinos were "incapable of governing themselves," the lowly tao "'ignorant and superstitious,'" the upper class "glib and superficial," he nevertheless considered them to be "capable of improvement." The governor's policy was to prepare

Washington's new subjects for popular "self-government," a phrase of indeterminate meaning but which fell short of full independence. Taft emphasized public education and economic

^Woolard, "Philippine Scouts," pp. 227-28. Abelino was a former enlisted man who resigned his commission in 1812.

^Boston Transcript (30 September 1920), clipping in BIA 1877-114, RG 350, NA. 131 development, but he did not overlook the military imperatives of self-government.9

As Secretary of War in 1908, Taft testified before the

House Committee on Military Affairs that although the 1901

Reorganization Act allowed natives of the Philippines to be appointed as junior officers in the Scout companies, he was of the opinion that "We have not any Filipinos that are fitted to be made officers. Taft also had a well-established record of antipathy to the army's enlisted ranks, and he did not consider the expedient of granting temporary commissions to American noncommissioned officers to be an acceptable alternative. Taft's solution was to allow Filipinos to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Taft argued that Congress had generously allowed citizens of other countries "to enjoy the benefits of education at West

Point." Of course, those students (or their governments) had had to pay their own expenses, but he thought the Philippine

Commission would be willing to support five Filipino cadets.

He pointed out that the Commission was already paying the expenses of one hundred Filipino students in the United

States. Committee Chairman John Hull agreed that it was a

Glenn A. May, Social Engineering in the Philippines: The Aims. Execution, and Impact of American Colonial Policy. 1900- 1913 (1980; reprint, Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1984), pp. 9-16.

.S. Congress, House, Hearings Before the House Committee on Military Affairs on Army Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 1908-09. 60th Cong., 1st sess., 1908, pp. 243-45, microfiche ed., HMi 60B. 132

"case of educating people that we are responsible for," and

he shared Taft's desire of having the Philippines recognized

"as part of this country."

One member of the Military Affairs Committee, James

Slayden of Texas, said little during the hearings, but he

spoke more frankly on the floor of the House. When the

Military Academy appropriation bill for fiscal year 1909 came

before Congress, Slayden denounced the decision to allow

Filipinos to attend West Point as "a cheap bribe" calculated

"to break [the Filipinos'] loyalty to their own race and to

the cause of Philippine independence." The idea was, he said,

"cunningly designed, too, for nothing is so apt to catch the

fancy of a semisavage people as the military bauble.” To the

applause of many Democratic colleagues, Slayden denounced the

country's increasing ties with the "Malay hybrids" of the

Philippine Islands, and he identified the "Filipino mad" Taft

as the originator of the provision. To Slayden, the arrival

of Filipino cadets to the Military Academy "indicate[d] a

policy" of growing involvement in Asia which was costly,

militarily dangerous, and deleterious of the nation's racial

exclusivity. It was a policy he did not hesitate to condemn.

In response, Taft's supporters identified several themes

relative to the building of indigenous military forces which

would occur again and again in the coming decades. Democratic

Representative Richmond Hobson of argued that, if the

United States "would hasten the day when th ? Filipinos could 133 be safely intrusted [sic] with the responsibility of self- government, [it] must carry forward their education in the science and art of self-defense." As he further noted, the government had given "to the oriental nation that may come to conquer the Philippines" (he meant China) the right to send soldiers to West Point; surely the Filipinos' rights were superior. More to the point, Hobson pointed out that in "the absence of a large, mobile Army in America and of transports," only the Filipinos could provide the necessary land forces to defend the Islands.

As finally approved, the academy appropriation bill provided for four (one for each year of the four-year course of instruction) Filipinos to enter West Point. However, it required Filipino cadets to serve at least eight years in the army following graduation, rather than the five years demanded of American cadets. Editorially, the Armv and Navy Journal supported Taft's proposition with the proviso that the

Filipino cadets be chosen from the enlisted ranks of the

Philippine Scouts or Constabulary.^^ The army itself had remained conspicuously silent throughout the debate. As it no doubt realized, the decision to allow Filipino graduates of

West Point to obtain commissions in the Philippine Scouts held great portent. Commissions had been based on proven loyalty through active service, a policy the Armv and Navv Journal's

^^Armv and Navv Journal (15 February 1908). 134

suggestion would have perpetuated. Now, however, Filipinos with vastly different backgrounds and expectations would enter

the army's commissioned grades.

It soon became obvious that the Secretary of War had embraced the cause of Filipino entry into West Point more avidly than had most Filipinos. Several years would pass before any Filipino presented himself for admission to the

Military Academy. In the interim, the Bureau of Insular

Affairs would search among Filipino students in the Islands and in the United States to identify suitable candidates for the honor of representing their country at West Point.

The Class of 1912 (those cadets who entered in 1908) had begun its passage through the academy when the Filipino cadet bill passed. Taft directed the academy's Academic Board to prepare a suitable examination for Filipino applicants and to expect a student from the Philippines for the next year's class, which would form in March 1909.^^ In selecting Filipino candidates, the government evolved a selection process similar in detail to that used in the United States but more meritocratic. In the United States, while some Congressmen allowed any otherwise qualified applicant to take part in an

"open, competitive examination" and appointed the one who scored highest, political connections could also play an

^^TAG to BIA, 3 July 1908, BIA 11685-7, RG 350, NA. Captain Joseph S. Herron, Academy Adjutant, prepared the examination. Armv and Navv Journal (1 August 1908). 135

important role in gaining admission to the academy. In the

Philippines, the applicant who obtained the highest score on

a test given by the Bureau of Civil Service was designated by

the Secretary of War (from 1916 by the governor-general and,

after 1935, by the President of the Commonwealth) as candidate

and first or second alternate. The test was similar to the

academy entrance examination, covering algebra, plane

geometry, history, geography, and English composition, grammar

and literature.

Once the Adjutant General's office in Washington received

the names of successful applicants from the Bureau of Insular

Affairs, it sent letters to the applicants authorizing them

to appear before a board of army officers for the official

academy physical and mental examination. This board of five

officers (including two medical officers) usually met in

January at Fort William McKinley near Manila. The Board

received detailed instructions regarding the physical exam and

In Eisenhower: Soldier. General of the Armv. President- Elect, 1890-1954. Vol. 1 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 39, Stephen Ambrose argues that most Senators allowed any applicant to compete when Dwight Eisenhower sought an academy appointment in 1910, but other authors assert the opposite. When Lucius Clay went to the academy in 1914, biographer Jean Edward Smith writes, "there were no competitive examinations and few merit appointments" since "most legislators looked on their appointments as patronage rewards for the sons of deserving supporters." See Smith, Lucius D. Clay: An American Life (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1990), p. 33. J. Lawton Collins, who entered West Point in 1913, also found a "contact" useful, his uncle the mayor of . See Collins, Lightning Joe: An Autobiography (Baton Rouge: State University Press, 1979), pp. 5-6. 136 copies of the mental examination from West Point. The Board then returned the completed tests to the academy where a board of professors and instructors determined which contestant would receive the cadetship.

If the "candidate" passed the tests, he could proceed to

West Point. He need not have outscored the alternates. If the candidate failed, the passing alternate received the appointment. (Never did two applicants pass the test for the same year.) There were minimum scores for each portion of the test (algebra, history, composition, etc.), but anyone who passed all sections was informed merely that he had passed the test. Only if the applicant failed one or more sections did the academy provide the actual test scores.

The selection of Filipinos for West Point was never an easy task. Not for several years would any candidate pass the local qualifying exam. Even more disturbing, few made the attempt. In a Philippine Bureau of Education circular dated

29 June 1911, Director of Education Frank R. White informed his division superintendents that no one had showed up for the qualifying test in May. He rescheduled the test for August and urged superintendents and teachers "to assist in securing desirable candidates for this examination."^^ Little had

changed the following year, when acting education director

^‘^Armv and Navv Journal (1 August 1908).

^^Bureau of Education, circular no. 81, series 1911, BIA 11685-32, RG 350, NA. 137

Frank Crone revealed that no one had passed the May 1912 test.

He suggested that "properly qualified Filipinos" were apparently unaware of the "exceptional opportunity" for a free education "at one of the best American colleges" with an annual salary of 3400 pesos ($1700) afterwards. He urged his teachers to identify and encourage suitable students to take the examination.^® Again in 1913, however, student response to the examination announcement was depressingly familiar. The

Bureau of Education was once more trying to "scare up" interest in attending West Point, a military weekly in the

Islands reported.

Slowly, Filipino cadets began to join the academy classes. The almost complete lack of biographies, memoirs or other studies of the Filipino officers complicates their collective portrayal, yet generalizations can be made about the Filipino officers of the United States Army, drawing primarily on their West Point cadet records. Admittedly these give but a partial view. Only sixteen of the thirty-eight

Filipinos who obtained commissions in the pre-war Philippine

Scouts graduated from the military academy, but records exist for four additional cadets who either failed to graduate or did not receive a commission upon completion of the academy

^®Bureau of Education, circular no. 93, series 1912, BIA 11685-39, RG 350, NA.

^^Armv and Navv Journal of the Philippines 1, no. 7 (19 July 1913). 138

course. The records’ contents also vary slightly over time, making exact comparisons impossible. Those cadets who entered

the academy from 1910 to 1914 completed a two-page

questionnaire requesting their family and educational backgrounds. The format of the records changed after 1914 but

required much the same information, with some details added

(such as religion of applicant) and others deleted (such as nationality of parents).

Geographically, all but one of the cadets came from the island of Luzon. Of these eighteen, northern Luzon (Ilocos

Norte, , and Cagayan provinces) was home to five, two came from southern Luzon (Tayabas and Island), and the remainder from (the provinces of

Pangasinan, Neuva Ecija, , , , Laguna, and the city of Manila). One cadet came from province, on the island of Panay in the Visayas.

Very few cadet families appear to have had a military background. A notable exception was that of Emilio Aguinaldo,

Jr., who entered the academy in 1923 (but failed to graduate).

He was the son of the revolution-era general and commander of the army of the First Philippine Republic. Emmanuel Cepeda,

Class of 1933, listed a Philippine Constabulary lieutenant.

‘"Record for cadets who graduated before 1920 are found in the United States Military Academy archives. West Point, New York. Records for later graduates are held in the Office of the Dean, United States Military Academy. American cadets used the same forms. 139

a cousin, as his guardian. Several of the West Point cadets

(six of nineteen) had served in a high school or university

cadet corps, and one was an enlisted veteran of the short­

lived Philippine National Guard Division of 1918-19.

A majority of those who listed the occupation of parent

or guardian claimed to be sons of farmers (nine of seventeen).

Presumably their fathers were at least modest land-owners. The

early application forms offered a choice of "country," "town,"

or "city" home residences to choose from, and all applicants

marked "town." The label "farmer" apparently denoted a great

deal of flexibility, as Aguinaldo listed it as his well-to-do

father's occupation, too. Other fathers' (or mothers')

occupations were merchant, proprietor, government clerk,

laborer, druggist, and even one "landowner." Maximiano

Janeiro's parents "owned and managed income producing

properties--rice land, fish ponds, deep sea fishing boats, and

a two-masted sailing ship."^^

The applicants' educational attainments placed them wel1-

up on the Islands' social ladder. At a time when slightly

less than eight percent of the Philippines' secondary school-

^Maximiano S. Janairo questionnaire. Colonel Janeiro, USA, Ret., (USMA Class of 1930) is the youngest of the three Filipino officer veterans of the pre-war Philippine Scouts surviving at the time research for this dissertation was undertaken. The other two are Lieutenant Colonel Santiago G. Guevara, USA, Ret., (USMA Class of 1923) who, with the aid of his wife. Carmen F. Guevara, completed a questionnaire and was interviewed, and Colonel Amado Martelino, USA, Ret., (appointed 1921) who was not contacted. 140 age children attended high school, and only about one-third of those graduated,^ all of the Filipino cadets appear to have graduated from high school. (The earliest forms required information concerning school attendance, but not graduation.)

As Filipino historian Bonifacio S. Salamanca concluded of the pensionados (those students chosen to obtain advanced degrees at Philippine government expense in the United States), their possession of a high school diploma alone placed them among the Islands' elite. Most high school students, he writes, were from "rich families . . . [a]s late as 1923." In selecting pensionados, Taft advised his school superintendents to give weight to social status, as well.^^ His testimony before the

House Military Affairs Committee suggests he viewed the selection of West Point candidates similarly.

Three officers, Vicente Barros, Vicente Lim and Salvador

Reyes, attended the Philippine Normal School, considered by its American founders to be (before the establishment of the

University of the Philippines in 1908) "the crown of the educational system of the islands," although in reality it was

^Philippine Islands, Board of Education, A Survey of the Educational System of the Philippine Islands (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1925), pp. 318, 332.

B. Salamanca, The Filipino Reaction to American Rule (1968; reprint, Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1984), pp. 78-79. 141 in the nature of a high s c h o o l . ^ All but four of the nineteen cadets attended post-secondary schools for at least a few months. Thirteen attended the University of the Philippines, from which one obtained an associate degree. Five officers appointed direct from civil life had post-secondary degrees from universities in either the Philippines (two from the

University of the Philippines and one from Santo Tomas) or the

United States before commissioning.^*

Only three of the nineteen cadets who entered West Point between 1908 and 1929 failed to graduate (a fourth was not commissioned upon graduation for health reasons). While one cadet finished at the bottom of his class, most posted more respectable results. Seven finished in the top half of the class; four of those in the top third. Rufo C. Romero, Class of 1931, led the Filipino cadets in class standing, finishing

^^Census of the Philippine Islands. 1903. Vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of the Census, 1905), p. 664. In a biographical sketch of Vicente Lim, Miguel Cornejo describes graduation from the Normal School as "equivalent to completion of the second year of the present [1939] high school course." See Commonwealth Directory, p. 1885. no ^■^Pedro D. Dulay, commissioned in 1912, graduated from St. John's School, Manlius, New York, in 1910; Nicolas B. Dalao, commissioned in 1921, obtained a bachelor of science degree from Highland Park College in 1918. The Armv Register places this school in Kansas, but the only college of that name at the time was in Des Moines, Iowa. See Homer L. Patterson (ed.), Patterson's American Educational Directory. Vol. 15 (Chicago: American Educational Co., 1918), p. 139. 142

sixteenth in a class of 297.As the editors of the academy

yearbook, the Howitzer. acknowledged, the first Filipino

cadets had little incentive to excel academically. With their

service restricted to the Philippine Scouts, then exclusively

organized as infantry troops, the usual perk for those who

finished near the top of the class--a choice of career path

(engineers, coast artillery, field artillery, cavalry, and

infantry, in order of usual preference)--was not available.

Until the reorganization of the Philippine garrison in the early 1920s, therefore, all of the Filipino graduates became infantry officers. With the creation of the Philippine

Division in 1922, the conversion of several infantry units

into coast artillery regiments, and the replacement of the

Camp Stotsenburg-based 9th Cavalry with a new, Filipino- manned, regiment, the Twenty-Sixth, Filipino graduates of West

Point enjoyed the full range of career options. The 26th

Information taken from cadet records. Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the United States Military Academy (published annually by the academy), and Register of Graduates and Former Cadets of the United States Military Academy (published annually by the Association of Graduates). Use of a proper name indicates that the information is from a published source. Lieutenant Romero gambled and lived far beyond his means. Heavily in debt, he sold classified material taken from his office with the 14th Engineers at Fort McKinley and was dismissed from the army (and imprisoned in the United States) in 1940. Details of Romero's activities, arrest, and trial can be found in HPD, Office of the Chief of Staff for Military Intelligence, "Reports on Subversive Activities," dated 31 October 1940 and 1 December 1940, in MID 10582-100, RG 165, NA. Contemporary newspapers gave his trial extensive coverage.

25Howitzer (1914), p. 69 143

Cavalry had four Filipino officers, the 24th Field Artillery, eight, and the 14th Engineers, three. Whether by design or accident, the army assigned nine of the ten coast artillery officers to the 92nd Regiment, and only one to the 91st. Six of the ten infantry officers went to the 45th Infantry, the regiment divided between Baguio, McKinley, and Zamboanga.

Examination of the life and career of the Philippines' first graduate of West Point and professionally the most successful, Vicente Podico Lim, provides a more intimate portrait of the Filipino officers. Lim was born in the town of Calamba, Laguna (about ten hours' ride by pony-cart south of Manila) in 1888.^® His father, who died in 1897, was Chinese and his mother a Chinese mestiza. Although the Lim children

"grew up identifying themselves with the Filipino rather than the Chinese community," Vicente thought his Chinese heritage worth noting. On the academy admission form he listed his father's "nationality" as "citizen of Phil. Is. but of Chinese blood." (In fact, not until the appointment of the

Philippines' fourth candidate to West Point, Luis R. Salvosa

The details of Lim's life and military career are taken from Edilberto C. de Jesus' introduction to To Inspire and To Lead: The Letters of Gen. Vicente Lim. 1938-1942 (Manila: By the Family, 1980), pp. 13-18; Lim's West Point admission forms; the Armv List and Directory and the Armv Register: and other sources as cited. On Calamba, also the birthplace of José , see Austin Coates, Rizal: Philippine Nationalist and Martvr (1968; reprint, Manila: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 5. According to de Jesus, the Lims and Rizals were friends in Calamba. 144 of , Tayabas, did the candidates unequivocally state their parents' nationalities to be "Filipino" and "Filipina.")

Lim studied at the Liceo de Manila and completed the teacher training program at the Philippine Normal School. Like a considerable number of other officers (both Scout and

Constabulary), he then tried his hand at teaching public school. He returned to the Normal School and, encouraged by one of his teachers, took in 1908 what must have been the first West Point qualifying examination administered by the

Philippine Bureau of Civil Service.

None of the fourteen or so applicants passed the test, but Pablo del Villas of Nueva Caceres and Lim were considered

"promising candidates" for admission, and Governor-General

James F. Smith designated them candidate and alternate, respectively.27 Fearful about their chances, the BIA lined up a second alternate in the United States, Sotero Baluyut, a student at Iowa University. Lim, however, passed the test and arrived at West Point, New York, to begin his military career

in March 1910. It is not clear why he did not enter in 1909; possibly the examining process, which required documents to be shipped back and forth across the Pacific several times, simply took too long to meet the March 1909 entry date. It

also seems likely that Lim was too old to attend the academy

27gmith to Secretary of War, 9 September 1908, BIA 11685- 12, RG 350, NA. 145 and indulged in the time-honored practice of adopting a birth- date more amenable to academy regulations.^®

The factors which motivated Lim to attend the military

academy are unknown. Like most Filipino cadets, Lim had no military background, although he reputedly "organized the

children his age to serve as couriers for the forces of

General Malvar operating in the Calamba area" during the

Philippine-American War. Years later, a journalist wrote of

him that "even in his youth, young Lim showed a fondness for military life and had a profound and consuming love for the

glitter of the uniform and the well-disciplined life of men

in the service."^® Philippine Bureau of Education and local

publicity presented West Point as the source of a government-

sponsored education with a good job to follow.®® Eighteen years

after Lim left for New York, Maximiano Janairo sought an

academy education because it offered a "sure job after

®Cadets officially reported to West Point on 1 March (later changed to 14 June) and could not have passed their twenty-second birthday by that date. Army records show Lim's birthday as 5 April 1888, but To Inspire and To Lead, published by the Lim family, shows it as being 24 February 1888. Of course, had Lim acknowledged the latter date he would not have been eligible to attend the academy. Officially, Lim was the third oldest member of his class.

^^Philippines Herald (29 April 1936).

®®BIA 11685-61, RG 350, NA, includes a translation of an article detailing the benefits of an academy education which appeared in the Spanish-language newspaper La Democracia (Manila) on 28 June 1913, under the faintly enthusiastic headline "Whoever wants to go to West Point can take advantage of a good opportunity." 146 graduation" and a chance "to see what America was 1 ike. "^1

Similar goals probably motivated Lim. A common reason for young Americans to pursue an academy appointment was, after all, no more exalted than the chance to get a free education.

Lim was not the first non-American to attend the United

States Military Academy, but they remained an uncommon sight.

The first Asians to complete the academy course, two cadets from China, had graduated the year before Lim arrived. His own class included one cadet from and one from Ecuador, but neither graduated. In fact, Lim's arrival at the academy coincided with a campaign by West Point's new superintendent.

General Thomas Barry, to upgrade potential cadets' preparatory training, and he was especially scornful of foreign cadets, whom he claimed were routinely "carried along" despite their failure to meet academy standards.

If Lim underwent the full rigors of "Beast Barracks" and experienced the other unpleasantries of plebe life, common sense suggests that Taft's known interest in the progression of the Filipino cadets stayed the hand of even the most obtuse

31Colonel Janairo Questionnaire.

^^See Barry's testimony in "Hearings Before the House Committee on Military Affairs on the Military Academy Appropriation Bill for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1913," pp. 6-8, microfiche ed. HMi 62P, and his comments in the published Annual Report of the Superintendent. United States Military Academy. Barry was superintendent from 1910 to 1912. In the case of "foreign cadets," he referred specifically to students from Cuba and Costa Rica. Barry had hardly more favorable words for many American applicants. 147

upperclassman. Black Americans had been spared the usual

harshness of the new cadets' first weeks but only to show them

that they did not belong and were not wanted, and there is no

evidence to indicate that Lim or any future Filipino cadet

confronted that even more unpleasant welcome to West Point.

Aside from English, in which he was found "deficient" (a

distinction he shared with one other classmate, future Air

Force George E. Stratemeyer, who was turned back to graduate in 1915), Lim "did well in math and chemistry

and excelled in Spanish," a subject in which he also proved

"a never tiring helper of goats." He remained at or near the bottom of the class in the purely military subjects, "drill

regulations" and "practical military engineering."^^ On 12

June 1914 cadet Lim received his commission as a second

lieutenant, graduating seventy-seventh in a class of one hundred and seven. One hundred and thirty-three cadets had entered West Point four years and three months earlier.

When Lieutenant Lim arrived home in late 1914 (via Europe and the Far East), he entered an organization still undergoing

The first two Filipino cadets did room together, once Anastacio Q. Ver (Class of 1915) arrived in 1911, which might suggest that neither did American cadets embrace the Filipinos. See Howitzer (1914), p. 69, for room assignments. Neither Colonels Janairo nor Guevara recalled being treated any differently than any other cadets.

^^Lim, To Inspire and To Lead, p. 15; Howitzer (1914), p. 69. Course standings can be found in the Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the United States Military Academy. published annually by the academy printing office. 148 the transition from scout to soldier. Filipino officers were noted mostly for their rarity; only five held commissions. The army, discomfited by the presence of any non-white officer, would have been doubly troubled by Lim's arrival. He shared the educational background of the handful of regular army officers assigned to command Philippine Scout battalions, at increased local rank, yet all other Scout officers held short­ term local commissions. Most of them reverted to regular army enlisted status upon termination of their position in the

Scouts.

What they thought of him is not known, but Lim clearly came to hold his fellow American Scout officers in contempt.

In 1927, Lim reminded Major John Sullivan, assistant to BIA

Chief General Frank McIntyre, of the need to "eliminate the unfit" American officers still serving with the Philippine

Scouts. "I have many friends in the Scouts," Lim wrote, "but

I can frankly state that as a whole they are the greatest handicap for the government. . . . The great majority of them are even disgusted with their ownsel ves.

To his fellow Scout officers, service with the Filipino soldiers remained the pinnacle of their professional careers.

Lim, however, felt constrained by the parochialism of Scout duty in distant provinces. "I feel ashamed that I am not doing what I should or could do [for] my people," Lim wrote to

^^Lim to Sullivan, 29 December 1927, BIA 1877-147, RG 350, NA. 149

Resident Commissioner Manuel Quezon in 1915 from his station at Fort San Pedro, near the city of Iloilo. "I will get out of the scouts at any cost if I could only widen my education on military subjects," he asserted. The young lieutenant sought Quezon's help in getting assigned to Europe as a military observer. The education he would receive, Lim believed, far outweighed any risk to his life.^G

Surprisingly, the racial prejudice which permeated the army in those years does not appear to have manifested itself in overt discrimination against Filipino officers. This was a far cry from the problems confronting the army's few other non-white officers. African-American Benjamin 0. Davis, Jr. entered West Point in 1932 and almost immediately found himself "silenced." This treatment, usually reserved for

cadets who violated the honor code and then refused to resign,

ensured that Davis dined alone, bunked alone, and spoke to no

one other than in the line of duty until he left in 1936. As

Davis knew from the start, the other cadets subjected him to

silencing simply because most did not want black officers in

the army. A black cadet who had been "found" for academic

deficiency in 1929 had faced the same treatment as did a cadet who was severely harassed and then dismissed in 1935.^7

^^Lim to Quezon, 6 July 1915, Quezon Papers, microfilm ed., reel 50.

^Benjamin 0. Davis, Jr., An Autobiography (Washington, D. C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), pp. 27, 36, 44. 150

To Davis' surprise and disgust, this treatment continued

after graduating from the academy. Among other slights, he was denied membership in officers' clubs both in the South,

at Fort Benning, Georgia, and later at , Kansas.

Like his army-officer father before him, Davis faced the dreary, demoralizing prospect of repeated assignments to

Junior ROTC units at black colleges or with one of a small number of black National Guard organizations, "professionally disadvantageous" but "'safe'" assignments where he would not command white enlisted men nor outrank a white officer/^

Filipino officers held generally fond memories of their relationships with white officers, both in the academy and

later in the regular army. Filipino officers could join the local military clubs and participate in the garrison's social activities, although one American officer who served in the

Islands observed that the Manila Army and Navy Club normally excluded natives from membership "no matter how lofty their position in Filipino circles" and only begrudgingly tolerated the Filipino military officers, "since they were in effect

Army officers. Many years after living at Fort Santiago, then the location of Philippine Department headquarters, army dependent Nancy Taylor remembered that her father, the

2®Ibid. , pp. 4, 57-58, 69.

^^Charles F. Ivins, "The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga," p. 30. This unpublished manuscript recounts Ivins' duty with the 45th Infantry in Zamboanga from 1932-34, in Charles F. Ivins Papers, USAMHI. 151

Department's Assistant Judge Advocate General, enjoyed "many

pleasant visits" with Scout officer and fellow academy

classmate Pastor Martelino.^*

Time, no doubt, mellowed these recollections. Vicente

Lim's letters reveal that Filipino officers were discriminated

against on the basis of race, or so the admittedly thin-

skinned Lim thought. As early as 1914, Lim had complained to

Manuel Quezon of the insults and petty harassment he had

suffered because of his color. Later, stationed with the 45th

Infantry Regiment at Fort McKinley in 1922, then-Captain Lim

refused a transfer to Corregidor "when it became apparent that

the reason for the order was to free living quarters at the

Fort for incoming American officers." The commanding general

of the Scout Brigade at McKinley, Douglas MacArthur, backed

down, and Lim remained at the more desirable post near Manila.

As a result of similar unpleasant experiences, Lim would later write, "there was always a question of how long [he] [w]ould

stay in the army.

Lim was not the only officer unhappy with his status.

"Filipinos in Army May Quit," a headline in the Phi 1ippines

Herald read a few months after Lim's run-in with the army

^^Letter, Nancy Taylor Evans to author, 3 March 1992. Evans' father was Major A. Rhu Taylor (USMA 1920). The family lived in the Philippines from 1939 to 1941.

^^Lim, To Inspire and To Lead, pp. 16, 18, 230. For a litany of complaints about his treatment as a young officer, see also Lim to Quezon, 27 November 1914, Quezon Papers, microfilm ed., reel 50. 152 brass. The Filipino Scout officers complained that they were tired of discrimination and assignments not worthy of their rank and experience. Some demanded positions with the civil government. Thirty-five year old Major Vicente Barros, the

Scout officer who had been commissioned the longest (since

1912), even retired from the army to become the superintendent of a penal colony.

A barrage of appointments from civil life in 1921 and a handful of United States Naval Academy graduates rounded out the Filipino officer corps of the Philippine Scouts. For reasons which are not clear, but which may have been related to the creation of the Philippine Division, eleven Filipinos received commissions as second lieutenants in the Philippine

Scouts in 1921, mostly in August and November. These eleven comprised nearly one-third of all Filipinos who obtained Scout commissions throughout the period of American occupation.^*

Two years later, in 1923, the Philippine Scouts received its first officer from Annapolis. An act of Congress approved

29 August 1916 allowed not more than four Filipinos (one for

'^^Philippines Herald (13 June 1923) , clipping in BIA 1877- 128, RG 350, NA. For a biographical sketch of Barros, see Cornejo, Commonwealth Directory, p. 1616.

^^In a letter to the governor-general dated 1 March 1921, the BIA Chief passed along an army memorandum concerning an examination to fill a large number of officer vacancies in the army. Eighty-five of these were in the Philippine Scouts which, by law, could be filled only by Filipinos. BIA 1877- 118, RG 350, NA. Subsequently, financial constraints kept most officer billets unfilled, both in the Scouts and the regular army. ±oo each class) to enter the United States Naval Academy.

Secretary of War Taft had mentioned the obvious usefulness of naval-trained officers to an island nation when he argued for

Filipino admission to West Point in 1908, but nothing had come of the suggestion. In 1916, the Philippine legislature renewed the request, and it gained the approval of the governor- general and the Secretary of the Navy, provided that the

Filipino graduates did not receive commissions in the United

States Navy.

The addition of this provision to the Naval Academy appropriation bill provided members of Congress with the usual

opportunity to display the enlightened/racist, pro/anti­ imperialist positions which Philippine issues always brought

to the fore. The rationale for allowing Filipinos to attend

the Naval Academy while at the same time denying them

commissions in the navy escaped several members. However, no

one argued, as one senator put it, that "a man of that race"

should be "an officer in the United States Navy." Other

senators pointed out that marine-trained officers could serve

a variety of purposes in the archipelago and that the ability

to man "any armament or navy that [the Philippines] may

acquire" was a prerequisite to independence. Finally, the

senators concluded with Claude Swanson of that since 154

the Philippine legislature had requested the measure, "it

would be an evidence of ill will to reject [it]."^*^

The process by which Filipino cadets entered Annapolis

is not as well documented as for West Point, but apparently

it proved equally difficult to interest young Filipinos in

attending the Naval Academy. Three years passed before the

first Filipino cadet, Jose Emilio Olivares, arrived at

Annapolis. He graduated in 1923 to a commission in the coast

artillery arm of the Philippine Scouts. Two other cadets,

Emilio M. Bataga in 1925 and Bienvenido M. Alba in 1927, also

obtained Scout commissions, Bataga in the infantry and Alba

in the coast artillery. Curiously, all three were from the

island of Panay (Alba and Bataga from Capiz Province; Olivares

from ).*^ There was no legal requirement that Naval

Academy graduates be given commissions in the army, and only these three received them. Like the cadets destined for West

^ Congressional Record. 64th Cong., 1st sess.. Vol. 53, pt. 11, pp. 10957-58.

^^Panay was not home to all of the Filipino graduates of Annapolis, but it was to those who obtained Scout commissions. Naval Academy records are not as extensive as those at West Point and thus the social and educational background of these cadets is not well documented. Alba briefly attended the University of the Philippines' College of Agriculture before entering Annapolis. He retired from the U.S. Army in 1955. Bataga served in the Scouts only to 1932 and died of pneumonia in 1935. Olivares continued in service with the army after the war and retired in 1953. I am grateful to Jane H. Price, assistant archivist at the Naval Academy, for providing me with details of service of the Filipino graduates. 155

Point, Annapolis-bound cadets were informed in early 1931 that they would not be offered commissions in the Scouts.

Few in number and consigned to what had become by the mid-1920s both geographically and psychologically the distant fringe of army society, the Filipinos actually drew little attention from their fellow officers. The handful of West

Point graduates who entered the academy contemporaneously with the first Filipino cadets and later gained enough fame to generate biographies and memoirs apparently did not find the arrival of America's colonial subjects remarkable. Unpublished references to Filipino officers are scarce and, while often flattering, seldom fail to include the damning phrase, "judged as a Filipino." So Colonel George Marshall evaluated the otherwise "popular [and] hard-working" Major Rafael L. Garcia

(USMA 1916).47 Major Edward M. Almond, who served with the

45th Infantry in 1930-33, found the Filipinos to be "good

Letter, G.W. Franks, Secretary to the Governor-General, to BIA, 19 February 1931, BIA 17271-99. The Filipino graduates of 1931 and 1934, Jose Francisco and Enrique Jurado, obtained commissions in the Philippine Constabulary. No Filipino cadet appears to have failed to complete the course of instruction. A list of Filipino graduates of the Naval Academy from 1923 to 1935 and their subsequent careers is included in a Bureau of Navigation memo., 19 March 1936, BIA 17271-125. For post- 1935 graduates, see Bureau of Navigation memo., 22 May 1940, BIA 17271-154, all in RG 350, NA.

^^Evaluation of Philippine Scout Officers (Native Born), undated memorandum (but mid-1935), RG 1, MacArthur Archives. 156 officers" of high quality, again "within their capabilities."^®

Ivins considered the Filipino Scout officers to be "the highest type of native," a generously-meant but still open- ended compliment.49

In 1920 the army ended the anomalous position of the

Philippine Scout officers by making them eligible for

reappointment in the regular army. The National Defense Act of 1920 provided that all Scout officers who were United

States citizens could be recommissioned in one of the branches of the army, if qualified. Those not qualified (those who

failed to take or pass a qualifying exam) could continue serving with Scout units. In either case, they were now to be

considered regular officers with all of the promotion and

retirement benefits enjoyed by other commissioned officers.

In the future, only Philippine citizens would be eligible for

commissions exclusively in the Scouts.®®

The rationale for this decision is not clear, but there

is no reason to conclude that the army was moved by the plight

of the thirteen Filipino officers then on the rolls. Most

likely, the army had taken advantage of post-war changes in

Senior Officers Debriefing Program: Conversations Between Lieutenant General Edward M. Almond and Captain Thomas G. Fergusson," undated oral history, pp. 40-41, Edward M. Almond Papers, USAMHI.

4®Ivins, "Zamboanga," p. 46.

®®War Department, Annual Report, 1920. Vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1921), p. 256. 157 the officer corps to bring an end to the habitual politicking of the American Scout officers and end the existence of this separate officer c o r p s . Nevertheless, passage of the act appeared to open up access to higher commissioned grades to

Filipinos. Captains Patajo, Barros, Dulay and Estaban Dalao received their majorities the day the act took effect, 1 July

1920. Soon, however, Filipino Scout officers had reason to question their future in the army. The 1920 Act, a closer reading revealed, actually prohibited Filipino promotions above captain. The government ruled that the four officers who had already received gold oak leaves could keep them: All others would have to be content with remaining captains.

Within months, however, passage of the army appropriations bill for 1923 made all Filipino officers eligible for promotion to colonel.

The officers called upon to testify before the Senate Military Affairs Committee on the changes in officer promotions brought about as a result of the 1920 Defense Act included several who had served with either the Philippine Scouts or Constabulary, but none commented on the Scouts' new status. See microfiche edition S183-3-A. On the unhappiness of American Scout officers with their status, see , The Cornerstone of Philippine Independence (New York: Century, 1922), pp. 150-51.

^^The United States Attorney General determined that the restriction limiting recommissioning to United States citizens meant that 1) Filipino officers remained subject to a 1908 law which limited Scout promotions to captain, 2) nevertheless the President's appointment power allowed him to award majorities, therefore the four officers who had already been promoted could retain their ranks, but 3) the 1920 Act did not allow promotions in the future. Filipino officers interested Quezon in their case, but the available documents do not allow for a conclusion to be made as to whether Quezon's involvement, or the obvious injustice of the case, prompted the subsequent 158

The National Defense Act also made Filipino officers

eligible for assignment to military schools in the United

States. Attendance at formal military or civilian schools,

instructorships in military science, or some other detached duty, leavened the officers' normal service with troops. Lim was assigned as an instructor at the Constabulary school at

Baguio in 1916-17, and as early as 1923 several Filipino officers drilled student members of ROTC-like units at the

University of the Philippines. During World War One, when the

Philippine government offered a division of Filipino infantrymen to the War Department, most of the Scout officers obtained positions of increased rank and authority with the so-called Philippine National Guard. But opportunities for more unusual detached duty were limited. The War Department turned down the one known request for assignment to the army's

Asian language detail, made by Lieutenant Fidel Segundo in

1922 to study in Japan.

The Filipino officers who served in the 1920s and 1930s made full use of army schools in the United States. For the most part, these were lower-level technical schools. Coast

Artillery officers attended that arm's battery officers'

change in the law. See Quezon to Resident Commissioner Isauro Gabaldon, 13 March 1922, BIA 1877-123; Department of Justice to Secretary of War, 28 March 1922, BIA 1877-124; and William Patterson to Gabaldon, 24 June 1922, BIA 1877-124, RG 350, NA.

^^Information on Segundo’s request is limited to what is provided in the index to MID files. The actual file, MID 2483- 378, RG 165, NA, is missing. 159 course; infantry officers completed the company officers' course (only three graduated from the advanced infantry course); field artillery officers the battery officers' course for field artillerymen; and cavalry officers the cavalry school's training and troop officers' courses. A glance at the annual Armv Register reveals attendance at an array of additional schools, including those for chemical warfare, communications, quartermaster, and engineering.

Attendance at these introductory courses mirrored the career progression of their American counterparts during the inter-war years. Where Filipino officers found themselves lagging behind was in access to the army's most prestigious schools. Those at the peak of the army "educational pyramid" included the Command and General Staff School, the Army

Industrial College, and the Army War College. Attendance at the Naval War College and certain foreign military schools offered equal prestige.^* These schools, dominated by West

Point graduates, introduced officers to operational and mobilization planning and the techniques of general staff work--the very skills which would be in short supply on the

Philippine Army's Central General Staff.

The only Filipino officer to attend the Command and

General Staff School prior to the creation of the Philippine

Edward M. Coffman and Peter F . Herrly, "The American Regular Army Officer Corps Between the World Wars: A Collective Biography," Armed Forces and Society 4, no. 1 (November 1977):67-68. 160

Army was Lim. He was also the only Filipino graduate of the

Army War College. Of course, most of the Filipino academy graduates lacked the necessary time-in-service to attend the upper-level schools prior to 1936-37, but those who had graduated earliest clearly fell short of their contemporaries' achievements. Of the 116 members of the Class of 1915 who remained in the army by the time their classmate Anastacio Q.

