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Linking Communications: the Philippine Regional Section of the Allied Intelligence

Bureau's Operations in the Occupied Islands,1942-1945

A thesis presented to

the faculty of

the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts

Caitlin T. Bentley

December 2015

© 2015 Caitlin T. Bentley. All Rights Reserved.

2

This thesis titled

Linking Communications: The Philippine Regional Section of the Allied Intelligence

Bureau's Operations in the Occupied Islands,1942-1945

by

CAITLIN T. BENTLEY

has been approved for

the Department of History

and the College of Arts and Sciences by

Ingo Trauschweizer

Associate Professor of History

Robert Frank

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3

Abstract

BENTLEY CAITLIN T., M.A., December 2015, History

Linking Communications: The Philippine Regional Section of the Allied Intelligence

Bureau's Operations in the Occupied Islands,1942-1945

Director of Thesis: Ingo Trauschweizer

The lay in the middle of Japanese shipping lanes to the Dutch East

Indies, a region that provided them with the oil necessary to keep their at sea.

Japanese possession of the Philippines ensured them not only access to such shipping lanes, but also unrestricted communication with . Allied command GHQ SWPA began maneuvering to sever this linkage.1 As this thesis will argue, there was already an effective local guerilla intelligence network in existence before the war, having been maintained by the guerrilla groups that emerged, as Major Peter Thomas Sinclair, II argues, as a result of minimal Japanese planning in advance of the occupation and an attempt to rule through fear.2 The effectiveness of these existing channels and the guerrillas as operatives was illustrated by the speed with which information began to flow back to Australia once these networks were aligned under the Philippine Regional

Section. The volume of material produced, of their own volition, while the guerillas unable to maintain reliable contact with GHQ in early 1942, as well as their maintenance

1M. Hamlin Cannon, War in the Pacific, : The Return to the Philippines. Center for History Publication (Washington, D.C. 1954), 2-4; Long, Gavin Merrick. Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 1- Army. Volume VII- The Final Campaigns, “Appendix 4: The Allied Intelligence Bureau,”1-6; 4; General Headquarters

2Major Peter Thomas Sinclair, II, Men of Destiny: The American and Filipino Guerrillas During the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, Master’s Thesis (Fort Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, 2011), iv. 4 of the networks through the war is evidence enough that the intelligence shared between

Filipino guerrilla districts and GHQ was a mutually beneficial endeavor. The PRS provided the communications apparatus to link these movements, but they themselves did not control or muster the forces necessary to operate it with the islands. It was the intelligence provided by the guerillas and the Coastwatch stations they supported that provided information crucial to an American reinvasion of the Philippine Archipelago.3

As Ronald H. Spector states, “The guerilla movement undermined Japan’s civil control, kept resistance morale high, and provided intelligence to the Allies.”4 Without the intelligence gathered by the resistance, American forces would have been operating without a precise understanding of enemy positions during battles like Leyte, making any attempt to retake the islands difficult, if not far too risky to be sold to the high command.

Despite General MacArthur’s selective use of guerilla reports, often favoring the discoveries of signals intelligence5, at each crucial stage of operations Filipino guerilla reports alerted Allied forces outside the Philippines to minute changes in enemy positions in a way only local operatives were able. Whether or not MacArthur used the intelligence presented to him to its full capacity, the information disseminated through the ranks of

GHQ SWPA transformed the collective mind of the Allied approach from a Headquarters

3USMC Major Larry S. Schmidt, American Involvement in the Filipino Resistance Movement on During the Japanese Occupation 1942-1945 (Fort Leavenworth Kansas: Master’s Thesis presented to U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. 1982), 243.

4Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: the American War with Japan (New York: Random House Press, 1985), 467.

5Edward J. Drea, MacArthur's Ultra: Codebreaking and the War Against Japan, 1942-1945 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 157, 170-171. 5 questioning the loyalty of the Philippine populace to an operational taskforce in possession of Japanese plans, strategy, and positions.

6

Dedication

To the Filipino and American service personnel who resisted Japanese Occupation:

Your service to your country as guerrilla resistance leaders or as agents of

the Allied Intelligence Bureau’s Philippine Regional Section

continues to be one of the finest examples of allied intelligence operations.

Thank you for your service; You are not forgotten…

7

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank the Ohio University’s History

Department and the Contemporary History Institute, as without their support I never would have been able to complete this thesis. Secondly, to my advisor Dr. Ingo

Trauschweizer whose numerous edits and recommendations have not only improved this thesis, but also challenged me to improve as a scholar, I cannot begin to thank you enough. To Dr. Brobst and Dr. Holcombe, thank you both endlessly for your suggestions on the project and your continued guidance as the project expands. To Dr. Peter Mansoor, thank you for your continued guidance and for recommending that I expand my study of the Philippines to focus on the Filipino Guerrillas in World War II. And lastly, to my mother, Sherry Bentley, and my partner, Fred Coventry, thank you both for sacrificing numerous vacations to join me in sifting through dusty archives and for being continuous supports throughout all my academic endeavors.

8

Table of Contents Page

Abstract ...... 3-5 Dedication ...... 6 Acknowledgments ...... 7 List of Figures ...... 9 Introduction: AIB, Philippine Regional Section ...... 10 Chapter 1: Filipino Resitance and the Fight for Self Governance ...... 30 Pre-Colonial Governance ...... 32 Spanish Colonialism ...... 35 The Filipino Independence Struggle Continues ...... 46 Japanese Diplomacy with the Philipine Commonwealth During the Interwar ...... 49 Prewar Intelligence Within the Philippines ...... 51 Chapter 2: Resistance in the Northern Philippine Islands ...... 65 AIB's Three Phase Plan ...... 65 AIBTraining ...... 75 Central Commands ...... 84 Marking's Guerillas ...... 89 Southern Luzon Commands ...... 92 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….96 Chapter 3: From Mindanao, , and , to : Resistance in the Southern Philippine Islands.....………………...... 98 Problems and Solutions...... 98 Planet Party Establishes Contact with the Visayas Guerillas...... 106 Mindanao...... …………………………………………………...... 121 Captured Plans and a Return to the Visayas...... 127 Conclusion...... 138 The Rape of , Japanese Brutality, and American Carelessness in the Reclamation of the Philippines...... 138 A Nation Rebuilding...... 143 The Spratlys, The South Sea, and the Pacific Partnership...... 146 Bibliography: Primary Sources...... 154 Secondary Sources ...... 160

9

List of Figures Page

Figure 1. Philippine Island Communications 15 December 1943 ...... 22

Figure 2. “The Fighting ” public domain image...... 64

Figure 3. Channels of Communication From Philippine Islands to GHQ ...... 71

Figure 4: Colonel Yay Panlilio and her husband Marcos V. Agustin ...... 91

Figure 5: AIB and PRS Penetrations of the Philippines 1943-1944...... 105

Figure 6: Military Districts 1943-1945...... 119

Figure 7: “Enemy Shipping Routes Destroyed During the Leyte Operations”...... 146

10

Introduction: AIB, Philippine Regional Section

For the better part of a decade, both Japanese and American officers had been working to establish intricate intelligence networks throughout the Philippine islands and by the time the Imperial Navy launched the assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941, both nations had agents deeply imbedded in various front organizations. From Vice-Consul Kihara

Jitaro’s Anti-Communist League of the Philippines to the Nisei operatives employed by the American Military Intelligence Service (MIS) in hotels and Japanese social clubs, the

Philippines was rife with clandestine operations. These groups were assigned the task of gathering intelligence and overseeing massive propaganda machines organized to sway the opinions of those living within the islands whether commonwealth citizens, visitors, or expatriates.6

James C. McNaughton, command historian of the Defense Language Institute

Foreign Language Center, in his presentation on American Nisei linguists argued that while each Pacific Theater historian will always owe a debt to Ronald H. Spector’s Eagle

Against the Sun, the war-time contributions of these linguists teach us that the role of race and intelligence operations in the Pacific war still provides a rather open field of study to modern historians. McNaughton’s last point was one on continuity, arguing that this vast

6General Headquarters Far East Command. A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948. (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): I. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 4, 15-16, Intelligence Structure Diagram on 24 “ G-2 SWPA - May-September 1942; Long, Gavin Merrick, Australia in the War of 1939-1945. Series 1- Army. Volume VII- The Final Campaigns, “Appendix 4: The Allied Intelligence Bureau”, 4.

11 intelligence infrastructure in use during the war was later redirected toward meeting the

Soviet and other communist threats during the .7 These intelligence structures were not dismantled after the war and became the mechanism by which the and its Cold War allies continued their struggle to stay ahead of the in terms of regional influence.

During the early 1930s the spy game had begun and the sheer weight of intelligence marshaled, interpreted, and delivered by Filipino and American personnel was dwarfed only by the mammoth scope of the communications networks they operated within. The Allied Intelligence Bureau further expanded these communications and intelligence frameworks during World War II. When the war ended the American presence in Southeast Asia had become a power never rivaled before or since. In the years prior to the outbreak of World War II, the United States had been slowly placing hundreds of clandestine agents into countries within the region for the purpose of acquiring better intelligence on their rivals and cooperating with their allies in joint intelligence operations. One of the largest multi-national intelligence operations ever begun was the Allied Intelligence Bureau, an organization founded in Melbourne in April of 1942 by the cooperative efforts of the Australian, British, Americans, and Dutch forces in the Pacific. It is the Allied Intelligence Bureau’s Philippine Regional Section, created specifically to better facilitate the inner-workings of the Filipino guerilla resistance, and the functioning of the resistance itself that are the focus of this thesis.

7James C. McNaughton, “Nisei Linguists and New Perspectives on the War: Intelligence, Race and Continuity” (Paper Presented at the Conference of Army Historians, 1994.)

12

As Ronald H. Spector states, “the guerilla movement undermined Japan’s civil control, kept resistance morale high, and provided intelligence to the Allies.”8 Without the intelligence gathered by the resistance, American forces would have been operating without a clear understanding of enemy positions during battles like Leyte, making any attempt to retake the islands difficult, if not far too risky to be sold to the high command.

Despite General MacArthur’s selective use of guerilla reports, often favoring the discoveries of signals intelligence9, at each crucial stage of operations Filipino guerilla reports alerted Allied forces outside the Philippines to minute changes in enemy positions in a way only local operatives were able. Whether or not MacArthur used the intelligence presented to him to its full capacity, the information that disseminated through the ranks transformed the collective mind of the Allied approach from a Headquarters questioning the loyalty of the Philippine populace to an operational taskforce in possession of

Japanese plans, strategy, and positions.

In addition, without the help of the Fil-American resistance, internees— especially those held in Manila, Cabanatuan, Davao, and Puerto Princesa—who would likely have died long before liberation. All of the information these guerillas, homeguard personnel, and civil were gathering, needed a method of contact, followed by a means of secure transmission. Using the MIS apparatus of the

Philippine Army Simeon de Jesus continued to gather intelligence and orchestrate

8Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: the American War with Japan (New York: Random House Press, 1985), 467.

9Edward J. Drea, MacArthur's Ultra: Codebreaking and the War Against Japan, 1942-1945 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 157, 170-171. 13 clandestine operations on , , , and throughout Luzon after the fall of Bataan. The agency that stepped in to provide a network linking local operations to

Melbourne, Australia was the Allied Intelligence Bureau (AIB) under the Philippine

Regional Section (PRS). Initially all of the agents to take part in the first mission to penetrate the occupied islands were Philippine nationals. Throughout much of AIB’s operations in the region, the largest breakthroughs continued to be provided by agents from the Philippines.

Despite Australian authors writing on the Allied Intelligence Bureau’s Australian operations, American scholars have only recently begun to address American AIB operations, and often only providing a brief synopsis when their focus overlaps with their specific approach to the guerrilla movement. This leaves the majority of published works on the AIB either the recollections of officers and participants or broader works on the

Pacific, only covering the subject in brief. Military men like Major Larry S. Schmidt, who mentions the AIB briefly in his thesis on Mindanao, have argued that it was the

American military presence that ultimately salvaged a floundering guerilla movement in the Philippines. Schmidt’s argument is soundly based on U.S. Army documents, which state the guerillas succeeded only because of PRS policies that were put in place to help them operate. He is clearly aware of the significant contributions of the guerillas, but ultimately comes to the conclusion that without American aid, the movement would not have succeeded.10 As this thesis will argue, there was already an effective local guerilla

10USMC Major Larry S. Schmidt, American Involvement in the Filipino Resistance Movement on Mindanao During the Japanese Occupation 1942-1945 (Fort 14 intelligence network in existence before the war having been maintained by the guerrilla groups that emerged, as Major Peter Thomas Sinclair, II argues, as a result of minimal

Japanese planning in advance of the occupation and an attempt to rule through fear. The effectiveness of these existing channels and the amount of information gathered by the guerrillas of their own volition was illustrated by the speed with which information began to flow back to Australia once these networks were aligned under the Philippine Regional

Section. The PRS provided the communications apparatus to link these movements, but they themselves did not control or muster the forces necessary to operate it with the islands. It was the intelligence provided by the guerillas and the Coastwatch stations they supported that provided information crucial to an American reinvasion.

The first author to question the notion that guerrillas were not necessarily being rescued, but instead an essential component in the liberation of the Philippines, was

Major Peter Thomas Sinclair, II in Men of Destiny: The American and Filipino Guerrillas

During the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines. He argues that it was the failure of the Japanese counter-guerilla forces to properly address the roving band of guerrillas, allowing them time to become the force necessary to support an Allied reinvasion that led to hastened their defeat. He unlike others before him seeks, as this thesis will also, to focus not on the or the ‘liberation’, but the occupation. Along with a focus on internal Japanese failures, he sees the effectiveness of the guerrilla efforts at and traditional guerrilla tactics of harassment and interdiction, all while attempting to gather

Leavenworth Kansas: Unpublished Master’s Thesis presented to U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1982), 243.