Ver retired in 1934, only fifteen had not attended the Command and General Staff School, the Army War College, or the Army

Industrial College. All but seventeen of Rafael L. Garcia's eighty-seven remaining classmates of the Class of 1916 attended one or more of the three schools before 1937. Even a substantial portion, more than one-third, of the Class of

August 1917 had attended a senior school by 1937. Their

Filipino classmates, Fidel V. Segundo and Salvador F. Reyes, were not among them.

By the late 1920s, the steady progression of Filipino officers through company (lieutenant and captain) and into

field grades (major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel) posed a potential dilemma for the army. Typically, majors commanded battalions, and colonels commanded regiments. With their

Statistics compiled using the Register of Graduates and Former Cadets of the United States Military Academy (West Point, New York: Association of Graduates, 1973) and the army's Annual Register (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1938). The Filipino graduate of the Class of April 1917, Louis Salvosa y Rada, received an honorable discharge in 1922, and his class was not evaluated for school attendance. 161 service restricted to the Philippines, the Filipino officers would naturally gravitate to the command of the Scout battalions and regiments. They would also command the American regular army officers who filled most of the officer billets in the Philippine Scouts.

In 1928, Brigadier General George S. Simonds, the

Assistant Chief of Staff for the War Plans Division, drew the

General Staff's attention to what he called a "problem" which could become "seriously embarrassing" within a few years. Four

Filipino officers had obtained their majorities in 1920, and three others followed in the course of the decade. "There will be difficulty," Simonds wrote, "in finding places for these officers appropriate to their grades." He suggested that no more Filipinos be commissioned. If the government still desired to allow Filipinos to attend the Military Academy, he continued, graduates might receive commissions in the

Philippine Constabulary. At any rate, he believed, they should not continue to be placed on the regular army list.^G

No Filipino received a direct commission from civil life or from the enlisted ranks after November 1921. Throughout the

1920s, Filipinos continued to receive commissions in the

Scouts after graduation from the academies, although the cadets who would have graduated with the West Point classes

^^"Disposition of Philippine Scout Officers," memo, for Assistant Chief of Staff, G-1, 8 June 1928, WPD 1785-9, RG 165, NA. 162

of 1927, 1928, and 1929 failed to complete the course of

instruction. Simonds' memorandum reflected the thoughts of many others, for by early 1930 the War Department had decided

to end its "embarrassing" situation and no longer grant

commissions to academy graduates. To prevent adverse reaction

in the Philippines, the decision was not publicized.

Leon P. Punsalan won the 1931 competition in Manila for

the academy appointment. His knowledge of algebra proved

unequal to the task of passing the further army examination, but he placed first again the following year and was soon on his way to New York. Both in 1931 and 1932, he received

letters from the governor-general informing him that, while

the government would honor its obligation to fund his studies at West Point, he would not receive a commission in the

Philippine Scouts. Punsalan, who felt fortunate to obtain a third lieutenancy in the newly formed Philippine Army when he graduated in 1936, credited the decision to Depression-era

fiscal constraints, but Simond's plea of 1928 had found

receptive listeners. The last academy graduate to obtain a commission in the Scouts was Emmanuel S. Cepeda, who graduated with the Class of 1933. He had entered West Point in 1929,

See F. LeJ. Parker, BIA Chief, to General Albert J. Bowley, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-1, 7 February 1930, BIA 1877-153, RG 350, NA. 163

only a year after Simonds had first raised the issue of

commissions for Filipinos.^®

By the mid-1930s, while most of the Filipino officers

seemed content with routine assignments to the Philippine

Scout regiments, the more ambitious had retreated into the

local community. Fidel Segundo, generally considered by his

American superiors to be the most influential and professional

of the Filipino officers, became the executive officer of the

Department of Military Science and Tactics at the University

of the Philippines in 1929. He moved up to Commandant of

Cadets in 1931, a position he held until 1936. After returning

in 1929 from three years of army schooling in the United

States, Vicente Lim found his niche as Commandant of Cadets

at Manila's smaller San Juan de Letran College. He remained

there until he entered the Philippine Army in 1936.

The approach of independence appears to have left the

Filipino officers ambivalent. Colonel Janairo remembered that

"no officer ever said, publicly or privately, that he was for

or against independence." No doubt accurate in general (there was, after all, an army order forbidding comment on Philippine political issues), some officers certainly did not maintain

^Although later Filipino graduates of West Point would be commissioned directly into the Philippine Army, Punsalan received his commission through the intervention of the Philippine Resident Commissioner in Washington and the Military Adviser's office. He became a United States citizen after the war and retired from the army in 1963. Telephone conversation with Punsalan, 10 April 1991. 164

this distance from the heated political environment of the

early and mid-1930s. Lieutenant Alejandrino Garcia, a 1923

graduate of West Point, had received a reprimand for

"participating in the publication of a political weekly" in

1931.^^ The Scout officers' long service in the Islands,

frequent assignments to local university cadet corps, and

familial ties led to natural and inevitable relations with

socially and politically influential members of the local

community.

The army was not so naive as to believe that the Filipino

officers maintained a complete disinterest in local political

affairs. Philippine Department intelligence agents paid close

attention to the activities of the Philippine Scouts, both

officers and enlisted men, and noted Vicente Lim's close

association with Manuel Quezon and other political leaders.

Major Lim expected to be Chief of Constabulary "in case of

independence," the Department's intelligence officer reported

in 1932, and had ambitious plans for other Scout officers.®^

The War Department did not discourage these associations,

at least in so far as they pertained to involvement with the

new Philippine Army. The existence of the "Philippine Scouts

(Native Born)" evaluation in the MacArthur Memorial Archives,

^Evaluation of Philippine Scout Officers (Native Born), undated memorandum (but mid-1935), RG 1, MacArthur Archives.

®®Major R.T. Taylor, "Digest of Confidential Information Furnished the Department Commander During the Month of August, 1931," 1 September 1932, MID 10582-90/1, RG 165, NA. 165 written no later than the end of July 1935, underlines this fact. Indeed, the creation of the Philippine Army suggested a solution to the perplexing problem of the Filipino Scout officers' future. A War Department personnel office study completed in early 1936 "encouraged in the interest of cooperation with the government of the Philippine Commonwealth and for the purpose of protecting the future military career of the Philippine Scout officer in the Philippine Army" the obtaining of commissions in the new army by retired Scout officers. The War Department reiterated its stand during the assimilated rank controversy in 1938. Brigadier General L.

D . Gasser concluded that "the Personnel Division recognizes the interest of the native Philippine Scouts officers who presumably upon the attainment of independence by the

Philippines will be faced with the problem of continuing their military careers in the Philippine Army.

At best, the United States Army had treated its Filipino officers with strict correctness. Unenthusiastic about the presence of native officers, it had nevertheless after World

War One regularized their status. The Filipino officers were promoted with their peers and assigned to duties commensurate with their rank, although, with the exception of school

(^Memorandum for the Chief of Staff from L. D. Gasser, dated 6 August 1938, included in AG 093.5 Philippine Islands, "Granting of increased rank by authorities of Philippine Commonwealth Government to Philippine Scout Officers now performing duty with the Philippine Army," AGO Central Files, Philippine Islands, 1926-1939, RG 407, NA. 166 attendance in the United States, their service was restricted

to the Philippine Islands. It had not, however, permitted access to the higher military schools which would have led to important and influential departmental and divisional assignments. Few in number, their presence nonetheless had the unintended consequence of providing General Douglas

MacArthur with a means of controlling the development of the

Philippine Army after he returned to the Islands as

Commonwealth military adviser in 1935. Without these few men only the officers of the Insular-government dominated

Philippine Constabulary would have been available to direct the Commonwealth's military force. It remained to be seen, however, if the Filipino officers of the Philippine Scouts cared to continue their careers in the Philippine military, and that if they did so, their goals would be those of their

American superiors. CHAPTER IV

THE PROMISE AND PROBLEM OF THE PHILIPPINE SCOUTS

Since World War One, the United States Army garrison in

the Philippine Islands had Filipinized even more rapidly than

had the civilian administration of Governor-General Francis

Burton Harrison, an irony which escaped most army officers,

whose loathing for Harrison's policy of replacing American

with Filipino government employees went undisguised. Thus on

the eve of independence the Philippines possessed a small but

seemingly modern armed force of Filipinos. These "Philippine

Scouts" numbered 6372 enlisted men in 1934. Well-trained,

long-service regulars, many in both the Philippines and the

United States expected them to be the centerpiece of a new

Philippine army. The Scouts did make important contributions

to the development of the Commonwealth army but, as shaped by

the War Department over three and one-half decades of colonial

occupation, America's so-called "Colonial Army" displayed

severe shortcomings in meeting the needs of an independent nation.

The Scouts' origin amidst the fires of the Philippine-

American War is well known. Challenged by the climate and

terrain of the archipelago and by the linguistic diversity of

its inhabitants, the United States Army quickly incorporated

167 168 native collaborators into its fighting force. Initially the army labelled these mercenary auxiliaries "contract employees." In September 1901, Washington recognized their status as soldiers, offered them the standard three-year enlistment, and thereafter assumed responsibility for their pay and entitlements.^

Now referred to as "Philippine Scouts," their similarity to the Philippine Constabulary (also founded in 1901) became a constant source of confusion. Like the Constabulary, the army's Filipino soldiers operated as independent companies under the command of junior officers, most of them specially drawn from the army's noncommissioned officer ranks. A short­ lived "Scout Law" passed by Congress in 1903 even dictated the temporary subordination of Scout companies to Constabulary command for operational purposes. Starting in 1905, however, the War Department placed the Scouts "more securely in the realm of the soldier" by authorizing their reorganization into battalions.2 Though some warned of the unreliability of

W. Cameron Forbes, The Philippine Islands. Vol. 1 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1928), pp. 196- 97. On the Scouts' founding, see James R. Woolard, "The Philippine Scouts: The Development of America's Colonial Army" (PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1975); Antonio Tabaniag, "The Pre-War Philippine Scouts," Journal of East Asiatic Studies 9, no. 4 (October 1960):7-26; and Clayton D. Laurie, "The Philippine Scouts: America's Colonial Army, 1899- 1913," Philippine Studies 37 (1989): 174-91.

^Woolard, "Philippine Scouts," pp. 142-43. For the Scout- Constabulary relationship, see Heath Twichel 1, Jr., Allen: The Biography of an Army Officer. 1859-1930 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1974), pp. 117-46. 169 native troops and spoke darkly of unrest and insurrection, most officers supported the building of a Filipino component of the army in the Philippines. Few, however, foresaw a time when American regulars would not comprise the bulk of the garrison.

Not until after entering the World War did the government begin to mold the Scouts into a semblance of the regular

United States Army, a decision dictated by the need to bring

American troops back to the United States and the fear that a proposed Philippine National Guard Division might strip the army of its control of the Philippine Scouts. In early 1918, the War Department ordered the reorganization of most of the

Philippine Scout battalions and companies into four provisional infantry regiments and one field artillery regiment

It is not clear that the army expected these provisional units to become permanent after the war, nor even that the decision was the army's to make. The Bureau of Insular Affairs schemed to combine the Scout and Constabulary organizations as late as 1917, and BIA foresaw joint United States and

Philippine government financing and administration of a combined force.^ But whatever hope lay in the cooperative

^General Orders 21, HPD, 5 April 1918. Reprinted in Woolard, "Philippine Scouts," pp. 179-80.

^Governor-General to BIA, 27 October 1916, BIA 2275-29; Secretary of War to Governor-General, 22 November 1916, BIA 2275-31; BIA to TAG, 13 January 1917, BIA 1877-88, RG 350, NA. 170 development of suitable armed forces uniting the domestic security role of the Constabulary with the Scouts' potential for defending against external aggression died with Warren

Harding's election in 1920 and Governor-General Harrison's subsequent resignation.

Certainly the army did not intend that Filipino troops would comprise virtually the entirety of the military garrison in the Philippines. The War Department informed the Commanding

General of the Philippine Department in October 1920 that

"Philippine Scout Combat Troops" would fill a division numbering nearly ten thousand soldiers. Essentially, this division would consist of the wartime provisional regiments.

The American component of the garrison (which included the

Philippine Division plus non-divisional units) would still be substantial, with nearly eight thousand men. Roughly one half

of the American soldiers, however, would be assigned to the coast artillery. The Philippine Scouts now formed the mobile army force in the Islands.^

Further economic retrenchment in 1922 limited the extent of the Philippine Scout build-up but at the same time gave the

Filipino troops an even more dominant role in the garrison.

Confronted by a Congressional mandate to reduce its total

^Appendix A to Philippine Department, "Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1921," AGO Project Files, 1917-1925, Philippine Department, RG 407, NA. The figure given for American troops, 8985, included about one thousand soldiers assigned to the army garrison in China. 171 manpower by nearly ten percent, in mid-year the War Department notified Manila that the American contribution to the garrison would be just 4500 men, barely half the commitment projected only nineteen months earlier. With slightly over seven thousand soldiers, the Scout contingent would also be reduced, but it now comprised an even greater percentage of the total garrison.

By the early 1920s, only tradition and a nagging sense of impermanence left the title "Philippine Scouts" intact.

America's Filipino troops had come to resemble a small modern army, mirroring--at least organizationally--the regular

American military. With the exception of a single engineering company already formed in 1912, Filipino soldiers underwent a complete conversion from "scout" to "soldier" between 1917 and 1922. The Philippine garrison came to include Filipino- manned military units of all arms and most supporting branches. The black 9th Regiment ended its long sojourn at Camp Stotsenburg in 1922, its place taken by the newly organized 26th Cavalry (PS). The Philippine

Department created a Scout signal company and an engineer regiment in 1921 followed by a medical regiment in 1922.

In constructing this military force, the army's perception of Filipino military abilities often demonstrated a cynical compatibility with the garrison's operational needs.

With no apparent sense of irony, an American field artillery officer observed that "up until 1917 the military utility of 172 the Filipino was thought to be limited to that of a light infantryman," but when the dictates of the war required the return of the Philippine garrison's field artillery unit to the United States, "it was decided to try the Filipino in a new role--that of a pack artilleryman."^ After the war,

Filipino suitability for broader military service continued to be shaped by the operational needs of the garrison, or at least by an influential officer's perception of the garrison's needs. When the Chief of Artillery opposed a Philippine

Department plan to convert the 24th Field Artillery from pack to motorized guns on tactical grounds, the commanding general reminded him that they were relying on the Filipino soldier, who was "an indifferent horseman" and poor pack artilleryman.

The general argued that the Filipino was a "much better mechanic and the number of natives having knowledge of motors is sufficient" to motorize successfully the artillery. In reality, the argument was not about the capabilities of

Filipino soldiers but about the appropriate tactical needs of the Philippine garrison and probable location of combat.?

Filipino abilities in the field of operational communications failed to impress the Department communications officer, who found their Signal Corps skills "unsatisfactory

®C.A. Easterbrook, "The Filipino as a Pack Artilleryman, Field Artillery Journal 16, no. 4 (1926):375

^Chief of Field Artillery to TAG, 21 Febru General Read to TAG, 24 April 1924, RG 407, NA. 173 and their ability to perform such duties as they are ultimately fitted for . . . arrived at only after a long period of service."® Again, the dearth of American soldiers gave Filipino soldiers ingress to this additional branch of military service. Only in the air corps did need not overcome prejudice. "National characteristics"— presumably too well known to require definition--prevented the qualification of

Filipinos as military pilots.®

Necessity also forced the inclusion of Filipino troops in the garrison of the all-important Fortified Islands of

Manila and Subic Bays. The army had lavished the bulk of military expenditures in the Philippines on the four island fortresses spanning the entrance to Manila Bay and a lone island located at the mouth of , thirty-five miles to the north. Constructed at great expense between 1908 and

1919, once completed the very existence of these forts shaped

(or distorted) all subsequent defense planning long after their weapons had become obsolete and their modernization prevented by treaty restriction. As the centerpiece of the army's defense effort in the archipelago, many considered the harbor fortresses sacrosanct, a final redoubt from which both the enemy and Filipinos should be excluded at all cost.

^Assistant Director WPD to TAG, 29 January 1921, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA.

^Memorandum for ACS/WPD, "Inspection of Philippine Department made by Major J.J. Bain, General Staff," dated 25 August 1924, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA. 174

With the reduction in the overall size of the military

in 1922, the army acknowledged its inability to man even the harbor defenses with Americans. Now, it allocated only eight hundred coast artillerymen to the Philippines and authorized the recruiting of 1600 Philippine Scouts to take the place of the four thousand American coast artillerymen called for in

October 1920.^0 when the 43rd Infantry (PS) was deactivated in September 1922, its members were transformed into coast artillery companies. They were soon joined by men transferred from other Scout units. In mid-1924, the army reorganized these companies into the 91st and 92nd Coast Artillery

Regiments (PS). American coast artillerymen were reduced to manning only the "key" batteries of Port Mil Is.

Philippine Department Intelligence Officer Major Walter

Prosser insisted that "personnel" was one of the major defects of the Manila Bay defenses. His continued to be a widely shared belief. In part, the dislike for relying on Filipino

^®TAG to Major General William Wright, 17 and 18 July 1922, AGO Project Files, 1917-1925, Philippine Department, RG 407, NA.

^^The "Official Program, Military Tournament, Philippine Department, 1924-1925," provides short histories of these regiments. Copy in USAMHI. The American coast artillery troops on Corregidor served in the 59th Coast Artillery Regiment. From late 1922 to mid-1924, the 59th included two batteries of Philippine Scouts, but these men were transferred to the 92nd. A fourth coast artillery regiment in the islands, the 60th, also consisted of Americans. These antiaircraft troops arrived in the Philippines in 1923 and were stationed at Fort McKinley until relocating to Corregidor in the late 1920s. "Key" quote is from TAG to Wright, 17 July 1922, AGO Project Files, 1917-1925, Philippine Islands, RG 407, NA. 175 troops as coast artillerymen was based on operational concerns. Most of the several thousand Filipino civilians who lived in the native barrios on Corregidor Island were the dependents of Philippine Scout soldiers. Replacing Filipino soldiers with Americans (few of whom were either married or allowed to bring families to the Philippines) would both increase security and simplify defense of the harbor fortresses. Filipino soldiers were also "too dependent upon detailed supervision [and] have less natural capacity along artillery lines," Prosser believed. And like proponents of air bombing of enemy population centers who foresaw the rapid collapse of civilian morale, Prosser suggested that it was

"not certain that [the Filipinos] posses[ed] the innate moral stamina to withstand continuous and protracted shel1-fire.

The manning of the Manila Bay batteries by Filipino soldiers remained a constant source of concern to both army and civilian officials, but financial constraints resolved the issue in favor of Filipino soldiers.

Lest any officer fail to discern the limitations of

Filipino ability and make the mistake of concluding that the native soldier was no different from or even superior to the

American enlisted man. Fort Santiago commissioned a psychological study of the Filipino soldier which left little doubt of Scout inferiority. Authored by an anonymous but

^WPD 532-24, RG 165, NA. 176

"acknowledged authority on the subject" and published by HPD

in 1925, The Psychology of the Filipino painted a sympathetic but ultimately demeaning portrait of the local soldiery. The

"Filipino character" had many "grave defects," the officer

learned. It was emotional, illogical, ignorant, unformed,

easily influenced, swayed by preference and prejudice, submissive yet vain, slothful, inert, careless, and lacking in forethought, competitiveness, pugnacity, creativity, and perseverance. Only superficially and with difficulty could the Filipinos develop the innate fighting ability of the white soldier.

Colonel Edward L. Munson of the army medical corps was the unnamed author of this unflattering analysis.1* An 1892 graduate of Yale Medical School, Munson had been an army surgeon since 1893. During the World War he had served as a brigadier general in the National Army and after the war as chief of Morale Branch, War Plans Division. He had, along the way, specialized in "systematized education and training in the psychology of the soldier and of war," an interest which saw fruition in the publication in 1921 of The Management of

13psycholoqy of the Filipino [and! Conversation with Major-General Leonard Wood, Governor-General of the Philippine Islands (Manila: Headquarters Philippine Department, August 1925), p. 29. The nine page "conversation" appended to the booklet consisted of an interview with General Wood conducted by Edward P. Bell, reprinted from the Chicago Daily News.

^^A copy of the original report, with Munson's name attached, dated 21 August 1924, is filed under WPD 2903, RG 165, NA. 177

Men. Subtitled "A Handbook on the Systematic Development of

Morale and the Control of Human Behavior," this lengthy tome was an attempt to demonstrate, both for the military officer and the supervisor of industrial labor, that "leadership" was a science, not an art. "The scientific application of the fundamental laws governing human nature itself," Munson believed, could "comprehensively and effectively" control human behavior.

By his own account, Munson was also a soldier of vast experience in the Philippines. By the time he wrote his report in mid-1924, he had served three tours of duty in the Islands, had been detailed to the Insular health service three times over the past twenty-two years, and had served as director of health or as sanitary adviser to the Philippine government.

He also considered himself no amateur in the wider field of military science. He had been a member of a board of officers which had evaluated the harbor defenses of Manila and Subic

Bays in 1913 and had studied the "general principle of military art" at military service schools.

Psychology of the Filipino was an abridgement of Munson's report. The doctor was in fact responding to the increased

L. Munson, The Management of Men (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1921), p. v.

^®Munson made these claims in the original report. The Army Register does not list Munson's attendance at any army school. He was a well-regarded authority in his field, however, and had been assigned to such schools as an instructor. 178 reliance placed on Filipino soldiers in the recently completed

HPD War Plan Orange and Philippine Defense Project. In

Munson's view, it was "illusory" to place any faith in the ability of Filipino soldiers to defend the Islands. Despite an appearance of soldierly skill, Munson insisted, "the practical results of [military] training will never produce more than a low grade fighting efficiency in the Filipino soldiers." The Department apparently shared Munson's overall sense of the shortcomings of Filipino martial ability.

The Scouts' organizational similarity to the regular army disguised an ambivalence about the Filipino soldiers' status which persisted into the 1930s. Ignorance about the Philippine

Scouts remained profound, both among army officers and the civilian politicians who routinely authorized the organization's funding. In 1913, to cite one example. Major

General James B. Aleshire's testimony before the House

Committee on Military Affairs revealed that neither he nor the committee members were aware that Filipinos could hold commissions in the Philippine Scouts, a right they had possessed since 1901.^^ A quarter of a century later. Chief of

Staff 's testimony on the future of the Philippine

Scouts illicited the question, "For my information, what do you mean by Philippine Scouts?"--this from Republican Senator

^ U. S. Congress, House, Army Appropriation Bill. 1915: Hearings Before the Committee on Military Affairs. House of Representatives. 63rd Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 226-27, microfiche ed., HMi 63B. 179

Henry Bridges of , who happened to be a long-time

army reserve officer. Another senator cut in to say that he

understood that the Philippine government maintained the

Scouts. The senator was, of course, confusing the Scouts with

the Constabulary. IB

Even after World War One and the apparent regularization

of the Philippine Scouts, numerous episodes revealed the

continuing uncertainty surrounding the Filipino soldiers'

status. Filipino soldiers could not, naturally enough, claim

"double-time" retirement credit for Philippine s e r v i c e , ^ut

when in October 1931 the first Filipino to complete thirty

years on active duty presented a pay voucher for his

retirement check. Master Sergeant Santos Miguel found his name

struck from the retired list. The Comptroller General of the

United States ruled that Scouts were not regular army

soldiers. Miguel was one of the original enlistees in the

Scouts in and had served earlier with the "Native

U.S. Congress, Senate, War Department Appropriation Bill for 1938: Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriation. U.S. Senate. 75th Cong., 1st sess., 1937, pp. 21-22, microfiche ed., S537-7.

^^Until 1912, the army had allowed enlisted men to count one year of service in the Philippines as two years of service toward retirement, which normally came at the end of thirty years' active duty. Richard B. Meixsel, "United States Army Policy in the Philippine Islands, 1902-1922" (MA thesis. University of Georgia, 1988), pp. 22-24. 180

Scouts."^® The District of Columbia Supreme Court upheld

Miguel's retirement privilege; the Court of Appeals ruled

against him. Not until the United States Supreme Court ruled

in his favor in 1934 did Miguel, and his comrades, begin to

draw retired pay.

The army's own Judge Advocate General complicated the

extension of the Enlisted Reserve Corps to the Philippines in

the early 1920s by ruling that the Scouts were not a part of

the regular army. The law stipulated that only persons

"eligible for enlistment in the regular army" could serve in

the ERC. Filipinos could only join the Scouts; the Scouts were not a component of the "regular" army; thus Filipinos could not enter the ERC, the Judge Advocate reasoned. Unaware of the

ruling, the Philippine Department's Judge Advocate General more obligingly concluded just the opposite. Learning of the

earlier finding, the Philippine Department officer admitted

that "the status of the organization known as the Philippine

Scouts was a vexed problem for many years" and had led to

Z^Miguel's occupation was listed as "scout" when he first enlisted on 1 October 1901. The Philippine Scout enlistment rolls show Miguel's first enlistment (with discharge shown in 1904) and reenlistment in 1910 (discharge in 1913), but the expected enlistment entries for 1904 and 1907 were not found. Filipinos could reenlist into white regiments of the regular army after serving in the Scouts, and possibly Miguel did so. See "Registers of Enlistments in the United States Army, 1798- 1914," National Archives microfilm series M233, reel 72.

Z^Tabaniag, "Pre-War Philippine Scouts," p. 17. BIA maintained a file on the issue. See especially BIA 1877-162 and 1877-164, RG 350, NA. 181

"numerous conflicting opinions." He believed, however, that despite some "special rules" applying to the Scouts, there was general agreement that it formed part of the regular army.

The War Department asked for, and received, a more favorable ruling on the Philippine Scouts' status.

Only once in its four-decades' long existence did the

Philippine Scouts intrude overtly on public consciousness. The

"Scout Mutiny" of 1924, glossed over in most accounts of the

Philippine Scouts, revealed the superficiality of the Scouts' semblance to a modern army and pointed to some of the problems inherent in transforming the "Colonial Army" into the army of a sovereign state.

At nine o'clock on the evening of 27 June 1924, a

Philippine Scout approached the home of the Port McKinley

Provost Marshall (the senior law enforcement official) and

On this issue, see the discussion in ACS/WPD memorandum for the Chief of Staff, "Defense Plans for the Philippine Islands," 6 November 1928, WPD 3251, RG 165, NA; and HPD/JAG memorandum for CGPD, "Applicability to the Philippine Islands of Section 55, National Defense Act," 14 August 1928, enclosure to "Report on the Defense of the Philippine Islands by Major General William Lassiter, August 21, 1928," AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA.

^Douglas MacArthur sat on the court-martial board of the mutineers, and both Carol M. Petillo, Douglas MacArthur; The Philippine Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), pp. 132-34, and D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1970), pp. 302-303, briefly describe the mutiny. Woolard, "The Philippine Scouts," p. 260, and John E. Olson, with Frank 0. Anders, Anvwhere-Anvtime: The History of the Fifty-Seventh Infantry. PS (By the Author, 1991), pp. 3-4, mention the incident only to dismiss it as inconsequential. 182

asked to speak privately with him. "Badly scared and excited

. . . afraid that he would be killed if it were known that he

had spoken to an American," the young soldier informed the

officer that many Scouts were meeting in homes outside the

post and in barracks on the fort. They were planning "to step

out for their rights" if they did not soon receive an

acknowledgement of equal status with their American comrades.^*

This was apparently the first awareness the American

officers had of the depth of Scout discontent over the discrimination the Filipino soldiers faced in pay and other benefits. With solid evidence of disaffection, the Department

Intelligence Officer recruited "a few tried and proven men" to visit the barrios surrounding the post and to attend meetings of the disaffected soldiers. Following several days of investigation, the Assistant Provost Marshall raided a

secret meeting being held in the basement of the post hospital

laundry on Sunday morning, July 6th. He arrested 26 men, most

of whom were soon released. Word of the arrests spread, and

the next morning several hundred Filipino soldiers of the

McKinley garrison refused to report for duty out of sympathy

for the arrested men.

'^Material dealing with the Philippine Scout Mutiny is found in MID file 10582 and WPD file 1799, both in RG 165, NA. For the most detailed report on the incident, see the 62- page compilation prepared by Walter E. Prosser, ACS/G-2, HPD, "Mutiny of July 7-8, 1924, in Philippine Division, Fort William McKinley, P .I.," 1 October 1924, MID 10582-59/18, from which most of the information in this chapter, dealing with the mutiny, is taken. 183

Inequality in pay underlay the soldiers' complaints.

Initially, native troops had received in "Mexican" dollars

what American soldiers received in gold. (Two "Mex" or silver

dollars equaled one gold dollar. There was apparently no

legal basis for this discrimination; it was, as Rear Admiral

Thomas Washington explained in justifying wages for Filipino

employees of the navy, simply "customary that Asiatics should

get one-half of what the white men get in the matter of pay."^®

Even in 1901, however. Scout pay had deviated from this

standard to the detriment of Filipino soldiers. By the early

1920s, the gap between Filipino and American soldiers' pay had grown even more marked. A regular army private earned $21 a month in 1921; the Scout private a mere $8. In the two decades since the Scouts' founding, the pay of a regular army private had risen by 61 percent; a Scout private's by .025 percent.

^^Mexican silver "dollars" (eight reales pieces) were a common form of currency in the Far East. Accompanying General as an aide on the 1898 expedition to Manila, Captain T. Bentley Mott had discovered that Mexican dollars were "the only silver coin current in the East" and attempted without success to talk the Quartermaster General into sending a supply along with American troops. Without these dollars, American soldiers "paid double for all they bought in the Philippine shops." Mott, Twenty Years as Military Attaché (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 58. Mexican dollars remained current in China for many years thereafter.

^®U.S. Congress, House, Hearings Before the Committee on Naval Affairs of the House of Representatives on Sundry Legislation Affecting the Naval Establishment. 1921. 67th Cong., 1st sess., 1921, p. 469, microfiche ed., HN 67A. The admiral was actually recommending a pay increase for the navy's poorly paid Filipino workers. 184

(In 1921, a Filipino private made twenty cents more each month

than in 1901.

As one intelligence report noted, rumblings about the

inequality in pay occurred "every year around the 4th of July

and Christmas" but the loyalty of the soldiers had never

before been suspect. A number of factors had coalesced within

a very few years to heighten awareness of the discrepancy in

the treatment of American and Filipino soldiers. The

reorganization of the Scout units into regiments and their

later combination into a division had brought most of the

troops physically together in two large brigade posts. Fort

McKinley, near Manila, and Camp Stotsenburg,^® about 55 miles

north of the capital. The comparison of their conduct and

training accomplishments with those of American soldiers,

often to the letter’s detriment, became starkly clear. Major

General Francis Kernan had, in part, resisted the

reorganization of the Scouts for this very reason. The placing

of a Filipino artillery regiment alongside the 9th United

States Cavalry at Camp Stotsenburg, Kernan had pointed out to

the War Department, only led the Filipino soldiers "to think

^Prosser, "Mutiny," appendix, pp. 26-28.

^Officially titled "camp" until 1929, Stotsenburg became thereafter a "fort." The designation appropriate to the time or event under discussion is used throughout this chapter. 185 their work is of as good a quality as that of the negro soldiers, while their pay is less than half."^®

Located near Manila, these posts opened the Scouts to the influence of political agitators and labor organizers at a particularly tempestuous time. Governor-General Leonard Wood's attempts to reassert executive authority after seven years of

Harrison's liberalism in granting political autonomy reached a fever pitch in 1923-24, with potential repercussions in the

Scout barrios. Facilitating the politicization of the Scouts was the presence of many young enlisted men, veterans of the

Philippine National Guard, far better educated and more politically aware than the older Scout soldiers.

In April 1921, Master Sergeant Bruno V. of the

57th Infantry drew attention to the discrimination faced by

the Scouts in an article published in the Armv and Navv

Journal. The Filipino soldiers "now perform[ed] duties similar

to those of the regular army soldier in the field and in the garrison," Madrid pointed out, and justice demanded that

Congress provide the Scouts--a title he wanted removed--the

same "consideration and privileges as the American soldier."^®

Conditions did not improve, and two years later, in April

1923, Madrid took another approach. Observing the success of

^^Philippine Department, "Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1921," AGO Project Files, 1917-1925, Philippine Department, RG 407, NA.

^Article reprinted in Prosser, "Mutiny," appendix, pp. 1-4. 186 other soldiers' fraternal groups, he attempted to form an enlisted mens' association to petition for equal treatment.

At the same time, the sergeant major at Camp Stotsenburg approached the post commander there. Brigadier General Johnson

Hagood, and also requested permission to form an enlisted mens' society which would serve as an outlet for grievances.

Hagood suggested some changes in the society's constitution and gave his approval. At McKinley, however, the Philippine

Division commander (who was Hagood's immediate superior) held the opinion that the men already belonged to a worthy organization which could be counted upon to look out for their interests--the Philippine Scouts. He did not approve of an enlisted mens' association.^^

Thwarted in these efforts, some Scouts formed a "Mutual

Aid Association" in Manila. These soldiers planned to gain equal pay by demonstrating or staging what they called "a

^Magood's lengthy statement aptly illustrated how one hand of the army did not always know what the other was doing, even within the narrow environs of the Philippine garrison. The proposed constitution shown to General Hagood included an oath of allegiance to the United States "couched in very fiery and patriotic language." Hagood advised that it be removed, since the Scouts had already sworn allegiance to the government and other military associations did not require a second oath. A few days later, Hagood learned from Fort McKinley that an enlisted mens' organization was being formed, and division headquarters had concluded that the new organization was probably "directed against the United States" because its constitution was known to have included a patriotic oath, which had later been removed. "Summary of Statement made by General Hagood in Reference to Disaffection Among Native Troops in the Philippine Islands," 13 August 1924, WPD 1799-2, RG 165, NA. 187

peaceful strike" in July or August 1924. All along, the

soldiers involved had obtained legal advice from several

lawyers in Manila. One of the many "secret societies" in the

Philippines, the Legionaries del Trabaio, also offered its

"strength and influence" to assist the Scouts in gaining their

ends. Such organizations, the army believed, tended to be

little more than vehicles through which unscrupulous promoters

fleeced the sociable and credulous Filipino. The army had

become concerned about the Leaionarios. which supposedly had

"many soldier members," after learning that the Philippine

government and the Constabulary had forbidden their employees

to join the organization. The Philippine Department concluded

that the lesser evil was to keep an eye on the group rather

than draw attention to it by ordering soldiers to avoid it.^^

Strike or mutiny, the refusal to perform military duties

involved a significant portion of the McKinley garrison. With

the exception of one company, two battalions of the 57th

Infantry Regiment refused to drill (although the men continued

to perform routine fatigue duties around camp). The commanding

officer of Company H, old-style Philippine Scout officer

Captain N. P. Williams, loaded his pistol in front of his

assembled men and threatened to shoot any who disobeyed him.

Company H promptly marched off to drill. However, disobedience

^^Prosser, "Mutiny," appendix, pp. 24-25, and Francis Ruggles (a WPD staff officer), "Causes Leading up to the Mutiny of the Philippine Scouts," 19 March 1925, WPD 1799-7, RG 165, NA. 188 continued among the other men throughout the morning of July

7th. The Division Commanding General remained calm. He ordered that the serious consequences of their conduct be explained to each soldier individually and that each be given the opportunity "to recant and return to duty with full privileges." Of 380 soldiers involved, 104 persisted in refusing to return to work.^^

Despite the rapid collapse of the strike in the ranks of the Fifty-Seventh, the next day (8 July 1924) 202 soldiers of the 12th Medical Regiment at Fort McKinley failed to report for duty. These men displayed "an uglier spirit" than that shown in the Fifty-Seventh, but 117 ended their participation in the strike after being addressed by their officers. The army suspected collusion with Scouts at Camp Stotsenburg and

Fort Mills, but no soldiers at those posts stepped forward to make common cause with the Scouts at McKinley. At least as reflected in subsequent official reports, the army did not analyze why the strike did not spread to other units on

McKinley. The 12th Medical Regiment had been formed by men transferred from the 45th Infantry only in late 1922, for example, but neither of the Forty-Fifth's two McKinley-based battalions joined the mutineers.

The army's response to the outbreak was restrained.

Washington allowed the Philippine Department to handle the

33Prosser, "Mutiny," p. 19. 189 matter as it saw fit. Manila informed the War Department that it had considered and rejected high-profile punishments such as the instant demobilization of the units involved. Instead, it would settle on court-martials for the soldiers who had persisted in mutinous behavior.By thus personalizing the offense, the Philippine Department effectively undercut the mutineers' strength. Each disaffected soldier could make a personal decision to return to duty without feeling he had betrayed the group, and those who had not participated in the strike felt no compulsion to join.

Ultimately, in

225 soldiers for violations of the 66th and 96th Articles of

War. In what the local press labelled the "Tower of Babel

Defense," defense attorney and Philippine Scout Captain

Vicente Lim argued that language difficulties had prevented the soldiers from understanding the seriousness of their actions. Six men were acquitted, but the ring-1 eaders drew prison terms of up to twenty years. The majority received dishonorable discharges and sentences of five years in prison at hard-labor. An appeals court reduced the length of the sentences by half, and with time off for good behavior, the prisoners were released less than two years later, in June

^'^Major General Read to TAG, 21 July 1924, WPD 1799, RG 165, NA. 190

1926. The prisoners served their sentences with the penal battalion on Corregidor.^*

The army understood that it had not gotten to the bottom of the matter. No noncommissioned officers were tried, yet it seemed clear that many had been involved. The army had information implicating Sergeant Major Madrid, but Madrid retired from the Philippine Scouts and later obtained a reserve lieutenancy in the adjutant general branch, one of only two Filipinos to hold such a commission at the time.^® All along, most officers had sympathized with the Scouts' relative disadvantage in pay and benefits and had urged the government to improve that soldiers' salaries, both out of a sense of justice and to maintain American prestige. Predictably, the army blamed outside agitators and the "seditious political knavery and discontent" of Filipino politicians for undermining the loyalty of the Philippine Scouts. "With universal political contentment existing the mutiny would not have occurred," Major Prosser concluded, but he admitted that

^^Clipping, Washington Star (10 June 1926), in BIA 1877- 132, RG 350, NA.

^^His name is included on a list of fourteen reserve officers in "Philippine Department--First Phase Plan--Orange, 1934, Adjutant General's Appendix," document no. 17 9, Special Projects--War Plans "Color," 1920-1948, RG 407, NA. 191

an investigation could not prove the involvement of any

"outside influence.

The events of July 1924 neatly reinforce the typology of

mutiny presented by Philip Mason in A Matter of Honor, his

magisterial history of the British Indian Army. According to

Mason, three conditions combine to create the environment in

which mutinies occurs. First, "something from outside," which

would normally be inconsequential without the second

condition, a failure of leadership. The final element--"one

without which the other two never seemed to catch fire— was

a purely military grievance, something to do with pay or

clothing or food."^^ The Scouts' pay grievance was legitimate

(food and clothing allowances were also a source of

contention); the heated political environment of the early

Wood administration brought "outside" events into the Scout

community; and, finally, the mutiny (or strike) corresponded

to a significant change in the officer ranks of the Scout

Prosser, "Mutiny," pp. 24-25. Since the Leoionarios del Trabaio had named Manuel Quezon their "Honorary Grand Master," the army and Governor-General Wood readily seized on the connection to link the mutiny with local politicians. According to Petillo, "Quezon and his compatriots publicly supported the goals of the strike" but soon backed away. From Washington, Quezon cabled his supporters in Manila "'that no excuse must be given for reports that there is insurrection or disloyalty.'" Douglas MacArthur. p. 134. Petillo quoted from a copy of this cable, dated 24 July 1924, in Quezon's papers, but someone ensured that the army received a copy as well. Copy included in WPD 1799, RG 165, NA.

3Bp. Mason, A Matter of Honor: An Account of the Indian Army. Its Officers and Men (London: MacMillan, 1986), pp. 236- 37. 192 regiments, one which investigators of the mutiny readily pointed to as facilitating the outbreak of disobedience.

Up to World War One, service in the Philippines was one of the most commonly shared experiences in the peacetime army, but once in the Islands, few Americans served with Filipino soldiers. American noncommissioned officers stationed in the

Philippines with regular army regiments (or who had seen service with the Volunteer regiments during the Philippine-

American War) applied for four-year commissions as lieutenants of Scout companies. In 1908, the army promoted fifty lieutenants to the rank of captain, one for each company of

Scouts, again on a four-year provisional basis. Until then, captains of Scouts had been regular army lieutenants holding advanced local rank. A few regular army captains held billets as Scout majors, but these officers remained with the Scouts only for the length of their tours of duty in the Islands (two to three years). Scout officers, by contrast, might serve for many years with Filipino troops. Nineteen of the fifty original first lieutenants appointed in 1901 were still serving with Scout companies in 1918.^9

^%oolard, "Philippine Scouts," pp. 197-225, provides a detailed account of the service conditions and regulations governing the selection of American officers of the Philippine Scouts from 1899 to 1920. These officers reverted to enlisted status upon leaving the Scouts. If eligible for retirement, the army allowed them to retire at the most senior enlisted grade. 193

This changed after the war. The utilization of Scouts in

virtually all branches of the army required the services of

professionally qualified officers, not the "jumped up"

enlisted men of the past. Provisions of the National Defense

Act of 1920 extended to Scout officers the status and benefits

of regular army officers. The gaining of "permanent

commissions and full retirement privileges" may have brought,

as Woolard contends, long-overdue recognition to the American

Scout officers' accomplishments, but the army nevertheless

used the occasion to abolish the colonial officer corps.

Thereafter, no American could receive a commission as an

officer of Philippine Scouts, and most officers assigned to

the Scouts would be regular army officers fulfilling their normal foreign service obligation in the Philippine Islands.

The young American officers who now found themselves

assigned to the Philippine Scout regiments viewed with

amazement the men of their new commands. The Filipinos seemed

to have little in common with their American counterparts. At

a time when few American enlisted men were allowed to marry, many Filipino troops had wives and children. The "Scout barrio

[village]" was a staple of Philippine military posts. "This

neat little village of nipa-covered bamboo houses," one

officer informed his comrades, provided even the "the lowest

paid private" the opportunity "to marry and raise that large

^°Ibid., pp. 224-25. 194 family of brown babies so dear to the heart of every

Filipino.Alcohol abuse and venereal disease seemed at times to define the American soldier's experience in the Philippine

Islands. "Drunken soldiers and sailors were a common sight in downtown Manila many years ago," one young Filipino--who wanted to be a soldier--recal led. At the founding of the

31st United States Infantry in 1916, the enlisted men of one battalion of "Manila's Own" suffered a venereal infection rate of over thirty percent.^3 Yet both drunkenness and VD were virtually unheard of in the Scout ranks. Correspondingly, the native soldiers' standard of discipline was far higher than the army norm. As the historian of the 57th Infantry (PS), then-Lieutenant John Olson, recalled, during his tour with the

Scouts he never served on a court-martial; his soldiers were too well behaved. His compatriots with the 31st Infantry had

just the opposite experience.^4

Another lasting impression of duty with the Philippine

Scouts was the Filipino soldiers' "apparent delight in

4^Ralph Hirsch, "Our Filipino Regiment: The Twenty-Fourth Field Artillery (Philippine Scouts)," Field Artillery Journal 14, no. 4 (1924):357.

4^Mariano Villarin, We Remember Bataan and Correoidor: The Story of the American and Filipino Defenders of Bataan and Correoidor and Their Captivity (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1990), p. 17.

4^War Department, Annual Report, 1917. Vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918), p. 519.

44olson, Anvwhere-Anvtime. p. 8. 195 polishing and cleaning."'*^ "Spit and polish" was the mainstay of army life everywhere, not just in the Philippine Scout regiments. Captain Charles Ivins, serving at the time with the

Philippine Scouts, succinctly described this prosaic reality of day-to-day military duty in the 1920s and 1930s: "If an outfit had on clean uniforms, starched and pressed, [and] if the rifles were clean . . . the outfit was ready for war.

In the Philippines, this standard was even more strongly stressed. A veteran of the peacetime 31st Infantry remembered that his company commander called the regiment the "West Point of enlisted personnel" thanks to its emphasis on "spit and polish, close order drill, manual of arms, and discipline.

The Scouts stood out even in an army which equated show with preparedness. Reporting the results of an inspection of the

24th Field Artillery (PS) at Camp Stotsenburg, the inspecting officer marveled that the guns' "steel looked like silver and brass parts shown like gold."'*^ If some officers feared that shiny weapons and glistening leather had little to do with fighting ability, for many others the Scouts' enthusiastic

^^Major General Eli A. Helmick, "Report of Inspection of Troops in the Philippine Department," 22 October 1925, RG 407, NA.

^Charles Ivins, "The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga" (unpublished manuscript), pp. 49-50, Charles F. Ivins Papers, ÜSAMHI.

^Harley F. Hieb, Heart of Iron (Lodi, Calif.: Pacifica Publishing, 1987), p. 59.

^%elmick, "Report of Inspection." 196

embrace of peacetime routine only enhanced a tour of duty in

the Philippines.

Scouts in effect developed a unique military culture of

which their officers knew little. As a further hindrance to

understanding, few officers learned native languages and many

enlisted Scouts could not speak English. One officer who

joined the 26th Cavalry on the eve of World War Two remembered

that he could have a conversation in fluent English with any

man in his troop, but such linguistic compatibility was

apparently uncommon.An officer of the Scouts' lone field

artillery regiment reported in the mid-1920s that many of the men "cannot read or write English at all, and speak it with

difficulty."^) Writing of his service as a battery commander

with the 91st Coast Artillery Regiment (PS) in 1939-41,

Captain Stephen Mellnik found communicating with his men

"difficult because their inadequate English made every

conversation an adventure. Olson recalled that the enlisted

soldiers' ability to use English improved over time: the older

^^Arthur K. Whitehead, Odvssev of a Philippine Scout (Tucson, : By the Author, 1990), p. 11. Colonel Whitehead confirmed this detail in a letter to the author, 29 September 1991. His experiences may have reflected the fact that the many Filipinos enlisted in early 1941--the time he arrived in the Islands— were required to be able to read, write, and speak English.

^Hirsch, "Our Filipino Regiment," p. 356.

^^Stephen M. Mellnik, Philippine War Diary, 1939-1945. rev. ed. (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1981), p. 9. As one of the more technically oriented jobs, presumably the coast artillery had the most highly educated enlisted men. 197 men "were never able to communicate directly in English with their American officers," but the younger recruits had learned

English in schoolOfficers were encouraged to study Tagalog, but there is no evidence of any fluency among them.

Given their short period of duty in the Philippines, the officers had no opportunity to gain an intimate understanding of the men they commanded. While it has now become commonplace to acknowledge with warmth and gratitude the soldiering ability of the Scout enlisted men, this acknowledgement is entirely a legacy of the strong ties formed between officer and enlisted during the desperate days of the Bataan

C a m p a i g n . 54 Before the war, the Americans who served with the

Scout units left the Philippines as distant from their soldiers as the day they had arrived in the Islands.

One rationale advanced for the Scouts' behavior in July

1924 which had additional implications for its future utility as a national army was the breakdown in triball y based recruiting. Initially, Scout enlistment policy was along

5^01 son, Anvwhere-Anvtime, p. 8.

^^According to Lieutenant Colonel Whitehead, American officers "were required to attend classes on Tagalog." Olson recalled that officers were "encouraged" to study Tagalog, but the admonition was not taken seriously. Letter, Whitehead to author, 28 September 1991; telephone conversation with Colonel Olson, 17 February 1991. The emphasis placed on language study may well have reflected the interest and enthusiasm of local regimental or post commanders. Whitehead served at Fort Stotsenburg; Olson at Fort McKinley.

S^Telephone conversation with Colonel Olson, 17 February 1991. 198 tribal lines, a deliberate adoption of "the old Roman principle, 'Divide and Rule,'" calculated to take advantage of tribal enmities.In contrast to Constabulary practice, assignment policy in the Philippine Scouts reflected a continuance of the Spanish tradition of stationing men outside their recruiting areas. This "divide-and-rule" policy does not appear to have been supported by the army's own experiences, however. Woolard offers an account of Philippines Division

Commanding General William Duvall's and Governor-General W.

Cameron Forbes' unwillingness to use nearby Scout companies to suppress an uprising in northern Luzon in 1910 because the soldiers shared tribal identities with some of the Filipinos who lived in the disturbed area. Duvall decided that thereafter Scout companies would always be stationed away from their home regions, a curious decision in light of the fact that it was the Philippine Constabulary--recruited locally— which restored law and order.

Army officers used the word "tribe" to identify the

Philippines' handful of "enthnogeographic" groups. The word itself had, by the 1930s, become pejorative, and many

Filipinos thought its use unjustly exaggerated the Islands'

^^Prosser, "Mutiny," p. 2.

^^oolard, "Philippine Scouts," pp. 238-39. Laurie gives the army too much credit in concluding that because "the United States desired a more homogenous nation, . . . tribal Scout units were mixed to prevent further rivalry and sectionalism." Laurie, "America's Colonial Army," p. 183. 199

political disunity.57 In essence the army attached political

significance to tribal designates. Those "tribes" who had

dominated the revolution or participated in political activity

were potentially disloyal and thus undesirable recruits. Seen

within this context, the army's categorization of Filipino

tribes was predictable. Preparing in 1923 its first detailed

plan of action in case of insurrection, the Philippine

Department staff concluded that the army needed to increase

the number of , Bicolanos, Macabebes, Ilocanos, and non-Christian soldiers in the ranks and to distribute the

Tagalog soldiers "as widely as possible." Nonetheless, the army admitted that Tagalogs stood at the top of Philippine society in "mental ability"; Moros and Negritos at the bottom.

This presumed mental superiority did not make the Tagalogs

leading contenders for military service, however. The

"mountain tribes," for example, excelled in physical prowess, while lowlanders — like the Tagalogs— were generally undernourished and diseased, capable of working long hours but with limited efficiency.5®

According to Prosser, successive commanding generals had

taken differing stands on the issue of tribal enlistment.

Major General J. Franklin Bell, for example, ordered "the

57joseph R. Hayden, The Philippines: A Study in National Development (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1942), p. 19.

5®"Basic Plan--Brown, Philippine Department, 1923" (dated 15 January 1924), copy in Special Projects, Harbor Defense, Philippines, RG 407, NA. 200 removal of tribal barriers to enlistment" in 1914. Thomas

Barry followed Bell in command of the Islands' garrison and

"practically revoked" Bell's policy. The increasingly administrative sophistication of the organization undermined the initial insistence on tribally based enlistments. Company officers grew less concerned with unit solidarity and reliability in combat and instead sought out better-educated or educable men who could perform the routine administrative functions of a peace-time military garrison. Confronted by a different type of duty, the army concentrated on recruiting more intelligent men, regardless of their tribal origins. In

Prosser's view, "the danger attending this new departure was forgotten or underestimated during the long period of peace following the last days of the insurrection."^*

By the early 1920s, tribal-based recruiting had broken down in the Scout companies. The assignment of most Scouts to only two posts made the policy inconvenient, and the army had never cared enough to articulate an inviolable "martial races" ideology, the adherence to which might have outweighed practicality. An unpublished history of the 45th Infantry revealed virtually no change in the regiment's tribal composition between 1924 and 1932. And no one "tribe" comprised as much as one-half of any of the regiment's eight companies stationed at Fort McKinley, although members of one

^Prosser, "Mutiny," pp. 3-5. 201 particular group did tend to dominate a company. The demise of tribal-based enlistments was a prerequisite for converting the Scouts into a national army (although that was not the army's intention), but what was significant in its implication for the Scouts’ utility as a part of the Philippine army was the fact that few of the soldiers were from central Luzon.

Tagalogs made up barely seven percent of the regiment;

Pampangos and Pangasinanes another ten percent. Ilocanos comprised nearly one-fourth of the unit; Visayans and

Bicolanos filled more than a quarter of the regiment's ranks.®®

The almost complete barring of enlistment to Tagalogs was deliberate army policy,and consequently none of the Scout units included a large proportion of Tagalogs or other central

Luzon "tribes." In 1924, only five percent of the entire Scout organization was Tagalog, while nearly forty percent was

Visayan and another twenty-seven percent Ilocano.®^ This narrow recruiting base would have made it difficult to rapidly expand the Philippine Division in time of emergency, despite war plans calling for just such an expansion. In addition, it

®®"History of the Forty-Fifth Infantry (Philippine Scouts), U.S.A." (typescript, no author, circa 1924, with a tribal composition chart dated 20 November 1932 appended). Copy in Edward M. Almonds Papers, USAMHI.

®^Olson, Anvwhere-Anvtime. p. 8.

62"Tribal Classification of Units of the Philippine Division," attachment to Prosser, "Mutiny." The chart lists all Filipino units of the Philippine Department, except coast artillery. 202 denoted the army's continuing distrust of the majority people in the islands, the inhabitants of central Luzon. Even when the Scouts doubled in size in 1941, the army refused to countenance the recruitment of Tagalogs.^*

One major lesson of the mutiny was that the Scouts were not nascent nationalists. They did not look back to a golden era of the past which their valor and self-sacrifice could restore nor were they inspired by the indeoendencia rhetoric of Filipino politicians. The Scout demands were strictly economic, as even the vernacular press recognized. The intelligence office translated (to prove an entirely different point) a Tagalog-language article which reported that "the few scouts, sergeants, or even privates and their

families to whom [the paper had] talked" preferred continued

service under the United States government, even if the

Philippines received independence.^^

Supporting this economic interpretation of the Scout mutiny is the Filipino soldiers' subsequent behavior.

■’Telephone conversation with Colonel John E. Olson, 17 February 1991. Filipino Scout officer Maximiano S. Janairo, who was serving as Philippine Army Chief of Engineers in early 1941, reported that he "had never read or heard about the prohibition to recruit Tagalogs" and observed that it "would have been very damaging to the cooperation and loyalty of Filipinos" (Colonel Janairo Questionnaire). Olson confirmed that a recruiting ban was in effect. HPD issued the confidential order banning recruitment of Tagalogs. Letter, Olson to author, 25 September 1991.

^^Translation from Ana-Watawat (19 May 1924), in Prosser, "Mutiny," appendix, p. 23. 203

Speculation that recruitment of Philippine Scouts would grow more difficult in the wake of the mutiny proved unfounded. On the surface, the Philippine Department's widely repeated assumption seemed reasonable enough, but it misread the psychology of the Filipino soldier and those who sought to be soldiers. Perhaps the disobedience of a few had made the rest fearful that access to military service with the prestigious and relatively well-paid Scouts might be jeopardized. The reenlistment rate shot up in the mid-1920s and remained at a uniform high to the outbreak of war in 1941. As the War

Department's finance representative. Captain Lawrence Worral 1, testified before a House of Representatives appropriations committee in 1935: "Those men, enlisted once, never leave.

They build little shacks outside of the posts, and they and their families live close to their organization."®^ Enlistment statistics bear him out. Previously around eighty percent, the reenlistment rate rose to 92 percent in 1926 and one-hundred percent in 1932. It averaged over 95 percent throughout the

1930s.®® Sergeant Miguel's retirement was followed by a rash of others. By mid-1934, 201 Scouts had been placed on the retirement list. The numbers grew rapidly thereafter, nearly doubling to 389 in 1935 and more than doubling again by 1941,

U.S. Congress, House, Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations in Charge of War Department Appropriation Bill. 1936. 74th Cong., 1st sess., 1935, pp. 165-66, microfiche ed. , H694.

®®Calculated from the War Department Annual Reports. 204 to 849. One implication for the incorporation of the

Philippine Scouts into the new Philippine Army was that by

1946 there would not be much of a Scout organization left, as most soldiers would be eligible for retirement.

By the mid-1930s, the Philippine Scouts had become something of a professional military caste. Recruitment was restricted to regions distant from the capital, and often to particular villages. The desirability of Scout duty allowed the army to pick and choose from among a large number of applicants, but friends and relatives of active duty soldiers were most successful in entering the ranks. According to one officer, many "'applications for enlistment were frequently disregarded, and, instead, brothers, cousins, and nephews-- even sons--of the men already in the ranks appeared to take the examinations for enlistment.'"^ Thus, a strong tradition of family service developed, with soldier status commonly

rn "Retirement figures, as of 30 June of each year, are found in the Annual Report of the Secretary of War, published by the Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.

James K. Eyre, Jr., quoting Colonel Frederick A. Blesse (a medical officer who had served with the Military Mission), in "The Philippine Scouts: United States Army Troops Extraordinary," The Military Engineer 35, no. 210 (April 1943):192-93. Most accounts of Scout recruitment emphasize the importance of family connections, but Rodney 0. Obi en interviewed a former Scout, Pedro Sarmiento, who had become acquainted with the Philippine Scouts through a high-school classmate. This friend was subsequently able to get Sarmiento enlisted in the 14th Engineers (PS). Obien, "America's Colonial Legacy: The Philippine Scouts, 1899-1949" (thesis paper prepared for the Douglas MacArthur Memorial Scholarship, Norfolk, Virginia, 1992), pp. 24-25. I am grateful to Mr. Obien for providing me with a copy of his paper. 205 passed from father to son. When First Sergeant Eusebio Cumagun completed thirty years of duty in 1937, for example, the 45th

Infantry continued to carry the names of two of his sons on the regimental roll.^S The experience was apparently not unique, as the familial nature of the service has become a mainstay of Scout history, accounts of the torch being passed from father to son quoted with paternalistic affection by

American officers.

Many Filipinos probably knew little or nothing about the

Philippine Scouts. Even the future Captain Sarmiento admitted that when he first saw the classmate who recruited him in uniform, he assumed his friend was in the Philippine

Constabulary.^^ Still, the local press and word of mouth portrayed an enviable lifestyle. The Mindanao Herald featured the Scout life in glowing terms: "Practically all [Scouts] live in large posts and in permanent quarters where they have running water for bathing and drinking, electric lights in their barracks, plenty of good reading matter, pool and billiard tables, moving picture shows, swimming tanks and in fact everything that goes to make their life one of comfort."

Once the soldiers had had to fight outlaws, the paper

^^Philippines Herald (30 April 1937).

^^Olson, Anvwhere-Anvtime. p. 8, and John W. Whitman, Bataan: Our Last Ditch (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1990), p. 27 .

^^Obien, "America's Colonial Legacy," pp. 24-25. 206 acknowledged, but now "they have good spring beds to sleep in, and they can go to bed with the feeling that there is a good night's rest in store for them with no danger of being awakened and having to fight for their lives.By all accounts, the Philippine Scout regiments had far more applicants for service than they had vacancies.

That the Philippine Scouts would form a central component of a Philippine national army seemed to be accepted without question in the Islands. At least as early as 1932, in the hypersensitive political atmosphere surrounding the ongoing negotiations which would lead to the Tydings-McDuffie Act,

"the presence of a highly trained body of professional soldiers, as exemplified in the Philippine Scouts, [was] not being overlooked by prominent Filipinos in the event of independence." Philippine Department intelligence officer

Major Richard T. Taylor made this observation in his monthly digest of confidential information. He went on to draw the War

Department's attention to the Scouts' "potential power for influencing the fortunes of the leader who gains their support, providing they remain intact." The matter was being widely discussed by "influential political and commercial leaders," Taylor claimed, but it remained very much up in the air, given the Constabulary's desire to be "the 'regular army'

^^Undated clipping (but 1927) in Edward C. Betts Papers, USAMHI. Captain Betts commanded Company D, 45th Infantry (PS) at Pettit Barracks, Zamboanga, 1925-27. 207

of the Philippines" and the probability that the Scouts would have to take a cut in pay if employed by the Philippine government.

In the United States, fiscal difficulties had again brought the issue of the Philippine Scouts to the fore. As the Depression worsened, House and Senate economy committees offered a variety of ways of cutting the budget, several of which dealt with the army in the Philippines. Of importance to Filipinos was a proposal to transfer the cost of maintaining the Philippine Scouts from the United States to the Insular government, an expense estimated to be about five million dollars annually. Almost immediately, the Philippines' non-voting representative in Congress, Camilo Osias, drew committee chairman John McDuffie's attention to the proposal and the Philippine legislature's objection to it. The Scouts, he reminded Representative McDuffie, were a component of the

United States Army. After making clear the distinction between the Scouts and the Constabulary, the expenses of the latter

"borne by the Philippine government," Osias argued that the proposed change would set a "most dangerous precedent." The

Philippine government, and that of any other state or territory, could be saddled with military expenses no matter how financially burdensome. In particular, Osias reminded him.

^^"Digest of Confidential Information Furnished the Department Commander During the Month of December 1932," 1 January 1933, MID 10582-90/6, RG 165, NA. 208

this step would violate the "virtual financial autonomy" the

Philippines had come to enjoy.

The Osmena-Roxas mission had also arrived in Washington

to negotiate for Philippine independence. Informed of the

proposed transfer of financial responsibility for the Scouts,

the mission was less equivocal than Osias in asserting that

the Scouts was "a part of the Regular Army of the United

States . . . organized . . . for purely American purposes."

Osias appeared before the House Committee on Rules to explain

the Philippine position, and it soon eliminated the provision

from the economy bill.''*

All along, the army's intelligence reports indicated that what concerned the Filipino soldiers most was financial

security. This was the central importance of the government's disposition of soldiers who completed thirty years of active service. The comptroller ruling which denied retirement benefits to Filipino soldiers mav have been sound law, but it was bad politics. Given their concern for financial security, the army's inability to guarantee such security made the

Scouts a volatile and potentially destabilizing force. It could not have escaped anyone's notice that the Philippine

Scouts were the most heavily armed men in the Islands, the best trained militarily, and organized in one brigade of foot soldiers located just outside the capital, with a second

^^Congressional Record. 72nd Cong., 1st sess., vol. 75, pt. 9, pp. 9526-28. 209

brigade possessed of cavalry and motorized artillery only

fifty miles to the north of Manila. Neither the Constabulary nor the regular army could match the Scouts' numbers or

firepower. The small air force was entirely in American hands, but the military landing fields were located on the Philippine

Scout brigade posts: Nichols Field adjacent to Fort McKinley and Clark Field on the Stotsenburg reservation.

Thinking Filipinos and Americans must have been concerned when a Philippines Herald editorialist suggested in 1937 that the Philippine Scouts be turned into "Republican Guards" (a term borrowed from the Spanish forces then making headlines).

The author pointed out that there did not appear to be any plan for dealing with the organization. While some of the younger Scouts held reserve commissions and would naturally enter the Philippine Army and older soldiers could retire, many others wished to continue in the military service under the conditions they enjoyed in the United States Army.

According to the writer, the Philippine government would be wise to take over this "ready-made military machine," paying the soldiers the money and benefits to which they had become accustomed.^

This was a disturbing suggestion, but its publication underscored the potential dilemma of either disposing of the

Scouts or of attempting to incorporate them into the new army.

^ Philippines Herald (24 April 1937). 210

An American informant had drawn attention to the problem in the aftermath of the Scout strike in 1924 when he passed along to HPD the story of "A Filipino sugar man in Negros" who reported that when several Filipino politicians had asked some enlisted Scouts about their attitude toward independence, the men responded that they favored independence "if they would receive the same treatment" they received under American rule.

The politicians' rejoinder that an independent government could hardly offer the same benefits drew a disconcerting reminder from the Scouts: They "had the guns."^®

Here was the real problem of integrating the Scouts into the Philippine Army. As General Craig acknowledged in his testimony before Congress in support of continued funding of the organization during the Commonwealth period and the honoring of pension claims beyond 1946, the Filipinos serving the United States Army had "taken our part against their own people.For the United States, the Philippine Scouts were a two-edged sword. The Filipino soldiers were the mainstay of American authority in the Islands, but their presence complicated the process of departure and the implementation of war plans. Quick withdrawal into Bataan, as some versions of War Plan Orange contemplated, for example, would leave "the

^^Arthur Fischer to Colonel Leroy Eltinge (ACS/WPD), 26 October 1924, WPD 1799-4, RG 165, NA.

^^War Department Appropriation Bill for 1938: Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. U.S. Senate, pp. 21-22, S537-7. 211

families of Philippine Scouts to the mercies of an invader" destroying the morale of the Scouts and possibly precipitating mutiny. These conclusions, part of a study prepared by an

officer at the Army War College in 1939, were classified secret but made available for wider readership.

The Philippine Scouts figured far more prominently in public speculation about its possible role in the armed forces of the Philippine Republic than in the deliberations of the

War Department. In fact, the army seemed reluctant to take any stand on the issue. Prompted by Congressional inquiries as to the need for continued funding of the Scouts in the wake of the Tydings-McDuffie Act, army spokesmen did little more than acknowledge the need to consider the Scouts' future but argued that the status quo had to be maintained for the present.

Under the terms of the independence act, Washington remained responsible for the Philippines' external defense and for law and order. Testifying in January 1938, Colonel Howard Loughry insisted that the Scouts "certainly [would] not be continued as United States troops" but acknowledged that the War

Department had made no decision as to the Filipinos' final disposition. He presumed, in response to a Congressman's

^®Lieutenant Colonel Paul R. Hawley, "The Probable Effect on the Natives of Luzon, P.I., of an Exclusively Close-in Defense of Corregidor," 28 January 1939, File 7-1939-69, AWC Curricular Archives, USAMHI. 212

query, that Philippine government wishes would be taken into

account in disposing of the Philippine Scouts.

The army's concern was that the Philippine Scouts not be

interfered with, and the War Department had to remain vigilant

in the face of Congressional attacks on continued funding of

the organization. For example. Chief of Staff Malin Craig

wrote to Congress in mid-1937 pointing out that a bill

"barring 'aliens' from government employment" threatened the

army's ability to keep up the Philippine garrison. Congress

approved the bill but restricted its applicability to the

United States.

Not everyone was content to accept the War Department's

stonewalling. Nebraska Representative Karl Stefan took it upon

himself to confront the army on the issue of military troops,

both Filipino and American, in the Philippines. Nebraska's

only successful Republican candidate for Congress in 1934,

Stefan had served briefly with the Philippine Constabulary

early in the century.Assignment to the House Committee on

7Q U.S. Congress, House, Military Establishment Appropriation Bill for 1939; Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. 75th Cong., 3rd sess., 1938, pp. 68-70, microfiche ed., H818-1.

^ Philippines Herald (6 May 1937).

®^Stefan's status as a Congressman gained him a listing in Harold Elarth's compilation of Constabulary officers. The Story of the Philippine Constabulary (Los Angeles: Philippine Constabulary Officers Association, 1949), p. 177, and the Nebraska representative used his influence to be awarded retroactively the Constabulary's Luzon campaign medal after World War II, but he was not a Constabulary officer. He served as a civilian telegraph operator with the Constabulary from 213

Insular Affairs renewed his interest in the Philippine

Islands, and he travelled to Manila in November 1935 as a member of the Congressional delegation attending the

Commonwealth inauguration ceremony. Stefan was a firm supporter of the Tydings-McDuffie Act, believing that American producers of fats and oils should be protected from foreign

(including Philippine) competition. To any constituent who expressed an interest in the topic, he would reaffirm his support for Philippine independence and the weaning of

Philippine producers from the American market.^2

While in the Philippines, Stefan visited several army posts where both officers and enlisted men complained to him that they did nothing but drill. American forces in the archipelago, Stefan concluded in a statement read before an appropriations subcommittee, formed "an idle army"--a phrase he never tired of repeating in subsequent statements and letters. He urged an end to funding for both the Philippine

Scouts and the army in the Philippines. That army, Stefan believed, was "being used by the oil and sugar industries as merely a threat to the Philippine people who want their

3 April 1904 to 4 April 1906.

See for example, his letters to E. F. House, 1 March 1937, and Charles Ryckman, 17 March 1937, Karl Stefan Papers, Nebraska State Historical Society. 214

independence and want their industries to stand on their own

feet. "83

The army's "idleness" escaped the notice of many other members of Congress who also had toured army posts in the

Philippines at the same time,84 but in light of the War

Department's reluctance to address the issue and the dearth of interest or awareness by others, Stefan had the field to himself. He repeated what he called his "annual objection" in

1938, although acknowledging that the "muddied waters" in Asia made it unlikely that Congress would accept his views. Many

Congressmen expressed sympathy with Stefan's position but concluded that disposition of the Philippine Scouts should be a matter of deliberate national policy, not a result of "the

elimination of funds" by Congressional appropriations

committees. 8^

The uncertainty of the Scouts' status actually gave the army great flexibility in the organization's disposition.

Brigadier General Charles Kilbourne, for example, about to

Ibid., and U. S. Congress, House, Military Establishment Appropriation Bill for 1938: Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. 75th Cong., 1st sess., 1937, microfiche ed. , H792-1.

84Thirty-two members of the Congressional party braved typhoon winds to tour , for example. See Coast Artillery Journal 79, no. 1 (January-February 1936):63.

83Military Establishment Appropriation Bill for 1939: Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. pp. 746-48, H818-1. 215 depart Washington to take up command of harbor defenses in

1934, had urged use of the Scouts (and army posts in the

Philippines) to the greatest possible extent to guide the

Philippine military transition from colony to independent state. Instead, the army's approach was cautious and short­ term. Nor was Chief of Staff Craig's stand on this point entirely creditable. He justified continued control of the

Scouts on the basis of a possible need to reassert American authority in the Islands, should the Commonwealth government prove disloyal or collapse from domestic turmoil. However, the contemporaneous Philippine Department Plans Brown foresaw the Scouts' probable disloyalty in such a case. (Ironically, and for no good reason, the army tended to take Constabulary support for granted.)

For a variety of reasons, however, incorporation of the

United States Army's Filipino soldiers into the army of the

Philippine Commonwealth would have proven to be very difficult. Given the army's attempt to avoid recruiting

Tagalogs, the Scouts' use undoubtedly would have exacerbated regional antipathies in the archipelago. In addition, while the communal nature of the Scout regiments warmed the paternalistic hearts of their American officers, it was antithetical to the mechanistic nature of the "western" military system it superficially resembled. The nature of the

°ACS/WPD memorandum for Chief of Staff, 22 November 1934, WPD 3251-22, RG 165, NA. 216 organization's personnel made it difficult to reinforce easily, and its favored status made it impossible for the

Commonwealth, or an independent, government to support. The outbreak of war prior to the Philippines’ scheduled independence in 1946 made the disposition of the Philippine

Scouts problematic. In a cruelly ironic fashion, the Japanese attack solved what otherwise would have been a troubling and potentially destabilizing legacy of American rule. CHAPTER V

"THE 'SPINE' OF THE NEW ARM-EE" THE CONSTABULARY ROOTS OF THE PHILIPPINE ARMY

One applicant who sat for the Philippine Constabulary

Academy entrance examination in August 1931 asserted in his required English-language essay that "if America won her independence at the point of a bayonet, why should not we

Filipinos try the same way?" The otherwise unidentified

"candidate no. 20" continued: "If our independence should not be granted during the coming session of Congress it would be a million times better that we revolt against the Americans.

We shall fight and die for the sake of our liberty." Bemused or startled by its content. Chief of Constabulary Brigadier

General Charles Nathorst thought the essay noteworthy enough to pass along to the governor-general. Other copies made their way into the local American army officer community. Major

Edward Almond, serving at Fort William McKinley, pasted his in a scrapbook underneath the label "Humor of the Philippine

Islands.

If the would-be cadet struck an unusually martial--even disloyal--tone, his essay nonetheless suggested a perception widely held both within the ranks of the Constabulary, the

^Copy in Edward M. Almond Papers, ÜSAMHI.

217 218

Philippine government, and Philippine society, of the

Philippine Constabulary as a "military" force, the "army" of

a nation-to-be. Both in fulfillment of its own self-image and

to meet the practical need for an immediately available body

of trained manpower, the Constabulary found itself transformed

into the Philippine Army in January 1936. In addition to mere

numbers, however, the "PC" brought with it traditions,

attitudes, and a model of military service inculcated during

the course of over three decades of duty as the central

government's military and police arm.

Administration insistence upon the Constabulary's

founding in July 1901 that the organization was "not a military force" was calculated not to describe real conditions

but to justify the eroding of army authority in the Islands.^

^Henry Parker Willis, Our Philippine Problem (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1905), p. 122, and John R. White, Bui lets and Bolos; Fifteen Years in the Philippine Islands (New York: The Century Co., 1928), p. 8. Details of the Constabulary's founding in 1901 can be found in W. Cameron Forbes, The Philippine Islands, Vol. 1 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1928), pp. 201-40; Heath Twichell, Jr., Allen: The Biography of an Armv Officer. 1859-1930 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1974), pp. 117-46; and George Y . Coats, "The Philippine Constabulary, 1901-1917" (PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1968), pp. 1-27. Scholars have not moved much beyond these now dated accounts, each of which restricts its focus primarily to the early years of the force. Forbes was a member of the Philippine Commission from 1904 to 1909 and then governor-general until 1913, and Henry T. Allen was the first Chief of Constabulary, from 1901 to 1907. Coats, who apparently was unaware of the extensive Constabulary files maintained by BIA from 1901 to 1935 and now in the National Archives, includes a brief cheerleaderish summation of the PC's activities during the 1920s and 1930s. 219

Governor William Howard Taft recognized "the military tendencies to hold onto power" during a period of transition from military to civil government,^ and the availability of the Insular Constabulary (the corps' original title) served to buttress the civil government's claim to legitimacy. "The distinction drawn" between the army-controlled Philippine

Scouts and the Philippine Constabulary, one observer concluded, "is a distinction without a difference."^ Even after the government consolidated its authority throughout most of the archipelago and wartime exigencies gave way to peacetime routine, Filipino legislators, the public, and members of the PC demonstrated a commitment to the concept of the Constabulary as an army, rather than a law-enforcement agency.

Washington's exclusionary policy in military affairs encouraged politicians to seek another outlet for a natural interest in building a military force. The expansion of the

Constabulary school to a two-year course in 1916 at the instigation of the national legislature looked deliberately to the time when it could provide officers not just for the

Constabulary but also for a national guard. The new school would be "a sort of West Point for the training of officers

Taft to Bellamy Storer (United States Minister to ), 6 January 1902, William Howard Taft Papers, microfilm ed., reel 34.

'Hsfillis, Our Philippine Problem, p. 122. 220 for the armies of the independent republic of the Philippines when it shall materialize."^ The impetus for militarizing the

Constabulary, however, was primarily self-generated.^ Its origin as an infantry alternative to the United States Army, the early leadership of regular army officers, and the wearing of army-pattern uniforms, all contributed to the officer corps' identification as a military, rather than a police, force. Both officers and men "resented [being] called or referred to as 'policemen.'"^ The Constabulary recognized the dilemma posed by the continuing military nature of its training, while its day-to-day duties grew increasingly police oriented. "The military aspect predominates in all [the PC's] training," the editor of the PC's monthly journal Khaki and

Red noted in 1926, although "times have changed [and] the constabulary operates as a military organization only in the

District of Mindanao." As the writer explained, drill and the manual of arms "must serve a diminishing purpose in an organization whose duties are daily becoming more civil."®

Coincidentally, however, the first Constabulary officer to attend the Infantry School at Fort Banning, Georgia,

Charles Elliott, The Philippines to the End of the Military Regime (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merril1 Co., 1917), pp. 175-76.

®Emanuel A. Baja, Philippine Police System and Its Problems (Manila: Pobre's Press, [1933]), p. 90.

"^Ibid. , p. 79.

®Khaki and Red 6, no. 7 (July 1926):18. 221 graduated in 1926. Since the PC was destined to be "the nucleus of the Philippine military forces of the future,"

Lieutenant Elias Dioguino believed that more officers should attend the United States Army school. In the future, however, he hoped the government would sponsor officers' attendance, rather than limit advanced schooling to the few officers who could afford to pay the cost themselves.^ Calixto Duque, the second officer to attend Penning (in 1926-27), reported that his classmates showed a great deal of interest in the PC and looked forward to seeing "one student from the Constabulary each year" at the school.

How seriously the army took the presence of Constabulary officers at Fort Benning is open to question. Certainly few army lieutenants would have dared to host a social event and invite the school's senior officers, as Lieutenant Pedro San

Diego did when he attended the infantry course in 1930-31.

Nevertheless, the experience clearly benefited the officers and furthered the Constabulary's military stature. Filomeno

B. Villaluz, who attended Fort Benning in 1928-29, returned to become an instructor at the academy and frequently contributed articles on defense issues to Khaki and Red and

%haki and Red 7, no. 4 (April 1927): 3.