15 information to be of utmost importance in analyzing such an effective guerrilla organization. Expanding the scope of the research done by Major Sinclair, this thesis will focus more on the role of Allied and Philippine intelligence in out maneuvering the undermanned Japanese intelligence and counter-espionage efforts, rather than Japanese internal failures. In addition to an excellent survey of the literature, Sinclair also provides the growing field of Philippine Guerrilla Historians a unique glimpse into the failures of

Japanese intelligence and counter-guerrilla operations:

The structure of the Japanese intelligence apparatus also contributed to a successful guerrilla movement. Its low status within the Japanese bureaucracy and the bifurcated nature between the and Imperial Japanese Navy prevented it from becoming a credible

threat to the guerrillas. The Imperial Japanese Army had a Soviet focus due to the Japanese state of Manchukuo and did not establish an analytical cell focusing on the United States and its forces until 1943.11

This provides a remarkably clear summary of Japanese capabilities during the war.

However, as he is only looking at the Japanese military intelligence apparatus, he does not account for the existence of the Japanese propaganda units and other operations taking place in the Philippines during the 1930s. Thank to research first uncovered by Grant K. Goodman, the operations of Vice-Consul Kihara Jitaro’s Anti

Communist League have been uncovered and found to illustrate a much wider effort by the Japanese to gather information and sway public opinion in the

11Major Peter Thomas Sinclair, II, Men of Destiny: The American and Filipino Guerrillas During the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, Master’s Thesis (Ft. Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, 2011), iv, 4, 16, 28, citing Ken Kotani, Japanese Intelligence in World War II (New York, NY: Osprey, 2009), 8, 16. 16

Philippines away from both the United States and the small, but economically powerful

Chinese expat community.12

After the war a great number of its participants—guerillas, nurses and other prisoners of war, as well as citizens under the occupation— wrote memoirs to provide the public with an account of their wartime exploits or to pardon, condone, or condemn their

Japanese captors. These memoirs provide readers with an emotional, personal experience unique to the individual writing, but the majority of them use a great deal of hyperbole and however valuable, must be taken alongside the proof provided by other sources.

Travis Ingham’s Guerilla Submarines may be the worst example of this and is frequently incorrect in fact and interpretation. In contrast, the Manila wartime journalist Yay

Marking also uses a great deal of hyperbole, but other sources seem to confirm the majority of her account and her insight provides a unique glimpse into the everyday workings and training of a guerilla unit when it was not in direct contact with the

Philippine Regional Section. Yet perhaps the most insightful memoir is Colonel Robert

Ind’s Secret War Against Japan and the documents he references, but was unable to cite at the time of publication. The vast majority of Colonel Ind’s discussion of PRS wartime

12General Headquarters Far East Command. A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948. (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): I. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 4, 15-16, Intelligence Structure Diagram on 24 “ G-2 SWPA Melbourne-Brisbane May-September 1942; Long, Gavin Merrick. Australia in the War of 1939-1945. Series 1- Army. Volume VII- The Final Campaigns. “Appendix 4: The Allied Intelligence Bureau.”, 4. Grant K. Goodman, “Anti-Communism” In Japanese-Philippine Relations during the 1930s”, Vol. 9, No. 2, in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Japan and the Western Powers in Southeast Asia (September, 1978): 219-23.

17 intelligence contributions have been verified by use of the files of Colonel Courtney

Whitney at the MacArthur Library.

Arguments posed by U.S military’s official reports frequently discount the successes of the enemy before them, and at times the valuable ally, the Filipino resistance, at their side. says of guerilla warfare, “because guerilla warfare basically derives from the masses and is supported by them, it can neither exist nor flourish if it separates from their sympathies and cooperation.”13 General Yay Panlilio and General Marking, Luis Taruc, and numerous other guerilla leaders said repeatedly that if they alienated those in the surrounding villages their intelligence, supply, and transportation networks would have collapsed early in the war. Ronald Spector argues that only in the Philippines were enough of the population actively resisting the occupation to properly support the intelligence endeavors of the guerillas and the PRS who worked to coordinate their operations. The sister service of the AIB, the Office of

Strategic Services, had far less success in Indonesian campaigns where portions of the populous were far more opposed to a Western presence than an Eastern occupation.14

Most guerilla units in the Philippines began as an effort on the part of barrio civilians to protect their homes and combat pillaging. Because of the need for scouts and civilian

13Mao Tse-Tung, On . Translated by Samuel B. Griffith II, Second Edition, (Champaign, Il: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 44; Colonel Yay Panlilio Marking, The Crucible: An Autobiography by “Colonel” Yay (New York: McMillan Press, 1950), 68.

14Spector, 468.

18 support, by guerilla bands was relatively rare and limited to some well-publicized, but isolated incidents.

Political legitimacy in the Philippines and throughout Southeast Asia has long been derived from men of prowess, often with authority radiating outward from a local barrio, or prior to colonial contact, a . Just as the Spanish, American, and

Japanese occupations required the consent of the barrio nobles and to a lesser extent the compliance of their dependents, Philippine resistance movements likewise needed the support of those with a great deal of local influence.15 The varied topography of the

Philippines created unique sub-cultures within its 7,107 islands. Despite religious, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity among these groups, Brian McAllister Linn argues that in response to the localized nature of the Philippine Resistance during the Philippine-

American War, the U.S. military was forced to decentralize their commands. By focusing on winning support at a local level and understanding the unique climate, culture, and geography of the archipelago, the U.S. military had learned a valuable lesson, that to win

15Patricino N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, State and Society in the Philippines (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 22, 30-31; Teodoro A. Agoncillo, History of the Philippine People, Eighth Edition ( Manila: G.P. Press, 1990), 36-42; Rafaelita Hilario Soriano, Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, with Special Reference to Japanese Propaganda, 1941-1945, PhD Dissertation, (Ann Arbor, MI: University Of Michigan Press, 1948.) The premier Philippine archivist of the second half of the 20th Century, Martin J. Netzorg described her dissertation as ‘outstanding’ in his annotated bibliography of the Occupation of the Philippines from 1941-1945. Morton J. Netzorg, The Philippines in World War II and Independence (December 8, 1941- July 4, 1946): An Annotated Bibliography (Ithaca, NY: Department of Southeast Asia Studies, Cornell University, January 1977.)

19 in the islands support of local elites was vital.16 For Pacific Partnership personnel who work today in Palawan and other forward operating positions along the South China Sea, in times of relative instability in the region, it is even more important to understand the collective successes of the Allied Intelligence Bureau’s Philippine, American, Australian,

British, Malay, and Indonesian allies during the reclamation of the Pacific.

The Pacific Theater of War was divided into separate commands: the Southwest

Pacific Area, SWPA, led by Supreme Commander, or self-styled Commander in Chief,

General Douglas MacArthur; and the Pacific Ocean Area, that included the Central

Pacific under Commander in Chief, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. General Headquarters

Southwest Pacific Area, or GHQ SWPA, was formally established on 18 April 1942 under the common agreement of Australia, the United States, the , and the , with the first headquarters established in Melbourne, Australia. SWPA included the cooperative efforts of the Royal Australian Air Force and the U.S. Air

Corps, , and Land Forces all combining for the duration of the war, reorganized as the Allied Air, Land, and Naval Forces. The remaining combined military forces were the

United States Army Forces in Australia, a group far more removed from General

MacArthur’s control as its efforts determined the security of Australia, and an operation he took a personal interest in the Forces in the Philippines. While

General MacArthur was the official head of GHQ throughout the war, his deputy, Major

General Richard K. Sutherland was largely acting upon operational and strategic level

16Glen Anthony May, “Was the Philippine-American War a ‘Total War?’” in Manfred F. Boeneke, Roger Chickering, and Stig Forster, Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experience, 1871-1914 (London, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 439-442. 20 intelligence, as General MacArthur was forced to maneuver through an unclear and competitive command structure.17

The Allied command structure became far more complex as war continued, due in large part to the numerous reorganizations begun at General MacArthur’s behest. In many of these cases it seems that there were simply far too many nations attempting to bring other parallel organizations under their own authority. Alan Powell, argues that it was the American desire to extricate itself from British, Dutch, and Australian focus on restoring their colonies that motivated Americans to shift their focus back to a return of

American colonial holdings in the Philippines.18 In addition there were multiple intelligence endeavors begun on behalf of Australia, the United States, Britain, New

Zealand, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, and other allied Asian nations in the region. Despite this impressive level of multi-national cooperation in wartime, these services— the Allied Intelligence Bureau, the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service,

Section 22, the Central Bureau, and the Allied Geographical Section— went to great

17David W. Hogan, MacArthur, Stilwell, and Special Operations in the War Against Japan (Parameters, Spring 1995), 104-115, accessed 28 April, 2015, http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/1995/hogan.htm; Adjutant General B.M. Fitch to Deputy Controller of AIB, General Headquarters Southwest. Correspondence Regarding: Pacific Area. Administrative Adjustments Directive- Memorandum Supplemental to AIB Directive. Copy Number 9. April, 19, 1943. For a more detailed discussion on the command conflict see Powell, 73-81.

18Ibid.

21 lengths to maintain secrecy, and while each reported to GHQ it was remarkably rare for any of its operatives to be aware of the functioning or existence of these other units.19

The Allied Intelligence Bureau’s Philippine Regional Section began working to implement three primary phases of operations in the Philippines in later 1942. Phase One, involved the penetration parties making necessary contacts and expanding radio networks through the end of 1943. Phase Two begun in late 1943 involved the continued expansion of this network and the training of skilled operators and agents via specialized schools in preparation for the reinvasion of the islands. Lastly, Phase Three began with the invasion of Leyte and involved utilizing these much expanded radio networks to handle military communications overflow and continue to use the Coastwatchers and home guard agents to provide combat reports throughout the archipelago, all without overburdening military channels. Once the first phase began to integrate the strong local guerilla movements with broader resistance forces the intelligence each was gathering began to be funneled back to GHQ, to attentive PRS personnel, while high command still was far more concerned with theater level, signals intelligence.20

19Long, Gavin Merrick, Australia in the War of 1939-1945. Series 1- Army. Volume VII- The Final Campaigns, “Appendix 4: The Allied Intelligence Bureau”,1-6, 4; For additional information see Judy Thompson, Winning With Intelligence: A Biography of Brigadier John David Rogers 1895-1978 (Australian Military History Publications, 2000).

20General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948. (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): I. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 8-11; Edward J. Drea, MacArthur's Ultra: Codebreaking and the War Against Japan, 1942-1945 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 157, 170-171. 22

.. .. LEGEND

RAOIO STATIONS AND LOCAL COMMANDERS OR AGENTS IN CONTACT WITH GHQ STATION • KAZ IN DAR WIN o NET STATIONS

• 'LOffOOISO PHILIPPINE SF

'1"' ''"" ",,, .IIOU' IULIOfI ,

,..._.

SULU , ...... SEA , •• 0

"","WIL' oS

"

""011'0 " '"•

PLATE NO. 87 Philippine Islands Communications, 15 December 1943

Figure 1. “Philippine Island Communications 15 December 1943.”21

21General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of Douglas MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 295. 23

The Philippine guerilla movement had ten military district commands, with each island mustering its own resistance, all loosely unified via a system of AIB intelligence networks, radio communications, and personnel across over 2,500 miles of the island nation. Their primary method of communication, amateur radio, was highly symbolic of the decentralized, simplified, but nonetheless unified front. Radio waves carried messages from the Japanese occupied islands to General Headquarters Southwest Pacific

Area in Brisbane, Australia, and between the regional commands, so long as they were able to maintain their radios. It became difficult to procure replacement batteries, but the guerillas learned many ways to prolong the use of those they had. For example, by soaking batteries in salt-water it was possible to recharge them for a short period. The

Japanese were so concerned about short and long wave radio that as soon as they entered

Manila, amateur radio communication was banned and in February of 1942 all antennas and foreign broadcasts were outlawed. In May, an order was passed requiring all radios to be ‘reconditioned’ or to have their short wave coils removed and to be registered. A few months later, despite the withdrawal of General Douglas MacArthur, only half of the radios in Manila had been submitted. 22

22The guerilla commands who signed on to provide their daily intelligence report to the radio personnel at the Mindanao Station, MAIN, before MAIN then relayed the information to station KAZ in Darwin, Australia. Rafaelita Hilario Soriano, Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, With Special Reference to Japanese Propaganda, 1941- 1945, PhD Dissertation, (Ann Arbor, MI: University Of Michigan Press, 1948), 330-331; 159; C. Porter Kyukendall, Report of Life in the Philippines During the Japanese Occupation (Washington, D.C.: State Department, 1943); Stanley Karnow, In our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Random House Books, 1989), 309.

24

The Philippines lay in the middle of Japanese shipping lanes to the Dutch East

Indies, a region that provided them with the oil necessary to keep their navy in the war.

Japanese possession of the Philippines ensured them not only shipping lanes, but also unrestricted communication with Tokyo. Allied command GHQ SWPA began to plot to sever this link.23 In early 1942, Allied forces attempted to cut Japanese supply lines.

Allied governments hoped to create an island barrier between the Japanese forces abroad and their supplies using Java, , Malaya, and Northern Australia as a bases for halting the Japanese advance and beginning to regain territories seized by the Japanese.

This barrier has become known as the ABDA Command, named for the American,

British, Dutch, and Australian governments that supported this barrier strategy. As the

Japanese air force continued to bomb Port Moresby and Darwin, these seemed to be a prime invasion target if drastic measures were not taken to counter the Imperial advantage. General Sir Archibald P. Wavell of the British Army was appointed as

Supreme Commander. Once this barrier line had been established, two goals of the

ABDA, were to run the Japanese blockade in an effort to make contact with the

Philippines and continue to support operations in the Netherlands East Indies. Cutting vital supply lines produced the desired result, but the ABDA was only one step toward

23M. Hamlin Cannon, War in the Pacific, Leyte: The Return to the Philippines (Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History Publications, 1954), 2-4; Gavin Merrick Long, Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 1- Army. Volume VII: The Final Campaigns, “Appendix 4: The Allied Intelligence Bureau,”1-6; 4; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement.” Reprint 1994, 31; For additional information see Judy Thompson, Winning With Intelligence: A Biography of Brigadier John David Rogers 1895-1978 (Australian Military History Publications, 2000.)