^^Khaki and Red 6, no. 12 (December 1926):9. The Official Constabulary Register for 1933 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1934), lists the following officers as graduates of the Infantry School (with years of graduation): E. Dioquino (1926); C. Duque (1927); F. Villaluz (1929); P. San Diego (1931); and R. Enriquez (1932). 222 other publications. Dioquino also taught at the academy, and later, as commanding officer of a battalion of the PC's 6th

Infantry Regiment at Jolo, introduced "military and tactical training . . . based on [the] American infantry system.

These officers authored numerous articles on professional military development and were among the most articulate defenders of the Constabulary's right to become the army of an independent Philippines.

The military aspects of Constabulary service continued to beguile Constabulary officers and aspirants to PC service.

Officers served as instructors in military science and tactics at Philippine col le g e s , a n d the pages of the Constabulary journal offered numerous episodes of a military-oriented force. Academy cadets borrowed mortars and tear gas shells from the Philippine Department and attended army-taught courses in gas warfare; the PC made plans to participate in the army's annual divisional maneuvers; and Constabulary cadets staged their own "war games" involving the invasion of

-^Khaki and Red 10, no. 3 (March 1930):3; idem 11, no. 5 (May 1931):6; and idem 15, no. 6 (June 1935):25-26.

^Emanuel A. Baja was instructor of military tactics at the University of the Philippines in the mid-1920s, as was Silvino Gallardo. Guillermo Francisco performed the same task about the time of World War One. Jose V. Agdamag, Martinez Telesforo, and Vicente Noel were on "special duty as military instructors" for "Manila city students" and the Bureau of Education in 1917-18. See Khaki and Red 7, no. 6 (June 1927):25; idem 12 no. 3 (March 1932):29; and the Official Constabulary Register. 223 one province by another. Throughout this time, the only note of advanced police training mentioned in Khaki and Red was

Third Lieutenant Edwin Andrews’ study of handwriting, fingerprinting, and document authentication methods in the

United States under an American handwriting expert in 1931.

A wealthy patroness in the Philippines funded his studies.

The Constabulary's "promotion" to national army, then, fulfilled the long-held vision of officers and many civilians, both Filipino and American. Former PC Lieutenant Walter E.

Guthrie's poem honoring the Constabulary's new status was only a typical bit of soldierly doggerel, but it spoke to the pride felt by many who had worn the khaki and red:

"It took some time to bring the change, but change there had to be, from the rollicking roaring semi-police, to a Philippine Island Arm-ee.

"And in days that come, we'll look back with pride, to the glory that is to be, when the Scouts are taken into the fold, and serve for their own country.

"Then the combined corps will form a front, and they will do it well. They can look the whole world in the face, and tell them to go t o VIVA PILIPINAS.

It was not, however, that the Philippine Constabulary did not assume an ever larger burden of law enforcement and other

^^Khaki and Red 7, no. 4 (April 1927):8-9; idem 8, no. 11 (November 1928):11; and idem 9, no. 1 (January 1929) :8.

^'^Khaki and Red 11, no. 5 (May 1931): 33-34. Andrews later transferred to the air corps.

^^Verses one, nine, and ten of "The 'Spine' of the New Arm-ee," published in Khaki and Red 15, no. 9 (September 1935):24. Guthrie served in the Constabulary from 1907 to 1916. 224

non-military duties. The extent of Constabulary responsibility

was "practically unlimited," ranging from aiding in tax

collection, to acting as firemen, game wardens, and Red Cross

auxiliaries. Police-oriented duties included enforcement of

traffic regulations and suppression of the opium trade.

Village and municipal law enforcement remained in the hands

of local police, but the Constabulary maintained supervisory

responsibilities over these widely excoriated police forces.

When local police proved particularly inept--or political

imperatives so dictated--the Constabulary took over the

functions of law enforcement.^^

At least to some extent, the very diversity of

responsibility left the Constabulary with the worst of both worlds. One student of the Royal Irish Constabulary's

experience has written of that force that "the welter of

duties and powers [of the RIC] provided a vivid illustration

of [its] formless growth. The origins of the constabulary as

a semi-military force designed as a primary defence against

^headquarters. , Civil Affairs Handbook; The Philippines. Section 14; Public Safety (5 February 1945), pp. 19-20. Philippine Vice Governor (1933-35) Joseph Hayden's comment on local police forces is typical; "The municipal police were a joke and a scandal. . . . [Most were] political henchmen . . . of the présidentes and local bosses. . . [and were] underpaid, only partially trained, and poorly equipped." The Philippines; A Study in National Development (New York; The MacMillan Co., 1942), p. 291.

^holitical motivations dictated PC policing of some towns, such as Cavite, which was said to be a result of the demands of United States Navy officers at the Cavite naval base. Philippines Herald (28 July 1937). 225 insurrection were only too plainly visible in its twentieth-

century successor. The military (its critics said pseudo­ military) ambience of police training and organization, most unmistakenly the carrying of service rifles . . . , set evident limits to its capacity to evolve into a 'normal' civil police on the English model.Much the same could be said of the PC. In addition, the United States government's refusal to share responsibility for military affairs in the Philippine

Islands encouraged Filipino nationalists to "militarize" the

PC. At the same time, the distraction of one day becoming an

"army” lessened the Constabulary's willingness to become a professional police force.

Torn between the dual roles of soldier and policeman.

Constabulary officers were less ambivalent about their role as builders of a modern Filipino nation, an ethic carried into the Commonwealth army. Foreign observers shared this perception of the Constabulary role in Philippine society.

Sociologists Felix and Marie Keesing, spending six months among the Kalingas of north Luzon, readily perceived the integrative, modernizing nature of the Constabulary. The

locally recruited enlisted men, the Keesings observed, were

"educated by their officers in a wide knowledge of matters

l^Charles Townshend, "Policing in , 1914-23," in David M. Anderson and David Killingray (eds.). Policing and Decolonisation: Politics. Nationalism, and the Police. 1917-65 (Manchester and Nevr York: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 26-27. 226 varying from English, hygiene, and first aid to the laws applying to the province." Presented with "opportunities for wider contact and experience," the constables exercised "an increasingly important influence for modernization upon their peoples."19

Filipino officers were no less convinced of the PC's progressive influence. The Constabulary's "policy," as articulated by Brigadier General in 1919, was "to direct the work of Constabulary units along lines offering security to established economic development and giving especial security by pushing on abreast with or in advance of new projects and lines of settlement and development of the country in heretofore undeveloped s e c t i o n s . That the

Constabulary soldier had become a "missionary of civilization" was a proud boast of the district officers who reported on their mens' accomplishments upon the occasion of the PC's thirtieth anniversary in 1931. Monthly patrols into remote areas imparted a "salutary influence upon the mountain people

[and brought] them to the fold of civilization," reported an officer from the Visayas. Soldiers explained the "benefits of modern civilization" to backward peasants and, incidentally.

^9pelix M. and MarieKeesing, Taming Philippine Headhunters (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1934), p. 139.

"Annual Report of the Philippine Constabulary to the Secretary of Interior for the Year Ending December 31, 1919," report dated 20 February 1920, BIA 1184-153, RG 350, NA. 227 rounded up "road tax laborers" who otherwise, one officer assigned to northern Luzon admitted, might not show up to perform road-building duties.

Muslim-dominated Mindanao proved to be an especially fertile field for the Constabulary's crusading spirit. In bringing the attributes of modernization to the Philippines' large southern island, "the Constabulary and civilian officials cooperated so closely and their work was so mutually interdependent that no marked distinction [could] be made between the work of the provincial authorities and the

Constabulary." For this reason, PC officers held many civilian administrative positions, from justice of the peace to provincial g o v e r n o r . T h e zeal with which Constabulary officers played their role did little to endear them to local inhabitants, however, and could actually hinder the integration of Muslim society with Filipino. Nathorst criticized Constabulary officers in Mindanao whose heavy- handed methods caused needless trouble, especially when they unnecessarily interested themselves in enforcing public school attendance by Muslim girls, "The idea, which prevails in your district," an assistant Constabulary chief wrote to Colonel

Ole Waloe in 1921, "to 'eliminate' [culturally if not physically] the Moros must cease and the quicker the better

^^Khaki and Red 11, no. 7 (July 1931):106, 134,

^^Ibid. , p. 146. 228

for all concerned. "23

The PC's role as modernizer was not limited to the non-

Christian regions of the Islands. One issue of Khaki and Red

recounted a fascinating clash of modernity and tradition on the island of Negros in January 1931. A piece of wood propelled into the trunk of a coconut tree by typhoon winds presented local villagers with the image of a cross. Word spread that prayer to the image healed sick children.

Worshippers gathered at the cross to light candles and leave gifts. "Fanatics" then built a protective fence around the tree. Six months later, Second Lieutenant Juan Deloso led a small detachment of Constabulary soldiers to the site and convinced the tree's owners to have the piece of wood removed.

To "prevent the beginning of another fanatical sect," Deloso left several men behind to take down the names and addresses of those who continued to worship at the cross. For his trouble, angry villagers denounced Lieutenant Deloso, a graduate of Iloilo High School and ten-year veteran of the force, as an "animal, . . . a carabao," a savage. His

Constabulary was no different from the hated Guardia Civil .2'^

Safeguarding the country from fanatical sects (and socialist

23"summary of Constabulary and Moro Engagements and Casualties in Mindanao-, 1913-1921, and Correspondence Pertaining Thereto" (a collection of letters from Colonel C.E. Nathorst to Colonel 0. Waloe, 1921), in Leonard Wood Papers, LC.

2%haki and Red 11, no. 8 (August 1931):26-27. 229 movements) had an obvious law-enforcement and internal security dimension but also spoke to the "progressive" ethos of the Constabulary officers.

Until well into the 1930s, the PC continued to play the traditional role of a colonial constabulary in the non-

Christian areas of the Philippine Islands. In a colonial context, as Anthony Clayton has observed in a study of British police forces in Africa, the constabulary's mission is "to contain unrest and keep order" while imposing "a new and strange culture" on recently subjected peoples.Those groups, such as the Negritos, deemed unassimilable into a modern homogenized society were isolated by the Constabulary and pushed to the fringes of the "Filipino" community

To whatever degree the average Filipino held a vision of what military service meant, that image was probably based upon the model presented by the local Constabulary patrol and contact with Constabulary soldiers. Colonial do not invariably restrict enlisted status to natives of the

A. Clayton and David Killingray, Khaki and Blue; Military and Police in British Colonial Africa (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1989), p. 5.

^®The journalist and travel writer, Carl Taylor, for example, noticed that the Constabulary made "very little effort [to] exercise any real authority over the comings and goings" of Negritos in the mountains. The Constabulary confined itself to ensuring that the Negritos did not infringe on the adjacent civilized areas. Taylor, Odvssev of the Islands (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), p. 229. 230

occupied country. Rhodesia's British South Africa Police, for

example, long had European enlisted men before Africans alone could serve as constables. In India, the Madras Constabulary briefly enlisted a small force of mounted European policemen but generally considered it inappropriate "to assign Europeans to the routine, often demeaning, duties of ordinary constables.American authorities apparently never considered accepting whites as anything other than officers in the

Philippine Constabulary. A major purpose of creating the PC was to take advantage of the natives' language ability, familiarity with local conditions, and economy of employment.

Only Filipinos filled the enlisted ranks.

The major divide between American and Spanish practice was the recruitment and assignment of enlisted personnel. The

Spanish era Guardia Civil stationed its members in distant provinces to hinder collusion between occupied and occupier, a policy enhanced by the Spanish colonial government's rigid migratory laws which ensured that most provincial inhabitants were native to that province.The PC's American founders were aware of Spain's precedent and familiar with what they

97 'David Arnold, "Bureaucratic Recruitment and Subordination in Colonial India: The Madras Constabulary, 1859-1947," in Ranajit Guha (ed.). Subaltern Studies IV: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 15.

^^Peter W. Stanley, A Nation in the Making: The Philippines and the United States, 1899-1921 (Cambridge: Press, 1974), pp. 14-15. 231 considered to be Britain's similar practice in India but

"discarded precedent. In theory each PC enlisted man was

"to have recommendations from at least two prominent men in his community as to his loyalty and trustworthiness."^^ In addition, the American authorities wanted to pay prevailing provincial wages, a plan no doubt more acceptable to locally recruited soldiers than to outsiders. (Within a few years, a uniform archipelago-wide pay scale was in place.)

Male Filipinos between the ages of 18 and 35 enlisted for three-year periods (the army's enlistment period) with retirement privileges after twenty years of service (if aged

55 or over). In 1931, only 560 enlisted men drew pensions, suggesting that relatively few men made careers of the

Constabulary. In order not to overburden the underfinanced pension and retirement fund. Constabulary headquarters actually discouraged retirement after a mere twenty years. Old soldiers could be given light duties around camp, HPC informed examining physicians, sharing their experiences with younger

^®White, Bullets and Bolos. p. 231. The British actually tended to recruit on communal bases, and their native soldiers and police did not necessarily serve outside their home provinces. American colonial officials were, of course, always keen to tout their country's progressive policies in contrast to the actions of European colonialists.

^Twichell, Allen, p. 123. 232

comrades.The enlisted mens' wage was not high, and pay rose

little over time. A private received thirteen pesos a month

in 1914, rising to fourteen in 1930. A sergeant's pay actually

declined from thirty to twenty-seven pesos per month during

the financial retrenchment of the early 1930s.By contrast,

a bottle cleaner in an aerated water factory or brewery earned

P33.50 a month in 1925, in addition to free food and lodging.

Adult male agricultural workers in the central Luzon region

earned roughly thirty pesos each month, if they could find work.

Information provided in the PC journal Khaki and Red in

1925-27 suggested a better than average level of educational

attainment in the enlisted ranks. One soldier of the 41st

Company touted his unit's educational accomplishments and

challenged other companies to better it. Four men of the 41- man strong Baguio company had graduated from high school, and

eight other had at least attended high school. Only one man

91 Enlisted loss figures up through 1927 are provided in the Annual Report of the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands. For details of enlisted service, see Headquarters, Army Service Forces, Civil Affairs Handbook: The Philippines. Section 14: Public Safety (5 February 1945), pp. 12-18.

The annual Official Constabulary Register includes pay scales. Enlisted men also received reenlistment and longevity pay. BIA file 1184, RG 350, NA, contains a nearly complete set of registers.

^^Figures given in Government of the Philippines, Bureau of Commerce and Industry, Statistical Bulletin of the Philippine Islands, 1926 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1927), pp. 49-52. 233 had no formal schooling. Five other companies, ranging from the 107th in Zamboanga to the 13th Company at Aparri, responded. The 1st General Service Battalion in Manila and the

19th Company at Cebu both included enlisted men who had attended college; each of the other companies to respond held a significant number of soldiers who had attended high s c h o o l . Presumably, only those companies which thought their records to be comparable to Baguio's responded, but these figures suggest that local PC companies contained some of the community's better-educated men. A Constabulary order promulgated in 1925 drew attention to the fact that "NCOs and privates of today [were] far better educated than those of ten or fifteen years a g o . "33 Among the general populace, as late as 1939 little more than six percent of Filipinos had graduated from intermediate school (grades 5 to 7) and less than two percent from high school (grades 8 to 12).3®

In the published literature, the Constabulary's reputation has improved only marginally beyond that of the

Guardia Civil. American Constabulary officers looked back on

See Khaki and Red 6, no. 11 (November 1926) :7; idem 6, no. 12 (December 1926):7; idem 7, no. 1 (January 1927):13; idem 7, no. 2 (February 1927):3; idem 7, no. 4 (April 1927): 3- 4.

^General Orders 14, Headquarters Philippine Constabulary, 13 July 1925, copy in BIA 1184-169, RG 350, NA.

^Headquarters, Army Service Forces, Civil Affairs Handbook: The Philippines. Section 15: Education (15 February 1945), p. 12. 234

their service as difficult, dangerous, lonely and ill-

rewarded, compensated for only by an awareness of "duty well done" and of the respect of fellow officers.Vic Hurley's

Jungle Patrol. which more than a half-century after its appearance in 1938 remains the only published history of the

Constabulary, is a paean to these forgotten men, agents of civilization in a savage land.

Where Hurley and his Constabulary informants saw "bandits or crackpots" who understood only the business-end of a rifle,

Filipino author Renato Constantino, in his introduction to the

Filipiniana Reprint Series edition of Jungle Patrol. perceived the "inchoate political consciousness" of the oppressed masses. Modern scholars share his perception and sympathy, but many contemporary writers were hardly less harsh in their

judgment of the Constabulary. Philippine Vice Governor Joseph

Ralston Hayden complained that "Filipino leaders" refused to investigate the Tayug uprising of 1931 in part to keep from exposing Constabulary abuses, abuses which had been among the root causes of the disturbances.^® Even the Constabulary

journal reprinted without comment a Free Press editorial which, while applauding the PC's generally "splendid record,"

®^"The Philippine Constabulary," Infantry Journal 30, no. 4 (April 1927):424. An unnamed former Constabulary lieutenant authored this brief article to explain the difference between the Philippine Scouts and Constabulary.

®®Hayden, The Philippines, p. 380; David Bernstein, The Philippine Story (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Co., 1947), pp. 119-120. 235 enumerated a damning list of shortcomings: brutal, arrogant, high-handed conduct; the "swelled-heads" of younger officers; exactions of material goods from barrio folk; and sexual demands on village w o m e n . I n light of the latter accusation, one need not speculate on the rationale behind a Constabulary order requiring "soldiers returning from patrol or investigation work" to be "rigidly examined . . . to determine whether they contracted gonorrhea or not."^® As one

Constabulary officer recalled of the days before the war, "we were treated like kings whenever we went on patrol to the barrios."'*^ And, like a king, there was apparently no limit to what the Constabulary could demand.

Brutality and misconduct, of course, made better press than the creditable performance of routine duty, and in the absence of reliable and extensive primary data, little more than anecdotal evidence remains on which to base conclusions about the PC's reputation in Philippine society. Those in a position to witness and be subjected to Constabulary abuse were not uniformly condemnatory. Filipinos involved in the

Sakdal uprising--easily suppressed by the Constabulary--of

1935 actually seem to have expected the soldiers to join

^^Khaki and Red 11, no. 2 (February 1931): 17.

^Bulletin no. 23, HPC, 25 September 1929, copy in BIA 1184-132, RG 350, NA.

^^Fidel L. Ongpauco, They Refused to Die; True Stories About World War II Heroes in the Philippines. 1941-42 (1982), p. 130. 236

them. Even Katherine Mayo saved her rancor for the

Constabulary's conduct on Mindanao. A "curse" on the Muslim inhabitants of the southern islands, the PC "worked fairly creditably in Christian Filipino country.Available disciplinary figures suggest that the perception of a rapacious Constabulary may be wide of the mark: Throughout the

1920s, one in every six or seven enlisted men in the PC was subjected to a summary court-martial each year, a rate similar to that of the United States Army and one which suggests that

Constabulary enlisted men were held to a high standard of conduct.'*^ Of course, without access to court-martial documents the specifics of disciplinary actions cannot be known, and many complaints against constables were undoubtedly dismissed without action.

^^David R. Sturtevant, Popular Uprisings in the Philippines. 1840-1940 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1976), p. 241.

Mayo, Isles of Fear: The Truth About the Philippines (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1925), pp. 307-308.

^^Disciplinary figures are given in the published Annual Report of the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands for the years 1923 through 1931, inclusive. In the United States Army's hierarchy of disciplinary measures, a summary court is the least severe of three types of courts-martial. The PC had only summary courts which, as in the army, dealt with minor infractions only. By comparison, about one in four soldiers in the army were punished by courts-martial in the early 1920s (about one in six underwent summary courts only). See a compilation of statistical data for the period 1914-1923 in Report of the Secretary of War. 1923 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923), p. 157. BIA file 1184-144 includes a copy of the Constabulary Summary Court Manual. 1916. in RG 350, NA. 237

Officers establish the tone of a military force, and the

PC's ability to contribute to a national army and define its goals and character was in large part determined by the nature

of the officer corps. Long before other colonial police forces had even begun to address the issue, the Constabulary by virtue of the Filipinization of the officer corps had completed the transition from an object of colonial control to an agent of nationalism. If Manuel Quezon's reputed outburst that America should "tyrannize [Filipinos] more" is quoted to underscore the frustrating mildness of America's imperial rule,'*^ it should be clear that by the early 1920s the potential instrument of tyranny, the Philippine Constabulary, was no longer in the hands of American authorities. Notably, complaints of Constabulary repression on the part of Filipino elites predominate in the early years of the century; with

Filipinization of the office corps nearly complete by the end of World War One, the shoe was on the other foot. Predictably,

American evaluation of PC ability declined. What once had been

"one of the most efficient police forces in the world" had become, under "the devastating hand of Filipino politics," a

^Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 4. 238 sadly diminished force.

The implementation of the Insular Constabulary had required the availability on the "world market" of a military labor force suitable for managing the native police/army force of a colonial power. An assortment of American and European adventurers and ex-soldiers found their way to Constabulary

Chief Henry T. Allen's headquarters in Manila's Walled City.

Like the men recruited to serve as junior officers in the

Philippine Scout companies (although the Scouts, unlike the

Constabulary, did recruit several black officers), most had arrived in the Philippines as enlisted men in the United

States Army during the Phi 1ippine-American War; many were in addition veterans of assorted European and colonial military forces. Robert Duckworth-Ford, born in Ceylon, had rode into

Rhodesia with the Bulawayo Field Force in suppression of the

Matabele revolt in 1896. Charles Livingston, one of the few white officers who remained with the Constabulary into the

Commonwealth period, wore both the Queen's and King's South

Africa war medals. A commission in the PC was only one episode in the military career of German-born Oscar Preuss,

"the greatest Moro killer of them all." Already a veteran of fighting in China, East Africa, and South America, Preuss

Nicholas Roosevelt, The Philippines: A Treasure and a Problem (New York: J.H. Sears and Co., 1926), pp. 255-56. Observations like this, of course, helped keep Roosevelt out of the job he spent much of the 1930s chasing after: Governor- General of the Philippines. 239

reportedly died with the Kaiser's army on the eastern front

in 1915. And John R. White, the only Constabulary officer to

publish an account of his service in the Philippines, had seen

action with the Greek Foreign Legion before finding his way

to the Islands. In all, nearly one thousand foreigners (non-

Filipinos) obtained commissions in the Constabulary.'^^

While only a handful of Filipinos managed to move into

the commissioned ranks of the Federal government-controlled

Philippine Scouts, Filipinos quickly dominated, in numbers,

the Constabulary officer corps. As a nod to Taft's commitment

to a (sometime in the future) distant equality between

colonizer and colonized, the 18 July 1901 Philippine

Commission act establishing the Constabulary had allowed for

the recruitment of Filipino officers, and Filipinos comprised

twenty-seven of 183 officers at the end of 1901. Many of these

^^Harold H. Elarth (ed.). The Story of the Philippine Constabularv (Los Angeles: Philippine Constabulary Officers Association, 1949) is the essential starting point for a study of the "old" (i.e. pre-World War One) Constabulary officer corps. Mostly a biographical register, this otherwise noteworthy book is marred by the compiler's inability to include data on more than a few Filipino officers and an unwillingness to confront unpleasant information concerning some comrades. Nor is Elarth authoritative concerning dates of service, promotions, and medals of PC officers. His information should be cross-checked with the annual Official Constabulary Register, copies of which can be found in BIA file 1184, RG 350, NA. The standard history of the Constabulary, with numerous vignettes of the more colorful "characters" (including Preuss), remains Vic Hurley, Jungle Patrol: The Storv of the Philippine Constabulary (New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1938; reprinted 1985 in Manila by Cacho Hermanns). Emanuel A. Baja provides additional biographical details in The Medal for Valor (Manila: By the Author, 1933), 240

"Filipinos," one American officer observed, were Spanish mestizos--"much more Spanish than Filipino"--who tended to perpetuate "Spanish traditions of the 'ruling race.'"^®

Nevertheless, natives of the Islands, whatever their ethnic origin, comprised a significant portion of the officer corps from the start.

America's entry into the World War in April 1917 precipitated the departure of many white officers who sought appointments in the rapidly expanding United States Army, but the war only accelerated a trend toward Filipinization.

Actions taken by the Philippine legislature had already encouraged the departure of serving American officers and discouraged the recruitment of new. The reduction of entry- level pay for PC officers in 1916 ensured, so the Governor-

General opined in his annual report, that "no more Americans

[would] come from the United States to enter as third lieutenants."^^ And the passage of a retirement act (the

Osmena Act) for Philippine civil servants in February 1916 allowed officers with six years' service to depart with a gratuity. At the end of 1916, 190 American and 159 Filipino officers served with the Constabulary; at the end of the following year, 102 American officers remained; by 31 December

White, Bullets and Bolos, p. 159. Forbes provides a convenient statistical table showing Constabulary personnel by race in Philippine Islands. Vol. 1, p. 227.

'^^Annual Report of the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands, 1916 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1917), p. 14. 241

1918, the officer corps included only 39 Americans, while

Filipino officers numbered 308.^®

Nor was there a growing demand for PC commissions on the

part of Americans. For many, the Constabulary had been viewed

merely as an alternative to a place in the army. Future army

Major General Clarence L. Tinker's experience was probably

typical of those Americans who joined the Constabulary after

the first rush of Insurrection-era enlistments. Graduate of

a military college in Missouri, Tinker had hoped for a

commission in the army. Failing that, the school's director

had obtained for Tinker and several other students positions

in the PC. In 1912, after three and one-half years' service

in the Visayas and the Mountain Province, Tinker passed an

army selection board at Fort McKinley and exchanged his third

lieutenancy in the PC for the army's more prestigious

commission.51

Numbers provided in Annual Reportfsl of the Governor- General of the Philippine Islands for 1916, 1917, and 1918. On the retirement act, see Acts of the Third Philippine Legislature and of the Philippine Commission, nos. 2531-2663 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), pp. 185- 87, and Lewis E. Gleeck, Jr., The American Half-Century. 1898- 1946 (Manila: Historical Conservation Society, 1984), p. 183. Gleeck argues that the retirement act was motivated by Filipino desire to further Governor-General Harrison's Filipinization policy, and "fearful of their prospects," virtually "all of the Americans with six years of service immediately applied for retirement."

James L. Crowder, Jr., Osaae General : Mai. Gen. Clarence L. Tinker (Tinker Air Force Base: Office of History, Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, 1987), pp. 30-49. Elarth's biographical register lists about two dozen officers who graduated from colleges and universities in the United States (ranging from Ohio Northern and the Georgia Military College 242

American control of the Constabulary was based in large

part on the continuance of army domination of the PC's senior

ranks. The selection of army officers to lead the Constabulary

in 1901 was a pragmatic acknowledgement of the preeminently military nature of the Constabulary's mission and the need for

readily available--and politically dependable--professional military leadership. The continued reliance on seconded army

officers proved a slender reed upon which to base American control of the PC, however. By almost any measure, the army officers assigned to the Constabulary accomplished a great deal, and most went on to establish outstanding records serving with the American Expeditionary Forces. Their achievements had been based not only on their individual merit, but on the longevity of their duty in the Islands.

Allen, the first chief, served for six years. His successor,

Henry Bandholtz, spent a decade with the PC, and Colonel James

Harbord, the third chief, served equally long with the corps.

Constabulary officers, however, chaffed at their continued subordination to army officers. In 1913 Colonel

Harbord received from a member of the documents outlining a Constabulary reorganization scheme which

apparently left out or reduced the role of army officers.

Constabulary Captains John Knust and Robert Duckworth-Ford had

to Rutgers and the University of Wisconsin) before entering the PC. (Tinker is not among them.) Most of these obtained commissions from 1906 to 1910. 243 authored the plan, which Harbord described as disloyal and

"little short of race 'renegadism.'" He passed the papers on to the captains' immediate superior, fellow army officer

Colonel William C. Rivers, chief of the District of Northern

Luzon. Rivers responded that he was "expecting [the] resignation" of the two, non-American, officers soon.^^

Filipino officers had little more reason to expect encouragement from the army chiefs, either. In 1908, looking ahead to a time when more Filipinos would apply for entry to the officer ranks of the Constabulary, Harbord raised the examination standard for appointment to third lieutenant. "I think I can see that time coming," Harbord informed Chief of

Constabulary Bandholtz, then on leave in the United States,

"and desire to have the examinations high enough to stop the rush." Soon after, Harbord proposed to Quezon and Osmeha that the entry-level Constabulary ranks of third lieutenant and sub-inspector be abolished, the officers concerned required to pass the second lieutenant’s examination or be dismissed from the service. This change would both raise standards and

Harbord to Rivers, 25 October 1913, and Rivers to Harbord, 6 November 1913, both in "Private Letters of J. G. Harbord, Maj. Gen., U.S. Army," Vol. 5, James G. Harbord Papers, LC. Both officers did resign in 1913. Elarth could provide no further information concerning German-born Knust. Duckworth-Ford, an Englishman who had served in British colonial and American armies before joining the PC, rejoined the Constabulary in 1922 and became one of its senior officers before retiring in 1932. At that time he was a colonel and Superintendent of the Constabulary academy. Story of the Philippine Constabulary, pp. 152, 163. 244 provide a safe-guard "against a sudden Filipinization" of the office corps.

With the departure of the Constabulary's army officers to assist in the preparation of the army for service in

France, attempts to "hold the line" against Filipinization of the corps collapsed. The army's retention of control on the force's top positions had already been weakened seriously, however, apparently an unintended side-effect of the struggle for control of army administration between Adjutant General

Frederick Ainsworth and Chief of Staff Leonard Wood. A provision in the fiscal year 1913 army appropriations bill had restricted the ability of the army to assign officers to the PC and in fact, if the bill passed, would require the relief of the five senior officers of the Constabulary. The acting governor-general thought it imperative that experienced men remain at the helm, and in Washington Philippine Resident

Commissioner Manuel Quezon praised the officers' achievements and argued in favor of maintaining the status quo. But the provision remained in the bill, and the five officers had left

Harbord to Bandholtz, 5 April 1908, and 20 May 1908, "Private Letters of J.G. Harbord, Maj. Gen., U.S. Army," Vol. 2, James G. Harbord Papers, LC. Presumably, Harbord attempted to sell the idea to the Filipino political leaders, with whom he is said to have had a "close relationship," on some other, non-racial, basis. See Carol M. Petillo, Douglas MacArthur; The Philippine Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), pp. 75, 261. 245

the Islands by 1914.

All American army officers were gone by 1917, and the

Constabulary acquired its first Filipino commanding officer,

although not without some hesitation. Lieutenant Colonel

Rafael Crame's assumption of command in December 1917 was mostly a triumph of perseverance and personal ambition. He had served with the Spanish military forces in the Philippines as an enlisted man and officer and had found his way into the

Constabulary in 1902. Crame spent most of his career with the

Information Division (also known as the "secret service"), the intelligence-gathering arm of the Constabulary. Crame's

"political" activities had long drawn the attention of his superior officers. Harbord had been informed in 1908 that

Crame had orchestrated a series of newspapers articles in the

Spanish-language press critical of the PC's army leadership.

Another American Constabulary officer told Harbord that Crame was also stirring up trouble in Bulacan in an effort to secure the PC's return to that province.No doubt familiar with

^ Congressional Record. 62nd Cong., 2nd sess.. Vol. 48, pt. 8, p. 8095.

^^The context of Crame's activity is unclear, but in 1908 the government had withdrawn the Constabulary from Bulacan "as an experiment" and upon the insistence of the provincial governor. Law and order conditions declined precipitously, and the PC returned in 1909. Memorandum by Harbord, dated 23 December 1908, in "Private Letters of J.G. Harbord, Maj. Gen., U.S. Army," Vol. 2, James G. Harbord Papers, LC; and Elarth, Story of the Philippine Constabulary, p. 133. In the course of an attack on the PC in 1914, a Spanish-language newspaper in Iloilo, El Tiempo, reminded its readers of the action of Governor Sandico of Bulacan, who had expelled the Constabulary as "an article of luxury." Clipping in BIA 1184-134, RG 350, 246

Crame's machinations, Governor-General Forbes concluded that

the Filipino officer was "not well equipped" to rise higher

in the organization and promoted him to "Chief of the

Information Division with the understanding that he was to get

no higher rank" than lieutenant colonel. But Crame outlasted

unfriendly army commanders and Republican-appointed

administrators to die in office on the 1st day of January

1927, after nine years as Chief of Constabulary.^®

The fact that American officers continued to occupy many

of the higher posts in the organization did little to reassure

the government. The Americans' commitment to a career in the

tropics was suspicious enough; in addition, inter-marriage made them susceptible to the same pressures which lessened the

authorities' confidence in Filipino o f f i c e r s . S c a t t e r e d

NA.

®®Forbes diary, Vol. 3, p. 33. Cameron Forbes Papers, LC. Forbes was naturally more diplomatic (but no more laudatory) in his published memoirs, referring to Brigadier General Crame as a "notable figure, . . . who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and was placed at the head of the Information Division" before Governor-General Harrison "appointed him Chief of Constabulary." The Philippine Islands. Vol. 1, p. 239.

®^Mrs. Maud Bowers Rice, daughter of onetime Chief of Constabulary Clarence Bowers, remembered that several American PC officers took Filipina wives. Her father married one of the Governor of 's many daughters. Telephone conversations with Mrs. Rice, 1 November 1992 and 17 January 1993. Colonel William Dosser, who served nearly thirty years in the Mountain Province, was married to a mestiza, and Josephine Craig met "a pretty Spanish-Filipina" whose American husband served with the PC on Mindoro in 1907. See Josephine and Austin Craig, Farthest Westing: A Philippine Footnote (Philadelphia: Dorrance and Co., 1940), pp. 53-54. 247

anecdotal evidence offers every variety of army opinion of

Constabulary officers, however. In late 1906, army Captain

John Palmer thought the Constabulary governor of the Lake

Lanao district, Englishman Edward W. Griffith, a dignified and

skillful officer.^® Visiting the PC post at Camp Keithley on

Lake Lanao's shore many years later, in 1933, Captain Charles

Ivins found the Filipino officers a "well spoken, well

educated and efficient looking group." The Americans, on the

other hand, "seemed rather seedy." "Prolonged existence in the

tropics working for and with natives erodes a white man's

character," he concluded.®® When, after World War One, army

officers who had served in the pre-war Constabulary attempted to receive longevity credit in the army for their insular

experience, the War Department derided the comparison of duty with the Philippine Islands' "peace force" with active duty

army service (which did not keep Congress from granting the

ex-Constabulary officers their request, however).®®

That United States Army officers should return to the

command of the PC was a constant refrain of Leonard Wood's

I. B. Holley, Jr., General John M. Palmer. Citizen Soldiers, and the Army of a Democracy (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), p. 150.

®®Charles F. Ivins, "The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga," pp. 186-87. Unpublished manuscript in Charles F. Ivins Papers, USAMHI.

®®U. S. Congress, House, Hearings Before Subcommittee no. 5 of the Committee on Military Affairs. 70th Cong., 1st sess., 1928, microfiche ed., H497-11. 248 annual reports as governor-general. General Wood, who during his army career had served both as commanding general in

Mindanao and in Manila, exhibited racial prejudice "too strong and too apparent" to permit close and sympathetic contact with

Filipinos.®^ He was distrustful of their ability and integrity, refusing even to speak with Filipino leaders "on substantive matters" without a white witness present.®^ When

General Crame recommended Major Guillermo Francisco for promotion to lieutenant colonel in 1924, for example. Wood frankly told him that he "was not in favor of promoting

Filipinos to very responsible positions because of the tavo- tayo rcompadrel system. They cannot succeed.

The War Department fended off attempts to reassign its officers to the Constabulary, and the best Wood could do was to prevail upon the Philippine Department commanding general to recommend wel1-qualified noncommissioned officers for

Constabulary commissions. Wood was especially concerned about the antipathy between Muslim and Christian Filipinos in the south and made an effort to obtain American officers for the

Edward Bowditch (an army officer and aide to Governor- General Wood) to W. Cameron Forbes, quoted in A. J. Bacevich, Diplomat in Khaki; Major General Frank Ross McCov and American Foreign Policy. 1898-1949 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), p. 105.

^friend. Between Two Empires, p. 31.

Recalled by Francisco in the Cebu newspaper Progress (27 May 1934). The paper did a special feature on then Colonel Francisco when he was named to be the new Constabulary chief of staff. 249

Muslim Constabulary companies.^4 He did not plan "to

extensively re-Americanize the Constabulary," Wood declared

in his annual reports, but the PC needed more American

officers who would not face the pressure to form "local

affiliations."GS The twelve army NCOs who entered the

Constabulary in 1926 nearly doubled the number of Americans

in the force (from thirteen to twenty-five), but Wood’s hope

that Americans would come to fill thirty percent of the

officer corps proved wildly optimistic.^® In fact, virtually none of the Americans who entered the Constabulary during

Wood's administration remained with the corps for more than

three or four years.

^^Henry Stimson, "Memorandum of Personnel in the Philippines for Governor-General Davis," 27 May 1929, Stimson Papers, microfilm ed., reel 78. In this document, Stimson explained the rationale behind obtaining Americans for service in Mindanao and urged Davis to support these young officers.

®®Annual Report of the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands, 1925 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1926), pp. 13-14.

®®Annual Report of the Governor-General of the Philippines Islands. 1926 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1928), pp. 12-13.

®^Elarth identifies nine army enlisted men who accepted constabulary commissions in 1926; all but one had resigned by 1931. Interestingly, the only one to remain in service, William A. Johnson, was also the only officer not assigned to Mindanao. (He served in the Mountain Province.) See entries for H. Campbell, F. Cottrell, W. Edgar, T. Glinn, J. Grinstead, W. Johnson, R. Lyttle, T. McCrea, and J. Mercer in Story of the Philippine Constabulary, pp. 148ff. 250

Attempts to re-Americanize the PC's leadership did not end with Wood's death in 1927. A new governor-general, Henry

Stimson, "started the business of getting the law amended to permit army officers to be so detailed," and his successor

Dwight Davis invited Colonel George Marshall to accompany him to the Philippines "as prospective Chief of Constabulary." The future army chief of staff, who had not enjoyed two previous tours of duty in the Islands, declined the invitation.®®

The nominating process by which Filipino aspirants entered the Constabulary helped to ensure that the officer corps would reflect the interests of the archipelago's ruling elite. As in the United States, representatives in the national assembly controlled cadet nominations, although legislators could not guarantee that a nominee would pass the entrance exam or the following academy course-work.®®

Letter, Marshall to General John J. Pershing, 28 June 1929, in Larry I. Bland (ed.). The Papers of George Catlett Marshal 1. Vol. 1 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 343-44. Marshall was apparently referring to an attempt to change a provision in the National Defense Act which prevented army officers from holding detached assignments at higher local rank. The army Judge Advocate General opined that officers in the grades of major or above could serve as chiefs or assistant chiefs of the Philippine Constabulary with the pay and allowances of brigadier general or colonel, respectively. They could not, however, use the latter titles unless they already held those grades in the army. See memorandum, "Detail of Army Officers as Chiefs of the Philippine Constabulary," 6 December 1927, BIA 4600-364, RG 350, NA.

®®At least, no examples of the manipulation of these portions of the process were discovered. The governor-general controlled four nominations; the president of the senate and speaker of the house, three each; each senator, two; and each representative, one. Figures provided in Khaki and Red 6, no. 251

Naturally, the process required potential officers to have access to these political elites, and the need to pass an entrance examination (similar to the civil service test) and possess at least a high-school diploma further restricted access to a commission. Predictably, Constabulary officers could be relied upon to defend the social and economic status quo in the Islands.

Virtually all officers were Christian Filipinos. Arrival in the ranks of those who were not occasioned special mention.

The annual report of the Governor-General made note of the appointment of "a Moro, a native of Sulu" as a third lieutenant in 1924, and the Constabulary journal reported two

Muslims, both graduates of Manila South High School, attending the academy in 1927. The first Igorote, from the Mountain

Province of Northern Luzon, completed the academy course the same year. (One other apparently failed to graduate.

Constabulary officers came from virtually every province, but those from Central Luzon and the major Visayan islands

2 (February 1926):2-3.

^^Annual Report of the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands. 1924. p. 63; The 1925 Report identifies the Igorrotes as "non-Christian." Khaki and Red 7, no. 5 (May 1927):9; and idem 7, no. 7 (July 1927):3. The journal initially reported that two Igorrotes would graduate, but only one did so. The journal article also mentioned that the first "Filipino- Mohamedan" to graduate was Hadji Jakaria Abu-bakr, a member of the Sulu royal family on duty at Jolo. See also Elarth, Story of the Philippine Constabulary, p. 125. 252 dominated the officer corps.

Most Filipino officers made the Constabulary a career, although the governor-general's reports reflect a steady wastage by resignation or, more commonly, dismissal. Promotion could be slow, especially once the American officers who departed in 1917 and 1918 had been replaced. Few officers could have shared the government's satisfaction that promotions after the war had at last settled down and "an officer may be in the corps for fifteen or twenty years without rising above the grade of captain. Unlike the strict seniority system in place in the United States Army, promotion through the grade of major could be by selection in the constabulary. In theory, this allowed f' r "the recognition of outstanding ability," but it also per.nitted a demoralizing manipulation of the promotion process.

In 1931, Rizal was home to 17 officers; 16 hailed from Batangas; and fifteen each came from , Cebu, and Iloilo. Biographical data and a photograph of every serving officer can be found in Khaki and Red 11, no. 7 (July 1931), a special thirtieth anniversary issue of the journal.

^^Annual Report of the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands. 1919 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1920), pp. 44-45. The statement was taken from General Crame's annual, unpublished, report.

Elarth, Story of the Philippine Constabulary, p. 14; Baja, Police System, p. 136; and Ramon P. Mendoza, "Saga of the Philippine Constabulary," in Philippine Constabulary 65th Anniversary. a souvenir program issued by Constabulary headquarters, 8 August 1966. I am grateful to Maud Bowers Rice for providing a copy of this publication. 253

Complaints about favoritism in promotions and assignments

became commonplace in the Constabulary and were, indeed, one

of the most troubling legacies taken in to the Philippine

Army. Baja believed that by the late 1920s, "the service

suffered much from disastrous political forces." In

manipulating personal links to political elites to gain

promotions and favorable assignments, PC officers copied the

"political" nature of earlier generations of United States

Army officers, who had allowed no opportunity for self­

promotion to pass. The stultifying boredom of frontier duty

in the later nineteenth century, as one officer recalled,

meant that the "ardent desire of most officers was to be

detailed on the staff or sent to Washington. During the

Spanish-American War, future Constabulary chief Allen had been

"shocked at the blatant way both regular officers and

civilians used personal influence to obtain commissions and

choice assignments, regardless of their professional

qualifications." He was, Allen's biographer noted, "no novice

at it h i m s e l f . "75 The circumstances confronting many

Constabulary officers were similar, but the effects were more

insidious in the Philippines. Given the nature of its duties,

favoritism in the ranks of the PC encouraged partisanship in

law enforcement. A PC officer beholden to a local political

7^T. Bentley Mott, Twenty Years as Military Attaché (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 50-51.

^Twichell, Allen, p. 90. 254

boss faced daunting challenges to the maintenance of

professional standards and impartial application of the law.

And the problem was apparently both real and common. When a

Philippine Army plucking board recommended the retirement of

Major Paciano Tangco because as a Constabulary officer he had

"sought the influence of persons in political office to secure

preferment," Quezon ordered the hapless veteran reinstated.

Singling out Tangco for behavior "accepted almost as a matter

of course" in Constabulary days was clearly unfair, the

Commonwealth President r e a s o n e d . T h r o u g h o u t the 1920s and

1930s, the charge of "political favoritism" was the most damning indictment of the PC's lack of professional

competence.

The small size and dispersion of the Constabulary made

it readily susceptible to charges of politicization. Although would-be officers had to pass a qualifying examination for entry into the academy, the cadets also had to be nominated by members of the legislature, a system the outspoken Baja

claimed had "not been entirely free from political pressure.

A representative in the national assembly as much as admitted

the truth of the accusation when he proposed that legislators be allowed to nominate more candidates for admission to the

^Quezon to Eisenhower, 16 March 1937, Eisenhower Papers, Principal File, Pre-Presidential Papers (Ann Whitman File), Eisenhower Library. The "reasoning" was actually Eisenhower's, to which Quezon offered prompt agreement.

^^Baja, Police System, p. 150. 255

academy. The present system, he complained, ensured that

"only close friends and relatives of nominating officials"

stood a chance of gaining admission.^®

In truth, the PC provided slim pickings for patronage

dispensers. Few applicants passed the entrance examination

(usually about twenty percent), and often there were no positions for them in the Constabulary even if they made it

through the academy. Only twenty-four of 146 applicants passed

the entrance test in 1931; out of 164 applicants only ten passed the following year, and six of those were already enlisted men in the PC. In 1934, ten cadets graduated from the

academy. None received commissions. Eighteen young men had

completed the academy course in July 1933, and in April 1934

seventeen of them were still awaiting positions in the

Constabulary. (Some were in fact awaiting any form of

employment.) For the commissioned ranks of the Constabulary,

the Commonwealth was a godsend. The eight cadets who graduated

from the academy in 1936 were the first in many years to

receive commissions on graduation day.^®

Khaki and Red 12. no. 11 (November 1932):12-13. American officials were not guiltless in this regard. Governor-General Forbes had obtained the dismissal of Charles Elliott, a member of the Philippine Commission, in 1913, in part because Elliott had used his position to "put one son in the Constabulary [and] to get his brother detailed as Inspector of Constabulary." Gleeck, American Half-Century, p. 149.

“^^Philippines Herald (19 April 1936). For application figures, see Khaki and Red 11, no. 8 (August 1931): 24, and idem 12, no. 8 (August 1932):10. 256

The oft-quoted observation that Crame was the first

Filipino Chief of Constabulary obscures the fact that he was also the last until the eve of the Commonwealth. Yet the return of American--if not army--officers to the command of the PC did little to end accusations of low morale and politicization. Governor-General Stimson thought the American successor to Brigadier General Crame, Swedish-born Charles E.

Nathorst (Chief of Constabulary from 1927 to 1932), was particularly susceptible to the influences of Filipino politicians.GO The aged Nathorst (two months short of his seventieth birthday, when he finally retired), Baja wrote, was

"in his second childhood" but continued to cling to command

"like a barnacle,"®^ The only Filipino in the administrative staff at this time, the Adjutant (not named by Baja, but

Paulino Santos served as Adjutant from 1924 to 1930), "rather encouraged than checked political intrusions." The senior leadership of the Constabulary remained in upheaval throughout this period, with Nathorst replaced by the sickly Lucien

Sweet, who served only three months as chief before retiring and then returning to the United States, where he died in

December 1932.®^

^Stimson, "Memorandum of Personnel."

®^Baja, Police System, p. 166.

^^Khaki and Red 13, no. 2 (February 1933):2. 257

Filipino political leaders had not readily acquiesced in

the return of an American to command of the Constabulary.

Leonard Wood appointed Nathorst as chief, wrote one American

journalist, over the strenuous objections of "the boss of the

Philippine Legislature, Senator Quezon," who had "served

notice on Washington that the Philippine Senate . . . would

not confirm any American as Chief of Constabulary."®^ When

Nathorst resigned in April 1932, Quezon summoned retired

Lieutenant Colonel to Baguio and reportedly

sounded him out about becoming the new chief. Colonel

Guillermo B. Francisco, then district commander of the

Visayas, was also mentioned as the possible Constabulary head,

but a senior American officer, Clarence H. Bowers, had the

inside track and was appointed acting chief during Sweet's

tenure. Bowers was admittedly popular among Filipinos and had

a reputation for "tact and efficiency.

Public speculation throughout 1932 and into 1933 that an

"outsider" would be appointed to command of the Constabulary

®®Article by James T. Williams, Jr., in the Manila Bulletin (19 March 1927), clipping in BIA 1184-173, RG 350, NA.

®^Manila Daily Bulletin (14 and 18 April 1932). Oddly enough. Bowers' "stature" may have been enhanced by his short height. As chief, he was the shortest man on the Constabulary staff. (Photograph of PC staff officers, undated but circa 1932-33, in possession of M. B. Rice.) Colonel Robert A. Duckworth-Ford was reportedly offered the post of chief if he would agree to become a Philippine citizen, which he was unwilling to do. Letter, Robert W. Duckworth-Ford (Colonel Duckworth-Ford's youngest son) to author, 4 February 1993. 258

revealed the government's lack of confidence in the PC's

ability to right itself. The "outsider" was Philippine Scout

Major Vicente Lim, the ambitious commander of the student

cadet corps at San Juan de Letran College since 1929.

According to the Philippines Herald. Lim was to serve as

assistant chief before moving up to the organization's senior

post. Lim was a graduate of West Point and several advanced

army schools, and the paper expressed confidence in his

ability to lay "the foundation for our national defense" in

harmony with "the best military techniques" and Filipino

needs. The Constabulary was less enthusiastic. "It is bad

enough to consider the appointment of former Constabulary

officers to the vacant position," Khaki and Red editor R. G.

Hawkins wrote, "but it is far worse to talk of the appointment

of anyone entirely foreign to the organization." To make such

an appointment would be a "rank injustice" to many deserving

officers.®® Governor-General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. then announced that the War Department had turned down his request

for Lim's assignment. The long-suffering Bowers finally

received the promotion to brigadier general in February 1933.

Like most of the Constabulary's few remaining American

officers. Bower's experience in the Islands dated back to the

Philippine-American War, during which he had served with the

®®Quoted in Khaki and Red 13, no. 2 (February 1933):12.

®®Khaki and Red 12, no. 7 (July 1932):18. 259

6th Cavalry Regiment. Remaining in the Islands after leaving

the army in 1902, he worked at the insular ice plant before

joining the Constabulary in 1904. Thereafter, his Constabulary

service "was principally along administrative and executive

lines," although he had accepted one of the senior commissions

in the Philippine National Guard during World War One and had

led PC forces in a two-month campaign against colorums in

Surigao in 1924, an action in which United States Marines also participated.^

Baja, a family friend, thought him a capable officer, but

by 1933 "it was too late to save the organization from falling

into the hands and control of the political powers that be."

Bowers' "predecessors had carried the ship too far into the

vortex of political bossism."®^ A new governor-general, Frank

Murphy, publicly warned Chief Bowers in January 1934 that

officer assignments gained "through influence other than

merit" would no longer be tolerated. Thereafter, Bowers

notified his officers, it would be assumed that the officer

concerned in an assignment request from outside the force had

generated the request himself. The officer would not be

I am grateful to General Bowers' daughter and grand­ daughter, Mrs. Maud Bowers Rice and Dr. Jacqueline Bowers Rice, for sharing with me personal details, photographs, memorabilia, and newspaper clippings of the general's career. Bowers, whose death Elarth lists erroneously as "about 1938," died in Texas in 1943 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Story of the Philippine Constabulary, p. 146.

®®Baja, Police System, p. 71. 260 considered for the sought-after post.^^ By then, such warnings had become routine and largely meaningless.

At the same time, Murphy informed the Bureau of Insular

Affairs that it was "essential" to reorganize the PC "to separate that body from political influence, place it on a merit basis and generally improve its morale." General Bowers was not up to the task, Murphy asserted, nor were the other eight ranking American Constabulary officers. Murphy sought the War Department's advice on appointing a Filipino officer to command, a Filipino graduate of West Point, or an American army officer with two or three additional army officers as assistants. He admitted that the latter option would not gain local support.^

As it had only the previous year, the army again declined to allow its officers to serve with the Constabulary. The PC had good officers of it own, the army allowed, and the army needed the few officers assigned to the Philippine garrison.

Finally, the appointment of army officers to the Constabulary would be a "backward step," detrimental to the Philippine

p q Letter, Murphy to Bowers, 8 January 1934, quoted in Khaki and Red 14, no. 2 (February 1934) :2-3. Bowers had Murphy's letter reprinted and distributed to all PC posts. See Bulletin no. 5, HPC, 17 January 1934, copy in BIA 1184- 132, RG 350, NA.

^Memorandum for Chief of Staff from Brigadier General Creed Cox, 23 January 1934, AGO Central Files, Philippine Islands, 1926-39, RG 407, NA. 261 government's growing political autonomy. Murphy then turned to the Constabulary's head surgeon, Colonel , for a new Chief of Constabulary. The editor of Khaki and Red expressed "pleasant surprise" at the appointment. Presumably

Valdes, a handsome and affable Spaniard who had joined the PC only in 1921 and had been serving since January 1933 as the

Acting Commissioner of Health and Public Welfare, would prove immune from the blandishments of political interference.®^

With the prize of political autonomy approaching within reach, the reality of Constabulary service remained at sharp odds with the army-in-the-making musings of many PC officers.

The commissioned strength of the corps averaged only 390 officers annually (from 1920 to 1932) apportioned among as many as 162 duty s t a t i o n s . Even though "regiments" and even

"brigades" (two or more regiments grouped together) came to exist in the PC table of organization, in reality the

"military" dimension of Constabulary service consisted of guard duty and small-unit patrolling in the more isolated portions of the archipelago. For most Constabulary officers, professional education began and ended with graduation from

®^Memorandum, ACS/WPD to Chief of Staff, 31 January 1934, AGO Central Files, Philippines, 1926-39, RG 407, NA.

®^Khaki and Red 14, no. 4 (April 1934): 2.

^^Statistical information regarding the Constabulary can be found in the Annual ReportFsl of the Governor-General (through 1931 only); Forbes, Philippine Islands, Vol. 1, p. 227 (through 1926); and Baja, Police Problems. p. 549 (through 1932). 262 the Constabulary academy, which had grown from being a nine- month course of instruction to being two-years' in length only in 1 9 1 7 .*4 Many of those elements of collegiality which lead to the development of a professional ethos were missing from the Constabulary experience.

The lack of advanced military schooling undermined the

Constabulary's legitimacy as the nucleus of the army. As one of those rushed to in 1937 to provide the

Philippine Army with qualified general staff officers. Captain

Villaluz observed ruefully that nothing in the Constabulary had prepared him for the Command and General Staff School. He admitted that he did not complete half of the assigned reading, despite studying until one o'clock each morning.

Such candidness could only have strengthened the hands of those who felt Constabulary officers to be unequal to the task of leading the new army.

As talk of independence mounted in the early 1930s, the

Constabulary commenced reorganization to better fit itself as an army. Clearly, the PC feared that its role as the logical

"army" of the nation-to-be needed reinforcement and public airing. Lieutenant Colonel Duckworth-Ford, Superintendent of the Philippine Constabulary Academy, exhorted incoming cadets

®'*Until a third year was added to the academy in 1928, the school year was only nine-months' long. In 1928, the summer vacation period was reduced to one month.

^^Khaki and Red 17, no. 12 (December 1937):21. 263

in 1931 "to excel and keep pace with the political advancement

of the Philippine Islands" if they hoped to lead in "the Armed

Forces of the government." When he retired a year and a half

later, Duckworth-Ford challenged the Constabulary to devise

a five-year plan to become the "National Armed Forces." The

Constabulary, he suggested, should reorganize into "regimental districts" and abandon nonessential company posts to allow

greater concentration of troops. The PC should also establish

a reserve officers corps building upon the available

university cadet corps and prepare an emergency conscription

plan.^

Financial constraints in the early 1930s limited the

Constabulary's ability to move beyond rhetoric. Both

Governors-General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. and Frank Murphy

stressed economy during the early years of the Depression. The

Constabulary bore its share of government retrenchment. In

1931, officers and men saw their base pay cut. In addition,

the government reduced quarters, subsistence and clothing

allowances, abolished per diems, and severely restricted

automobile and other travel allowances.®^ The Constabulary lost

551 enlisted billets in 1931 (and ten officer slots), nearly

nine percent of its total strength.

®^Khaki and Red 11, no. 9 (September 1931 ): 13-15, and idem 11, no. 11 (November 1931):8-11.

®^Khaki and Red 12, no. 7 (July 1932):13. 264

Ironically, the very success of Filipinization undermined

the leverage which might otherwise be held by a colonial police force. Growing conflict between the forces of nationalism and colonial authority could enhance the position of the police, who were not always loath to use this new-found

leverage to gain material advantages.^® Already an object of

legislature control, the Philippine Constabulary could do nothing but wait out the decline of its fortunes. But the

Constabulary gained strength as the reality of Philippine political autonomy grew in 1933-34. Both Murphy and Philippine

Department Commanding General Frank Parker saw a renewed

Constabulary as meeting the military needs of the

Commonwealth, a conclusion fully in accord with Constabulary officers and their political allies. PC officers had no intention of remaining content with merely an enhanced internal security role, however, which appears to be what

Parker and Murphy had in mind.

Before leaving for the United States in the fall of 1934,

Quezon gave his approval to a measure more than doubling the size of the PC within two years (to 12,000), establishing an officers' training school (formal military schooling beyond the academy), reorganizing the academy, and allowing the Chief of Constabulary to arrange for the detail of instructors and

Arnold explores this development in India where nationalists turned their attention to the police in the 1920s and 1930s, in "Madras Constabulary," pp. 28-30. 265

advisers from the United States Army. In January 1935 the

PC redesignated its six territorial districts as "regiments,"

numbered one through six (the 1st Regiment being in northern

Luzon; the 6th Regiment on Mindanao).

While in the United States, Quezon, of course, gave army

Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur carte-blanche to devise a

Philippine military scheme of his own making. The attempt to keep secret the agreement that MacArthur would fill the role of military adviser suggests that it was not the role envisioned for United States Army advisers in the 1935

Constabulary bill. The plan to reorganize and enlarge the

Constabulary was halted early in 1936 since it conflicted with the National Defense Act. The Philippine Constabulary would play a central role in the military forces of the nation but only as a component of a much larger organization.

^^Philippines Herald (28 February 1935) and the Manila Daily Bulletin (1 March 1935). Clippings in BIA 1184-173, RG 350, NA.

^^Philippines Herald (6 January 1936). CHAPTER VI

THE MISSION IN ACTION

Part One: Getting Started, 1935-38

United States Army Lieutenant William Lee, technical adviser to the Philippine Constabulary air corps, was an active Shriner, and on the 26th of October 1935, the hard- drinking officer joined fellow members of the Bamboo Oasis

Shrine Patrol at the . Prom there, the "Shrine

Patrol" travelled the brief distance over to pier seven to give a boisterous welcome to visiting members of San

Francisco's Islam Temple, who had just arrived on the S. S.

President Hoover. Dressed in their "colorful Turkish robes of red and yellow and green with carmine fez and large Arab swords," the Shriners attracted the attention of a large crowd at the pier, but the newcomers soon moved off with their hosts to sample the hospitality of the city. Almost as an afterthought, Lee added to his diary entry for the day that

"General Douglas MacArthur arrived in the boat also."^

The colorfully attired Shriners had only momentarily diverted the crowd from its real purpose, which was to greet

^Diary entry, 26 October 1935, Lee Papers, Eisenhower Library; Philippines Herald (26 October 1935).

266 267 the former chief of staff, and MacArthur'a arrival made a larger splash in the local press than it would in Lee's diary.

The design of the Philippine military system was a matter of great interest. Significantly, MacArthur was first asked about the status of the Philippine Constabulary. The Herald ran a headline which shouted out the news that the PC would be the nucleus of the army, but in the small print, MacArthur's words seemed more carefully chosen: The matter had been considered, he acknowledged

The Constabulary's fate was only one of many decisions to be made. Over the course of the next six weeks, the

Military Mission worked with the government to revise the plan devised in Washington. President Quezon announced the formation of a National Defense Council, which assisted in development of the military system.^ Eisenhower acknowledged that while the "basic provisions" of the plan devised in

Washington remained unchanged, the Mission had to rewrite much

Ibid. Relying upon an article in the Graphic (31 October 1935), Carpenter writes that MacArthur stated in an interview given "immediately after his arrival" that the army would be built upon the PC. "Toward the Development of Philippine National Security Capability, 1920-1940" (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1976), pp. 338-39.

^The Council included the President, Vice President, all cabinet members. Assemblymen Francisco Enage and Daniel Maramba, Constabulary Chief Valdes, and Governors H. Villanueva and J. Cailles. Paulino Santos was the secretary of the Council. Soon after forming the Council, Quezon added to its ranks two Revclution-era generals, Jose Alejandrino and Teodoro Sandiko. 268 of the language of the proposed defense bill.* Exactly what changes were made is not clear. Between the Mission's organization in late 1934 and its arrival in Manila nearly a year later, Quezon had commissioned a further study of defense needs. A "technical adviser" (a generic term for any outside

"expert" working for the government) in the Department of the

Interior, L. Siguion Reyna, prepared a "preliminary study" in

May 1935. Reyna apparently focussed his attention on the need to integrate the raising of military forces with other national developmental activities.^ Possibly, the Mission had to respond to this plan. It also had to bring the language of its proposed legislation into line with Philippine legislative practice. Defense issues had been much in the air in the recent past, culminating in the passage of the "Bureau of

National Defense Act" in late 1934. The governor-general had vetoed the act, but the agitation for an "army" of some kind had continued, and legislation strengthening the military aspects of the PC had been enacted in early 1935. No doubt the

*Robert H. Ferrell (ed.). The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), p. 10.

^Aruna Gopinath, Manuel L. Quezon: The Tutelary Democrat (Quezon City: New Day, 1987), pp. 144-46, summarizes the study (not seen by this author). Although she seems to conclude that Reyna’s plan formed the basis of the National Defense Act, based on her summation it is difficult to see much connection between Reyna's and the Mission's plan other than a common emphasis on compulsory service and the development of military training in schools. MacArthur had, of course, already accepted these twin facets of a defense system for his own plan. 269

Mission had to accommodate these enhanced expectations in ways it had not foreseen in Washington.®

On 25 November 1935, Quezon described the resultant national defense scheme in his first address to the National

Assembly. "Assuring the future safety of our beloved country," he proclaimed, was "the fundamental responsibility of [the] state." The "plan for national defense," as he then outlined it, was based on the obligation of every citizen to contribute; the need to provide "actual security" by means of a comprehensive scheme of defense; and considerations of economy. The latter suggested the inability to build a "battle fleet," choosing instead the incremental and deliberate construction of a large land force. Quezon then went on to describe in greater detail the plan which the Defense Council and Military Mission had readied for submission to the

Assembly.7

At the same time, the Assembly received a copy of the proposed National Defense Act. Major Ord went before a special Assembly commission and explained the provisions of the act and the suitability of the defense plan to Philippine

Carpenter provides a lengthy account of the 1934 defense bill and the discussion of defense issues at the Commonwealth Constitutional Convention, held from July 1934 to February 1935, in "Philippine National Security Capability," pp. 149- 68, and Chapter 5, passim.

^Message of His Excellency Manuel L. Quezon. President al Ulê Philippines, to the National AssemkUy , Delivered November 25, 1935. at its Inaugural Session. National Assembly Hall. Legislative Building (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1935). 270 conditions at great length. Legislators debated the act and offered numerous amendments (mostly related to pay of officers and methods of financing the defense plan), but the National

Defense Act was passed essentially as presented and signed by

Quezon on 21 December 1935.® Conscript training would not begin until January 1937, but many daunting tasks confronted the Military Mission and the regular soldiers of the new army during 1936.

The underlying philosophy of the defense plan was simple.

By enlisting and training a large infantry force which would encompass all major islands of the archipelago, MacArthur expected to make the task of conquering the Philippines so potentially costly that no enemy would care, or dare, to attempt such a mission. Of each years' registrants for conscription, a certain percentage (which varied each year)

^Carpenter ("Philippine National Security Capability," pp. 348-60) evaluates criticism of the act and states that the proposed act was not made public until mid-December, but the Philippines Herald printed the act in full the day after Quezon’s initial speech, 26 November 1935. A comparison of the proposal with the approved act reveals mostly minor changes. The provision allowing the American advisory group to include one "Field Marshal" was moved to near the end of the act (it had been near the beginning), technical provisions relating to Philippine neutrality were deleted, and a section allowing "instruction and training" for "auxiliary service" to be given to school girls was added. The financial provisions were roughly the same, two significant changes being a reduction in the monies for "maintenance, operation and rentals of posts, stations, hospitals and buildings" from 800,000 to 150,000 pesos (the reduced funding might have been transferred to "construction costs" of 535,000 pesos which were not given in the proposed act), and a halving of "expenses of military academy" from 40,000 to 22,000 pesos. 271 would be selected for training. After completing initial training of five and one-half months (a few were offered eleven months of training), the trainees passed into the first reserve. At age 31, they entered the second reserve; at age

41 (through age 50), the third and final reserve. The first reserve would train for ten days annually, the second reserve for five days, and the third reserve for seven days every third year.

Military necessity is seldom the only consideration in establishing the components of a military system.* However wasteful, no plan of defense could write-off a significant part of the archipelago. Just as in the United States, the price of public and political support for a military system required at least the appearance of a comprehensive defense effort, one which responded to public clamor for local protection and a fair share of military spending. Claims that

"military units would be scattered . . . on dozens of islands"^* fail to note the importance placed on the defense of Luzon (just as Philippine Department war plans envisioned).

The 128 projected training sites would eventually be found on fourteen islands, but six of these (Marinduque, Mindoro,

Palawan, , Tablas, and Sulu) would have only one

Eliot A. Cohen, Citizens and Soldiers; The Dilemmas of Military Service (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 33.

^°D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), p. 502. 272 training location each. The bulk of the sites would be on

Luzon, Mindanao, and the six major Visayan islands (Panay,

Negros, Cebu, , , and )

MacArthur stated that the regular division would

"ultimately" be located on Luzon, presumably fulfilling the role then played by the Philippine Division. The "strength of the defending forces that will be built up in Luzon," he pointed out, would make conquest of that essential island extremely difficult.The more important training locations, such as the regular division's Camp Murphy, the model training camp at San Miguel, Tarlac, the field artillery training camp at Dau, and the Philippine Military Academy, were all on

Luzon. Air Force and Off-Shore Patrol headquarters were near

Manila, as were the major United States Army posts which the

Philippine Army would take over. Inevitably, considerable military resources would be concentrated on Luzon.

For cadre titles and locations, see General Orders 136, HPA, 23 November 1936. More or less complete collections of Philippine Army orders and bulletins are held in the National Archives (RG 350), the Library of Congress, and the United States Army Military History Institute. Until sometime in 1938, HPA also provided copies to several other public, private, and university libraries in the United States. For a complete list, see letter, Paulino Santos to BIA, 21 February 1938, BIA 1184A-79, RG 350, NA. It is worth noting that neither Quezon nor MacArthur ever stipulated exactly where a major American naval base might be built in the archipelago, so a military system which encompassed all the major islands had the potential for defending a base not built in Manila Bay.

^^Frank C. Waldrop (ed.), MacArthur on War (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1942), pp. 342, 346. 273

The original idea was that potential trainees would

acquire basic military skills (drill, musketry, first aid, and

so on) before being conscripted. For this reason, the defense

plan called for Preparatory Military Training (PMT) to be

included as part of the normal school curriculum. The trainee

period would then provide an opportunity to enhance these

skills and offer company-level training. Subsequently, active

duty periods while serving in the first reserve allowed the

companies to engage in training at larger-unit level. The

cadre sites were to be large enough for company training, and each geographical area (Luzon, the Visayas, Mindanao) was to

include a divisional-size training reserve.

Five and one-half months on active duty was a short period of time by international standards (although long by

Swiss standards, the supposed "model"), but MacArthur

justified the decision by pointing out that static beach defense did not require extensive training. Too, he argued,

it was more important to devote the available training time

The Stotsenburg reservation would play this role on Luzon and Camp Keithley was to serve this purpose on Mindanao, but the army was not successful in obtaining a large training area in the Visayas. Fort Stotsenburg (named for an officer killed during the Philippine-American War) covered about 150,000 acres. The Commonwealth government leased a portion of the reservation. Camp Dau (renamed Camp del Pilar after the Revolution-era general and war hero, , in 1941 [see General Orders 19, HPA, 27 January 1941]), for field artillery training. Keithley (the only United States Army post named for an enlisted man. Private Fernando Keithley, who had been killed near the site in 1903) was located on the northern edge of Lake Lanao. 274 and money to more important first reserve unit training.

Finally, the trainee was supposed to report for duty already having undergone individual training in school.

Few decisions made by the Mission are as perplexing as the last. With PMT and conscription instituted at the same time, trainees could not possibly possess any military skills for several years. PMT was to continue from ages 10 to 18, but most students did not stay in school for more than three or four years. By 1939, for example, less than twenty percent of the population had graduated from primary school, and only six percent from intermediate school. HPA would seize on the low educational attainment of many trainees to excuse poor training results. (HPA did not point out then, nor has anyone since, exactly what literacy had to do with basic infantry training.) Perhaps the belief that most conscripts would possess more formal education grew out of earlier experience with enlisted Scouts and Constabulary soldiers, who tended to have relatively high educational attainments.^^

The Philippine Army regular force was to number about

20,000 officers and men by 1942 (reduced to 11,000 after the number of conscripts was raised in mid-1936), mostly dedicated at first to training the conscripts. The regular force

The most detailed description of the reasoning behind the specifics of the trainee system is found in the Military Adviser's and Chief of Staff's Memorandum (on concentration of training cadres) to President Quezon, 8 December 1939, RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 2. 275 included a small air force and "navy," the Off-Shore Patrol

(OSP). The original plan called for only one squadron of aircraft, later raised to three squadrons and a training school. The Off-Shore Patrol, a member of the Military Mission wrote, "was initially conceived as a service of wartime information and peacetime police," but the OSP was later planned to grow to a fleet of thirty "fast motor torpedo boats

. . . to maintain a constant service police of [Philippine] waters . . . capable of immediate concentration against an aggressor."^

Few of the initial tasks confronting the Military Mission were so potentially divisive as choosing the officers of the

Philippine Army, yet an effective officer corps was essential to building the army. Probably the best qualified Filipino

^^"Expansion of Plan" (undated, unsigned memorandum), RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 1. For a brief history of the air force, see Salvador Campos, "Growing Wings," Citizen Army (August-September 1940):4, 20. Antonio Varias (comp.), WW-II (1941-42) in the Philippines (Manila: Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor, Inc., 1979), provides a detailed chronology of the development of the air force and Off-Shore Patrol. The air force grew out of a recently established Constabulary aviation unit. Captain Ivan L. Proctor of the United States Army air corps had been appointed technical adviser to the PC's air force on 18 February 1935, but he had died after a brief illness on 19 March 1935. Lieutenant William Lee, who had arrived in the Islands the day of Proctor's death and was serving as the assistant adjutant of the 4th Composite Group at Nichols Field, had taken his place. Lee's numerous but unedifying diaries have recently been opened to researchers at the Eisenhower Library. However, Lee's diaries do make clear that he had no prior knowledge of the Military Mission's arrival and was uncertain for several weeks as to whether MacArthur would even want to continue the air unit. 276

military officer was Vicente Lim, the man repeatedly posed for

success. He had not quite become the Chief of Constabulary;

now he would not quite become the army chief of staff; later

he would not quite become the Secretary of the Department of

National Defense. Lim was openly contemptuous of the PC, and,

promoted to lieutenant colonel on 1 November 1935, he was

senior to both Eisenhower and Ord. The United States Army's

traditional status vis-a-vis the Constabulary was such that

being junior (in grade) to a PC officer did not inhibit

authority; being junior to a Filipino PS officer was another matter.

The Constabulary was converted wholesale into the army,1^

presumably allowing the senior PC officers to take the leading

positions in the new force, as well. This was not entirely

the case, however. As Carlos Quirino later told the story in

In a "secret" handwritten evaluation of Philippine Army officers destined for Quezon, Eisenhower criticized Lim for believing that "no Filipino except a Scout can possibly be a good soldier." Document (undated, but 1939) in Kevin McCann Papers, Eisenhower Library. Coast artillery officer Estaban B. Dalao was the senior Filipino PS officer (promoted to lieutenant colonel on 1 August 1935) but he apparently had little interest in seeking a career in the Philippine Army.

^^There was now a Constabulary division within the army, and it continued to fulfill traditional Constabulary duties. A "State Police Force" consisting of "all the police forces of the country" was established in October 1936. When this police force proved unsatisfactory, the PC was reconstituted in June 1938. For a convenient summary of the Constabulary's legal relationship with the Philippine Army, see The Philippine Army: its Establishment, Organization, and Legal Basis (Philippine Research and Information Section, Advance Echelon, USAFFE, 26 January 1945), pp. 1-3. his biography of the Commonwealth president, Quezon refused to appoint the current Chief of Constabulary, Brigadier

General Basilio Valdes, chief of staff of the new army for fear of being thought "too partial to white people."^® Rather than give Valdes the senior post, two Constabulary officers who had retired in 1930, Jose de los Reyes and Paulino Santos, were recalled to active duty to assume the top positions in the army.

Initial senior officer assignments were meant to be temporary. Quezon reportedly wanted to make "absolutely certain he had the right men" before designating any officer to a permanent position.^* De los Reyes' selection to be acting chief of staff was, according to the Philippines

Herald, "highly unexpected." The Constabulary journal Khaki and Red agreed that the promotion "came as a surprise" and was presumably "but a reward" for long years of service in the

Constabulary.20 De los Reyes had served a competent but unheralded twenty-nine years in the PC before retiring to begin a second career as head of the Manila customs bureau secret service. Even the Military Mission could not understand why de los Reyes had been pushed to the top. Eisenhower had expected Santos to be the chief of staff; now de los Reyes,

^®Carlos Quirino, Quezon: Paladin of Philippine Freedom (Manila: Pilipiniana Book Guild, 1971), p. 289.

^ Philippines Herald (18 January 1936).

^Ojbid., and Khaki and Red 16, no. 1 (January 1936):3. 278 despite his title, was "to supervise only in a most general way the processes of organizing the Philippine Army."^^ He was, however, the most senior of the retired Filipino

Constabulary officers, and his promotion was hailed as proof that the army would remain "outside" of politics.^2 At the same time as Reyes' elevation to brigadier general, Valdes and

Guillermo Francisco received appointments as acting assistant chiefs of staff, also at the rank of brigadier general.

General de los Reyes remained as acting chief of staff barely four months. Paulino Santos acceded to the post on 4

May 1936 with the rank of major general. Valdes, now also a major general, became the deputy chief of staff. De los Reyes became the Provost Marshall General, and he too was given a second star. (The presence of three major generals in the

Philippines' small army was widely ridiculed, and later a regulation stipulated that only the chief of staff could hold the rank.) Reyes' had been simply a caretaker regime.

General Santos was General MacArthur's choice for army chief. Santos had officially rejoined the army in December

1935 as secretary to the Council of National Defense. Fellow officers felt that Santos was either unqualified or did not deserve to be the chief of staff. His selection to head the army required reinforcement of his martial reputation, which

2^Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, pp. 10-11, 15.

^^Philippines Herald (11 and 13 January 1936) 279

may have been the rationale for awarding him the Medal of

Valor (the Constabulary's highest award for bravery) in

November 1935 for an incident which had taken place in 1917.

In announcing his selection as chief of staff, President

Quezon frankly acknowledged that was not

"endowed with the knowledge that a chief of staff should have

in building up" Philippine national defense, but Santos would,

after all, have General MacArthur's g u i d a n c e . S a n t o s too

felt compelled to defend his appointment. He admitted that he was "not a professional soldier" but rather a "citizen-

soldier," a distinction he thought to be an advantage given

the Philippine Army's recruitment basis. And he virtually

admitted the truth of accusations that his appointment had led

to discontent in the officer corps. His fellow officers would, he was certain, put patriotism above personal feeling.

Acrimony and accusations of "politics in the army" forced

MacArthur to declare publicly that he had put forward Santos

for the job. According to MacArthur's statement, he had

received a request from Quezon in late 1935 to recommend

senior officer positions and grades. He responded with a memorandum in January 1936 in which he proposed Santos to be

chief of staff with the rank of major general; Valdes to be

deputy chief, also as a major general; de los Reyes to be

Provost Marshall as a brigadier general; Francisco to be

^^Philippines Herald (4 May 1936). 280 commanding general of the 1st Regular Division with the rank of brigadier general; and Vicente Lim to be chief of the War

Plans Division. Lim also could look forward to wearing a single star. All of the officers involved, MacArthur stated, had been made aware of and had expressed their satisfaction with this arrangement.24 But MacArthur, others maintained, was loyally taking the blame for Quezon's untenable insertion of politics into the army, which Santos' promotion represented.25

Horatio Alger, Jr. could hardly have improved upon the life story of this first Philippine Army chief of staff. By luck, pluck, and hard work, Santos had risen from PC private in 1909 to adjutant in 1924. Six years later, in October 1930, along with a promotion to lieutenant colonel he was appointed the Assistant District Commander for Southern Luzon. Barely forty, he was clearly destined for the Constabulary's single generalship.