25 successfully isolating the Japanese fleet abroad. The essence of the ABDA’s goals continued to be underwritten by the SWPA, but according to Ray S. Cline, author of The

United States Army in World War II, the period of confusion that had marked the command under General Brett led to its dissolution on 25 February 1942.24

In 1942 radio traffic between GHQ’s Darwin station and the Philippines was not secure and remained without schedule or viable procedure. Incoming information was difficult to verify, but it was also difficult to transmit, even when the tropical climate cooperated. This led to arduous journeys: Charles Smith and Jordan Hamner travelled to

Australia by sailboat. In an attempt to gain both recognition and supplies for their allies, they informed GHQ in Australia of two separate and promising guerilla operations on

Panay and Mindanao. Major Jesus A. Villamor organized the first submarine mission, codenamed “Planet party” tasked with establishing contact with the two primary commands on Panay and Mindanao, assessing public opinion in the Philippines, and establishing a strong radio network complete with call-in schedules, personnel call-signs, and cyphers. As AIB began to formulate plans for a penetration party, the lack of information available regarding the power of the Japanese influenced constabulary, counterespionage, and the uncertain number of Filipino subversives demanded the utmost caution.

24Ray S. Cline, United States Army In World War II. The War Department. Washington Command Post: The Operations Division (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1990), Appendix B, 376-380; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter I: The Japanese Offensive in the Pacific.” Reprint 1994, 22-24.

26

Planet party succeeded in making contact with groups on Panay, , and

Negros, and all the “Spy Squadron” (or Spyron) missions organized under the direction of Commander Charles Parsons, expanded the network begun by Villamor in January

1943. At the request of AIB large sums of money were procured to purchase medical supplies and food from sources within the islands as aid to guerillas, civilians, and POWs interned by the Japanese. A great deal of this money was counterfeit, but was smuggled into the Philippines along with “Fifty party,” the second AIB submarine mission to penetrate the occupied islands, and was to be disbursed among General Mecario Peralta and Wendell W. Fertig’s commands on Panay and Mindanao. Four more penetration parties landed in the Philippines through 1943. After these first six parties, AIB’s focus shifted from fact-finding missions to sending supplies to assist the guerillas in continuing to maintain their positions as Coastwatchers, propagandists, radio-technicians, politicians, and protectors of the civilian population until January of 1945.25

Chapter one of the thesis moves back in time to provide an overview of Philippine history, touching briefly on the period before colonization and the research that William

Henry Scott and other scholars have provided regarding early Philippine governance. It then compares the Spanish and American colonial periods to the Japanese occupation, while also providing a glimpse into the history of resistance begun during the Philippine-

25Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation, “Development of Contact with American POW in Japanese Camps,” Volume II. Headquarters, United States Army Forces Pacific. Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, 4-26; General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948. (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): I. “The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines”, 8. 27

American War. As the twentieth century began and the Philippine Commonwealth emerged, competition arose between the Americans and the Japanese for political and economic influence within the archipelago. Clandestine operations by both governments were underway through most of the 1930s as a means of further strengthening their hold on the island’s sugar cane trade and other exports. This chapter ends just after the occupation of Manila, when violence against the Filipino population was curtailed by the

Japanese administration in order to facilitate the formation of a puppet government.26

Chapter two covers the period from General Thomas Wainwright’s surrender of

Corregidor on 6 May 1942 through the three phases of the Philippine Regional Section’s plan to facilitate the Allies’ return to the islands on 20 . It focuses on Luzon and the northern and central islands. The early sections follow ,

Philippine-American war hero and the Philippine liberation activist who had been asked to champion the cause of the Japanese. As he moved through the countryside he described the violence and paternalism he saw during the early invasion period.

Infiltration of Manila by Colonel Cruz, Manuel Quezon’s former physician took place during the first phase of AIB operations, but despite being well-known figure, with posters with his likeness posted throughout the islands, he was surprisingly adept at conducting covert operations. Training took place during all three phases of PRS operations, and Jesus A. Villamor’s Planet party became the example of how a team trained in numerous elements of covert operations, ship and plane spotting, and radio operations.

26William Henry Scott, Prehispanic Materials For the Study of Philippine History (, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 1984), 104-106. 28

Agents were often specialized in other operations to ensure that each agent was self-sufficient and able to train others in the field. The second phase of operations now focused on sending agents into the field even more prepared than before and ensuring that as they went they were taking the supplies necessary to keep the districts equally prepared for an American return. After their mission was completed in March 1943, training became a focus all its own, with a new training manual designed in response to the specific challenges faced by Planet party now in the hands of officers at the special training school and the various commando training schools throughout the Pacific and

Washington, D.C., the third phase of operations began with a number of agents entering the field with training and expertise provided by these penetration parties.

Chapter three focuses on the southern Philippine islands and covers the same three phases of PRS operations and what they looked like on each island. Phase one began in earnest with Jesus Villamor and his organization, Planet party, the first penetration party to reach the Philippine Islands in January1943. Having addressed some of the communications difficulties facing Major Peralta and Colonel Fertig’s commands in early 1942, AIB then placed Charles “Chico” Parsons in charge of the Fifty party supply mission to provide both commands with weapons, funds, and urgently needed medical supplies. Parsons utilized any occasion to personalize the small items he shipped to the guerillas and civilians to boost morale. He reminded his adopted homeland that they had not been forgotten, spending six months personally delivering items to various commands and carefully brokering alliances first with all of the Mindanao commands and then other southern district commanders. The AIB sent Peleven, Tenwest, and Peleven 29

Relief parties into the islands to continue expanding the communications network created by Villamor and expanded by Parsons throughout 1943, but supply missions continued under the Spyron program until January of 1945. When the reinvasion began the primary goal in the Philippines, was to continue to reduce the number of Japanese supply lines and isolate the remaining commands within the islands preventing both resupply and reinforcement from the home islands. This is precisely what the Allied forces accomplished in the Philippines and throughout the Pacific due to the multi-national cooperation, combating the Japanese militarily and clandestinely.

30

Chapter 1: Filipino Resistance and the Fight for Self-Governance

In modern history, the defense of the idea of national self-determination has provoked revolt against autocratic rule. When such conflicts arose, Filipino citizens chose to collaborate, form resistance cells, or work covertly to improve their position and ensure the survival of the ideals they cherished. This was not unlike the response of

Europeans during the expansion of Nazi . Nevertheless, just as people in the post-war world had to grapple with the hazy dynamics of in Vichy , to understand our Cold War ally, Filipinos and Americans must also begin to grapple with concepts of collaboration, resistance, and allied intelligence operations to provide greater definition to the complex life in the Philippines under the Japanese occupation.

General Douglas MacArthur’s presence conveniently defines the 1945 liberation of the Philippines in western minds, but it is the reign of his father, Arthur MacArthur,

Jr., that evokes a memory of American imperialism. This idea of ‘liberation’ is far less widely accepted among the Filipino population, given the history of American imperialism. This troubled Filipino-American relationship was mended to a degree by the unifying experience of the Japanese occupation. The history of the Philippines during the period of colonization—first by the Spanish, then the Americans, and later the

Japanese—was marked by a thorough disregard for the valuable social and governmental structures of the island peoples and only when the occupying power successfully adapted existing structures did they find greater success in their imperial endeavors. To varying degrees each imperial power understood little about the Filipinos, overlooking or dismissing the agency of the subjects they governed. Given the imperialist presumption 31 that Filipinos were inherently inferior, acknowledging any successes on their part would have negated the need for the civilizing mission.27

James C. Scott, author of Seeing Like A State, argues that the greatest failings of imperial endeavors throughout history most often centered on “an imperial or hegemonic planning mentality that excludes the necessary role of local knowledge and know-how.”28

He criticized that by not allowing for self-governance, colonial leaders excluded the practical experience of locals and their in-depth understanding of what David Kilcullen calls ‘the metabolism of the city’. The assumptions of the Spanish and other powers about standard ways of ruling created rigid, and often ill-fitted government, frequently fragmented internally. By imposing idealistic views without the implicit consent of the governed, or even creating a culturally saleable narrative, colonizers were unlikely to offer anything that deeply appealed to the fragmented island populace. While Scott does not completely reject the idea of bureaucratic planning, it is this top-down, heavy-handed approach that he believes ignored basic circumstances and weakened the position of these governments over time. To quote Joel Steinberg, “This external focus has distorted

Philippine history, stressing the role of the alien and denying the reality of the native.”29

27Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 75-78; See also Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (New York, Basic Books, 2002); Stuart Creighton Miller, Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1982.)

28James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. (Binghamton, New York: Vail-Ballou Press, 1998),6.

29David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Scott, 6-7,8; David Joel Steinberg, The 32

What ultimately united the Filipinos and Americans was the brutality of another colonizing power, and the kept promise of Filipino nationhood following the war, however imbalanced the continued Fil-American economic relationship remained.

During the Japanese occupation period Americans also learned to utilize the unparalleled knowledge of locals to bolster their intelligence, propaganda, and communication networks, thereby facilitating one of the most successful guerilla movements during

World War II.

Pre-Colonial Governance

The Philippine Archipelago, composed of 7,100 islands, is bounded to the west by the South China Sea and to the south by the Celebes Sea. Its inhabitants are a diverse people separated by linguistic barriers, as well as differing cultural and religious traditions. Given its location and genetic make-up it might seem logical to assume that the Filipino people also have a culture more centered on Eastern philosophy and traditions. On the contrary, given the three hundred and sixty-eight years of Western colonialism, Pinoys are a people who have blended Western and Eastern philosophies, , and experiences, producing a varied and complex citizenry. Historian and head of the highly paternalistic U.S. Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes, David P. Barrows proclaimed of the islanders, “Their state did not embrace the whole tribe or nation; it

Philippines a Singular and a Plural Place (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000), 54.“The first edition was endorsed by (President) Benigno Aquino Jr. as ‘must reading’ for anyone seeking a true understanding of the Philippines;” Mary Campbell Wild, Philippines: Modern Nations of the World (Framington Hills, MI: Lucent Books, 2004), 105. 33 included simply the community.”30 While fragmented at first, a unified desire for self- governance developed in response to Filipino exclusion from and religious positions of prestige during the period of Spanish Colonial Rule.31

Even before the publication of William Henry Scott’s thesis debunking the civil code in 1968 there was a loosely accepted historiography, centered around “the code of

Kalantiaw” and its veracity. Norberto Romualdez noted the blatant and improper use of ancient Philippine script in the document in 1919. Not only had the story of the acquisition of the document not been verified, but also nothing about the documents linguistic analysis seemed to illustrate its veracity. Scott went even further with his critique, arguing the code had been fabricated by Jose E. Marco in 1914. From the discovery of the code to the publication of the first piece questioning it, there were a number of scholars who produced similarly suspect documents, or through genuine excitement published works citing this unverified source. Scott was not the first to question the work with his 1968 dissertation, though he was the first to do so openly and to a western audience. Despite the number of false documents that emerged in this period, there were three authentic pre-colonial artifacts that emerged along with numerous

30David P. Barrows, History of the Philippines (New York: World Book Co., 1909), 101-105.

31David. J. Silbey, A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War 1899-1902 (New York: Hill and Wang Publishing, 2008), 210.

34 colonial documents to illustrate the veracity of life in the Barangay, the early local society and the basis for the current Barrio.32

The Filipino people’s pre-colonial system of government was called the

Barangay, with a whose unilateral power was checked to a small degree by a council of elders. The datu proposed new laws to protect his people from evil. Jose P.

Laurel argued that the early governments were, “aristocratic in form with monarchial tendencies.” Laurel, the author of numerous Fil-American diplomatic documents from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was also the president during the Imperial

Japanese occupation who reluctantly collaborated in an attempt to blunt the impact of the occupation forces on Filipinos. Nevertheless, much of the evidence that he puts forward indicates that the government—the elders, the chief and the two or three sub-chiefs—all conferred in judicial proceedings and in the passage of laws. Laws under this system were proposed, debated, and then either ratified or rejected by the datu. During judicial proceedings the datu sat as the judge and the council of elders took the place of the jury to advise him on the final ruling and put forth a more balanced opinion.33

There were three economic classes in pre-Spanish Philippine society, or the

Barangay: the nobles, freedmen, and their dependents. Men, and women, of prowess derived their authority from one or more barrio nobles, and power l radiated down, into

32William Henry Scott, Prehispanic Source Materials For The Study Of Philippine History (Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 1984), 104-111.

33Jose P. Laurel, Local Government in the Philippines (Manila: Pilarica Press, 1926), 6, 13-14.—Laurel too is guilty of citing the code, but as there is a great deal of secondary evidence for barangay life provided by William Henry Scott and others, his account is no less accurate in its depiction, though its veracity should still be questioned. 35 the lower classes. Despite the existence of classes and non-chattel , subjects under the Barangay could abandon an immoral leader in favor of another. The particular names for each class were—Gat or for nobles outside of the Visayas region; the , a class containing both freedmen and those who depended on them; aliping namamahay or slaves who could own a home, have a and property; and aliping sagigilid or slaves who owned no property and lived with the master, a hereditary position passed through bloodlines. The ability to between classes was not limited to men in this society. While class was the single largest determinant in the role of

Filipinas, in some cases birthright could allow women a great deal of local influence. If a datu left behind only a female child, it was possible for the oldest to become a chieftain, the embodiment of power and divinity in this society. As with many early, Southeast

Asian cultures women of non-noble birth had the right to divorce, choose and change sexual partners, inherit land, and represent their own interests in legal disputes.34

Spanish Colonialism

Magellan arrived in Cebu in 1521 and, ignoring its strong local rule, his writings argued that because of a lack of centralized governance, the Philippines needed the paternalistic guidance offered by Spanish colonial intervention. When the Spanish invaded the Philippines they introduced Christianity using the process of synchronicity to alter previous traditions, elevating Dios, and actively changing mythology like the story

34Teodoro A. Agoncillo, History of the Philippine People, Eighth Edition (Quezon City Manila: G.P. Press, 1990), 36-42; William Henry Scott, Prehispanic Source Materials For The Study Of Philippine History (Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 1984), 104-111.

36 of the asuwang to minimize the power of former gods and demonize women. Given the condescension expressed by foreigners from Magellan to the present, the history of the

Philippines was shaped by the destruction of early cultural relics, leaving a history supported largely by documents produced by foreign hands. In response to the incursion of Magellan’s forces, , an early Philippine datu, led his forces to victory, fatally wounding Magellan in the battle in 1521.35

In 1594 the population of the Philippines was 750,000 and with only a few hundred Friars to govern them the Spanish began the process of forcibly relocating many settlements, centering the former Barangay now around the Friar and the church. This process known as reduccion, led to the creation of some larger district capitals known as cabaceras. Despite the conflicts between the friars and the mass relocations of some barangays, Datu power remained with slightly less influence than before, and still the focus of Philippine society remained local, centered around family ties.36 Despite the

Spanish had the resources to govern by coercion, they offered goods in exchange for desired behaviors. Many colonial leaders were unconcerned with creating a receptive populace, so the creation of a supportive elite was essential to the success of island administration. Given the failure by colonial officials to utilize existing local governmental structures, the desire to use to their advantage existing class divisions showed a small measure of cultural insight, and led them to seek favor of these elites by coercion or by force.

35Steinberg, 53-56.

36Abinales and Amoroso, 53-55. 37

One lasting impact of Spanish Colonial rule was the pervasive acceptance of

Catholicism in so many of the Islands, a tradition that has endured for centuries and become a facet of culture. With the exception of the historically Muslim island of

Mindanao, Catholicism remains the dominant of the islands. According to

American governor of the Philippines, William Howard Taft, “it is evident to me that without this preparation (Christianity) the plans to convert these peoples into a true democracy and to make them self-governing would have had no foundation.”37 While the interactions with Philippine citizens may have been elevated in the eyes of some who viewed them as ‘more civilized’ by virtue of their religion, anti-Catholic sentiment had a long history in the United States that made discrimination just as likely as increased toleration.

David Barrow’s 1909 history, as so many early documents, was based solely on the accounts of Spanish friars, particularly Juan de Plasencia who wrote in 1589. These accounts tended to minimize the positive nature of pre-colonial Filipino government.

Nevertheless, William Henry Scott argues that the Spanish chose to learn local languages, such as Tagalog and Visayan to work with the natives and facilitate confession. This created a paternalist dynamic between friars and the citizens of their barrio, as it precluded the necessity for Filipino clergy in the church. As they had already learned the dialect and had both the time and supplies to produce such works, Friars and their allies in the colonial administration produced the majority of scholarship on the Philippines for

37William Howard Taft, Report of the Philippine Commission, January 31st, 1900, (Washington D.C.: Government Bureau of Printing, 1901), I.

38 much of this period. After hundreds of years of histories produced that echoed the friars’ histories and their dismissals of Filipino contributions, in 1925 Jose P. Laurel offered his

Philippine students the first history that did not openly characterize Filipinos as barbaric and uncivilized. He did so citing his imperialist predecessors as authorities, with only subtle revisions and quiet critiques.

Raphaelita Hilario Soriano, was the first to openly question the dismissive conclusions of early Philippine historians. Soriano argued that pre-colonial Barangays were not only representative, but also “had even then favored a democratic form of government.”38 Soriano expanded on the ideas of Laurel in an attempt to elevate Filipinos in the estimation of Cold War Americans. Soriano was certainly using language that would evoke respect among Cold Warriors in the United States, but by assuming the existence of tacit consent and conflating it with democracy, or rule derived directly from the people, she overstates the representative nature of the ancient Filipino government. At the same time the discussion of elite influence on local events remains vital to Philippine history and political theory. Legitimacy at this local level, derived from the support of one or more barrio patrons, often determined the success or failure in Philippine resistance movements from the colonial period through the Japanese occupation. The

38David P. Barrows, History of the Philippines (New York: World Book Co., 1909), 101-105; William Henry Scott, Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society (Manila, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1968), viii; Rafaelita Hilario Soriano, Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, with Special Reference to Japanese Propaganda, 1941-1945, PhD Dissertation, (Ann Arbor, MI: University Of Michigan Press, 1948) 24. Soriano was a research analyst on Philippine Affairs for the Central Intelligence Division of the War Department, interviewed hundreds of expatriates, translated intelligence reports, and wrote a large dissertation on intelligence and the failure of Japanese Propaganda.

39 central government often imposed their policies only with the consent of these local elites, creating a tense power dynamic centered first at the local level, even though the official seat of power lay in Manila.39

The Spanish regime created deep frustration among its subjects by allowing friars too great a voice in Philippine affairs and denying Filipinos the option of being part of the powerful clergy or even the ability to trade, which was something integral to early island societies. These political limitations led Filipinos to revolt in 1587, with some assistance provided by Japan. With Japan facing its own civil war that would end in the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1602, military aid was limited as Japanese focus necessarily turned to internal politics. This alliance, while unsuccessful, led the islanders to a mistaken belief held over centuries that the Japanese would also support a wider revolution. In response to increasing pressure and a weakening of their empire during the eighteenth century, began to relax some of its previous regulations, allowing islanders to trade with China and throughout the Malay Archipelago. The influx of material wealth allowed more Filipinos to send their children to Europe or Manila for higher education. Elite Filipinos steeped in the intellectual circles of Madrid began to lobby for reforms, and as these students returned to the islands, they brought with them

Enlightenment theories of revolution.40

39Agoncillo, 36-42; Rafaelita Hilario Soriano, Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, with Special Reference to Japanese Propaganda, 1941-1945, PhD Dissertation, (Ann Arbor, MI: University Of Michigan Press, 1948.)

40Barrows, 265, 258; Dean C. Worcester, The Philippines, Past and Present (New York: The Macmillan Co., New Edition in one Volume, 1930, 661-668.

40

Filipino historian, Luis H. Francia, tells the story of the transition of the Filipino intellectual elite, or the illustrados (enlightened ones), developing from a few disillusioned intellectuals in Madrid to the ideological voice of the .

After Jose , one of the most prolific and revered Philippine literary figures watched a Wild West Lumière film in 1889, he and his fellow Manileros, adopted for themselves the moniker indios bravos, or “brave native.” Writing Noli Me Tangere in 1887 and El

Filibusterismo (the Subversive) in 1889, Jose Rizal gave voice to the messages of the

Filipino of the nineteenth century. The Fili is the tale of an average, oppressed Filipino, subversive only by virtue of his desire to be treated with respect, particularly by the corrupt friary. Rizal returned to the Philippines to spread ideas of independence and a leveling of the feudalistic society the Spanish had managed to graft to the preexisting structures within the Barangay, after a largely failed attempt to

“gather round the church bells.” Fearing his strong reception by the populous, the

Spanish government in Manila attempted to exile him in 1892 and when he returned he was publically executed in 1899, killed by firing squad in a Manila Park. The Spanish government had hoped to terrorize the populace into submission, but in truth that had made Rizal a martyr and emboldened the resistance giving further credence to their claims of Spanish brutality. Most importantly they illustrated great weakness and a fear of those they governed, a reality from which the Spanish could not recover. Inspired by the propaganda movement of Rizal, but frustrated with the lack of direct action, 41 warehouse worker Andres Bonifacio created the , a second group of revolutionaries determined to achieve self-governance.41

In 1896 Filipinos began the first stage of the . But after some initial victories, most notably one at , the main force was overrun in December of 1897 and , the leader of the revolution, was exiled to . A fellow revolutionary, General Artemio Ricarte, continued to work in his absence, now fighting until he too was deported to Hong Kong in 1904. As the Filipinos plotted to launch their next assault, the Spanish-American War began and Filipinos hoped the United States intended to help them break the bonds of imperialism.42 Ramon Reyes Lala’s illustrated history of the Islands written in 1898, with a dedication that reads, “To Rear Admiral

Dewey, whose recent great victory over the Spanish fleet has begun a new era of freedom and prosperity for my country and to President McKinley in whose hand lies the destiny of eight millions (sic) of Filipinos, this book is dedicated.”43 Vicente L. Raphael argues that it was the collective efforts of the U.S. Navy and Philippine forces under General

41Luis H. Francia, A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos (New York: The Overlook Press, 2010), 11-12,96, 114-116; 120-124.

42Glen Anthony May, “Was the Philippine-American War a ‘Total War?’” in Manfred F. Boeneke, Roger Chickering, and Stig Forster, Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experience, 1871-1914 (London, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 439-442; Setsuho Ikehata, translated by Elpidio R. Sta. Romana, The Japanese Military Administration in the Philippines and the Tragedy of General Artemio Ricarte (: Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore, 1991), 2- 3.

43Ramon Reyes Lala. The Philippine Islands. (New York: The Continental Publishing Company, 1898), I. 42

Aguinaldo that defeated Spanish forces, with Aguinaldo capturing Spanish forces on

Luzon in mid-May.

David Barrows states that when Commodore Dewey, the officer in control of the

U.S. Asiatic Squadron came ashore on 13 August 1898 after quickly defeating the small

Spanish Fleet in Manila Harbor, Filipinos welcomed him as a liberator, but neither the

American nor Spanish regimes ever allowed Filipino forces into Manila. David Barrows proposition is even more unlikely as Dewey waited in harbor for reinforcements before entering Manila as he knew he could not hold the area with his present number. A loss to

Filipino troops would have been seen as a serious blow to American manhood, according to Kristin Koganson’s Fighting for American Manhood. Glen Anthony May takes a more moderate position, claiming that while it was clearly the U.S. naval victories that made expelling the Spanish expeditious, Dewey had no landing force and so it was ultimately the that secured much of the island of Luzon. Aguinaldo later claimed that rear Admiral Dewey promised Philippine liberation in exchange for their assistance, and given the circumstance it is quite plausible.44

As success drew near, the Filipinos established a new capital at Malolos in June.

The establishment of the first Philippine government under General Emilio Aguinaldo embodied many rights previously denied Filipinos. Philippine ideas on self-governance

44Vicente L. Raphael, White Love and Other Events in Filipinos History. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 9-13. *citing information from Dr. Michael Cullinane, Peter Stanley, Stuart Creighton Miller, Milagros Guerrero, and William Henry Scott - the foremost scholars on the region of Illocos; Barrows, 265, 258; May, 439-442; Kristin L Koganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press,1998), 6, 164, 168-69, 174-179, 28-29, 32-35. 43 were codified in the , which demanded the removal of economic limitations, and limits on their freedom of correspondence, assembly, press, and religion. In October the Spanish who refused to offer official surrender to the Filipinos began to broker a peace with the Americans. This opened a great debate in the United

States over the nature of American Empire and in the Philippines it sparked a renewed interest in a collective national identity, something they had come some so close to at

Malolos.

While there were many anti-imperialists, or antis, officials in opposition to retaining the Philippines as an American possession, a group represented in the public forum by the image of a feeble old man, U.S., imperialists felt they had secured a new colony and the means of reinvigorating the next generation of American male vitality.

With Spain ceding the islands as part of the December 1898 Treaty of , men had the opportunity to prove themselves in war, commerce, and diplomacy earning their place at the head of the family and solidifying the place of American men, and not women, in the political sphere. Not all Americans sided with the imperialists in the Philippines and the great debate over the and American Empire began, with Mark Twain stating, “It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to

Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States.”45 Filipinos

45Mark Twain, “The Greatest American Humorist, Returning Home”, New York World (London, 10/6/1900); Erving Winslow, Secretary of the Anti-Imperialist League. Address of the Anti-Imperialist League; Emilio Aguinaldo, “Aguinaldo’s Case Against the United States, by a Filipino,” North American Review. September 1899; Jim Zwick, Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American 44 were far from willing to accept this outcome and would continue fighting for the right to self-governance through active guerilla resistance for the next four years, and even after the final embers of this revolt were put out, Filipinos continued to fight through active and passive resistance for the next forty-four years.46

According to Glen May, the Philippine-American war should be understood in two distinct parts. During the first portion, from February to November of 1899, the

Philippine Army fought the Americans in a traditional war in northern Luzon. Then during the second phase, lasting from November of 1899 until the end of 1902, an unconventional war was fought between the American forces and remnants of the

Philippine Army along with guerilla commands throughout the various islands. Brian

McAllister Linn argues that the decentralized nature of the islands and the deeply varied nature of the enemy required the Americans to decentralize their commands, one essential component to American success in the region then and now.47

War (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992) Fred H. Harrington, “The Anti- Imperialist Movement in the United States, 1898-1900,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (September 1935), 211-230; David Turpie, “‘Howling Upon the Scent of Another Victim’: Senator Edward W. Carmack, the Philippine Issue, and Southern Opposition to Imperialism,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly Vol. 68, No. 4 (Winter 2009), 411-432.

46Vicente L. Raphael, White Love and Other Events in Filipinos History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 9-13; Barrows, 265, 258; May, 439-442.

47Glen Anthony May. “Was the Philippine-American War a ‘Total War?’” in Manfred F. Boeneke, Roger Chickering, and Stig Forster, Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experience, 1871-1914 (London, Cambridge University Press,1999) 439-442; Brian McAllister Linn, The Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000.)

45

After the shared experience of the 1890s, the highlight being the brief existence of the first Philippine Republic, slowly, a shared Pinoy identity began to emerge. Filipino elites formally surrendered and acquiesced to American rule in 1902, but fragmentary resistance continued until 1912. The same elites who founded the Malolos constitution remained Philippine representatives within the new American government apparatus. It was this continuity of political leadership that Silbey claims made the transition after the war much smoother than could be expected after so much bloodletting. The government that emerged, however, was far from representative and Filipino economic and political participation was greatly curbed by American imperialism. Filipinos would continue to fight for the ideal of self-governance with an even greater fervor now that they had ten years of collective struggle and the experience of a fledgling government to unite their purpose.48

The Philippine concept of ‘utang na loob’ or literally ‘a debt in the heart’ as discussed by Alfred McCoy, has been woven into the argument that Filipinos felt that they owed something, deep within their hearts, to Americans for their colonial governance. McCoy argues that the choice of Filipinos not to collaborate or to eventually side again with the Americans was “based largely on three factors: a rational sense of the conflict’s ultimate outcome; a sense of obligation to the United States for what it perceived as a beneficent colonial rule; and, most importantly, an awareness that the region’s economic prosperity was based on continued access to the American Sugar

48Silbey, 208-209, 210; May, 443.