Surprisingly, Colonel Santos retired within two months.

Officially, his retirement was a result of physical disability. (He was said to have an eye problem.) Yet Santos immediately became director of the Bureau of Prisons, a job, he later recalled, pressed on him by Governor-General Dwight

Davis. The governor-general had good reason to seek a new

^ Philippines Herald (15 May 1936).

25caston Montero, "La Politica en el Ejército?" Philippines Free Press (January 1936):58-59. I am grateful to Mary Ann Nash for translating this article from Spanish. 281 prison director. The findings of a investigatory committee appointed early in 1930 "following rumors of serious irregularities" in the prison bureau led to the resignation of director Ramon on 18 December. On the 22nd,

Santos took up the job and quickly gained plaudits for cleaning up the mess left behind by the bureau's former senior officials. After only a few months in office, lauded the

Secretary of Justice, director Santos "succeeded in creating a general spirit of contentment among the prisoners[,] . . . provided better rations, meted out more humane treatment, outlawed favoritism and undue discrimination, and gave evidence of greater interest in the welfare of the prisoners."^

As head of the prison bureau, Santos directed a large establishment of nearly four hundred employees overseeing the needs and security of eight to nine thousand prisoners. The system included several large facilities located throughout the Islands. Santos added to these by founding the penal colony at Davao in October 1931. It was expected to become

"the greatest productive unit of the Bureau of Prisons.

Santos' directorship of the Bureau of Prisons brought out the

^^Annual Report of the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands. 1930 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1932), p. 24, and Annual Report of the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands. 1931 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1932), p. 234.

2^Ibid. , p. 236. 282 same self-help, self-sufficiency, self-improvement philosophy he would attempt to inculcate in the Philippine Army. Santos would later claim that he "broached the idea" of tying the nation's economic development to military training. MacArthur and the United States Army, he recalled, "readily approved the plan. "2^

For many of the more important subordinate positions in the army, the Military Mission turned to the Filipino officers of the Philippine Scouts. Here again was a decision with divisive potential. For many years, "an intangible but ever present unsympathetic feeling" existed between army and

Constabulary officers. With the integration of Scout and

Constabulary officers in the Philippine Army, "an extra good effort" was made "to see that nothing [was] said about" this traditional rivalry.^9

Announcement of the initial senior staff positions in the

Philippine Army said virtually nothing about the Philippine

Scouts, although President Quezon was known to have discussed terms of service with several of the senior Filipino officers of the Philippine garrison.Lim, of course, had kept in close contact with Quezon and was rewarded with a promotion

29"Supplement Dedicated to the First Trainees of the Philippine Army," Philippines Herald (18 January 1937).

^^Emanuel A. Baja, Philippine Police System and Its Problems. Book II; Police of the Commonwealth (Manila: Philippine Education Co., 1939), p. 104.

30 Philippines Herald (2 January 1936) 283 to brigadier general, after retiring from the United States

Army (officially for high blood pressure) in 1936.

Most Scout officers remained wary of transferring to the

Philippine Army. It seemed, at first, that Scouts officers would be expected to sever their connection with the United

States Army before accepting positions in the Philippine Army.

In early May 1936, Quezon offered advanced ranks--from lieutenant colonel for Captain Amado Martelino to brigadier general for Lieutenant Colonel Lim--to seven Philippine Scouts officers who were said to be "contemplating early retirement. On MacArthur's advice, several Scouts officers had already received important assignments: Major Rafael

Garcia as army quartermaster; Captain Pastor Martelino

(brother of Amado) as superintendent of the Philippine

Military Academy; and Captain Salvador Reyes as commander of all ROTC units in the country. All graduates of West Point, they received the rank of colonel in the Philippine Army.

The handful of Filipino Philippine Scout officers were an obvious source of expertise for an army possessed of few technically trained officers. Despite the soldierly pretensions of the Constabulary, its officers had little professional education or practical experience in military affairs. The Scout officers, by contrast, had completed a wide

^Philippines Herald (5 May 1936).

^^Philippines Herald (30 April 1936). 284 variety of formal military schools followed by assignment with troops of the Philippine Department. Furthermore, service with the Philippine Army would solve the dilemma of their career status in the wake of the Tydings-McDuffie Act and the probable departure of United States Army forces from the

Philippines. The United States Army's reluctance to address the issue of its Filipino officers' future, however, left the

Scouts with an additional option. They could remain with the

American army and, if they were not yet eligible for retirement by 1946, trust to their superior's sense of fair play to provide for them after the final lowering of the

American flag.

By mid-1938 all but four of the twenty-two Filipino

Scouts officers on active duty were serving with the

Philippine Army, but they had not severed their connection with the United States Army. (One of the four was PMS&T at San

Juan de Letran College, whose cadet corps was not yet affiliated with the Philippine Army, and another was attending the Infantry School at Fort Banning.) Still, many were unhappy with their status in the Commonwealth force. As Lim explained the matter in a "confidential" letter to one of his sons, Eisenhower and Ord had promised several of the Scout officers that if they were promoted one rank (in accepting an assignment in the Philippine Army) they would be senior to the other officers holding that rank; if promoted two grades, they would be junior to the others of that grade. Apparently, 285

MacArthur's word was understood to be behind this "promise."

The officers did not receive the promised promotions, however, and some of them eventually decided to return to duty with the Philippine Scouts. The officers were "not discontented or disloyal," the Herald informed its readers in reporting the story in late September, but had been unable "to readjust themselves to certain requirements and policies of the Philippine Army." The matter quickly became contentious, however. A member of the Manila municipal board denounced the officers as "unpatriotic," and Quezon, who had been led to believe by General Santos that Lim had engineered the "entire walkout of Scout officers," denounced the assistant chief of staff and asked MacArthur to investigate Lim's conduct.

Lim, or so he maintained, had in fact watched the entire fiasco play itself out from the sideline. The officers involved who had cared to ask his advice, he informed Quezon, had invariably decided to remain with the Philippine Army. Lim pointed out that he had earlier suggested that officers quit the American army "by retirement or resignation" (as he and one other Scout officer, Mateo Capinpin, had done) before accepting a place in the Philippine Army. No man could serve two masters, he reminded the now apologetic President.

^Vicente Lim, To Inspire and To Lead: The Letters of Gen. Vicente Lim. 1938-1942 (Manila: By the Family, 1980), pp. 35- 40. Quite possibly the affair deepened the antagonism between Eisenhower and MacArthur, especially if— as Lim's letter implies--General MacArthur made promises he could not fulfill and then allowed Eisenhower and Ord to take the blame. 286

Probably as a result of this controversy, the Scout officers who remained with the Philippine Army soon received

"new assimilated ranks" (of from one to three steps above their United States Army grades, which they also retained) and the command structure was rearranged. Lim moved up to deputy chief of staff as well as head of WPD; Colonel Segundo was assigned to command Camp Dau, the Philippine Army's "Fort

Sill"; and Colonel Capinpin moved up to command the 1st

Regular Division. Several Scout officers, however, did return to service with the Philippine Department.^4

At the same time, Quezon issued a new executive order

"governing seniority, promotion, and elimination" of regular army officers. Henceforth, all officers would be placed on a single seniority list, and each newly promoted officer would start at the bottom of the appropriate list. Third lieutenants would be promoted after two years' service and second lieutenants at the end of five years' active duty

A confusing plethora of commissioning programs existed to supply the many junior officers who would compose the bulk

^^Philippines Herald (14 and 19 October 1938). Maximiano S. Janairo was among those who returned to Scout duty. Although under fire in the local press, Janairo maintained that he had "already made some contribution to the Philippine Army, in the organization and establishment of the Army General Service School, and in the training of officers." He had been away from his regiment (the 14th Engineers) for five years, and he wanted an opportunity to complete a final year of 1 aw school. He returned to duty with the Philippine Army in September 1940. Colonel Janairo questionnaire.

^^Philippines Herald (20 October 1938). 287 of the officer corps. The Philippine Military Academy at

Baguio would provide the majority of the regular army officers. Building on the existing Constabulary academy, the army had reorganized "the administration, curriculum, method of selection of cadets, the uniform, and many other phases of academy procedure" after passage of the National Defense Act.

The academy, expanded to accommodate a maximum of 350 cadets, was moved in 1936, from Camp Henry T. Allen to Teachers' Camp, at Forbes Park in Baguio. Completion of the now four-year course resulted in a third lieutenancy and a Bachelor of

Science degree.After six months of excellent service, non­ academy graduates (reserve officers) could have their names placed on an eligibility list and compete for future appointments as regular officers by passing a qualifying

examination.^

The army's greatest need was for reserve officers. Army camps at San Miguel, Tarlac (later known as Camp Ord), Camp

Dau, and Camp Keithley offered six-month commissioning programs through the Schools for Reserve Commissions (SRC).

Trainees who did well in their initial training and who met minimum educational standards could volunteer for additional

training at an SRC. Successful graduates became probationary

^Conrado B. Rigor, "The Philippine Military Academy," Coast Artillery Journal 84, no. 4 (July-August 1941):325-28.

^Bulletin no. 106, HPA, 22 July 1937. 288 third lieutenants in the reserve.^® A Reserve Officers Service

School (ROSS) at Baguio also turned out probationary lieutenants, usually those whose age, education and social standing did not necessitate their participation in basic training for conscripts (such as several members of the national assembly who obtained commissions).

Other officers made their way into the Philippine Army by transferring from the United States Army Officers Reserve

Corps. In 1932, according to the Philippine Department's Plan

Brown, there had been 295 Filipino reserve officers in the civilian community. Lauding their "highly unselfish and patriotic" behavior, the Manila Tribune reported in early

March 1936 that sixty or more reserve officers were planning to transfer to the Philippine Army.^®

Most reserve officers were expected to come eventually from the Reserve Officers Training Corps of the post-secondary educational system. As seen, a number of these cadet units already existed at the time of the Philippine Army's founding in 1936, unofficially affiliated with the Philippine

^®Camp Keithley trained infantry candidates from Military Districts 6 to 10; and Camp Ord from Military Districts 1 to 6. Camp Dau accepted ten or twelve trainees from each military district. See Bulletin no. 164, HPA, 29 September 1938.

^'Manila Tribune (10 and 11 March 1936). General Orders 28, HPA, 16 February 1937, authorized most of those who held commissions in the United States Army reserve to transfer to the Philippine Army in grade. The army extended similar provisions to those who had held commissions in the Philippine National Guard. 289

Department. The Department's 1932 Plan Brown (revised to 1934)

listed cadet programs at the University of the Philippines

(Manila, Los Banos, Cebu, and Vigan campuses), Ateneo de

Manila, and San Juan de Letran. ("Brown" plans from the mid-

1920s also show a cadet unit at National University, but this

program was not included in later plans.) As in the United

States, only a few cadets completed the full four-year reserve

officers' program. Figures available from 1931, for example,

show 408 cadets at Ateneo, of whom 85 were in the advanced

course. The University of the Philippines' percentage was far

worse: only 87 of the 1707 cadets in its ROTC program were

taking the advanced course. In 1937, of the Ateneo's 337

cadets, only 21 were in the advanced course. By its own

admission, the Philippine Department recognized that failure

to offer financial support and reserve commissions to graduates had severely limited ROTC's attractiveness in the

Islands.

The Philippine Army inherited this limited program and

rapidly expanded it. In addition to the existing ROTC units

(which had transferred from HPD to HPA control by 1939), nine schools implemented ROTC programs in 1936; five in 1937; two

See "Basic Plan--Brown, Philippine Department, 1923"; "Papers Pertaining to Proposed 1926 Revision of Basic Plan, Special Plan Brown"; and "Philippine Defense Project, Revision 1931, G-1 Appendix," all in Special Projects, Harbor Defenses, Philippines, RG 407, NA. For Ateneo figures, see Philippines Herald (28 June 1937). 290 in 1938; one in 1939; and ten in 1940.41 students who completed two years of the four-year ROTC program obtained an exemption from trainee status. This became a selling point for schools attempting to increase student enrollment, but it initially did nothing to provide officers for the reserve army. Heavy reliance on the ROTC to meet the demands of the citizen army would inevitably lead to greater coercion.

Creating an effective officer corps proved to be an acrimonious affair. There were sufficient reserve billets to accommodate most who sought one; the rub came with the assignment of active duty billets. HPA regularly called several hundred reserve officers to active duty for six-month periods. These men would then revert to inactive status, their places taken by another contingent of reserve officers. In this manner, most reserve officers could benefit from an extended period on active duty. Many in the public, however, assumed that the discharged officers were being dismissed for inefficiency. In addition, there were reserve officers who resisted coming on active duty. Often these were professionals who felt they could not afford to leave their civilian pursuits.

Many reservists sought active duty without success, however. A group of nearly 150 reserve officers complained in early 1938 that nepotism and favoritism too often guided the

4^"Reserve Officers in the Making," Citizen Armv (March 1941):2-3, 7. 291 selection of officers chosen to remain on active duty. Others charged that the same behavior could be seen in the granting of regular commissions to reserve officers. Apparently there was something to all this: Eisenhower, the Herald reported,

"virtually disbanded" the army acceptance board, which evaluated the merits of candidates for commission, over differences involving officer selection. Santos defended the integrity of the process, and he too made a valid point. What lay at the heart of many of the complaints, he implied, was the issue of employment. Like trainees who offered to take additional training or volunteered for the regular force, many reserve officers simply wanted full-time work/*?

Even those able to obtain commissions in the regular force found reason for dissatisfaction. The Military Adviser's

Office developed a ranking scheme for new officers, but recent graduates of the Philippine and United States Military

Academies (the latter now directly entering the Philippine

Army) complained that they had not been placed high enough on the promotion list. West Point graduates also complained about not receiving the "assimilated ranks" given to Scout Officers who, after all, had merely had the good fortune to graduate from the academy a few years earlier.^*

^ Philippines Herald (4 and 20 April, 5 July, and 11 October 1938).

^ Philippines Herald (27 September 1938). 292

Like the unhappy reserve officers, the regulars

threatened to take their grievances directly to President

Quezon. Here lay a major discipline problem for the new army,

one difficult to overcome. Periodic regulations stipulating

promotion and assignment standards ostensibly distanced the

army from patronage-inspired manipulation, but many officers

did not hesitate to make personal appeals to Quezon and other

senior officials when adherence to regulation frustrated their

goals. Like the Constabulary before it, the Philippine Army

found itself issuing orders threatening retaliation.*4

General MacArthur also drew on the facilities and manpower of the Philippine Department to help develop the

Commonwealth force. Fortunately, Charles Kilbourne was the

acting Department commander for a short while in late 1935 and

early 1936.^5 Generally sympathetic to MacArthur's Philippine

Army concept, Kilbourne lent active support. The two generals

worked out a "plan whereby the Regular United States Army in

the Philippines [could] assist in the organization of the Army

of the Philippines." The Commonwealth government would fund

an officers training school at Fort McKinley, Philippine Army

officers would be attached for training at other Department

posts, and those enlisted men destined for cadre duty would

^^See Bulletin no. 6, HPA, 15 January 1939.

^^Kilbourne's tour in the Islands was extended to cover the gap between Major General Parker's departure in December 1935 and Holbrook's arrival in February 1936. 293 first be assigned to Philippine Scout units to observe the

"normal routine of barracks and mess management, care of equipment and . . . rules of health and sanitation.

Major General Lucius R. Holbrook, the new Commanding

General of the Philippine Department, arrived in mid-February

1936 and, while not as enthusiastic as Kilbourne, remained helpful. About 150 Scouts (mostly from the 45th Infantry and the two Scout coast artillery regiments) were detached for service with the Philippine Army. According to Holbrook, the

Scouts were chosen especially for the duty and were then trained by United States Army officers.These soldiers usually worked as instructors at training camps, although HPA had to caution cadre officers not to use the Scouts in administrative positions or as noncommissioned officers of the guard, or in any other role which would give them "command authority" over Philippine Army s o l d i e r s . Their numbers dropped after mid-1938, but thirty to forty enlisted Scouts remained on duty with the Commonwealth government until mid-

1939. The War Department also authorized the discharge of enlisted Scouts to accept commissions in the Philippine Army or to accept appointment as cadets at the Philippine Military

^^Philippines Herald (10 February 1936).

‘^^Khaki and Red 16, no. 11 (November 1936): 23

^Bulletin no. 98, HPA, 12 July 1937. 294

Academy.

The government in Manila could stipulate an ambitious national conscription-based military system; the soldiers-to- be would not necessarily cooperate. The "plan" had been prepared with little fan-fare and quickly accepted by an

enthusiastic but compliant legislature. It now had to be sold to the would-be participants, a business requiring publicity and explanation of the plan's details and the sympathy and active cooperation of influential provincial leaders.

The military plan called for strict impartiality in the distribution of military resources and opportunities (and obligations) of service. Of course, more populous regions of the country would provide more men, but each one of the fifty provinces and the city of Manila would provide registrants for trainee instruction and each at the same proportion of the total registered (about 27 percent in 1937).^® To meet successfully the demands of the conscription program, the national defense scheme had to be made known widely.

There was little understanding of the extent to which the military system reflected the aspirations of those who would

Correspondence and reports on the use of Philippine Scout enlisted men by the Military Mission are filed under AG 093.5, AGO Central Files, Philippine Islands, 1926-1939, RG 407, NA.

^^Percentages calculated from figures provided in Bulletin no. 20, HPA, 30 April 1936. An exception was Province in the District of Southern Mindanao, which was to provide 33.6 percent of its registrants for training in 1937. 295 be called upon to serve. The basics of the pi an--compulsory service with equality of risk--had widespread support, at least among Filipino military officers and civilian elites.

MacArthur's acceptance of conscription was primarily driven by economics, but as Cohen has argued, "military service seems to offer a shortcut to vocational training and a unified national spirit[,]. . . . inculcat[ing] such virtues as loyalty, self-sacrifice, and obedience to duly constituted authority. For much the same reasons, demands for military conscription had been made frequently in the Philippines. The subservience inherent in the colonial status made military service even more attractive, since it offered a means to overcome the Filipino's sense of inferiority vis-a-vis the white man and his "habitual dependency" on America.

The army's own effort to encourage registration for military service demonstrated an incomplete understanding of the citizen army concept on the part of the officers overseeing registration publicity. The army commissioned two posters which were displayed "in conspicuous places in all parts of the Philippines." One presented a straightforward patriotic theme: A Libertyesque Filipina, superimposed on the

^^Cohen, Citizens and Soldiers, p. 33.

^^For typical articulations of this view, see General Lim's speech to University of the Philippines ROTC cadets, Philippines Herald (20 March 1937) and General Santos' speech in "Supplement dedicated to the first trainees of the Philippine Army," Philippines Herald (18 January 1937). 296

Commonwealth's coat-of-arms, implored "Young Men" to "Hear

Your Country's Call!" and "register for military instruction" while, in the background, a soldier-trumpeter sounded the call to arms. Controversy focused on the second poster. In the foreground, a young man in soldier's dress chatted with two attractive Pilipinas. In the distance, looking on but ignored by the others, was a forlorn youth man in mufti. The poster read, "Young Men, Which Would You Rather Be— This or That?"

The word "this" was printed underneath the soldier; "that" under the civilian. This "amazing" poster, the Philippines

Herald argued, violated "the fundamental principles of citizenship training because a soldier [was] glorified at the expense of a civilian.

MacArthur and Generals de los Reyes and Valdes had supposedly approved the artist's work, although MacArthur later passed copies of both posters along to a Canadian collector of military recruiting posters with the comment that, until the collector had asked, he had not known any

Philippine military posters existed.^* Colonel Charles E.

Livingston, one of the few remaining American members of the old Philippine Constabulary and now head of the army recruiting division, defended the poster's message. The

^Philippines Herald (25 March 1936). The Manila Tribune (25 March 1936) printed a picture of the unobjectionable poster. Clippings in BIA file 1184A-1, RG 350, NA.

^^Philippines Herald (26 March 1936); MacArthur to E. F. Daemen, 22 November 1941, RG 2, MacArthur Archives. 297 contrast, the colonel stressed, was between registrant and nonregistrant, not between soldier and civilian. The army would keep using the posters, he insisted.But the army's obtuseness suggested that the public would not be alone in misunderstanding the difference between a regular and more familiar long-service army and the vastly different concept of the civilian-soldier.

By all accounts, the first registration period ended successfully. The surge to participate in the new nation's military force was entirely predictable. Filipinos themselves had a phrase for it: ninaas kugon (flaming grass), enthusiasm which blazed brightly at the start but quickly died down to ashes. Aside from any cultural specificity to this behavior, however, the problem was one common to all militia-conscript military systems. As Jock Haswell perceptively observed in his history of "citizen armies," such military forces need "a cause," a motivation to prefer the rigor of military duty over civilian pursuits.^® Once the hoopla surrounding the

Commonwealth's inauguration had subsided, Philippine Army headquarters would inevitably face the difficult task of sustaining public interest in military service.

Philippines Herald (26 March 1936). Livingston’s response--the poster merely showed "womanhood of the race" encouraging the men to serve--suggested that he, at least, did not understand the issue raised by the poster's critics.

Haswell, Citizen Armies (London: Peter Davies, 1973), 15. 298

Impressed by the enthusiasm shown in April, MacArthur

"suddenly decided" to enlarge the annual intake of trainees.

The original plan called for only six thousand conscripts to

be trained in 1937; 12,000 in 1938; 20,000 in 1939; and 30,000

in 1940 and again in 1941. The cadres would not attempt to

train 40,000 men a year (20,000 in each semi-annual intake)

until 1942 and subsequent years. By independence in 1946,

there were to be seven reserve divisions with a strength of

63,000 soldiers. The new plan called for 30 divisions by 1946

with a strength of 270,000 men. Now, according to Eisenhower,

the army was to train the "full quota of forty thousand

conscripts" in 1937 rather than the six thousand originally

contemplated. The decision naturally placed a heavy strain on

resources already stretched thin. Eisenhower would later

explain that the "high command" feared that failure to take

advantage of the public's "magnificent response" by calling

only 3000 to service would lead to public feelings of

"deflation and disappointment." And since the training

facilities to accommodate 40,000 conscripts a year would have

to be constructed eventually, the "high command" decided to

accelerate the program.

^^Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, pp. 18-19; and Eisenhower, "Memorandum for His Excellency, the President of the Philippines," 8 August 1940, International Series (Ann Whitman File), Eisenhower Library. A lengthy undated document comparing the original and revised plans can be found in RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 1. MacArthur credited Quezon with the decision to speed up the army- building process, Eisenhower later wrote. Louis Morton, "The Philippine Army, 1935-39: Eisenhower's Memorandum to Quezon," 299

The decision had momentous consequences, it caused

"considerable changes in construction, in training and organization programs, and eventually resulted in a growing shortage of qualified instructors when trainees reported to training camps," Eisenhower wrote. "This change of planning, moreover," he continued, "eliminated the financial reserve that was expected to pile up during the first few years and so created difficulties in the purchase of equipment that was desired.Possibly MacArthur was determined to seize the moment, to demonstrate conclusively to doubters and scoffers that the Philippines could provide a solid "left wing" for an

American defensive network across the Pacific.

The pattern of registration statistics should have given the army pause. The army had estimated 133,049 male births for

1916 (later revised to 158,404), of whom perhaps 110,000 would be alive in 1936. The army recognized that many of the men who registered during the first registration period were therefore not aged twenty. What is interesting about the published 1936 registration statistics is the relationship between estimated births and number of registrants on a province by province basis. Registration in most provinces was roughly equal to the estimated number of births in 1916 (the published chart presenting these statistics excluded deaths

Military Affairs 12 (Summer 1948):103-107 .

^^Morton, "Eisenhower's Memorandum to Quezon," p. 105. 300

between 1916 and 1936). Thus the total number of registrants

(148,964) was only 10.7 percent higher than the estimated number of births (133,049). Of the extra 15,915 registrants,

over thirteen thousand came just from the city of Manila and

the three Visayan provinces of Capiz and Iloilo (on the island

of Panay) and nearby Negros Occidental. The conclusion that

the army's development could be quickly accelerated possibly

reflected how events in Manila dominated the perception of

Philippine realities. Since the number of conscripts called

to service was equally apportioned on the basis of the actual number of registrants (and not on the estimated number of 20-

year olds in any given province), the system placed an undue

burden on those areas where registrants came forward in large

numbers in 1936. Would they continue to do so in later years?^®

The first draft began at noon on May 15th. At

each drawing location, one in every provincial capital

(Manila's was Araullo High School in the walled city, the

school located--with unintended symbolism--at the opposite end

of Victoria Street from Military Mission headquarters),

registrants' numbers had been written on small cards which had

then been placed in two large boxes (or jars). One held "A"

numbers (those registrants born in the first half of 1916),

written on white cards; the other held "B" numbers (assigned

to those born in the latter half of 1916), written on yellow

^^Bulletin no. 20, HPA, 30 April 1936, and Bulletin no. Ill, HPA, 30 June 1938. 301 cards. Relays of blindfolded young women, who had been cautioned to wear dresses with sleeves which did not extend below their elbows, drew double the number of needed cards, the extra names to accommodate registrants who would be exempted for health or other reasons. Local civil and military officials oversaw the drawing, which in many places was a festive occasion as registration week had been.^^

Conscript training began in early January 1937. Soon, the army began to receive a large number of claims from trainees revealing that they had not been twenty years' old when they had registered, and they wanted out of camp. (Too bad, HPA responded.Half-way through the first training session, trainees were reported to be "on strike" at Canlubang, Laguna;

Pontevedra, Capiz; Legaspi, ; and Batangas, Batangas. The army blamed "anti-military agitators who had taken advantage of the Holy Week respite" to cause trouble. Probably more to the point, there were said to be "irregularities" in some of the camps which trainees responded to by not cooperating with their officers. The cadre commander at Sibul, Bulacan, where another "incident" had taken place, was relieved, and a rash of sharp orders from HPA to cadre officers suggested that the

®®Bullstin no. 17, HPA, 17 April 1936, established guidelines for the drawing.

^Bulletin no. 50, HPA, 12 April 1937. 302

problem lay with poor leadership.®^

At the completion of the first five and one-half months'

training period in mid-June 1937, General Santos frankly

admitted that there had been problems. Some officers were

poorly trained, barracks and other facilities were not

complete, and equipment had not arrived on time. These

handicaps had been overcome, he claimed, but all cadre

officers would nonetheless attend officer schools at either

Cebu or Dau before the second batch of trainees arrived in

July. Two officers from the Philippine Department would direct

the schools. Lieutenant Colonel Per Ramee at Cebu and First

Lieutenant Vachel D. Whatley at Dau. The schools were to

provide "more or less uniform training and to bring to all

Cadre Commanders the problems which confront them . . . and

the means to overcome” the problems. Santos also called a

conference of senior officers and district commanders to

discuss ways of preventing trainee problems in the future.®^

^Philippines Herald (29 and 31 March 1937). Among the criticisms voiced by the army command were that too many cadre officers were allowing enlisted men to supervise training, many were avoiding drill to remain in their offices, and trainees were being used as house boys. See Bulletins no. 42, 31 March 1937; no. 58, 24 April 1937; and no. 76, 29 May 1937. Eisenhower confirmed that many "defects were traceable to neglect on the part of cadre officers" and some to army headquarters. Letter, Eisenhower to Ord, 29 July 1937, RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed. reel 1.

^Philippines Herald (15, 23, and 28 June 1937); General Orders 87, HPA, 7 June 1937. 303

A number of other concrete steps were taken. District

training teams were formed to travel to the training sites to

improve and standardize training. The chief of staff returned

from an inspection trip to Mindanao and the Visayas in

September 1937 and expressed satisfaction with the fourteen

cadres he had visited. "None ha[d] registered any case of strike or forced leave . . . such as characterized several military stations last year [sic]." A further trip to Panay and Negros in late September confirmed his opinion that trainees were--now--getting excellent training.^4

Many of the first training session's problems were traceable to MacArthur's (and/or Quezon's) decision to

increase the trainee intake seven-fold. More trainees meant

the need for more of everything--more officers, more training sites, more equipment, more money. More of many things the army did not have. Eisenhower and Ord pleaded with MacArthur

to return to the original modest plan, but the general refused. According to the official diary, he expected

considerable assistance from the Philippine Department. Using

the Scout units as training cadres, MacArthur thought that as many as 15,000 conscripts could be trained on United States

Army posts. The 1931 Philippine Defense Project had included

a similar plan, with which MacArthur was no doubt familiar.

Then, the Philippine Department had expected to train up to

^ Philippines Herald (9 and 25 September 1937). Of course, Santos meant the first half of 1937, not 1936. 304

10,000 recruits on Luzon by converting each Philippine Scout

"company, troop and battery" into the parent organization for approximately 200 trainees. Under the changed political circumstances of 1936, acceptable administrative arrangements for such a scheme were complicated and costly, and the

Military Mission finally asked for individual Scouts to assist the Philippine Army cadres.*5

MacArthur had arrived in the Islands in 1935 convinced that his own powers of persuasion and the tide of history, as he saw it, would bring others around to his way of thinking on Philippine-American defense issues. MacArthur rationalized that the Philippine Army formed the reserve force always called for in the Philippine Defense Projects. He had

"conferred extensively" with the garrison commander, who had come--so MacArthur claimed— to recognize "a distinct identity in the fundamental purposes of the activities we lead."

MacArthur went on to urge the War Department to take a

"sympathetic viewpoint" in responding to requests for aid.

Since the Philippine Army was "an adjunct and supporting element of the American Army," Washington could supply obsolete weapons (such as Enfield rifles, stokes mortars, or

British-type 75mm artillery pieces) at little or no cost. At the same time, he did not want War Department interference

®^Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, p. 19; Basic Project, Philippine Department, 1931, G-1 Appendix, in AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA. 305 with his own activities. In "peacetime," he reminded his former subordinates, the Philippine Army's development was "an exclusive responsibility of the Philippine Government."®®

From the start of his mission, senior American officials in the Islands had expressed concern over the extent of

MacArthur's authority. Even before the inauguration of the

Commonwealth government. Major General Parker had questioned the legality of MacArthur's orders. In a letter to the

Secretary of War, Parker had argued that "the use of United

States funds or property . . . in aid of the mission would appear to be a direct violation of statute. . . . The foregoing applies equally to the use of Army personnel."®^

According to Governor-General (later High Commissioner) Frank

Murphy's biographer, Parker told Murphy that he had never

"seen such orders in his entire career."®® Murphy was equally concerned. In May 1936, he submitted a lengthy (41-typed pages) denunciation of the Military Mission to Secretary Dern, in which he complained of the Mission's independent authority and the potentially serious responsibilities which would evolve onto the government if the impression continued to be given that the National Defense Plan had Washington's backing.

®®MacArthur to Craig, 9 July 1936, AGO Central Files, Philippine Islands, 1926-1939, RG 407, NA.

®^Parker to Dern, 14 November 1935, WPD 3389-30, RG 165, NA.

®®Sidney Fine, Frank Murphy: The New Deal Years (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 187. 306

and would, by implication, receive the American government's

support. His opinion had not been sought on the plan, nor had

that of the Philippine Department commander, nor even the War

Department's (other than in the person of General MacArthur).®^

Concern in Washington was also growing. The State

Department had expressed cautious support when the Military

Mission was established in 1935. Senior officers in the War

Department had kept silent as long as MacArthur remained chief

of staff. With MacArthur safely out of the way, numerous

voices began to cast doubt on the Philippine defense plan.

Although opposition to the plan had varied facets, many

opponents feared that a large army in the Philippines would

draw the unwelcome attention of other Asian countries

(primarily Japan) or destabilize the Commonwealth government

and thus invite continued United States involvement in

Philippine internal affairs. The Military Mission's request

for 4500 automatic rifles and 400,000 Enfield rifles in

January 1936 provided the perfect opportunity for opponents

to attempt to weaken MacArthur's authority

A copy of Murphy's letter, dated 8 May 1936, is filed with WPD 3251, RG 165, NA. Fine offers a lengthy critique of Murphy's complaints about the defense plan and the Military Mission in Frank Murphy, pp. 187-98.

^^Alfred W. McCoy, "Quezon's Commonwealth; The Emergence of Philippine Authoritarianism," in Ruby R. Paredes (ed.), Philippine Colonial Democracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Southeast Asian Studies, 1988), pp. 144-145. 307

MacArthur believed that influential voices in Washington,

including Roosevelt’s, could be brought around, and FDR had

during Quezon's visit early in 1937 spoken vaguely of building

a modest naval facility "somewhere" in the archipelago.^^ In

reality, the President seems to have been fully in accord with

those who wanted an end to American military and naval

involvement in the Philippines. In September 1933, long before

the Military Mission took shape, Roosevelt had expressed to

Roy Howard an attitude toward the defense of the Philippines

which differed little from that of Embick. At that time,

Roosevelt had "stated unequivocally" that the United States would "never feel entirely safe" if it retained the Islands.

In any future war with Japan, the President saw possession of

the Islands as only a handicap.The Mission's subsequent

activities had failed to convert the President. In late 1936,

he expressed to State Department officials sentiments similar

to those given to Howard more than three years earlier.

The result of the controversy was a decision to reign in

the Commonwealth defense scheme by ordering MacArthur to

^^Quezon to Vargas, 8 April 1937, Quezon Papers, microfilm ed., reel 19.

^^"Confidential memorandum of conversation with President Roosevelt, conducted at the White House, September 19, 1933," Howard Archives, Indiana University. The President's vision of a war with Japan, as recorded by Howard, was prescient: Without the Philippine distraction, the United States would conduct a and aviation war against Japanese commerce and would incinerate Japan's cities of wood and thatch.

^^Fine, Frank Murphy, p. 196. 308 return to the United States in the guise of having completed the normal two year tour of duty in the Islands. Acting

Secretary of War Harry Woodring feared that MacArthur might undermine the intent of the order by retiring and remaining in the Philippines instead. General Craig shared this assumption, although the chief of staff's supposition was hardly complementary to MacArthur. "The man you have in mind

[i.e. MacArthur]," Craig noted in a confidential memorandum to President Roosevelt's military aide, "will probably retire or even resign rather than give up his present position and prospects, which I am reliably informed are worth in actual money to him more than three times his salary as an Army officer.MacArthur was unclear in his own mind how to respond. When, in late August 1937, William Lee asked

Eisenhower's advice about extending in the Islands, the

Mission chief of staff informed Lee that MacArthur planned to return to the United States in February 1938.^^

^Memorandum, Craig to Watson, 17 May 1937, Woodring Papers, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas Libraries. According to Woodring's biographer, Keith D. McFarland, contact between MacArthur and Woodring during the 1930s was extremely rare. A search of Woodring's papers did turn up this memorandum (the original copy), which appears to have been unused by MacArthur's biographers. The memo suggests that while, as biographer James concludes. General Craig "was not responsible for the forcing of [MacArthur's] retirement," the chief of staff did nothing to support MacArthur, either. D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), p. 522, and letter, McFarland to author, 26 June 1991.

^^Lee diary, entry 26 August 1937, Lee Papers, Eisenhower Library. 309

In early September 1937, Cal O'Laughlin wrote to General

Pershing that Brigadier General Creed F. Cox, the soon-to-

retire Chief of the BIA, had "been assigned as special adviser

to the President of the Philippines [and] this means the

recall of MacArthur." There may have been something to the

implication that the less-influential Cox would replace

MacArthur as military adviser. An article written by an

American correspondent and printed in the Philippines Herald, also in September, stated that Cox would "have much say on

P.I. defense." The article played up Cox's military credentials and foresaw his role as "harmoniz[ing] the islands' defense and economic programs."^® An observer in

Manila, however, said that local gossip had it that Quezon was merely rewarding General Cox with a "lucrative advisership" in return "for services rendered.

MacArthur's decision to remain in Manila made such speculation problematic. The Field Marshal, as Craig and

Woodring had foreseen, decided to retire from the army but, with Quezon's backing, to remain as Commonwealth Military

Adviser. Always conscious of his status, MacArthur told Craig

^O'Laughlin to Pershing, 4 September 1937, John C. O'Laughlin Papers, LC; Philippines Herald (24 September 1937).

^^Memorandum, "The Joint Committee," Joseph Earle Jacobs Papers, Hoover Institution, Stanford, California. This memo sets forth Jacob's "observations on the work and personnel" of the Joint Preparatory Committee on Philippine Affairs during its visit to the Philippines from July to December 1937 . 310

that having once held the army's senior post, it would now be

unseemly for him to return to the United States in a

subordinate role.

Of significance to the Commonwealth defense plan, of

course, was the question of MacArthur's continued influence

with Washington and the War Department. The broad authority

given to MacArthur in 1935 to make use of the resources of the

Philippine Department lapsed with his retirement. Members of

the Military Mission were officially relieved of duty with the

Military Adviser's Office and reassigned to the Philippine

Department for additional duty with the Commonwealth

Government "to assist in military matters." Several officers who had been working with the Mission failed to receive permission to remain on duty in the Philippines. Lee learned in February 1938 that his extension request had been denied

(he left in May 1938), as too was Mission member Bonner

Feller's (he left in April). Quezon himself had asked for

Feller's retention, to no avail.

Despite the assumption that retirement might lessen

MacArthur's access to Philippine Department resources, there does not appear to have been a substantial reduction in the

Department's support for the Philippine Army. Major General

^^Special Orders 32, HPD, 10 February 1938, copy in Davis Papers, Eisenhower Library.

?*Lee diary, entry 23 February 1938, Lee Papers, Eisenhower Library; MacArthur to Bonner Fellers, 3 April 1939, MacArthur Archives, RG 1, microfilm ed., reel 3. 311

John H. Hughes assumed command of the Philippine Department

on 25 February 1938 (he had been commanding the Philippine

Division since mid-1937), within two months of MacArthur's

retirement, and proved to be more accommodating than Holbrook.