46

Market.”49 Another translation of ‘utang na loob’, as provided by Bennedict Kerkvliet, defines ‘utang na loob’ differently and ties it more closely to a relationship of reciprocity frequently between those of unequal social status, perhaps as in the early patron client relationships of the barangays or in the later feudalism of the Spanish colonial era.

However it is much more likely Pinoys would disagree with the characterization of

American colonialism as beneficent. While perhaps not beneficent, McCoy points out that it was economically beneficial, especially to the elites. These same wealthy and influential Filipino , McCoy argues, were able to maintain their position before and after the war, working first with the Americans and later with the Japanese. This local, family-focused social structure had created a community that broadly echoed early

Filipino ties. An elite controlled each region, and whether it be one or more powerful patrons, they were responsible for and to the citizens in their district or barrio.50

The Filipino Independence Struggle Continues

During the 1907 election for the Philippine Assembly, or the lower house of the colonial legislature, the first Filipino political party “the Partido Nacionalista” emerged with a majority they would maintain for much of the first half of the twentieth century.51

In 1916, The granted control of the entire legislative branch to the people. The

49Alfred W. McCoy, “Politics by Other Means”: World War II in the Western Visiyas, Philippines,” in Southeast Asia Under Japanese Occupation, ed. Alfred W. McCoy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies): 158-160; Kerkvliet, 278. 50McCoy, 161; Abinales and Amoroso, 26-32.

51Stanley Karnow, In our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Random House Books, 1989), 246.

47 popularly-elected senate now held figuratively more power than the American-run

Philippine Commission, a governing body led by American advisors and appointees.

Equally important it gave the vote to all literate adult Filipino males, something they had been previously denied.52 This concession on the part of U.S. policy-makers may well have been an attempt to appease the colony, at a time when political turmoil in Europe necessitated a temporary shift in focus. As the Great War came to a close and the Filipino people no longer felt the need to restrain their ambitions, the 1919 Report of the

Governor General of the Philippines, indicates that this turmoil led the islanders to a renewed push for independence:

Nineteen hundred and nineteen in the Philippines was a year of political activity and economic disturbance resulting from the termination of the Great War. The public statements of allied and associated leaders during the war about the rights and liberties of small nationalities and the enunciation of the doctrine of self-determination had been widely disseminated in the Philippines, both through the newspaper press and the daily statements of the Council of National Defense. Confidence in the prompt formation of the League of Nations seemed to offer future security for Philippine independence.53

The Tydings-McDuffie Law of 1934 declared that a transitional government would be created to ease the Philippines into total self-governance, granting genuine independence, by 1946. Not all Filipinos believed the Americans meant to keep their promise and on the evening of 2 May 1935 led 65,000 armed peasants in

52David R. Sturtevant, Popular Uprisings In the Philippines 1840-1940 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976), 47-48.

53REPORT OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. JANUARY 1 TO DECEMBER 31, 1919. (Digital copy in possession of the author, as found on Google Books.)

48 the Sakdal uprising, a movement that spread through the , Rizal, Laguna, and

Cavite communities surrounding Manila. According to Motoe Terami-Wada, Philippine

Studies scholar at Ateneo de Manila University, the word “Sakdal” has two meanings. It is meant to accuse the Quezon administration and the U.S. of unequal political representation, but the second comes from a phrase taken from the Letter of James: “At dapat kayong magpakatatag hanggang wakas upang kayo’y maging sakdal at ganap at walang pagkukulang. (Make sure that your endurance carries you all the way without failing, so you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.)” The Sakdal uprising as it became known promised an abolition of taxes and a redistribution of land, returned to those who toiled daily in the fields.54

When the Philippine Commonwealth was founded on 15 November 1935, Manuel

Quezon became the president, and Sergio Osmena its vice president.

While there was frequent tension between the two leaders, an uneasy alliance allowed them to better walk the tightrope of diplomacy. Existing as a protectorate, the Philippines continued to conduct commerce and relations with other nations in preparation for independence. Tagalog was adopted as the official language of the Philippine legislature and as one of the three official languages of the Philippine government, along with

English and Spanish. What had once been a unity of communication based on an outside language now was equally focused on one of the Filipino dialects, a strong sign that

Tagalog culture and the influence of Manila was beginning to take hold in island politics.

54Agoncillo, 352-353; Sturtevant, 223; Moteo Termai-Wada. “’The Sakdal Movement’ 1930-34” Journal of Philippine Studies (June 2008), 2-6. 49

Despite the increased focus on a Filipino identity, this prioritizing of Tagalog over

Cebuano or other dialects at times marginalized non-Tagalog Filipinos and continued a division between the identity of the central government and local.55

The strong cultural history of Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, or any of the more than one hundred other cultural and dialectic groups in the islands had been drawn closer together by the Philippine-American Wars. But as Filipinos transitioned out of the great depression and into the roaring twenties and thirties linked to American economic interests, they had possibly the second most formative national experience—the Japanese

Occupation of World War II—ahead of them. Many continued to resist imperialism through political maneuvering, guerilla resistance, and through clandestine operations designed to better assist in strengthening whichever nation they believed most likely to help them achieve independence—Japan or the United States. Despite the differences between the various island cultures, Filipinos had begun to form a collective identity, a national identity that at least in theory superseded their local divisions. Once the Japanese unleashed a wave of violence against civilians, unrestrained warfare, the Imperial

Japanese sparked within Filipinos a unity that was able to gloss over pre-crisis barriers such as religion, language, ethnicity, and politics in the short-term.56

Japanese Diplomacy with the Philippine Commonwealth During the Interwar

Japan and America had been conducting a battle of information and public opinion through propaganda and fifth-column activities in the Philippines long before

55Karnow, 255; Soriano, 14-21, 160-165; Sturtevant, 49.

56Ibid.

50 their political relations began to deteriorate. Success in the Philippines became even more important in the eyes of the Tokyo elites. Grant K. Goodman, one of the foremost scholars in the field of Japanese studies, argues that Japan actively sought to rebrand themselves as the savior of the Philippines, by painting the Chinese as a particularly dangerous brand of communists during the Manchurian crisis of the 1930s. Given the long Filipino history of trade and inter- with the Chinese, the roots of Sino-

Philippine kinship ran deep, and Japan had a great deal of work to recast herself in a role other than that of the villain. By invoking the specter of communism, Japan was able to secure its continued economic interests in the region all while appearing to fight an invisible and increasingly globally acceptable danger. To do so, in the winter of 1937,

Vice-Consul Kihara Jitaro sponsored the formation of the Anti-Communist League of the

Philippines, establishing close contact with Filipino labor leader Jose Baluyot. Pedro M.

Esqueras was another member of the anti-communist network whose goal was to “reach an uninformed Philippine working class which is under the influence of Chinese anti-

Japanese boycott propaganda.” Kihara Jitaro felt it necessary to argue that the impoverished citizens of the Philippines must be protected from their right to form their own opinions, particularly regarding the pivotal issue of Sino-Philippine relations.57

On 28 August 1938 the Anti-Communist Labor Convention was held in the

Manila Opera House, and Esqueras had 10,000 propaganda pamphlets printed in his own name because Kihara feared the Japanese would be accused of precisely their goal—to

57Grant K. Goodman, “Anti-Communism” In Japanese-Philippine Relations during the 1930s”, Vol. 9, No. 2, in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Japan and the Western Powers in Southeast Asia (September, 1978): 219-23.

51 create fear by which to manipulate Philippine public opinion, influence public policy, and ensure Japanese economic opportunities in the region once the Philippines were granted independence. With 1,000 representatives present from over sixty different labor groups, these ideas spread quickly. President Quezon was maintaining a careful balancing act by promising a policy of neutrality in the Sino-Japanese conflict, even occasionally imprisoning anti-Japanese dissidents to maintain his impartiality. Not all Filipino politicians were so willing to bow to the pressure of the Japanese military. Assemblyman

Miguel Tolentino from warned in 1939 that every centavo a Filipino spent on

Japanese products was a centavo spent on the bullets that would be fired back at them when the Imperial Army invaded the islands. As diplomacy between the Unites States and Japan began to fail, the commonwealth government was forced to freeze all Japanese assets in the islands on 26 July 1941.58

Pre-War Intelligence Networks Within the Philippines

American intelligence networks were expanding in the Philippines and throughout

Asia in the years leading up to World War II. Information was being intercepted with the help of agents trained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the guidance of

American officials in the Philippines. Almost exclusively these agents were second generation Japanese, Nisei, and Filipino nationals as they needed to infiltrate Japanese nationalist circles within the Philippines. Two of these agents, Arthur Komori and

Richard Sakakida were making remarkable headway in establishing intelligence networks

58Goodman, 227, 232; Setsuho Ikehata, The Japanese Military Administration in the Philippines and the Tragedy of General Artemio Ricarte (University of Singapore Press, 1991),1. 52 before the outbreak of hostilities. Sakakida used his position as clerk at the Nishikawa

Hotel to make close ties with many nationalists. When the Americans froze Japanese assets in July 1941, Sakakida posted an advertisement in the paper. Having previously been asked by Japanese expats to teach a course in English, he decided to offer translation services as well as his help in filling out the forms necessary to declare

Japanese assets to the U.S. government. Since he never showed any of his clients the actual form, he would casually add the question, ‘what is your past or present military service?’ and if they appeared uncomfortable, he would wink and tell them that he would simply write ‘none’. In doing so, the clients became far more trusting. Once they were at ease, many having known him for some time beforehand, divulged sensitive details, with one operative identifying himself and providing some of the specifics of his mission.59

Australia had become concerned by Japan’s economic and territorial expansion since 1936 and so when Great Britain entered World War II in 1939, in the interest of self-defense, defense of the crown, and security of commerce her commonwealth followed suit by entering the war against Japan. Even during the Great War Australia had utilized civilian volunteers to report coastal happenings and, building on the work of others, Lieutenant Colonel F.H. Griffiths of the Royal became the first Director of Naval Intelligence to oversee the creation of a Coastwatcher network and his

59Leon O. Beck, Conversation with Richard Sakakida: [Nisei Army Counter Intelligence Agent in Manila, Luzon, P.I., April to December, 1941] Indianapolis Indiana: Indiana Historical Society, Military History Section, 1986; William B. Breuer, MacArthur’s Undercover War: Spies, Saboteurs, Guerrillas, and Secret Missions. (Hoboken, NJ: Castle Books, 1995), 3-9, 241; Mark Perry, The Most Dangerous Man in the World: The Making of Douglas MacArthur (New York: Perseus Books, 2014), 73-76.

53

Intelligence Clerk W.H. Brooksbank was the man who went about piecing it together. By

1939, the newly appointed Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence was overseeing more than 700 Coastwatch stations in the Solomon Islands and Papua, New Guinea.60 In that same year, Lieutenant-Commander Eric Feldt was placed in charge of organizing the

Coastwatch stations on Papua New Guinea. His ability and willingness to work with the residents of New Guinea was yet another example of success resulting from the support of the local population, something that would also lead to successes in the Solomon

Islands.

American forces had been able to stop the Japanese advance at Guadalcanal due to the work of Coastwatchers like Jack Read in the Solomon Islands who spotted

Japanese planes and radioed the message “Forty Bombers Headed Yours.” Colonel

Allison In, the first head of the Philippine Regional Section, argues that during 1942 more than fifty percent of Japan’s best-trained air personnel had been shot down because of information relayed by these Coastwatch stations.61 With the hard fought victories on

Guadalcanal, and the Battle of the Coral Sea, Allied Forces recaptured lading strips, refueling stations, and strategic positions from which to lengthen the American supply chain for the Pacific 7th Fleet. The next step for the Allies would be the retaking of the

Solomons, the Marianas, and later the psychological blow rendered by the invasion of

Iwo Jima. The flow of information from clandestine agents in the Philippines to

60Powell, 2-5, 8. 61Allison W. Ind, Secret War Against Japan: The Allied Intelligence Bureau in WWII (No Location Given: Uncommon Valor Press, 2014), 30-33, 40. Originally published in 1958.

54

Australia, like the shipping routes through the islands, was an imperative link that had to be repaired if Operation Olympic, or the invasion of the Japanese home islands was to move forward. Americans wanted revenge, but first they needed to break the Japanese supply-line, in the process reclaiming their former territorial possession, the Philippine

Archipelago.62

MacArthur was not alone in his surprise: “As (American resident of the

Philippines) Martha Hill recalls… the news of Pearl Harbor stunned us. Then we heard that all the planes at Clark field had been destroyed, Camp John Hay in had been bombed, all the ships in sunk. We could not believe it.”63 Despite his delayed response to the initial air raids, General MacArthur soon declared Manila an open city in the hopes of protecting its people, preserving its historic land marks, and ensuring that the city would survive the war. He cared deeply about the Philippine islanders, whatever his

62Charles A. Willoughby, The Guerrilla Movement in the Philippines: 1941-1945 (New York: Vantage Press, 1972), 67-77, 78, 435; General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948. (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): I. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 4, 15-18; See also Vol II, General Intelligence Series, "Intelligence Activities in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupation, Appendix XIX.

63Karnow, 288; Benedict J. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 61“in Manila the newspaper screamed, ‘JAPS INVADE THE ISLANDS”; Gavan Daws, Prisoners of the Rising Sun: POWS of the World War II in the Pacific (New York: Pantheon Books), 1986 in Frances B. Cogan. Captured: The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines, 1941-1940 (, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2000), 34. Cogan offers a thorough historiography on the subject of the Japanese Occupation, possibly the most extensive bibliography after that of Morton J. Netzorg, The Philippines in World War II and to Independence (December 8, 1941- July 4, 1946): An Annotated Bibliography (Ithaca, NY: Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Cornell University Press, 1977.)

55 shortcomings in his choice in operational planning personnel like Chief Supply officer

Charles Willoughby who made the decision to position all supplies just past the end and out of reach of the soldiers who would soon be trapped on the Bataan peninsula on

Luzon.64

In an effort to unify communications and provide a “the nucleus of clandestine intelligence”, Brigadier General Simeon de Jesus, Philippine Army (PA), expanded the

MIS in the Philippines. Initially operations were coordinated from Bataan, but with the help of sixty agents, Brigadier General De Jesus was able to link the efforts of troops in

Pampanga, Zambales, Bataan, and elsewhere. Many of his agents were part of the

Philippine Constabulary prior to enlisting, which meant these agents were familiar with the territories and could move about with relative ease. Given the number of Japanese soldiers on Luzon, and a lack of transport, operatives would travel on foot or cross in small boats, also known as “bancas.” Prior to the fall of Bataan communications were supplemented by de Jesus’s creation of a radio station in Manila, situated in the projection booth of a movie theater. The noise of the projector covered the sounds of the radio and movie patrons were an excellent cover for those coming to relay information regarding the ‘underground network’ created by the MIS. This expansion of existing intelligence networks by de Jesus made possible temporary communication between guerilla commands in the absence of a broader communications framework. His

64Cogan, 34.

56 accomplishments and the structure of intelligence during the pre-war and early occupation periods is described below:65

The Postal Telegraph Service, the Philippine Civil Service, the Postmasters, the Philippine Long Distance Tele- phone Company,(2) etc., not only had all been dragged into an inter- locking network, primarily for air-raid warning and spotting, but also represented a collateral framework of information, trans-mission, rendezvous and intelligence contacts… MIS did not, however, cease functioning after the sur-render, Although scattered, its members went underground and slowly began to rebuild their disrupted organization. General de Jesus issued secret instructions: a) to carry on the mission of the MIS by underground activities, 'b) to contact guerrilla leaders for professional advice, c) to give them aid and comfort whenever and wherever an opportunity presented itself, d) to accept “cover” employment in Filipino agencies under Japanese Occupation if such would be means to achieve the desired end, and e) to make all reports to a central agency handled by himself.66

That allied intelligence gathering resumed after the fall of Bataan is far from surprising, but that it was maintained at the same pre-war levels and expanded indicates the adaptability of the existing intelligence net, the agents, and the Filipino resistance that worked to strengthen these lines of communication. General Headquarters willingness to

65General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948 (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): I. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 4, 15-18; Major, USMC Larry S. Schmidt, American Involvement in the Filipino Resistance Movement on Mindanao During the Japanese Occupation 1942-1945 (Master’s Thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1982), 47-48. On July 14, 1944 Proclamation 20 was issued, months before news of an American Invasion because as Schmidt argues, the Constabulary was intentionally shirking their duties either out of loyalty to the guerillas or to avoid death at the hand of an increasingly loyal Philippine public; See also Vol II, General Intelligence Series, "Intelligence Activities in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupation, Appendix XIX. 66General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948 (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): I. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 15, 19.

57 rely upon the understanding of those who called the islands home, and to utilize

American commanders and supply personnel willing to learn the dialect, that unified the guerillas, homeguard, and AIB agents. The information stream dried up due to the outbreak of hostilities after the Japanese invasion, but once General Wainwright surrendered, operatives and guerillas resumed undercover operations, and in time, began passing small amounts of information back to Australia, , and Washington,

D.C.67

The surrender at Bataan began with the forced march of 76,000 Filipino and

American prisoners to Camp O’Donnel. The deadly march, lasting over ten days, began at , on the southern tip of the peninsula, with the and execution of roughly 400 prisoners too weak to make the march. In total the lowest estimates show at least 2,500 hundred Filipino prisoners were killed, along with another 500 American prisoners. None of these totals include the number of civilians brutalized. Of the original

76,000 who began the march, 22,000 did not arrive at Camp O’Donnell. These individuals may have either escaped, or died and not been recovered. Of the 54,000 who arrived, there were 43,000 Filipinos—29,000 of whom died in captivity according to

Major General Rafael Jaladoni’s census of the Filipino prisoners. On 11 March 1942,

General MacArthur withdrew from the Islands, only to take the position of Commander

67Willoughby, 67-77, 78 map, 435; General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948 (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): I. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 4, 15-18; See also Vol. II, General Intelligence Series, "Intelligence Activities in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupation, Appendix XIX.

58 in Chief of the SWPA that April. American and Filipino POWs did not manage to survive the occupation based solely on the ‘kindness’ of the average Imperial Japanese soldier, but because of the vitamins and other essential drugs smuggled in by loyal civilians of the homeguard and other guerillas who risked their lives when an Americans return did not seem assured.68

According to U.S. Army Colonel R.W. Volckmann, unopposed Japanese Imperial landings were made in the Aparri-Gonzaga and Vigan areas on Northern Luzon, before the United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) made a final stand against the

Japanese thrust from the north. The U.S. Army usually dates Japanese invasion of the

Philippines, from 8 December 1941, through the fall of Bataan on 9 April 1942, ending with the surrender of on 6 May 1942. As then Captain Volckmann took command of the Lingayen Gulf region, he was quite certain that they “would be overrun by them, supported as they were by unchallenged naval gunfire and air units.” Because the Japanese invasion of the Philippine islands was so swift and the response capabilities of the Allies so limited, the United States made the difficult decision not to provide reinforcements or evacuation to the troops stationed there. Despite promises to the contrary, help would not arrive until MacArthur and Filipino Nationals at GHQ organized penetration parties to reach the guerilla fighters.

68General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement.” Reprint 1994; General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, “Report on Conditions in the Philippines as of June 1943: Prisoners of War (Military) Appendix XX: Personal Narrative of Colonel Emigdio C. Cruz, Philippine Army, sent to Major General Willoughby 30 July 1946”, 6.

59

Fighting together on starvation rations with no medical supplies on Bataan and

Corregidor did much to repair the long marred relationship between Filipinos and

American personnel. More than that, the long period of the Japanese occupation and the numerous cooperative missions with the Allied Intelligence Bureau’s, Philippine

Regional Section personnel began to further repair this relationship. On Bataan Filipinos were forced to fight with Americans by sheer circumstance, after the surrender the occupation may have provided a common enemy but both groups voluntarily worked side by side to achieve their goals. In the process they began to undue decades of a legacy of

American imperialism in the islands.69

By 2 January, the Imperial Army along with roughly 500 Kempei Tai occupied the open city of Manila.70 Stanley Karnow describes the Kempei Tai as the Japanese version of the Nazi Gestapo, or secret police. These officers seized citizens from their homes, tortured, and killed civilians at times for infractions as small as listening to

American radio broadcasts. Despite the propaganda that touted fraternal linkages, arrogant enlisted soldiers beat any Filipino who refused to bow to them and as the

69Volkmann, 13; Cogan, 35. While it is true that the resources were not available at the time, they had been denied time and time again when MacArthur had requested them and from the moment the Philippines was acquired the United States military continually debated whether or not it was possible to defend the islands under even the most ideal circumstances; Mark A. Stoler, Allies in War: Britain and America Against the , 1940-1941 (London, Great Britain: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 30;While Stoler argues that the Philippines had been ruled indefensible against Japanese attack, the choice to deny reinforcements or reinvestment prior to the arrival of the Japanese was a decision that sent a message to the Philippine people that their security was not a priority for some American policymakers.

70Felisa A. Syjuco, The Kempei Tai in the Philippines: 1941-1945 (Quezon City, Luzon: New Day Publishers, 1988), 12, 24.

60 soldiers became more frustrated executions became more violent as a means of creating a larger public spectacle.71 According to Benedict Kerkvliet, as the Japanese reached

Talavera shortly after Christmas, violence at the hands of the Imperial Army and not the

Kempei Tai was widespread. These events strengthened the resolve of the resistance, but also drove a wedge between those barrio residents who cooperated during the early months and those who fled into the protection of the resistance.

The end of the invasion period marks the transition to the Japanese Occupation.

Under President Jose P. Laurel, leader of the Philippine Executive Commission, or PEC, the new puppet government had been installed, and despite efforts to curb their violence, the reign of the Japanese secret police, the Kempei Tai began. They kept themselves informed by their vast web of Sakdals, Ganaps, and other pro-Japanese spies. One such group was the Kalibapi, the sole pro-Japanese political party aligned with the PEC and their powerful apparatus for observing and influencing civilians through propaganda and threats. In addition the Japanese sought to forcefully re-staff the and task their new recruits with hunting down guerilla units. The Japanese were soon so displeased with the efforts of the constabulary, as many of those employed here frequently worked covertly for the guerillas. Later, with his superiors frustrated by the lack of results shown by the Constabulary, President Jose Laurel issued Proclamation 20, which returned the responsibility of guerilla neutralization to the Japanese.72

71Karnow, 309-310.

72Willoughby, 67-77, 78 map, 435; General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948 (U.S. Army War College, 61

Without the help of collaborating Filipinos, called Ganaps, occupation would have been a difficult task, given that the Kempei Tai had to create and maintain their national police force, the Philippine Constabulary, but also a spy network designed to rival that of the Philippine underground. While violence persisted to varying degrees throughout, the occupation the Japanese began increasing their influence in schools, churches, and even local organizations farming practices to ensure that the Japanese social control and local infiltration network was complete. “As in Talavera, the reaction among people in Central Luzon varied: the Ganaps who welcomed the Japanese; the politicians who cooperated; and the villagers who simply tolerated.”73

The Japanese attempted to further the division between these groups by turning some into spies or at times simply convincing others that they had given information to the occupying forces. One frequent practice was to place a rucksack over the head of a

Filipino to conceal his or her identity and then lead them into the center of the village where they were to point out collaborationist neighbors. The cooperation of villagers determined whether or not intelligence could be obtained efficiently in any region, especially given the communal nature of Filipino barrios. Through much of the war the

Japanese hearts and minds campaign extended only to the application of force and fear necessary to control the civilians on an island. Despite their nominal attempts to bring

Carlisle, PA): I. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 4, 15-18; See also Vol II, General Intelligence Series, "Intelligence Activities in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupation, Appendix XIX.

73Benedict J. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 61-65, 77.

62

Filipinos into their government they were ultimately hampered by their lack of concern for Philippine culture or their political aspirations toward national self-determination.

When they did attempt to bridge such gaps by working with those striving for Filipino liberation, Filipinos allies found the anecdotal efforts of the Japanese, insincere and paternalistic.74

Artemio Ricarte y Garcia had remained a symbol of resistance to American occupation after the Philippine-American war, especially in urban areas. Long after his deportation in 1904 he refused to recognize the American government in the Philippines.

This made him very appealing to some within the Japanese government as a possible head for the post-invasion commonwealth government, despite having being rather quiet during the period of his political exile. During the invasion he was brought to the

Philippines by a small faction among the Tokyo elite who sought to see him at the head of the new Philippine Executive Committee. However, when he arrived the position had already been offered to Jorge Vargas. Instead, Ricarte was appointed as a member of a twenty-four person council, and as he toured 300 villages he saw Japanese soldiers repeatedly slapping Filipinos in the face without provocation, savagely torturing of captured guerilla forces, confiscating food and other necessities, raping civilians.

Frustrated by being marginalized by the Japanese occupying forces and appalled at the treatment of his countrymen he led an unsuccessful coup by disillusioned pro-Japanese

Ganaps in 1943.75

74Kerkvliet, 61-65, 77; Ikehata, 4; Karnow, 309-310. 75Sturtevant, 223; Ikehata, 4.

63

Dr. Raphaelita Soriano, who worked as an intelligence analyst for the War

Department prior to resuming her doctoral studies at the University of Michigan, states that the “close underground cooperation between the Philippine guerrilleros and the

Philippine citizenry in general, a cooperation so close in spirit that there was indeed very little sympathy with Japanese propaganda except on the part of a small minority of top crust collaborationists… there was general knowledge that the resistance was almost everywhere and such knowledge could quickly spread even though the Japanese were ever on the alert to detect communications.”76 This statement is a gross overgeneralization and Dr. Soriano was pandering to a post-war audience whose fears of race and communist incursion made them less than receptive to conceptual grey areas.

Knowing this, she perpetuated the myth of an elite collaborator that is still a common narrative in the Philippines and France today. What was true in her statement, however, is how quickly and effectively the resistance was able to relay information back to their commanders prior to the integration of intelligence networks by Filipino and American agents of the AIB’s Philippine Regional Section in 1942. The clandestine operations of these agents will be discussed in detail in Chapters Two and Three.77

76Soriano, 330-331, 159.

77Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals 1944-1956 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 76-88; Soriano, 330-331; 159. 64

Figure 2 “The Fighting Filipinos” public domain propaganda image 65

Chapter 2: Resistance in the Northern Philippine Islands

AIB’s Three Phase Plan

The Philippine Regional Section’s plan in early March 1942 called for three phases. Phase One focused on obtaining intelligence reports and ascertaining the plans and strength of the Japanese as well as the feelings of the Filipinos regarding an

American return; Phase Two would involve the organization and training of guerilla and

AIB forces in preparation for that return; and Phase Three would be focused on providing communications as necessitated by the Allied Task Force Commander in an effort to coordinate an offensive with the guerilla forces. By using the network built by the guerillas and the Philippine Regional Section as an alternate line of communications to

GHQ, guerilla forces were able to provide timely combat information and Coastwatch intelligence without overburdening military wavelengths.78

Phase One necessitated sending a number of parties into the enemy-held islands, penetrating previous from December of 1942 through late 1943, to carry out this series of fact-finding missions. The three main islands on which they sought intelligence were

Luzon, Mindanao, and the Visayas. The “Spy Squadron” or ‘Spyron Missions’ sent to the

Visayas and Mindanao, and the majority of the additional clandestine parties will be discussed in detail in the next chapter. But it was on Luzon that one of the most difficult infiltration missions took place— that designed to contact Manuel Roxas, whose popularity soared when he refused to surrender and found himself facing house arrest and

78General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Planet Party Communications. “Communications Required for Philippines Operations” (Military Intelligence Section, General Staff 10 March, 1943), 2-3.