He informed the War Department that continued use of

Philippine Scout officers and enlisted men to assist the new army and the detailing of fifteen other American officers to the Military Adviser’s Office had "no adverse effect" on his own operations.®® Also in 1938, the Philippine government provided funds to refurbish the old coast artillery fortifications on Grande Island, which guarded the entrance to Subic Bay. The fort was to be a coast artillery training center for the Philippine Army, and General Hughes assigned three American officers as inspector-instructors, in addition

to providing an instructional force of up to thirty enlisted

Philippine Scouts."No report on the activities and development of the Philippine Army can be complete," the chief

of staff acknowledged in his Annual Report for 1938, "without adverting to the valuable assistance and cooperation which the army has been receiving from the United States Army.

®®Hughes to TAG, 25 August 1938, AGO Central Files, Philippine Islands, 1926-1939, RG 407, NA; James, Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, pp. 533-34.

®^"Philippine Army Coast Artillery," Coast Artillery Journal 81. no. 4 (July-August 1938):310.

®^Annual Report of the Chiet_Q£_S.taff_gf_the_Phll.iPPine Army for the Fiscal Year from January 1 tO-De.c.ember-.31, 1938 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1940), p. 13. 312

Part Two: Changing Direction? 1939-40

The beginning of 1939 saw the departure of Paulino

Santos, his place taken by General Basilic Valdes. Santos had been a tireless promoter of a "nation-building" army but seems not to have overcome the early unenthusiastic response to his selection as army chief. In mid-1937, he had become involved in a vituperative public exchange of letters with General José

Alejandrino (as had MacArthur, to a lesser extent), in which the latter poked fun at Santos' "military" career, revealed that Quezon had not even bothered to keep the secretary of the

National Defense Council (Santos) informed about the Council's deliberations when the National Defense Act was being written, and dismissed the army chief of staff as only a "subordinate" of the Military Mission.Both Lim and Eisenhower, in separate contexts, had come to despair of General Santos' willingness to stand firm on matters of principle, and the general did have a leadership style which in some ways seemed unsuitable

for a chief of staff. He once lectured his senior subordinates

on the need for a cleaner headquarters; They should always

keep "no less than two ash trays" on their desks "so that when

two or three visitors come in, [they could] hand them

receptacles for the ashes of their cigars."®^

®^See Philippines Herald (11 August, and 9 and 11 September 1937).

®^This adviceadvic was passed along to the rest of the army in Bulletin no. 115, HPA, 9 August 1937. 313

Although Santos left (to direct the government's large developmental program on Mindanao) expressing his devotion to

General MacArthur, the experience of high command had apparently embittered him. Publicly, Quezon claimed that he wanted to prevent the creation of an "elite group" within the high command. Officers were now to remain only three years with the Central General Staff and had to serve at least two following years elsewhere before returning to general staff duty. But General Lim wrote that Santos was actually fired.

Even before Santos' departure from the army, HPD intelligence had received a report from an officer who claimed to have learned "from reliable sources" during a recent trip through

Mindanao that "General Santos when slightly under the influence [gave] voice to an attitude hostile to Americans."

One could hear learn the same thing, this officer continued,

"in Manila. "86

Basilio J. Valdes, a handsome Filipino of Spanish descent, had begun his Constabulary career as a medical inspector in 1921. Born in Manila in 1892 and educated in

Spain and the Philippines, Valdes had obtained a medical degree from the University of Santo Tomas in 1916 and had served at military hospitals on the Western Front with French

^Apparently as a direct result of the assimilated rank controversy. Lim, To Inspire and To Lead, pp. 40, 42.

86Lieutenant Colonel Henry McLean, "Notes on ' Mindanao," 1 August 1938, MID 10582-94/1, RG 165, NA. 314

and organizations during the World War. His

rise in the Constabulary had been rapid. By 1926, after only

five years of service, Valdes was colonel and chief surgeon

of the Constabulary. In 1934, he had been raised to brigadier

general and Chief of Constabulary.^^

General Valdes was a cultured gentleman, admired by

virtually all who knew him, but his professional military

background was limited. Even as chief of staff, his social

and medical skills remained in demand. General Lim (who

probably would have "cleaned up" his letters had he lived to

do so) wrote that General Valdes had actually refused the

promotion, telling Quezon that he lacked the training to do

the job. If promoted to chief of staff, Valdes told Lim that

he wanted the ex-Scout officer "to run the Army for him while

he attends the social functions."®®

Public criticism was muted but not silenced. Near the end

of General Valdes' first year in office, the author of the

Philippines Herald's "Hello, Compadre" column wrote of the

®^Valdes had been made chief surgeon upon the court- martial of Colonel Francisco Onate in 1925. His rise in the organization had probably not been hurt by the fact that Quezon was a family friend. See Michael P. Onorato, Origins of the Philippine Republic; Extracts from the Diaries and Records of Francis Burton Harrison (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program, Data Paper no. 95, 1974), pp. 4, 44. Miguel R. Cornejo (ed.), Cornejo's Commonwealth Directory of the Philippines, Encyclopedic Edition. 1939 (Manila: By the Author, 1939), pp. 2196-98, provides a detailed chronology of Valdes' professional career.

®®Lim, To Inspire and To Lead, pp. 42, 90. 315

festivities at President Quezon's farm near ,

where dignitaries had gathered to honor the President and his

wife on their 21st wedding anniversary. Each person--Yulo,

Roxas, Valdes and others--had been given a tree to plant, and

the writer humorously likened each man's nature to the type

of tree he planted. He noted that General Valdes had been

handed a lemon tree. Had the Philippine Army, too, "been

handed a lemon?" he asked. He refused to discuss further the

implications, "political and otherwise."G* If nothing else,

however, Valdes had a better press than Santos, and he had the

ear of President Quezon.

With Santos' departure, orders and directives began to downplay the vocational aspect of military training. In fact,

the term "vocational training" was no longer to be used. A

trainee would engage in "industrial work" only enough "to break the monotony of his military existence and incidentally

to provide him better food at less cost." Such labor was neither to be instructional nor to interfere with soldier

training.^) HPA also took an increasingly hard line against

those who failed to fulfill their military obligation. At the

start of the 1939 registration week. General Valdes announced

that non-registrants would be prosecuted if their action was

a result of "neglect or antagonism." Those who failed to

B9phi1jppineS-HeraId (15 December 1939).

^Bulletin no. 123, HPA, 4 October 1939. 316 register for other reasons would be listed as "delinquent."

They would not be included in the 15 May 1939 drawing.

Instead, if they did not meet exemption criteria, they would be chosen first to fill their region's 1940 trainee quota.

The issuance of orders directing steps to be taken to enforce compliance with the national defense act and periodic accounts of trainee malfeasance should not be taken to mean that the army was not making progress. The 1939 mobilization, held in May, revealed continuing enthusiasm for military service. In preparing for the exercise, the army faced a disconcerting problem; Many of the reservists who had completed training in 1937 were no longer to be found at their old addresses. But when the exercise was over, more enlisted men had reported for the week of training than had been summoned.

As the Philippines Field Marshal entered his second year of retirement, he seemed to grow more distant from the day-

to-day development of the Philippine Army in (what the

American High Commissioner called) his "ivory tower" atop the

Manila Hotel.The now obligatory Philippine Army

Distinguished Service Stars pinned to their chests. Lieutenant

Colonel Howard J. Hutter and Major T. J . Davis sailed from

Manila in February 1940. Two years had passed since Ord's

^^Philippines Herald (1 April 1939).

^Francis Bowes Sayre, Glad Adventure (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1957), p. 208. 317

death, and Eisenhower, his break with MacArthur complete, left

the Islands at the end of 1939. Davis and Hutter, one

MacArthur's long-time aide and the other the family physician,

were the last of the original Military Mission members who had

arrived in Manila more than four years earlier. Now, they too

were gone.

At Quezon's behest, the National Assembly authorized a

Department of National Defense in May 1939, a development widely interpreted as a means of undercutting MacArthur's authority. Initially, General Valdes had been mentioned as the probable first department head, although Lim told his sons that rumor also made that versatile officer the chief of the new Department of Health, which was to be created at the same

time. But in a speech given at Lingayen in mid-October,

Quezon revealed that his choice for the cabinet post was court

^Several books have pointed to Eisenhower's growing disenchantment with MacArthur, but reputedly the publication in the near future of long-suppressed portions of Eisenhower's Philippine diary will reveal a depth of antagonism far greater than heretofore has been generally recognized. In his memoirs, Paul Rogers, the enlisted stenographer in MacArthur's office from October 1941 until the end of the war, offered a new account of Eisenhower's departure. According to Rogers, Ord's replacement Richard Sutherland "bragged in 1945 that he had outwitted Eisenhower." Sutherland took advantage of Eisenhower's absence from Manila in 1938 to work out "a command agreement" with MacArthur which would leave Eisenhower subordinate to Sutherland. Eisenhower protested the "reduction in prestige," and MacArthur invited him to "seek other assignments." Paul P. Rogers, The Good Years: MacArthur and Sutherland (New York: Praeger, 1990), pp. 39-40. That the rank-conscious MacArthur would acquiesce in an arrangement which left Eisenhower subordinate to his junior, Sutherland, suggests that the relationship between MacArthur and Eisenhower must have already markedly deteriorated. 318 of appeals judge and former Pangasinan provincial governor

Teofilo Sison. Pangasinan residents had been enthusiastic supporters of the national defense scheme.

Sison subsequently gained an unenviable place in

Philippine history: His was the first and most publicized of the post-war collaborationist trials. At the time, however, the new secretary found only private opprobrium. While the

Philippine Department intelligence office credited Sison "with entertaining a sincere good feeling toward the Ü. S. Army," the frustrated Deputy Chief of Staff, who had turned down an offer to be the Undersecretary of National Defense (he was holding out for the top spot), found the appointment only another "impediment in the progress of this army." Sison, Lim wrote, combined intense egotism— the secretary thought he knew everything--With a desire to "please everybody." Sison decided questions. General Lim lamented, "to suit his vanity.

The Philippines. Herald reported that a lack of funds would push creation of the new department into early 1940, information HPD intelligence had also received "from a usually reliable source." On November 1st, however, an impatient

Quezon signed the executive order creating the Department of

National Defense. He was reportedly anxious to be relieved of many details of army administration. At the same time, he took

®^Lim, To Inspire and To Lead, p. 92; HPD G-2, "Formation of Department of National Defense," 1 November 1939, MID 2802- 4; and HPD G-2, "Biographical Sketch of Teofilo Sison," 15 January 1940, MID 2802-6, RG 165, NA. 319

the opportunity to make a radio broadcast explaining the

relevance of the new department. In the context of increased interest in the neutralization of the Islands, the President reminded his listeners that neutralization meant little without strength. "The establishment of national defense forces," he said, "should be an assurance to the would-be signatories [of an agreement] that the Philippines . . . had force of its own to protect and defend its neutrality." The defense department served notice of the new nation's determination to defend its inheritance. Indeed, some observers speculated that the defense program would now be

"substantially accelerated."

How, then, to account for the widely repeated statements by Friend, James, Petillo, and others that by the end of 1939

Quezon was disenchanted with his military adviser and the national defense system and despaired of defending the Islands from attack and that the creation of the Department of

National Defense was the outgrowth of his growing pessimism?

In the "early Fall of 1939," James explained, Quezon "told the

National Assembly that 'developments in the European war have convinced me of the futility of spending money to carry on our program of defending the Philippines from foreign aggression, and this objective cannot be attained with the limited resources of the country for many years to come.'" Later

(James implies sometime in late 1939), Quezon "told a large audience assembled at Rizal Stadium in Manila on the 320 anniversary of the Commonwealth's founding: 'The Philippines could not be defended even if every last Filipino were armed with modern weapons.Relying on James' account, Petillo repeats portions of these quotations, but, reading James literally, she dated the latter definitely to 15 November

1939, the Commonwealth's fourth anniversary.^* James' footnoting style makes attribution difficult, but his source appears to be Theodore Friend, who discussed the issue in

Between Two Empires. In reporting Quezon's statement that the

Philippines "could not be defended successfully even if every last Filipino were armed," Friend followed Frederic

Marquardt's Before Bataan and After. According to Marguardt,

Quezon included the statement in a speech made before a

"Normal School group at the Rizal Stadium." Marquardt provides no date but gives the context of Quezon's lessening resolve in 1940 or even "the first half of 1941."^^ Friend says nothing about Rizal Stadium. He attributes Quezon's remark on "'the futility of spending money to carry on our program of defending the Philippines'" to a Manila Bulletin article of

2 November 1939 and an "undated draft [late 1939]" in the

James, Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, p. 537.

^^Carol M. Petillo, Douglas MacArthur: The Philippine Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), pp. 193, 277, fn. 80.

^Frederic Marquardt, Before Bataan and After (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merril1 Co., 1943), pp. 240-41. 321

Quezon Papers written to Teofilo Sison.In fact, Quezon does

not appear to have said (at least in 1939) that "the

Philippines could not be defended even if every last Filipino

were armed." What he did say, at the time of Bison's induction

as National Defense Secretary, was that the lessons of

Czechoslovakia and Poland made clear that the Philippines,

"even though it should arm every male citizen," might yet

"become the victim of aggression." Quezon thought it an apt

time to push forward with neutralization, as called for by the

Tydings-McDuffie Act. He did not, he assured his listeners,

place "his confidence for the protection of Philippine

independence and liberty" in a neutralization agreement. "The

signatory powers would be more willing to enter into a pact,"

he believed, if "the Filipinos have here a sufficient force

with which to defend that neutrality."^*

If, by the end of the Commonwealth's fourth year.

President Quezon despaired of successfully defending the

archipelago and consequently had lost confidence in the

national defense system, his lieutenants had not yet gotten

the message. Both the Secretary and Undersecretary of National

Defense used the occasion of 1939 Class 'B' trainee graduation

ceremonies to reaffirm support for Philippine defense policy.

Addressing graduates of an officers' training course at Camp

^^Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 192-93.

^ Philippines Herald (1 and 2 November 1939). 322

Ord, Tarlac, on 18 December, Secretary Sison drew attention

to the (as then) successful defense of its territory by tiny

Finland. With the Philippines' favorable geographic position,

larger population, and the continued building of a "strong and

trained army," he held "great faith in [Filipino] ability to resist foreign invasion." The next day, attending the graduation of forty probationary third lieutenants of the field artillery training school at Camp Dau, , Sison expressed the belief that the ten-year defense program had produced satisfactory results and would continue "according to plan."l°°

The Undersecretary of National Defense, Leon Guinto, had addressed the army's first graduating cavalry officers' course at Camp Claudio, near Manila, on 15 December. He frankly acknowledged that "recent events in Europe" had led many to question the ability of the Filipinos to defend themselves.

The task of the officers seated before him was not just to have confidence in the defense system but to inspire confidence in others. Filipinos must "shake off [their] inferiority complex" and strengthen their belief in the defensibility of the archipelago. Just as French soldiers had proclaimed "they shall not pass," he asserted, so Filipino soldiers must take as their motto, "they shall not land."^l

^°°Philippines Herald (18 and 20 December 1939).

^"philippines Herald (15 December 1939). 323

A positive spin could also be put upon events in Europe.

Finland's initial success in stalling Russian attacks suggested that had Finland been surrounded by ocean, it might have fended off the Red Army indefinitely. And the Russo-

German accord in August 1939 led some to believe that Japan might now seek accommodation with the United States and Great

Britain in Asia (since Russia could now turn its attention to

Japan), lessening the Philippines' security concerns. Events in Europe troubled Quezon, but when he addressed the National

Assembly the following January (1940), he said nothing about changes in the national defense scheme. That over 100,000 soldiers were now in the army reserve. President Quezon stated, "shows that the youth of the land have responded patriotically to the call of duty and indicates how much has been accomplished in the execution of the National Defense

Program.Could their commander-in-chief be any less patriotic?

Whatever Quezon's private doubts, planning for national defense continued according to schedule. Philippine Army

Headquarters estimated that of the 154,065 males thought to have been born in 1519, 97,200 would be alive (and expected to register) in 1939. At the close of the April 1939

^°^Messaqe of His Excellency Manuel L.__Oue^on,_President of the Philippines, to the Second National_Assembly...delivered January 22. 1940. at thf Qp^ninfl— the , g$çgnd— S?p.siçni National Assembly Hall. Legislative Building (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1940), p. 21. 324 registration period, the army had 97,130 new registrants from which to choose its 1940 trainee classes. In October 1939 HPA published trainee figures for the 1940 training periods. A total of nearly fourteen thousand conscripts were projected for each of the sessions, January to June and July to

December. An additional four thousand would report for eleven months of training. The total of January-June 1940 trainees who actually underwent training (15,537) was only slightly less then the number for July-December 1939 (16,286). Once

late registrants had been added to the count, more youths would register in 1940 than had done so in 1939.

In an impromptu speech given at Rizal Memorial Stadium before the graduates of the Philippine Normal School on 26

March 1940 (and broadcast over Manila Radio KZRM), President

Quezon "startled his audience by asserting that he was no

longer of the opinion that the Philippines [could] be defended

against the aggression of a first class power. I am saying

this,'" he told his listeners, "'because I want you to know

the truth.’"

Quezon's message was typically ambiguous. While seeming

to undermine the provisions of the national defense act with

one breath, with the next he asked, "'Are we going to quit

carrying through our policies of national defense? My answer

. . . is in the negative.'" Many in the United States took

^^Bulletin no. 11, HPA, 30 June 1938, and Bulletin no. 85, HPA, 24 June 1941. 325

the Commonwealth president's words to be a "trial balloon."

Rather than continue on course to independence in 1946, the

future of Philippine-American relations would now be reopened.

The "re-examinationists" discerned support for their cause.

Quezon's speech, former High Commissioner and outspoken

retentionist Paul V. McNutt reportedly said, was "a first step

in the direction which many of us have been predicting for a

long time."104

Many in the Islands interpreted the president's words as

finally putting paid to any question of "re-examination." It did not follow, to them, that he had put paid to the army. HPA promptly announced that 20-year old males were still expected

to register for conscription during the immediately upcoming

April 1940 registration period. And in a speech to graduates

of the Off-Shore Patrol training school on 1 April, Defense

Secretary Sison interpreted Quezon's message as "a challenge

to our countrymen [to] put their shoulders to the wheels of the common enterprise." "The plan of our national defense had been carefully mapped out," he assured the graduates, "and we are following it to the letter without any hitch.

But with an obvious attempt at secrecy, Malacahan began to restrict defense expenditures and reduce trainee intake in early 1940. Quezon had earlier in March ordered the 1940

^°4philippines Herald (26 and 28 March 1940).

^^Philippines Herald (29 March and 1 April 1940). 326

mobilization practice cancelled "to exercise the most rigid

economy in the expenditure of funds." Presidential Secretary

Jorge B. Vargas followed the announcement up with assurances

that the national defense program would nonetheless "be

carried out faithfully.

On 1 April 1940, Quezon made a speech which even his

loyal, but pro-army, supporters found difficult to reconcile

with their own more optimistic beliefs. Speaking at the Manila

Hotel Winter Garden (in MacArthur's backyard), the President

told his audience of alumni of the 1915 class of the

University of the Philippines School of Law that "for a time,

for a long time, I have believed confidently in the opinions

of some people--some of whom are experts in this line--who

have said that the Filipino people can defend themselves

successfully against foreign invasion," but, in truth, he had

grown pessimistic. The completion of the ten-year defense

program, he now understood, would provide safety only "for a

limited period of time." As always, he left himself an out:

"Despite that danger [of conquest] we should insist on

becoming independent. . . . We shall never be a nation until we are willing to face the dangers of an independent

existence.

^^Philippines Herald (1 and 2 March 1940).

^^Philippines Herald (1 April 1940). 327

The administration's subsequent retrenchment did not sit well with many Filipinos. Cebu assemblyman Miguel Cuenco wondered aloud how the number of annual trainees had been reduced by half with almost no public debate, other than a brief comment in the Free Press. "The existence of the country is more imperative that its perfection," Cuenco declared.

Defense was the most important obligation of any government, and he did not believe that his should reduce military expenditures. Ilocos Sur assemblyman Prospero Sanidad was equally suspicious and expressed "vehement opposition" to any reduction in defense spending.^*8

The government was quick to offer reassurances that

Philippine defense preparations would continue. Budget commissioner Serafin Marabut explained that the defense budget had not really been cut. Field Marshal MacArthur had always recommended an annual budget of 16 million pesos, and that is what he would receive. The 1940 budget had been higher only to reestablish the Constabulary. With that expense met, the

1941 budget could return to normal. "Reports about a letting down in the trainee system," the Philippines Herald repeated

"on good authority," were "wholly without foundation in fact."

Indeed, some "war conscious" legislators introduced a bill to provide fifty million pesos for Philippine defense.

^°^PhiliPPines_Herald (29 April and 1 May 1940)

109Philippines Herald (1 and 16 May, and 10 July 1940) 328

Over at HPA, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Training and Operations, Philippine Scout officer Fidel Segundo, relied on legislative support for a stronger defense program to denounce the current spending policy. "The army budget is really not an army budget prepared by the army," Segundo observed, "but is rather a dictated budget which does not represent the requirements for carrying out the army mission in the light of present world conditions." Given the "healthy feeling among the members of the Assembly that the budget should be increased," Segundo argued that the General Staff should prepare its own more realistic budget.

General Lim passed a copy of this memorandum, which

Segundo had prepared for General Valdes, along to General

MacArthur. The Field Marshal showed little patience with

Segundo. MacArthur reminded Lim that Quezon could raise and lower the budget "at will," and that HPA had remained silent while members of the National Assembly and the Military

Adviser had risked the President's displeasure by asking for more money. "Knowing the temper of the President in these matters," he advised Lim "not to have anything to do with this action of Colonel Segundo's," if he ever hoped to prosper in the army. Segundo, General MacArthur concluded, could do himself and the army a favor if he concentrated on putting army training "on a proper basis." In fact, Segundo's failure 329 to do so was the army's "greatest weakness.

Quezon was, as his public comments suggested, growing disenchanted with the Field Marshal's advice. According to

High Commissioner Sayre, who had replaced McNutt in May 1939,

MacArthur's answers to some hard questions about Philippine defense posed by Quezon at a conference at the first of the year (1940) had been unsatisfactory. MacArthur had admitted that the plan of defense did not envision safeguarding

Mindanao. More incredibly, MacArthur reportedly stated that if Japan invaded the Islands, the only hope of salvation lay in "Great Britain of some other naval power" sailing to the rescue. Soon after, Quezon referred to MacArthur's public statements on the defensibility of the Philippines as

"'idiotic'" and "fantastic." The Military Adviser was "crazy,"

Quezon said. Finally, he asked High Commissioner Sayre "to have [MacArthur] relieved." When Quezon refused to put the request in writing, Sayre wisely declined.^^^

Journal for July 1940," entry for 2 July 1940, RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 3. Segundo was transferred to Mindanao in September, replaced as Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations and Training by another Scout officer. Pastor Martelino.

Ill "Memorandum of conversation between President Quezon and Mr. Sayre regarding national defense, held on January 8, 1940"; "Memorandum to the High Commissioner," dated 21 February 13 40; "Memorandum of conversation between High Commissioner Sayre and President Quezon regarding Philippine national defense," 28 February 1940, all in Sayre Papers, LC; and Friend, Between Two Empires, pp. 193-94. Since MacArthur was retired from the army, it is not clear exactly what authority the United States government had "to relieve" the Field Marshal. 330

In light of the Commonwealth President's public

statements in late March and early April 1940, it was widely

reported in the United States that Quezon had, as one paper put it, decided to "abandon the Philippines national defense plan and disband the army, retaining only the constabulary for police purposes.Military and naval authorities in

Washington maintained that the United States would continue to defend the Islands until 1946 regardless of Quezon's actions, but at least one Senator was quoted as saying that

America would have nothing to do with Philippine defense. In response to reports that President Quezon contemplated shelving the national defense plan, the Philippine government admitted that while it might reduce the military budget, it did not contemplate abandonment of the scheme.Possibly the unfriendly local response to hints of major defense cuts forced Quezon to pull back. The Manila Bulletin had reported as early as 8 March that the administration had suspended the trainee program, but by June the local press was reporting that plans to "reduce" the program would be deferred to 1941.114

From the vantage point of Headquarters Philippine Army,

General Lim offered a more nuanced view of the changes taking

ll^Times-Herald (24 July 1940), clipping in BIA 1184A-204, RG 350, NA.

ll^PhiliPPines Herald (25 and 26 July 1940).

ll^Bul letin (8 March 1940), and Tribune (13 June 1940). 331 place in the government. Not privy to all of the maneuvering behind the establishment of the Department of National

Defense, he nonetheless saw its creation as a first step toward doing "the right thing about the Army. And the

"right thing," in Lim's view, involved abandoning Field

Marshal MacArthur's unrealistic and grandiose scheme for building a huge conscript army. Lim's insight supports the usual interpretation that creation of the Defense Department was meant to undermine MacArthur's authority, but not for the usual reasons. At least to some extent, Quezon was turning to a new vision of an armed force appropriate for the

Philippines, one not associated with his Military Adviser.

At a conference with President Quezon in June 1939, army officials and members of the Military Mission had discussed the question of whether "training would be improved by a greater concentration of stations for the instruction of trainees, and if so, [would] mobilization efficiency be adversely affected?"^^® (Fewer mobilization centers meant that soldiers called to active duty had to travel further to mobilisation locations.) This conference and subsequent deliberations provided an opportunity to air conceptual differences over the development of the army.

^^^Lim, To Inspire and To Lead, p. 62.

^^^Memorandum, Field Marshal MacArthur and Major General Valdes to President Quezon, 8 December 1939, RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 2. 332

In a cover letter to a twenty-page report on the issue ultimately submitted to President Quezon six months later, on

9 December 1939, General MacArthur acknowledged that "during the consideration of the board, a suggestion for discussion was made as to the possible affect that would result were added emphasis to be placed at this time on the professional component, with a consequent diminution of the reserve element." MacArthur was adamantly opposed to such a reorientation of the national defense plan, which he equated with replacing the citizen army with a professional force. The

"fundamental truths" of the Philippine defense system, he reminded his patron, were

1) "Sufficiency in numbers is the first indispensable requisite to successful defense,

2) Only through the medium of a civilian army may these numbers be produced, and

3) Universal service, with equal liability for all, is the only fair and effective means of training and organizing the citizenry for defensive purposes."

The sixteen members of the board were unanimous in concluding that "there shall be no diminution in the number [of men] trained annually.

The report reflected MacArthur's adherence to the original plan, but clearly the Central General Staff was far from unanimous in its support. The subsequent reduction in the number of conscripts taken into the military illustrated the

117ll)id, 333 beginning of a reorientation of the army away from providing

(rather superficial) training for the many, in favor of more in-depth training for the few. Quezon's statements of dissatisfaction with MacArthur’s scheme of defense made in late 1939 and 1940 were exactly that; they should not necessarily be extended to include disillusionment with the army.

A number of developments pointed to a reappraisal of

Philippine defense needs in early and mid-1940, rather than their abandonment. Ten new Reserve Officer Training Corps units began with the opening of the school year in June, ranging from the 64-student unit at the Philippine Dental

College to the eight hundred cadets of National University.

At the same time, the army planned to institute an obligatory

"streamlined" three-year cadet program (to replace the partially optional four-year program). "Honor" and

"distinguished" graduates could look forward to commissions as reserve officers. Other qualified graduates would become noncommissioned officers in the reserve divisions.

Despite the projections of late 1939 (of about 14,000 trainees), only 10,420 recruits reported for the July-December

1940 basic training period and far fewer, 5802, for the

January-June 1941 period (the Philippine Army's last trainee class). The slack in trainee numbers was taken up by a

^Citizen Armv (August-September 1940):6-7, 23. 334 reorientation of basic military training away from conscripts to those who already possessed some military training. For example, starting in 1940, ROTC students had to take an eight- week training course (at the trainee camps nearest their homes) upon completion of the second year of ROTC. To make up for the reduction in trainees, some eight thousand recently graduated high school students who had undergone Preparatory

Military Training reported for military instruction in April

1941.^^®

By late 1940, Quezon had begun to temper his earlier outspokenness. General MacArthur's plan of defense would "be carried out with only slight alterations" he told journalists at a press conference in September. The defense-building process was being slowed down, he explained, because the army had "been training men so rapidly that there [was] a lack of trained officers." Asked if he too would be willing to trade the United States naval bases for destroyers, as Britain had recently done, the President joked that if America gave some overage destroyers to the Philippines, it could have "'half a dozen bases'" in return.As 1940 drew to a close, there was reason for hope. The United States had not turned down a recent request for military aid, and his emissary, José Yulo, had been sympathetically received in Washington. Among Yulo's

^^^PhiliPPines Herald (31 March 1941).

^^Philippines Herald (19 September 1940) 335 tasks was to convince the War Department of the need to strengthen America's Pacific outpost. CHAPTER VII

WPO-3 AND THE PHILIPPINE ARMY, 1940-41

In his memoir of defeat and redemption in the Philippine

Islands, army officer Stephen Mellnik summarized the common view of pre-war planning for the defense of the archipelago against an invasion by Japan. "WPO [War Plan Orange]-3,” he explained, "was prewar General Staff guidance to a small

American force defending Luzon. It assumed--correctly, as it turned out--that the enemy would land at Lingayen and drive to Manila. It directed mobile units to slow the enemy's advance with a series of delaying actions while the main force gathered supplies and withdrew to defense positions on

Bataan."! j^j-my historian Louis Morton continued the story in his still-standard history of the Philippine campaign of 1941-

42: General Douglas MacArthur, recalled to active duty to command all military forces in the Islands, discarded what he viewed as "the defeatist and defensive WPO-3" in favor of an active forward defense utilizing reinforcements from the

United States and the soldiers of the new Philippine Army.

When Philippine forces collapsed under the assault of the

^Stephen M. Mellnik, Philippine War Diarv. 1939-1945. revised ed. (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1981), p. 48.

336 337

Japanese 14th Army in late December 1941, MacArthur put WPO-

3— "an old plan, well known to all U. S. Army officers who had been in the Philippines six months or more"--into effect, and

Pi1-American forces began the retreat into Bataan.^ There, thanks in part to MacArthur's ill-considered abrogation of

WPO-3, they fell prey to disease, malnutrition, and the

Japanese Army.

The common depiction of WPO-3 as only one of a series of virtually indistinguishable Orange plans gives an unwarranted impression of continuity from one war plan to another, and it posits an equally unwarranted dichotomy between HPD's War Plan

Orange of 1940-41 (WPO-3) and the plan adopted by General

Douglas MacArthur in mid-1941. There was, after all, a reason the Orange plans were variously numbered: In some way, their contents differed. In particular. War Plan Orange-3 differed substantially from its predecessor, WPO-2. Aware— like

MacArthur--of the potential of the Philippine Army to underpin a distinctive, even historic, rewriting of the Orange plan,

Philippine Department Commanding General Major General George

Grunert relied on the manpower resources of the Commonwealth's military force in preparing Fort Santiago's War Plan Orange.

Indeed, there is ample reason to believe he journeyed to the

Philippines with precisely that purpose in mind.

Louis Morton, The Fall of the Philippines (Washington, D. C.: United States Army, Office of the Chief of Military History, 1953), pp. 64-65, 163-64. 338

Grunert, then a colonel, had arrived in Manila aboard the

USAT Grant on 30 October 1936. The army transport was an old ship, constructed in Germany in 1907, inadequate for the army's needs, and scheduled for replacement as soon as the army could obtain the funds to do so.^ Still, it had not yet been built when Grunert had last sailed through the San

Bernardino Strait. Although he had entered the army as an enlisted man thirty-eight years earlier, he had not seen the

Philippines since completing a tour of duty in the Islands with the 11th Cavalry in 1904. In the intervening decades, he had distinguished himself in both war and peace: three years with the Army of Occupation in Cuba; at Cambrai with the

British 40th Division; staff service with the American

Expeditionary Forces; graduation from the Army War College and from the Command and General Staff School (in that order). He wore the Distinguished Service Medal, , French

Legion of Honor, and six campaign medals. Peacetime duty included teaching at the Army War College from 1932 to 1936.

He had not returned to the Orient.*

On this second tour in the Philippines, the fifty-six year old Grunert took command of the Philippine Scout 26th

^Memorandum for Chief of Staff, "Subject: Transports," 20 February 1937, copy in Woodring Papers, Kansas Collection, University of Kansas Libraries.

^Details of Grunert's career are taken from the Armv fiSfliatfil., the Army List, articles in the Philippines Herald, and documents in the Papers, USAMHI. 339

Cavalry Regiment at Fort Stotsenburg. He was soon promoted to

brigadier general and command of the 23rd Infantry Brigade at

Fort William McKinley, a unit also composed of Filipino soldiers. Upon completion of his two-year tour of duty,

Grunert departed the Philippines on 3 November 1938. Little is known of Grunert's activities in 1937 and 1938, but he left the Philippines clearly determined to return as soon as possible. In a letter written in June 1939, outgoing Chief of

Staff Malin Craig informed Grunert that while he did not know what General George Marshall's policies would be with respect to the assignment of general officers, he saw "no reason why you should not be seriously considered for the Philippines if you wish it.Barely seven months later, on 14 February

1940, Grunert was back in Manila and in command of the

Philippine Division. As scheduled, Grunert (a major general since December 1939) became Commanding General of the

Philippine Department on 31 May 1940, when Major General

Walter Grant returned home.

What motivated Grunert's return to the Philippines?

Grunert's years in the archipelago corresponded to a period of increasing antagonism between Japan and the United States.

The United States grew more strident in its condemnation of

Japanese behavior but did not translate verbal belligerence into military action. What made Grunert think that the War

^Craig to "George," 24 June 1939, Grunert Papers, USAMHI. 340

Department would be any more sympathetic to his entreaties for men and materiel than it had been to earlier commanders? The one new development observed by Grunert during his 1936-38 tour was the creation of the Philippine Army. With the commencement of Philippine Army conscription in January 1937, there was now the promise of a large, trained body of manpower, and until 1946 the army remained legally a reserve force available for use by the United States military under the provisions of the Tydings-McDuffie Act.

"Philippine Department Plan--Orange (1936 Revision)"— its official "short title" was HPD WPO-2— was in effect when

Grunert returned for the third time to the archipelago.^ A short "preliminary draft" of WPO-2 remains, as do complete copies of the complementary 1938 and 1939 Philippine Defense

Projects. Their linkage is proved by the common language and tactical thrust shared by all three documents. The "1938

Revision" of the Philippine Defense Project continued the cautious phraseology which had come to typify HPD-authored plans and projects: the mobile force used "without uncovering the defense of the entrance to Manila Bay"; the enemy advance delayed "to the greatest extent possibly without jeopardizing the timely withdrawal of the mobile forces and Department

^Successive HPD staff planners adopted conflicting numbering schemes (or used none at all), but the final system appears to have worked thusly: "Philippine Department--First Phase Plan--Orange, 1934" was WPO-1; "Philippine Department Plan— Orange (1936 Revision)" was WPO-2; and "Philippine Department Plan--Orange (1940 Revision)" was WPO-3. 341 installations to Bataan”; and the air resources employed

’’conservatively. "

HPD did not ignore the Philippine Army. The new army’s troops (referred to as Philippine Scouts, once mobilized, in both the 1938 and 1939 Projects) would be assigned "to raise units of the IPF [Initial Protective Force] from peace to war strength and to new and reconstituted Philippine Scout units."

The entire force would "comprise a small corps of two divisions and certain corps troops." The 1939 Project similarly planned to use troops of the Philippine Army "to raise units of the IPF from peace to war strength and to form new and reconstituted Philippine Scout units." WPO-2 expected only to use Philippine Army soldiers to increase the

Philippine Department garrison to its war strength of 31,000 men. This force would then operate "defensively [i.e. on

Bataan] for a period of six months."^

Tactically, WPO-2 was more offense-oriented than its 1934 predecessor, WPO-1, Possibly this reflected MacArthur's early influence on HPD after his arrival in Manila as Commonwealth

Military Adviser in October 1935. For example, WPO-2 divided

Luzon into three sectors: North, South, and West, the latter

The Philippine Defense Project (1938 Revision) is found in box 90, and the Philippine Defense Project (1939 Revision) in box 89, of Special Projects--War Plans--"Color," 1920-48, RG 407, NA. WPO-2 is found in box 64 of the same collection. The "preliminary draft" of WPO-2 is actually labelled "short title HPD WPO-3," but this was apparently a prematurely assigned number. The accompanying annexes and appendices are all labelled WPO-2. 342

encompassing Bataan and Zambales Provinces. (The even more-

detailed WPO-3 would divide Luzon into six sectors.) An IPF

consisting of one battalion of the 31st United States Infantry

and portions of the Philippine Scouts' 26th Cavalry and 24th

Field Artillery Regiments would cover likely landing areas in

each sector. Most of the Philippine Division (the 45th and

57th Infantries) formed the Department Mobile Reserve (DMR).®

By contrast, WPO-1 conceded the value of beach defense but

feared to act on that understanding. Mobile troops would take station behind a defensive perimeter in southern Bataan, moving forward to contest the enemy advance only "if time permit[ted]." The 31st Infantry Regiment would move to

Corregidor "immediately for beach defense."*

No Philippine Army existed when HPD prepared WPO-1 in

1934, and the hesitation of WPO-2's authors in 1936 to make greater use of the Philippine Army was not unnatural, given the army's still elementary organization. Planners in 1938 and

1939 had had less reason for caution, and within days of assuming command of the Philippine Department, a far more ambitious General Grunert informed the Military Adviser's

Office that he planned to hold a conference at eight o'clock on the morning of 19 June 1940 to begin the process of

^"Philippine Department Plan— Orange (1936 Revision)," Special Projects--War Plans, "Color," 1920-1948, RG 407, NA.

*"G-3 Estimate of the Situation— Philippine Department, First Phase, Plan--Orange--1934" (HPD WPO-1 G3E), Special Projects--War Plans, "Color," 1920-1948, RG 407, NA. 343 revising the Department's current war plan (WPO-2). He invited the Military Adviser to send representatives, and

MacArthur designated his Deputy Chief of Staff, Lieutenant

Colonel Richard Marshall, and Major William Dunckel to attend the conferences held at Department headquarters in Port

Santiago.