66 one threat after another. Within the islands the initial phase of the Philippine occupation was marked by the inclusion of Filipino citizens in the new government, as means of ensuring that Japanese messages were brought to the public with a Filipino voice. At the same time Japanese prohibitions of many facets of Pinoy culture emerged, alienating many Filipinos, and driving some away from the Kalibapi party and to the guerilla movement.79

Within a week of General Wainwright’s surrender Japanese agents were moving through the foot-trails of Northern Luzon, waging a propaganda campaign in an attempt to sway the non-Christian population to this side. These agents handed out candy in attempts to win over the children and began introducing Japanese mores into local musical and theatrical performances designed to impart syncretic oral histories. Japanese propagandists held lectures to educate the Bontac women of the region on how to live in a way the regime found acceptable, preparing many for a level of subservience to which they could not acclimate. Women in Southeast Asian societies had for centuries had access to power that was not normative in European or East Asian cultures. Many

Philippine women were forced into sexual and physical servitude throughout the war and these plays were a gentle way to acclimate the populace to Japanese culture, but soon came the imposition of treatments acceptable in no culture.80

79Mellnik, 282-283; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, “Report on Conditions in the Philippines as of June 1943: Prisoners of War (Military),” 6.

80Soriano, 219-222; Schmidt, 28-52, provides information on the practices of forced prostitution, ritual beheadings to instill fear, and loathsome treatment of Philippine women—sexual and physical servitude, often with sexual assaults taking place in front of 67

Artemio Ricarte, a leader of the Philippine resistance during the Philippine-

American War in the 1890s, had lived for years as an exile in Japan. He was then brought back to the islands for the purpose of spreading pro-Japanese sentiment. Due to his advanced age at the time of his return, his leadership was much as it had been after his exile from the previous conflict, largely symbolic yet powerful enough to spark an unsuccessful coup attempt by his Ganap supporters.81 Reminiscent of the imperialists before them, the Japanese army quickly took to demanding respect in ways that demeaned Philippine citizens. Luis Taruc, a key member of the Philippine Communist

Party (or PKP), explains what the relationship had looked like prior to the 1930s between landowners and the peasants who joined the Sakdal and Hukbalahap :

…And I saw many of the tenants, especially of the Santiagos, the Tecsons’, and the Deleons’, and the Sevillas, meeting their landlords. Even if the tenant was a bent old man he had to kiss the hand of the wife of the landlord, riding a tilborin, or a doffing humbly his hat to the landlord; sometimes the landlord will even allow his hand to be kissed by the poor old peasant… The older tenants have the tendency not only to scrape and bow and remove their hats in all humility and inferiority, but they have to kiss the hands of the landlady and the landlord, and even the son or daughter, which they say was a sign of respect; but in fact [it is] a sign of slavery, which I detested…Luckily our own landlord of the Pabalan Family did not allow that; they did not compel us to do that. But they were paternalistic. They called us ”amang,” “anak” that is my son, my daughter ….

family members should they refuse to consent to their being taken by the Japanese Forces in the Philippines.

81Soriano, 219-222; Setsuho Ikehata, translated by Elpidio R. Sta. Romana, The Japanese Military Administration in the Philippines and the Tragedy of General Artemio Ricarte (Singapore: Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore, 1991), 9-10.

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This paternalistic relationship created a deep-seated resentment between Filipino peasants and the wealthy landlords who employed them. The system of unequal taxation, and such a drastic imbalance in political power allowed the elite to continue exploitative practices that benefited wealthy landholders, merchants who made their living from exports, and the American businessmen who profited from cheap labor and low cost goods like sugar cane. When the invading army began treating the population similarly, the Filipinos saw through the Japanese promises of brotherhood and began looking for other paths to nationhood.82

A key member of the pro-Japanese Executive Commission, placed under the direction of Jorge Vargas on 23 January 1942, Artemio Ricarte toured the countryside and commented on his experiences. During the occupation there were two main pro-

Japanese factions: the largest one centered upon Benigno Ramos and a second centered around Ricarte known as Shin Nichi To, or pro-Japan party. Ricarte noted that the

Japanese soldiers, frustrated by the resistance, took to slapping the faces of even the most compliant Filipinos. Confiscation of food, livestock, and other resources were harsh punishments and created a deep resentment among the poor, but it was the rape of civilians and the torture of suspected guerilla that led even the most pro-Japanese to become disillusioned. It was the official Japanese policy to confiscate food ruled as

82Bruce Nussbaum, Interview With Luis Taruc. May 29, 1974. Editorial Additions by Wayne Sanford. (Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, November 28, 1985), 26-27.

69 surplus and send it, along with metal from cars, manufacturing plants, and other sources back to the home islands as a contribution to the war effort.83

Ricarte’s first act of defiance against the Japanese was the granting of ryominsho certificates of good citizenship. These were later granted so often they became meaningless, but during 1942 he put himself and his position of privilege in danger to issue them so widely. When the Japanese banned the displaying of the Philippine flag in

April, he began to realize that they had no intention of granting full independence as had initially been promised. Others who opposed the Japanese did so passively, for example as trail guides intentionally leading Japanese troops away from guerilla camps. This was only one of the many roles citizens were assigned as ‘volunteer guard’ members, along with a list of tasks that could be performed poorly in order to sabotage the Japanese war effort. Filipinos were frequently pressured into working as ‘volunteer guards’ by occupying forces.84

Frequently these volunteer guard officers were also guerillas. Auxiliary guerilla forces operating within a barrio were known as ‘homeguard’ as in most instances they protected their own village. Members of the homeguard helped expand and maintain intelligence nets, distribute guerilla propaganda, and gain supplies for their local

83Ikehata, 9-10; Schmidt, 28-52; I. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 4, 15-18; Guerilla Intelligence Series, “Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation, Appendix XIX; Steinberg, Collaboration in World War II (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 36-37; Stanley Karnow, In Our Image (New York: Random House, 1989), 437.

84Ikehata, 9-10; Colonel Yay Panlilio Marking, 40-41, 58; David W. Hogan Jr., U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, Department of the Army, 1992), 67-69. 70 command, all while working to identify Sakdal and Ganap double agents. These auxiliary members accepted positions within the Japanese ‘volunteer guard’ to gain intelligence, and to ensure that their safety and livelihoods were not compromised by angering the occupying forces. This subtle resistance slowed Japanese projects throughout the islands, disrupted and manufactured communications, and caused countless problems with transportation.85

85Ibid.

71

Figure 3. “Channels of Communication From Philippine Islands to GHQ.”86

In June of 1943, The AIB felt it necessary to establish a firm link between GHQ in Brisbane and Manuel Roxas in Manila. Dr. Emigidio Cruz, a Philippine Army Colonel and the personal physician of president-in-exile Manuel Quezon, was selected to lead a clandestine mission into the heavily occupied island of Luzon. Cruz was told by General

86General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. RG-16: Major General Courtney Whitney Papers. Planet Party Communications December 1942-1945. MacArthur Library Norfolk, VA; See also Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Headquarters United States Army Forces Pacific. Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, 159, for the daily order in which each station called into MAIN and KAZ. 72

MacArthur that he believed his odds of success in contacting Roxas were very slim, but that the benefits of such an attempt outweighed the risk. MacArthur also told Colonel

Cruz prior to his embarkation on an American submarine, “Personally, I believe you have no chance to go through. With your connection to President Quezon you have become very well known. I give you a ten percent chance to enter Manila, but honestly, I believe you have no chance to get out.” On 9 July the USS Thresher surfaced off the coast of

Negros and the crew offloaded seven tons of weapons for the guerillas, as well as Colonel

Cruz.

Colonel Cruz arrived with instructions that Major Jesus A. Villamor, commander of the Planet party mission on Negros, assist him in reaching Manila. Planet party, the first penetration party to enter the islands and make contact with the guerillas, was still in the midst of their own operations when he arrived. On July 12 the Japanese attacked the exact location where Colonel Cruz had come ashore and seized well over half of the supplies he had brought for the guerillas. Lost ammunition and weapons were a small blow to morale, but what was worse, the Japanese now knew that the Americans were shipping supplies to the guerillas, and they would expand their anti-guerilla forces accordingly. ‘The man-who-walks-like-a-ghost’ as Colonel Cruz became known, was a well-connected, but well-known figure, and as he moved through the islands he put himself and the commands he contacted, particularly Planet Party, in danger.87

87General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, “Report on Conditions in the Philippines as of June 1943: Prisoners of War (Military) Appendix XX: Personal Narrative of Colonel Emigdio C. Cruz, Philippine Army; sent to Major General Willoughby 30 July 1946.” 1-2; Ind, Secret War, 129-131. 73

Major Villamor was forced by necessity to protect his own mission and insulate his personnel from Colonel Cruz’s increasingly dangerous operation despite the risk of upsetting GHQ. Without the assistance Colonel Cruz had been promised by GHQ, a promise that in truth put the objectives of both missions in jeopardy, he had to find a new contact who could get him to Manila. Colonel Salvadore Abcede, district commander of

Negros, saw the importance of Colonel Cruz’s mission. Abecede formed a detachment headed by one of his lieutenants and twelve men who led Cruz through the jungle and past the numerous Japanese patrols. Their journey took two weeks through treacherous terrain before they arrived in Cadiz, under the protection of Governor Montelibano. After narrowly escaping a Japanese search of the town, Cruz sailed from Cadiz bound for

Luzon.88

During numerous brief questionings by Japanese soldiers and Philippine

Constabulary officers, Colonel Cruz was able to maintain his cover as Major Suylan, a

Visayan merchant. On their journey to Luzon he and his party were overtaken by a

Japanese patrol and questioned on the open sea. He had hidden the bundle of the letters from President Quezon and Vice President Osmena under a stack of fruits and dried fish.

When the Visayan interpreter asked him questions about the bandit Cruz who helped to ship arms to the guerillas, he responded in fluent Visayan rather than his native Tagalog.

88General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, “Report on Conditions in the Philippines as of June 1943: Prisoners of War (Military) Appendix XX: Personal Narrative of Colonel Emigdio C. Cruz, Philippine Army; sent to Major General Willoughby 30 July 1946.” 2; Ind, Secret War, 129-131.

74

The interpreter and the patrol were fooled, allowing them to continue on their journey to

Matnog. After securing the necessary residence certificate and Kalibapi membership,

Cruz entered Manila. Arriving in time to witness the inauguration of the Japanese occupation government on 14 October 1943, he and all others in the city were made to stand along the plaza and bow to Japanese officials and their Kalibapi allies.89

Within just a few hours of his arrival Colonel Cruz acquired vital intelligence, learning that the Japanese naval garrison was located just outside of Bulan and housed two to three hundred naval personnel. Also of great interest to officials in GHQ, the

Japanese were in the process of constructing another airfield three miles outside of Bulan.

Next Cruz moved to Lucena, and on the way they were once again harassed by a

Japanese patrol. Only this time Colonel Cruz was forced to weight down the letters and send them to the bottom of Manila Bay. He seems to have raised suspicion. While staying at the New Banashaw Hotel in Lucena, and after numerous visits to the Japanese officers club, Colonel Cruz reported that he was even invited to tour the naval garrison.

Having had to drop the bundle of Quezons' letters into Manila bay during a search, Colonel Cruz’s mission was now to convey in person the message that not only did the president still have the utmost faith in Roxas, but that Quezon also wished for him to join him in Washington, D.C. When Colonel Cruz arrived, Manuel Roxas refused to leave as he had already created an intricate intelligence network as a means of disrupting

89General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, “Report on Conditions in the Philippines as of June 1943: Prisoners of War (Military) Appendix XX: Personal Narrative of Colonel Emigdio C. Cruz, Philippine Army; sent to Major General Willoughby 30 July 1946.” 5-8; Ind, Secret War, 129-136.

75

Japanese plans on Luzon. Colonel Cruz learned that Roxas had situated himself so that he held sway with collaborators like General Guillermo Francisco who had agreed that should the Japanese begin to conscript Philippine soldiers, Philippine officers would be placed in strategic positions so that the army could be used in an anti-Japanese coup. At the same time Roxas was in close contact with guerilla leaders such as Peralta, Fertig,

Marcos “Marking” Augustin, and even the confrontational Major Edwin Ramsey who openly fought the Hukbalahap guerillas. Colonel Cruz had completed his primary objective and after a short period of gathering additional intelligence and making more contacts he left the islands from Negros on 8 December 1943. He had established firm contacts in Manila, clarified the situation between the puppet government allies and the guerillas, and established secure radio channels by which to contact MAIN the primary radio station in Mindanao, and KAZ in Darwin.90

AIB Training

While training took place during all three stages of the war, the second phase of

Philippine Regional Section operations began after the founding of the school at Cairns,

Australia. By order of C. G. Roberts, AIB Controller, Captain Andrew T. Ross of the

AIB was put in charge of the AIB Training School on 10 April 1943. As Administrative

Commandant of the facility Captain Ross was responsible for overseeing the operations and discipline of all non-Australian personnel. While all cases still fell under Ross’s

90General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, “Report on Conditions in the Philippines as of June 1943: Prisoners of War (Military) Appendix XX: Personal Narrative of Colonel Emigidio C. Cruz, Philippine Army; sent to Major General Willoughby 30 July 1946,” 5-8; Ind, Secret War, 129-136. 76 jurisdiction, the school operated with a senior officer of each nation overseeing the education and discipline of his own cadets. Senior Staff officers were responsible for helping to ensure that those Filipino and American personnel who had been “selected, observed, classified” into Group A for leaders and sub-leaders of the AIB penetration parties; Group B for agents of secret penetration parties; Group C for Coastwatch parties as well as leaders and sub-leaders of Coastwatch parties; and Group D trainees as leaders and members of the essential supply missions that continued through 1 January 1945.