It soon became apparent that Grunert*s plans included

Philippine Army troops. A complaint by an officer of the

Philippine Army that officers from the Philippine Division had been visiting HPA to obtain information about the status of trainees, reservists, and weapons had already been noted in the Military Mission's official journal. Department officers were ordered to deal with the Philippine Army only through

MacArthur's office. An entry in the journal dated 26 June

1940 registered General Lim's complaint that the Philippine

Department was making plans for using soldiers of the

Philippine Army (and clearly the Philippine Army was not being invited to participate in the planning). The Mission responded weakly that the Department was not making plans for the

Philippine Army "as an organization," which of course was exactly Lim's fear. On July 1st Grunert met with MacArthur

Only Dunckel was designated by name. The unnamed person who maintained the journal, which James concluded was "probably kept" by Marshall, was the other officer. D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1 (Boston; Houghton Mifflin, 1970), p. 694, fn. 26. Appendix "C" to the "Journal for June 1940" confirms that WPO-2 was the plan under discussion. Copy in RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 3. 344 to discuss the new plan, but the following day MacArthur told

General Lim that "so far we have no indication of what the

[Department] war plan will be.

The transition from WPO-1 to WPO-3 can be seen in HPD G-

3 ’s detailed evaluation of various war plans suitable for

Philippine conditions (included as an appendix to WPO-3).

"Plan 1" called for moving "the mobile troops to Bataan immediately." This plan, obviously a rendition of WPO-1, had the advantage of insuring that everyone got to Bataan in good health and uninjured. Its many disadvantages included abandoning essential supplies elsewhere on Luzon; rapid enemy occupation of the strategic Pico de Loro area south of Manila

Bay; lessening of civilian and military morale; and failure to make use of "any part of the armed forces of the Philippine

Commonwealth." Plan 1, G-3 concluded, "might well result in failure to accomplish the assigned mission."

A small portion of American forces met the enemy at the beach while the bulk of the mobile army remained in reserve elsewhere under "Plan 2." If Orange forces got ashore, the covering forces would hinder their advance "as much as possible without jeopardizing the successful withdrawal to the

Bataan Peninsula of the forces designated for its defense."

G-3 acknowledged that Plan 2 complied "with the assigned mission, and undert[ook] the operations contemplated in the

Journal for July 1940," entry dated 2 July, RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 3. 345

War Department Orange Plan" [emphasis added]. The numerical weakness of American forces undermined the advantages of this plan. Limited troop strength made it unlikely that the enemy could be resisted at the beach. Plan 2 was similar to WPO-2.

Under "Plan 3"--WP0 3--"the major portion of all United

States mobile forces" on Luzon attempted to destroy the enemy at landing points. Covered by this action, the Philippine Army mobilized and moved to the scene of battle. Most American troops would then withdraw and form a mobile reserve. "In the event of hostile landings," the mission would be "to eject the enemy, or, failing in this, to limit his beach-head operations energetically until forced to withdraw. If forced to withdraw, to delay the hostile advance to the greatest extent possible without jeopardizing the successful withdrawal to Bataan of the forces designated for its defense."

The many advantages of Plan 3 included the ability to gather more supplies; to make use of all of the air facilities on Luzon (rather than consigning them immediately to the enemy); to allow a more organized defense of the Manila Bay entrance, "including the occupation and defense of the Pico de Loro area"; to maintain civilian and military morale and the prestige of the United States in the Orient; and to make

"extensive use of the armed forces of the Philippine

Commonwealth." The only disadvantage was "the initial dispersion of the regular mobile forces for a short period, pending the mobilization of the units of the Philippine Army." 346

After "careful consideration of the three plans," the

clear choice was Plan 3. Using the bulk of the Philippine

Division to challenge the enemy at the outset, rather than husbanding this well-trained unit for an inconsequential and inevitably unsuccessful defense of Bataan, answered those critics who questioned the whole point of attempting to hold

Manila Bay from positions on Bataan when the navy could not possibly relieve the garrison in a timely fashion. Why not,

Grunert asked, actually try to beat the enemy? Here was a plan neither defensive nor defeatist.

The inclusion of the Philippine Army in a new HPD war plan was only one aspect of Grunert's attempt to build up the garrison's strength. Prom mid-1940, the Philippine Department commander began "hammering" (his word) the War Department with cables, memoranda, and personal letters to the chief of staff requesting ammunition, anti-aircraft equipment with operating personnel, harbor defense equipment, airplanes, and more troops. According to the official army history of this period. General Grunert sent eight "warning reports and recommendations" in July and August 1940 alone. Distracted by growing responsibilities elsewhere and uncertain of the

^^G-3 Appendix to Philippine Department Plan— Orange (1940 Revision), Special Projects— War Plans--"Color," 1920-1948, RG 407, NA. 347

Philippines' future in American defense efforts, the War

Department responded with sympathy, but little else.^^

In early November 1940, General Grunert sought the War

Department's authority to call Philippine Army troops to

active duty for training. As individuals, the Filipino

soldiers were valuable additions to the garrison, Grunert

believed, but the Philippine Army was deficient in any kind

of advanced training and weak in officer leadership. In a

lengthy memorandum, Grunert passed along to the War Department

"factual data as to the present status of the Philippine

Army." If an emergency arose, Grunert planned "to utilize elements of the Philippine Army on the Island of Luzon . . . in units not larger than a battalion." He would supply "one experienced American officer" to each infantry and artillery battalion. The Department commander recommended that

"organized and equipped units of the Philippine Army be mobilized now" and given "a year of training, under competent supervision." A limited stock of ammunition led Grunert to ask for only those units located on Luzon for the present.

Eventually, however, he wanted to include all army units, both for operational and civilian morale purposes. He asked for 500

United States Army officers to oversee their training. In mid-

December, the War Department responded that the plan was

^^Mark Skinner Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations (Washington, D. C. : Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1950), pp. 414, 417-19. 348

"inadvisable under present conditions." It did offer to send seventy-five reserve officers to the Islands "to assist in training activities and for such other purposes as [Grunert] may desire.

Within only a few days, the War Department abruptly adopted a far more positive stance toward Philippine defense.

The army notified Grunert that he could look forward to an increase in the Philippine Scouts, the American 31st Infantry

Regiment and coast artillery regiments, and in construction funds. When sufficiency of supplies allowed, Washington would

^Grunert to General Marshall, 2 November 1940, and Memorandum for the Chief of Staff, 20 November 1940 (approved 13 December 1940), both filed under WPD 3251-39, RG 165, NA; Skinner, Chief of Staff, pp. 422-23. Grunert would later summarize his activities in an intriguing letter to a friend. Colonel William C. Koenig, in August 1941, only a few weeks before he was ordered to return to the United States. "I have been hammering for many months towards implementing the plan [of] which you have knowledge," Grunert wrote. "I took your proposals, whittled down the personnel and equipment [to what I thought I might obtain], and sent radio after radio" (Grunert to "Bill," 11 August 1941, Grunert Papers, USAMHI). Exactly what Grunert meant by "your" proposals is unknown. A 190 9 graduate of the Naval Academy who obtained a commission in the army's coast artillery arm, Koenig does not appear to have been stationed near Grunert until arriving in the Philippines in October 1937, He remained in the Islands until November 1940, during that time serving as commanding officer of the 91st and 60th Coast Artillery Regiments (both on Corregidor). Koenig was best known publicly for setting the course record on the officers' golf course on Topside. Given the relatively small community of senior officers in the Philippines (five general officers and 31 colonels in November 1940), Koenig would undoubtedly have met General Grunert. Perhaps the most that can be concluded is that there may have been a number of officers who discussed the potential for change in the current war plans who shared--or sparked-- Grunert's desire to shake-up the garrison and provide for a more offensive defense. 349 also ship anti-aircraft and other guns. The change in attitude was probably related to a concurrent request from the

Commonwealth government for more assistance in establishing the Philippine defense system. Prodded by MacArthur, who had prepared the message, in early August 1940 President Quezon broached the topic of obtaining greater federal funding for military purposes in the Islands. American High Commissioner

Sayre transmitted the President's request, in which Quezon asked for support similar to that granted the National Guard.

Sayre quickly followed the cable with one of his own, informing Washington that Quezon merely hoped to gain federal monies so he could reduce his own government's defense expenditures. "Whether or not appropriations should be made by [the] United States for defense of [the] Philippines is primarily a military question," Sayre acknowledged, but if the government decided to accede to Quezon's request, he felt

"strongly that the expenditure of such funds should be under the full control of the United States War and Navy Departments rather than of [the] Commonwealth Government."^®

^®Skinner, Chief of Staff, p. 423; James, Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, pp. 551-52.

^®"Journal for July 1940," entry for 26 July; "Journal for August 1940," entry for 3 August, RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 3; and Sayre to Interior Department, 6 August 1940, radiograms nos. 547 and 548, copies filed with J.B. 305, serial 672, Records of the Joint Board, microfilm ed., reel 6. 350

President Roosevelt brushed off Quezon's request, at

least for the time being, responding through Sayre in early

September that the issue was "of such broad scope" that the

government would have to give it "careful and sympathetic

study" before re s p o n d i n g . T h e next month, Quezon asked again,

this time suggesting that "the sugar excise tax funds" and the

"refund incidental to the devaluation of the dollar" be made

available "to push forward American defense plans" in the

IslandsSayre's follow-up cable again urged caution and

emphasized that any appropriations should be under the control

of local military commanders. He expected to confer with both

the Commanding General of the Philippine Department and the

Commandant of the 16th Naval District to learn how Quezon

could contribute to "American defense plans." Two days later,

Grunert told Sayre that "funds could be advantageously spent

by [the] Commonwealth Government in properly equipping, arming

and intensification of training of Philippine troops as is

now being done by National Guard troops in the United

States."!*

^Sayre to Quezon, 7 September 1940, Quezon Papers, microfilm ed., reel 20. See also David Dufault, "Francis B. Sayre and the Commonwealth of the Philippines, 1936-1942" (Phd dissertation. University of Oregon, 1972), pp. 356-58.

!*Quezon to Roosevelt, 11 October 1940, Quezon Papers, microfilm ed., reel 20.

!*Sayre to Interior Department, 14 October 1940, radiogram no. 739, and 16 October 1940, radiogram no. 747, copies filed with J.B. 305, serial 672, Records of the Joint Board, microfilm ed., reel 6. 351

Passing along Quezon's request to President Roosevelt,

Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes expressed the opinion

that the government should give "sympathetic consideration"

to the Commonwealth's entreaties. A few days later. Secretary of State added his weight to Ickes', urging more strongly that Quezon's suggestion be accepted. The Secretaries of the Navy and of War should study the matter, as well, and

"make concrete suggestions."

At the Secretaries' request, the Joint Board considered the appropriateness of using these funds, which totalled about

$52 million, for military purposes in the Philippine Islands.

The Board concluded that the funds should be spent, with

United States Army and Navy oversight, for defense items

"which will either immediately or ultimately belong to the

Filipinos themselves." "These items," the Board continued,

"include equipment, munitions, installations, and the training of the Philippine Army." The Joint Board recommended that the

President express appreciation to the Commonwealth government for its willingness to spend these funds on defense measures, and to begin the process of obtaining Congressional approval for the use of the monies.

While the process of obtaining authorization of the funds would be long (and ultimately unsuccessful), nevertheless an

Ickes to Roosevelt, 24 October 1940; Hull to Roosevelt, 4 November 1940; and J. B. 305, serial 672, 21 January 1941, all in Records of the Joint Board, microfilm ed., reel 6. 352

environment more supportive of increased Philippine defense

spending had been created. Speaker of the Philippine National

Assembly José Yulo was in the capital at the time, engaged on

a "secret mission" in part to express Quezon's concern with

Japanese aggression.Yulo's discussions with senior government officials contributed to greater awareness of the

Commonwealth's defense needs. It was at this point that

Grunert received word of the War Department's partial about-

face in responding to his demands.

Grunert moved forward with increasing the Philippine

Scout troops in the garrison. The number to be recruited, nearly 6000, had no bearing on the tactical needs of the

Philippine Department. The Army Reorganization Act of 1901 had decreed a maximum figure of 12,000 Filipino soldiers, and four decades later, this arbitrary and outdated number defined

Grunert's options. Asking for more men would require

legislative approval; the Philippine Department needed only money to recruit the additional 6000.

Philippine Scout recruitment strengthened the ability of

the IPF to defend the coastline, but the increase in the

Scouts was not only a means of building up the local United

States Army garrison. The reserve ranks of the Philippine

Army were to provide virtually all of the recruits. Philippine

Army soldiers who had already completed basic training would.

^^Aruna Gopinath, Manuel L. Quezon: The Tutelary Democrat (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1987), p. 71. 353 after one year of service in the Scouts, return to their reserve units, well-trained (at Federal expense) and ready to assume leadership positions in the reserve divisions. The arrangement had been agreed upon following discussions between

Grunert, Sayre, and Commonwealth officials President Quezon,

Defense Secretary Sison, and Chief of Staff Valdes. To minimize the impact on any one reserve unit, the army was to send recruiting parties north to Vigan and Dagupan, and south to Iloilo, , Cebu, and . Provincial recruitment also had the effect, as Lieutenant John Olson (then with the

57th Infantry) revealed, of restricting Tagalog access to the

Scouts. Some recruits were also accepted at Forts McKinley and Stotsenburg. Recruits had to be single, in excellent health, aged 21 to 28, possess (hopefully) the ability to read, write, and speak English, and show proof that they were members of the reserve. Soldiers of the regular Philippine

Army, those currently training with the army, and reservists assigned to the Off-Shore Patrol were ineligible for Scout enlistment.

Numerous applicants presented themselves for service, and the army met its recruitment goal by the first week of

April 1941. Over 5000 prospective recruits reported to Fort

McKinley, where the army selected 3803 of the best qualified.

Most of these men went into the 45th and 57th Infantry

^^Philippines Herald (3 February 1941). 354

Regiments. The field artillery regiment at Stotsenburg

received 1100 other recruits."The relaxed life came to a

sudden end," recalled an officer of the 26th Cavalry, a

Stotsenburg-based Scout regiment which also received over one

thousand recruits in March and April of 1941 For the

soldiers of the Philippine Scout regiments, the somnolent

peacetime garrison routine became a thing of the past.

The Philippine Army did not slacken its own training

effort during this time. Although the number of 21-year old

registrants reporting for semi-annual training was greatly

reduced for the trainee period beginning January 1941, in

other fields Philippine Army development continued apace.

Quezon had ordered the 1940 mobilization cancelled but at the same time had promised an ambitious mobilization exercise in

1941 and subsequent years.Two weeks of training at the end of March 1941 would include reservists from the 1937, 1938,

1939, and 1940 trainee sessions, a total of about 25,000 men.

In the belief that the 1939 mobilization had suffered in part

from poor administrative preparedness, Philippine Army headquarters began work early to ensure that provincial

^ "The Philippine Division in 1941-1942," typescript, prepared by Colonel Harrison C. Browne, Philippine Division Chief of Staff. Copy in USAMHI.

^^Arthur K. Whitehead, Odyssey of a Philippine Scout (Tucson, Arizona: By the Author, 1989), pp. 16-17.

^^See Exhibit "H" to "Journal — June 1940," RG 1, MacArthur Archives, microfilm ed., reel 3. 355

officials knew how to contact local reservists. Senior army

and civilian officials made weekly radio broadcasts to publicize the upcoming "Active Duty Training" period. General

Lim assured the listeners of his address that the army was attentive to complaints of the past. For example, soldiers would be well fed--he personally had reviewed the menu and tasted the food--and the public would be invited to visit the training camps to watch its citizen-soldiers at work.

Further emphasizing the commonality of purpose between the Philippine and United States armies, General Grunert assigned thirty army officers (mostly captains and majors from the 31st and 45th Infantry Regiments) to Philippine Army camps to assist in the reservists' training. And for the first time, Philippine Army coast artillery reservists would report to Corregidor to undergo refresher training with the United

States Army's coast artillery regiments.^®

Three months later, in mid-June 1941, General Grunert presented in detail his thinking on the use of the Philippine

Army, leaving no doubt that WPO-3 reflected his ambitions for integrating the Philippine Army with the United States Army garrison in the Islands. "A frank and realistic appraisal of the combat capacity of our U.S. War Garrison," Grunert wrote,

"indicates the need for numerical increases and enlarged fire­ power. The tactical possibilities, in our situation on Luzon,

^^Philippines Herald (10, 11, 12 and 18 March 1941). 356 are those inherent in a position in readiness, with forces in observation in several sectors, and a central reserve, for operations on interior lines; this inescapable dispersion has the effect of weakening each element; the only remedy lay in early reinforcement; the most direct, and economical means, at hand, is the Philippine Army and its man-power. Our current

W.P.O. is based on that conception." The "gravest risk,"

Grunert continued, lay in the "time-lag" between the

Philippine Division's movement to beach defense positions and the Philippine Army's mobilization. For that reason, the

Philippine Army needed to be called to active duty for a lengthy period of training.

As finalized on 1 April 1941 (with several penciled changes dated 10 June 1941), War Plan Orange-3 continued to adhere to the tripartite format of earlier HPD WPOs: beach defense, withdrawal to Bataan, static defense of the peninsula until relieved or destroyed. Thus, when, on the night of 23/24

December 1941, word passed that "WPO-3 was in effect," most officers knew to commence withdrawing into Bataan, even though

WPO-3 was hardly an "old" plan. Beach defense had failed, and

Grunert had appropriately provided for that contingency by incorporating the withdrawal provision of older plans into

WPO-3. But where other war plans had paid only lip service

Grunert to TAG, "Program of Expenditures for the Emergent Mobilization and Training of the Philippine Army, and Related Defense Activities," 12 June 1941, copy filed with WPD 3251, RG 165, NA. 357 to defending likely points of landing, using such limited resources that enemy landings would inevitably be successful,

WPO-3 had insisted upon a genuine effort to destroy the enemy when it attempted to land. Only "as a last resort" would the forces designated for Bataan's defense retreat into the peninsula.

Grunert envisioned multiple roles for the Philippine Army in WPO-3, although he emphasized their use in beach defense.

As outlined in the opening section of WPO-3 (the "General

Plan"), Philippine Army troops would "relieve and supplement

IPF units." Those troops not moved to Luzon from off-island mobilization centers would "conduct such operations as are practicable under the existing conditions" on their home islands. The "bulk" of the Department Mobile Reserve would include both United States troops (mostly units of the

Philippine Division) and "certain" Philippine Army units.

These units would, if necessary, eventually compose a Bataan

Defense Command. "When and if troops designated to defend

Bataan retire[d] thereto," the remaining Philippine Army units would be "organized into detachments for the conduct of such warfare as available supplies and munitions [would] permit."

Their American officers were to leave them and join the forces on Bataan.

As events in the Far East grew more ominous. General

Grunert provided a resolute and comforting presence in Manila.

High Commissioner Sayre had become a fervent admirer, lauding 358

Grunert's hard work, "common sense, and good judgment" in a

letter written to General Marshall in November 1940. A few

months later, Sayre recommended Grunert's promotion to

lieutenant general. The Department commander, Sayre enthused

to both Secretary of War Stimson and the chief of staff, was

such a "splendid leader that he richly deserved" three stars.

"All of us feel happy that we have in the Philippines so

competent and able a leader," the High Commissioner wrote.

On the occasion of the commanding general's sixty-first birthday (21 July 1941), the Philippines Herald included a 16- page "General Grunert Birthday Supplement." High Commissioner

Sayre, President Quezon, Major General Valdes, Chief of

Constabulary Francisco and other civic and military leaders

(but not Field Marshal MacArthur, nor the local navy commander) offered felicitations. General Grunert reassured the Filipino people with a heartening message. "Hardened by vigorous training, the troops, both American and Filipino, have been forged into an efficient combat team, ready now to guard these islands against an aggressor," he reported. Two days later, in a letter to General Marshall, Grunert apologized for appearing to "push himself forward." He had been unaware of the Herald's intent, but after all, he

^^Letters, Sayre to Marshall, 20 November 1940; Sayre to Marshall, 19 April 1941; and Stimson to Sayre, 15 May 1941, all in Francis B. Sayre Papers, LC. 359

reasoned, personal prestige and reputation counted for much

in the Orient.2*

Five days later, to the surprise of both Grunert and the

Philippine government, the War Department recalled MacArthur

to active duty and promoted him to command of United States

Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), an organization which would incorporate both the United States Army forces in the

Philippines and units of the Philippine Army to be called into

United States service. That President Quezon, too, had been unaware of the iimminent recall to active service of his government's most highly paid employee was revealed in a telegram sent from the Philippine Resident Commissioner in

Washington to Manila on 27 July. The War Department apologized. Resident Commissioner "Mike" Elizalde told Quezon, for not having informed the Commonwealth government "at the proper time" about President Roosevelt's recall of General

MacArthur and his intention to call the Philippine Army into

Federal service.

According to MacArthur's biographer, D. Clayton James, the Field Marshal and the general were "old friends" who

^Grunert to Marshall, 23 July 1941, Grunert Papers, USAMHI.

^Elizalde to Quezon, 27 July 1941, Quezon Papers, microfilm ed., reel 20. 360

"often visited each other's headquarters in Manila."^^ As far as the progress of the Philippine Army was concerned, however, the two seemed to have grown more distant, with General

MacArthur increasingly the less influential. On MacArthur's

61st birthday (26 January 1941), the Philippines Herald printed MacArthur's traditional message in which he reassured the Filipino people that the army would incorporate in its training and equipment the lessons of the European conflict.

But now he emphasized "courage." "Above and beyond all factors of progress and modernization," he stressed, "the efficiency of a fighting force depends primarily upon the psychology of the individuals who compose it." At their Field Marshal's request, officers of the Philippine Army and Constabulary dispensed with the usual birthday calls.

As American interest in Asia quickened in early 1941, however, MacArthur was not prepared to remain on the sideline.

In a letter to General Marshall in February, he revealed a scheme for establishing strong gun batteries at strategic positions in the archipelago and asked for a large number of

^^Frazier Hunt also referred to Grunert as an "old friend," and Carol Petillo repeated the phrase, but none mention this "old friend" until he arrived in the Philippines in 1940. Hunt, The Untold Story of Douglas MacArthur (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1954), pp. 203-204; Petillo, Douglas MacArthur: The Philippine Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), p. 194; and James, Years of MacArthur, Vol. 1, pp. 568-69.

^^Philippines Herald (25 and 27 January 1941). 361 guns, ammunition, and search lights from the United States.

In March he asked Major T. J. Davis to deliver letters to

Steve Early (President Roosevelt’s secretary). Secretary of

War Stimson, Chief of Staff Marshall, and Brigadier General

Edwin Watson (Roosevelt's Military Aide) in which he apparently offered his services should a military emergency arise.By mid-May General Marshall had decided to seek

MacArthur's recall to active duty "as the logical selection for the Army Commander in the Far East should the situation approach a crisis." He asked MacArthur to keep this information confidential. General Grunert and many staff officers in Washington continued to believe that the

Philippine department commanding officer would retain command should the Philippine Army be called into the service of the

United States.

Although clearly disappointed at his failure to direct the senior army command in the Islands, General Grunert pledged to his old mentor, General James G. Harbord, that he would support MacArthur with "one-hundred percent loyalty and

^^Skinner, Chief of Staff, pp. 425-26, 431-32.

^^MacArthur to Davis, 21 and 29 March 1941, copies (not originals) in Davis Papers, Eisenhower Library.

^^Skinner, Chief of Staff, p. 426. Marshall's letter, dated 20 June 1941, is included in ibid., pp. 435-36. For a discussion of the circumstances (still not fully understood) leading to the decision to recall MacArthur, see James, Years of MacArthur. Vol. 1, pp. 584-86; Petillo, Douglas MacArthur. pp. 196-97; and Skinner, Chief of Staff, pp. 434-36. 362 efficiency." Nonetheless, he expected to hold significant authority. "As Department commander," he informed Harbord,

"I still retain the responsibility for the training of the regular troops, and the training of the inducted Philippine

Army troops. Even before the establishment of USAFFE, the army had planned "to train about 75,000 Filipinos for a period of from three to nine months," assuming Congressional appropriation of the funds held on account for the Philippine governmentGrunert's records suggest a continuing role in

Philippine Army mobilization and training plans as USAFFE called Filipino infantry troops into Federal service starting on 1 September 1941. The first contingent consisted of one regiment from each reserve division. A second contingent was to mobilize for training on 15 October and a third on 1

December .38

Almost from the moment of General MacArthur's assumption of command, reinforcements of men and equipment had begun to arrive--with much more promised--in the Islands. A front-page story in the Philippines Herald on 29 October 1941 reported that General Marshall had declared before a Congressional appropriations subcommittee the previous day that

^^Grunert to Harbord, 6 October 1941, Grunert Papers, USAMHI.

3^Morton, Fall of the Philippines, pp. 15-16.

38"Diary of Major General George Grunert," Vol. 1, p. 8, Grunert Papers, USAMHI. 363

reinforcement of the Philippine garrison was now the War

Department's "number one" priority. The garrison's needs,

however, no longer included Major General Grunert. Only two

days' earlier, the same paper had acknowledged that Grunert

had received orders to return to the United States. What the

Herald did not reveal was that MacArthur had requested General

Grunert's recall. "'It would be advantageous to relieve him,"'

the USAFFE chief informed the War Department in mid-October,

" as I am loath, as long as he is here, to contract the

functions of the Department CommanderPublicly, the War

Department offered the excuse that the Philippine Department

commanding general had completed his normal overseas tour of

duty and was therefore being reassigned.

The order caught Grunert by surprise. Three weeks'

earlier he had written his sister that he did not know when

he would leave the Philippines, but he did not expect to

depart soon. He reminded her that his assignment would under

normal circumstances expire in February but felt that his

services could probably not be s p a r e d . T h e War Department's

dissembling fooled no one, since all knew that Grunert's two-

year tour of duty was not scheduled to end for several months.

Most officer transfers already had been put on hold; but not

^^Quoted in Morton, Fall of the Philippines, p. 23.

Philippines Herald (27 October 1941).

^^Letter, Grunert to "Sis," 6 October 1941, Grunert Papers, USAMHI. 364

Grunert's. The American soldier who arguably knew the Islands best and had done the most to prepare their people for the coming ordeal had now become an impediment. On the morning of 31 October, elements of Grunert's old command— men from

Fort Stotsenburg, Port McKinley, and the Post of Manila— gathered to bid the general farewell. His parting speech scarcely disguised his bitterness. Grunert lamented that his

"hurried departure" left "no time to bid adieu to many of my friends." He saved his final words for the people of the

Philippines: "I find it quite difficult [he said] to sever the ties made since 1936, and I am at a great loss for words to express my regrets that I must leave these friendly shores with their good hearted people who have become one with us in promoting National Defense wherewith to safeguard our libertiesAs USAFFE chief. General MacArthur added the now subordinate Philippine Department to his command. Morton concluded of the affair: "The headquarters which had made the plans and preparations for war had no tactical control when war came.

The Philippine Army's own planning for the defense of the archipelago seems to have been held firmly within the hands of the Military Adviser. MacArthur's planning, however, was directed toward the defense of the Islands after July 1946.

^^Philippines Herald (31 October 1941). Grunert's farewell address, with photographs, is printed in full.

43Morton,, Fall of the Philippines, p. 25. 365

When asked about the Military Mission's war planning by Louis

Morton after the war, William Dunckel of the Military

Adviser’s Office confirmed that "the Military Adviser had

detailed plans for the Philippine Army, Air Force and Off-

Shore Patrol to be used in event of war." The plans were for

use after independence and were predicated "on the basis that

there would be no assistance from U.S. Forces." Only during

the "anxious days" of 1941 did the Mission begin to consider

that the plans might be used prior to independence.

According to Dunckel, he alone wrote the Philippine Army

war plan "under the direct personal guidance of General

MacArthur." The "basic concept," Dunckel recalled, "was that

the entire Archipelago should receive attention in the

development of defense units rather than to concentrate all

forces and efforts on Luzon." The decision to embrace all

Islands in the defense scheme, Dunckel continued, was a direct

result of his experience as an HPD staff planner in 1928-30.

The Military Mission was determined not to repeat the Orange

Plans' traditional error of "ignoring . . . 'the psychological

appearance of security' for the Southern Islands and their

people." According to Dunckel, only he and MacArthur had seen

the plans up to the time Dunckel left the Islands in July

1941 Grunert at least came to know the basic outline of the

plan. He revealed in a speech given in early 1942 that under

^^Dunckel to Louis Morton, 11 May 1948, Louis Morton Collection, USAMHI. 366

MacArthur's Philippine Army war plan, each Military District was "charged with the defense of its own delimited area," which was essentially supported by Dunckel's recollection.^^

As usual. General Lim told a different story. According to his letters, Philippine Army War Plans Division had by mid-

1940 "already decided how the Philippine Army [was] going to be used in conjunction with the American army." The army had reconnoitered "all of Luzon" and determined which beaches to defend; had "indicated in general" what to do in the Visayas; and was in the process of hashing out with an obstreperous

Military Mission representative (Major Dunckel?) exactly how to prepare for the defense of Mindanao. Finally, Lim claimed, he "solved" the problem by ordering the representative and HPA officers to concentrate on planning the round up of the

Japanese community at Davao. "After that is done," he wrote,

"the problem of the defense of Mindanao will not be so difficult."4G It is difficult to reconcile these two accounts of army war planning. Perhaps the most that can be concluded is that liaison between HPA and the Military Mission was as poor as that between Port Santiago and No. 1, Calle Victoria.

Historically, the reorientation of Philippine defense away from HPD's "defeatist" War Plans Orange to USAPFE's

^^"Diary of Major General George Grunert," Vol. 1, p. 7, Grunert Papers, USAMHI.

^^icente Lim, To Inspire and To Lead: The Letters of Gen. Vicente Lim. 1938-1942 (Manila: By the Family, 1980), p. 109. 367

"aggressive plan whose object would be the defeat of any enemy

that attempted the conquest of the Philippines" is

inextricably linked to MacArthur's assumption of command of

Pi 1-American forces on 26 July 1941 That was not a

conclusion shared by General Grunert. "I had the entire defense plan revised, brought up to date, and implemented

insofar as men, equipment, and munitions permitted," Grunert asserted in a speech, given on the occasion of Army Day, on 6

April 1942, "and I am much gratified that MacArthur accepted this plan, practically in its entirety, and that its provisions and the preparatory measures incident thereto served his purposes so well. "48

others felt the same. "Until you got behind the war plans and the Philippine Army, the progress was literally by inches," Major General J. Garesche Ord wrote in early March

1942. "I suppose you will have to be reconciled to not receiving any credit for that work," Ord surmised. People needed a hero, and the "present commander" was being "heaped with praise," wrote another comrade. Colonel John T. H.

O'Rear, who had arrived in Manila with Grunert in February

1940 and served as the Department intelligence officer, "but we who were present and daily saw the defense grow in power

^^Morton, Fall of the Philippines, p. 64.

^®Speech by General Grunert given at "Union League Club Celebration of Army Day, April 6, 1942," copy in Grunert Papers, USAMHI. 368

will ever hail you as the commander who clearly saw the

problem and did something about it." It was "one man's

opinion," Colonel O'Rear declared, that Grunert deserved

"ninety percent of the credit" for preparing the defenses of

the Philippines.49

^^Letters, Ord to Grunert, 6 March 1942, and O'Rear to Grunert, 5 March 1942, Grunert Papers, USAMHI. CONCLUSION

So MacArthur had won. True, no naval base had been built in the Islands, but that hardly mattered. MacArthur's tenacity in adhering to the Commonwealth defense plan had provided the force which seemed to justify Washington's new-found optimism that a stand could be taken against Japan in mid-1941. General

Grunert had acted on that perception, but General MacArthur understandably did not care to share credit. He had conceived the defense plan. He had persevered against great odds. He was now determined to reap the reward.

Soon to relinquish the army's highest post, yet still relatively young, Quezon's request for guidance in developing a Philippine military force in 1934 had caught MacArthur at a propitious time. He had not foreseen the opportunity.

Although opposed to Philippine independence, once the

Depression-era Congress had passed the Hares-Hawes-Cutting

Act, MacArthur had apparently become reconciled to the end of

American involvement in the Islands. Quezon's offer suddenly presented a means to realize old dreams. As Commanding

General of the Philippine Department in the late 1920s,

MacArthur had seriously pursued the development of Philippine military forces to support American interests in the Far East.

369 370

Then, Washington's parsimony and the Philippine legislature's lack of authority made the effort academic. Now, the

Commonwealth's greater autonomy pointed the way toward fulfilling that earlier vision.

Although plans to make use of large numbers of Filipino soldiers in defense of the archipelago did not begin with

MacArthur, he understood the superficiality of the commitment to such plans on the part of many American officers. George

Cocheu, who worked on the original 1923-1924 Philippine defense plans and projects, recalled that most officers considered the defense of the Philippines a "hopeless" proposition. The planners simply did the best they could,

"never mind the odds. In the 1930s, many officers shared fully the isolationist sentiments of the nation at large.^

MacArthur thus took steps to carry considerable authority to the Philippines with him in 1935. Possibly, his awareness of latent hostility to his Philippine defense plan motivated his repeated attempts later to become High Commissioner and his attempt to leave the sympathetic General Simonds behind as army chief of staff.

MacArthur knew the archipelago could be defended, as he told Quezon, because a long series of Philippine defense

^Cocheu interview, 30 July 1963, William and James Belote Collection, USAMHI.

^Richard C. Brown, Social Attitudes of American Generals. 1898-1940 (New York: Arno Press, 1979), p. 365. 371 projects had shown the way to safeguard the Islands. Military historian Gavin Long missed the point when he concluded that

"the situation in 1946 might simply be that an entirely local military force had been substituted for the American garrison."3 MacArthur planned to provide a local force for the

American garrison that would have been had the provisions of the earlier defense projects/plans been carried out.

The belief that MacArthur saw the Commonwealth-era army as a means of establishing a complementary military/naval relationship between the United States and the Philippines is not new. Some accused MacArthur of such a plan at the time; other applauded him for it.* If MacArthur's own words can be taken at face value, it is what he had in mind.^ Quezon's irresolute enthusiasm is thus understandable. His support for the defense plan reflected his ever-changing perception of

Washington's, and his own, attitude toward future Philippine-

American relations.

Even if General MacArthur and President Quezon shared the same understanding of the purpose of the Philippine defense plan, and even had Quezon's commitment not waned, a major

^G. Long, MacArthur as Military Commander (London: B.T. Batsford, 1969), p. 48.

*Joseph R. Hayden, The Philippines: A Study in National Development (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1942), pp. 749-50.

^The letters to this effect quoted in Chapter Two seem straightforward enough, but they have not heretofore been used by MacArthur's biographers. 372 problem remained. The Commonwealth government had great autonomy, but it was not independent. Military affairs continued to draw Washington's attention, and its interests were short term: to ensure that Commonwealth action did not complicate the United States' relationship with other Asian countries, nor give cause to intervene militarily in the

Philippines and thus call into question America's ability to withdraw in 1946. General MacArthur, and probably President

Quezon, looked for strong ties between the two countries to continue. Most Americans did not.

Ulterior motives aside, if the Philippines was to have

"any system of military defense," as Joseph Hayden pointed out in 1941, the one devised by MacArthur was as good as it probably could afford.® The certain ability to defeat probable enemies is a criterion for possessing an army to which few countries adhere. Filipinos had demonstrated often their determination to establish an army. MacArthur's plan drew on concepts of military service which Filipinos had earlier shown an awareness of (such as Preparatory Military

Training and compulsory service) and desire to implement. An enlargement of the Constabulary to continue fulfilling an internal security role appealed to American governors-general and some senior army officers. It had little appeal to

Filipinos.

®Hayden, The Philippines, pp. 756-57. 373

It can be concluded that the army experience in the pre-

Coiranonwealth Philippines led to disastrous results. The perception that a sympathetic and influential military

commander could accomplish a great deal led Quezon to seek

MacArthur's aid. MacArthur had enough prestige to insist on

carrying out his vision of an appropriate military system in

the Philippines but not enough to ensure support from

Washington. And twenty years of Philippine Department war planning had suggested that locally raised troops could

successfully defend the Islands, in theory. But it was the

Philippine Army that was put to the test, in fact. APPENDIX A

Philippine Defense Projects

1. Basic Project for the Defense of the Philippine Islands, 1923 (cited in HPD to TAG, 23 June and 27 December 1923, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA)

2. Basic Project for the Defense of the Philippine Islands, 1924 (copy in box 87, Special Projects, RG 407, NA)

3. Basic Project, Philippine Department, 1929 (cited in TAG to HPD, 15 .l^gust 1930, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA)

4. Basic Project, Philippine Department, 1930 (same citation as number 3, above)

5. Basic Project, Philippine Department, 1931 (cited in HPD to TAG, 12 October 1938, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA)

6. Basic Document, Philippine Defense Project, 1932 Revision (1931 Project with revisions dated 1 October 1932; copy in box 90, Special Projects, RG 407, NA)

7. Philippine DcSeiise Project, 1938 Revision (copy in box 90, Special Projects, RG 407, NA)

8. Philippine Defense Project, 1939 Revision (copy in box 89, Special Projects, RG 407, NA)

9. Philippine Defense Project, 1940 Revision (with amendments to April 1941; copy in box 89, Special Projects, RG 407, NA)

374 APP E N D I X B

Philippine Defense Plans (Orange)

1. Philippine Department, Basic Plan Orange, 1923 (cited in "Papers pertaining to proposed 1926 revision of Basic Plan— Special Plan Brown," Special Projects, RG 407, NA)

2. Philippine Department, Basic Plan— Orange, 1929 (cited in ACS memo dated 17 March 1938, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA)

3. Philippine Department, First Phase, Pian--Orange, 1933 (cited in WPD 3251-14, RG 165, NA)

4. Philippine Department, First Phase, Plan— Orange, 1934 (appendices included in boxes 64 and 65, Special Projects, RG 407, NA)

5. Philippine Department, Plan--Orange, 1936 Revision (copy in box 64, Special Projects, RG 407, NA)

6. Philippine Department, Plan— Orange, 1936 Revision, as amended to 1938 (HPD MPO 2) (cited in HPD to TAG, 12 October 1938, AG, Formerly Classified, Philippines, RG 407, NA)

7. Philippine Department, Plan— Orange, 1940 Revision, as amended to April 1941 (HPD WPO 3) (copy in box 89, Special Projects, RG 407, NA)

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