Many of the agents for these operations were Filipino nationals and American personnel, who came from the United States to Australia for training prior to being sent into, or back into the Philippines. In addition to those coming from the U.S., some of those entering the training courses had fled the Philippine islands during the invasion and began to staff the return missions. This was the case for decorated Philippine Army veteran, Major

Jesus A. Villamor, who was trained in one of many smaller training programs separate from the main school.91

Given the extremely demanding course at Cairns, all training documents, and the courses they describe, indicate the potential for numerous trainees to “wash-out”, or be unable to successfully complete the course. Those who failed frequently did so during the

91C.G. A.I.B Controller Roberts, Subject: A.I.B Training School At Cairns- Instructions to Administrative Commandant. To: Captain A. Ross, Administrative Commandant, A.I.B School, Cairns. 10 April, 1943; C.G. A.I.B Controller Roberts, Subject: A.I.B Training School At Cairns- Instructions to Administrative Commandant. To: Captain A. Ross, Administrative Commandant, A.I.B School, Cairns. Responsibilities of the Senior Officers of Each Section at the A.I.B. School, CAIRNS. Annexure 2. April 10, 1943; Allison W. Ind, Subject: Philippine Section—Personnel Procurement and Training Scheme. May, 1943. 1-3.

77 first week of jungle training for the basic training course; this included a week of intensive survival training designed to eliminate those who might slow down an outfit.

The basic training course consisted of 159 hours and included basic commando and ranger-type unarmed combat training, first aid, map and compass reading, ship and aircraft recognition, judging distance, and twenty-one hours of weapons training. The advanced course began with a two-week refresher course on jungle training, and a demanding 322 total hours that covered combat intelligence, fifth column activities, cryptography, radio and Morse code, small boat navigation, Japanese and English lessons, map reading and sketching, and ship and aircraft identification. Those who completed the advanced course, primarily those from groups A and B went on to train numerous commands throughout the Philippine islands.92

Lieutenant Bartolomeo Cabangbang was one of the few Philippine guerillas who as a former agent of the American Philippine Constabulary had been trained in covert operations prior to the war, and when the invasion began he had the unique opportunity to join and be trained as an officer in the Japanese Constabulary. He was ‘reeducated’ ineffectually and later escaped by diving off a cliff after he had been discovered as an

American agent. Lieutenant Cabangbang was asked to oversee training of guerilla and

Philippine Regional Section agents at Camp Tabragalba, also known as Camp X in

92C.G. A.I.B Controller Roberts, Subject: A.I.B Training School At Cairns- Instructions to Administrative Commandant. To: Captain A. Ross, Administrative Commandant, A.I.B School, Cairns. 10 April, 1943; C.G. A.I.B Controller Roberts, Subject: A.I.B Training School At Cairns- Instructions to Administrative Commandant. To: Captain A. Ross, Administrative Commandant, A.I.B School, Cairns. Responsibilities of the Senior Officers of Each Section at the A.I.B. School, CAIRNS. Annexure 2. April 10, 1943; Allison W. Ind, Subject: Philippine Section—Personnel Procurement and Training Scheme. May, 1943. 3-6. 78

Queensland starting in December 1943. There he taught classes on the history of guerilla fighting and the situation at present, a detailed section on prisoners of war and their treatment throughout the occupation as well as their present condition.

Lieutenant Cabangbang was in a unique position to teach the course covering the

Philippine Constabulary. He had taken both training courses offered by the Japanese and

Americans, and knew both the purpose and application of Japanese propaganda techniques firsthand. He knew what kinds of people the Japanese looked for to train as spies, puppets, collaborators, and informers, making their course on counter-espionage doubly effective as they knew which occupations and activities were most vulnerable to

Kalibapi pressure. They also spent time learning about Japanese culture and tactics, so as to produce a more flexible and informed guerilla response team. This was only one of many training sessions or centers that began to crop up during AIB’s second phase, but it was certainly one of the more unique in that much of the PRS training at this location was led by a Philippine officer. Just as training was conducted during all three phases of operations, the guerilla commands on Luzon do not fit into the neat three-phase plan and so they are discussed geographically, by district.93

In each district, while competition did arise between these numerous small commands over local power and control of limited supplies, ideological differences, or

93Bartolomeo Cabangbang, Subject: Subjects for Discussion with the Training Group, To Colonel Courtney Whitney Chief of the Philippine Regional Section. 26 December, 1943; Colonel Courtney Whitney, G-3 Operations, Philippine Sub-Division, to C-in-C. “Cabangbang, a conservative Filipino, who has spent much of his life in Manila, May be given full credence.” 25 November, 1944; Bartolomeo Cabangbang, General Information on Corregidor, Bataan, Concentration Camps, and Guerillas. May 6, 1942. 79 personal conflicts between leaders remained rare. The most distressing conflict was that between the Central Luzon commands of Major Edwin P. Ramsey and the Hukbalahap, who openly engaged in skirmishes during the occupation. Despite such ill-advised competition, provoked by the anti-communist vitriol of Major General Charles

Willoughby, the central Luzon district remained the most densely populated with guerillas, and of the three Luzon commands, the most effective in providing food and protection to the local residents. Guerilla commands had less opportunity to conduct covert operations and the danger for civilian home guard increased wherever there were good roads by which the Imperial Japanese Army could move supplies and personnel.

Throughout the islands, any locals cooperated and helped to create intelligence networks, supply lines, and facilitate a constant flow of information back to the local guerilla commands.

The mountainous footpaths in the Central Luzon region provided a maze of trails that allowed guerillas to virtually disappear, and without guides the area was impenetrable to the Japanese. When the resistance found themselves low on ammunition, they simply withdrew from combat. When the Japanese managed to get close to a camp, resistance fighters would creep down the mountain and away from the camp luring

Japanese troops in the wrong direction. It was necessary to change camps only when

Japanese army patrols came too frequently, but for some time this dance continued at a relaxed pace. The flexible nature of their bases, as well as their minimal engagements with the enemy allowed them to focus more attention on gathering intelligence and expanding communications without provoking the enemy. Although Luzon military 80 districts would be the last to be brought into the intelligence network, due to heavy garrisoning of the island as well as the conflict between Ramsey and the Hukbalahap, yet they still provided a great deal of vital intelligence regarding the safe evacuation of prisoners of war as the liberation began, as well as troop movements and weather patterns concerning the invasion of various islands. Most notably multiple resistance organizations fought to secure sensitive targets including prison camps, dams and bridges, and the airstrips necessary to provide air support for the reinvasion. One such example was the intelligence provided for the invasion of Mindoro prior to the landings at Lingayen Gulf on 6 January 1945.94

The Northern Luzon guerillas were the remnants of the Filipino-American divisions who had escaped Bataan. The problems they faced during the first phase of operations and their failure to unite indicated successful Japanese counter-guerilla operations as well as a desperate need to train these resistance leaders in aspects of warfare not covered in regular military preparation offered by either the American or the

Philippine Armies. One of the early leaders of what became the Luzon District command was Major Everett L. Warner. After Warner was ordered to surrender by General

Wainwright in May 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Guillermo Z. Nakar took part of his new forces to . From there Nakar contacted Australia by radio and was authorized by General MacArthur to form the 14th Infantry Regiment. Nakar was captured and executed in November 1942, with power passing to Philippine Army Lt.

Colonel Manuel Enriquez. Enriquez established a new headquarters in a National

94Colonel Yay Panlilio Marking, 58-62.

81

Coconut Corporation store. The men he commanded—as was the case in most guerilla district commands—were divided into combat units and sabotage units.

The Japanese were successful in Northern Luzon because they had ample spies and a network of good roads that allowed for frequent patrols, even if the guerillas and their allies were better able to navigate these mountain trails. Guerilla officers faced a massive turnover rate, either by slaughter or capture, forcing the various para-state commands on Luzon to remain largely underground. Another important guerilla band near Baguio, was the 43rd Infantry Detachment commanded by Martin Moses and Arthur

Noble. MacArthur authorized them to take command of all forces north of Lingayen, San

Jose in , , to establish a stable organization and collect military intelligence, but not to launch large scale attacks against the enemy.95

Despite MacArthur’s orders, Moses and Noble drew up plans to unleash a wave of coordinated attacks against the Japanese in lower Northern Luzon around 15 October

1942. Perhaps it was the mistaken impression that U.S. forces would be returning in

December 1942 that caused them to take brazen actions. Whatever their thought process, historian Bernard Norling says of their plan, “the road to hell is paved with good

95General Headquarters United States Army, Pacific, The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302, Series II, 1949 (Indianapolis Indiana: Indiana Historical Society, Military History Section): VI. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in Northern Luzon, 39-45; Information Bulletin dated November 16, 1944. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in Northern Luzon (Australia: General Headquarters, Southwest Pacific Area, MIS, General Staff), 1; “Enemy Occupation,” Triumph in the Philippines (Australia: The Combat History Division, G-1, Section Headquarters, AFWESPAC, 1946. III, 29-30; Edward M. Kuder and Pete Martin, “The Philippines Never Surrendered,” The Saturday Evening Post, March 10, 1945, as quoted in Soriano, 330-333.

82 intentions.” Major Robert Lapham, leader of Lapham’s Raiders near Pangasinan, was near death with dysentery but maintained that he thought the two men’s situational assessment lacked sound planning. Due to a number of ill-coordinated harassment missions leading up to the larger attack, the assault was launched prematurely, sporadically, and ineffectually. In response, the Japanese sent in thousands of soldiers and within months many of the guerillas from the region were captured and interrogated or executed. Both Moses and Noble were captured and executed before the end of 1944.

Those guerillas that survived did so by utilizing greater discretion in future missions and by operating in mobile commands, further into the nearly impenetrable maze of mountain trails.96

There were many other small bands of guerilla within the region, mostly led by

Filipinos, but some individuals took the opportunity after the war to claim service they never rendered. 31 year-old lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel Ferdinand Marcos, claimed after the war to have led a group of guerillas known as Ang Mga Maharlika. Stanley Karnow says of Marcos, “No guerilla, true or false, ever exalted his exploits more loudly than did

96General Headquarters United States Army, Pacific, The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302, Series II, 1949 (Indianapolis Indiana: Indiana Historical Society, Military History Section): VI. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in Northern Luzon, 39-45; Information Bulletin dated November 16, 1944. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in Northern Luzon (Australia: General Headquarters, Southwest Pacific Area, MIS, General Staff), 1; “Enemy Occupation,” Triumph in the Philippines (Australia: The Combat History Division, G-1, Section Headquarters, AFWESPAC, 1946. III, 29-30; Edward M Kuder and Pete Martin, “The Philippines Never Surrendered,” The Saturday Evening Post, March 10, 1945, as quoted in Soriano, 330-333.

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Ferdinand Marcos, who never ceased to laud Ang Mga Maharlika, the band of guerillas he claimed to have fought with.”97

Historian Alfred McCoy, reported receiving death threats after having uncovered documents and published his findings denying Ferdinand Marcos’s guerilla claim.

McCoy says of the group, that by attempting to drown the U.S. Army’s Guerilla Affair’s

Division in paper work, Marcos roused suspicion. When he claimed to have been attached to the 14th Infantry USAFIP in Northern Luzon, led by Major Harry McKenzie, military personnel became suspicious and asked the commander. After Major McKenzie was interviewed and denied having ever worked with or met Marcos during the war a second American-led investigation began. Marcos’s second appeal was denied this time terming his claim ‘fraudulent and ‘concluded no such unit ever existed.’’98

In late November 1942, Major Walter Praeger used station WYY to tune in to San

Francisco’s station and after making brief contact his call sign was relayed to

Washington. Having verified his identity, Colonel Evans helped him to establish a secure cypher system for Major Praeger’s isolated radio station. The Northern Luzon guerillas began to gradually increase their communication with other regional commands, and by the end of the war their engagements with the enemy were coordinated as they had been included in the Philippine Regional Section’s radio and Coastwatching network.

97Karnow, 309-311.

98Alfred W. McCoy, Closer Than Brothers: Manhood At The Philippine (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1999), 168-170; Alfred W. McCoy, “Politics by Other Means”: World War II in the Western Visiyas, Philippines, in: Southeast Asia Under Japanese Occupation, edited by Alfred C. McCoy (New Haven, CT: Yale Universities Southeast Asia Studies, 1984): 159-203. 84

Filipinos were far from apathetic about their liberation. By 1944, the Japanese had captured Moses and Noble and leadership passed to Lt. Colonel Russel W. Volckmann, who renamed his unit the United States Armed Forces in the Philippines. This force under Volckmann numbered only 8,000 when the 6th Infantry Division came ashore at

Lingayen Gulf, but within two months its strength had increased to 18,000 men. Even after Major Praeger’s capture in 1944, the radio station continued to be used by other members of the shrinking Northern Luzon guerilla forces. Possibly the most enduring contribution of the Northern Luzon guerillas was the information passed through this and other small stations in the region, reporting troop movements and later joining with the

6th and 8th Armies in the liberation of the islands.99

Central Luzon Commands

In Luzon, the heavy presence of Japanese soldiers deterred more overt action against the Japanese, but the Japanese Army’s requisition of livestock, food, and whatever else they desired from the Philippine citizens led many locals to join the resistance. It was in Central Luzon that during January 1942 Colonel Claude Thorpe was ordered by General MacArthur to organize resistance behind the Japanese lines. Thorpe moved northward into the Zambales Mountains, dividing Luzon into multiple commands and establishing his headquarters near , part of the mountains on Luzon’s west coast. He was later executed, and command passed to Major Bernard L. Anderson and Major Edwin P. Ramsey. Major Anderson was charged with “selecting on the Pacific

99Karnow, 309-310; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of Douglas MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: Activities of the Philippine Regional Section,” Reprint 1994, 320.

85 side of the Philippines, a suitable hide-out where he could make any submarine contacts.

And he did it from Infanta, Quezon, and later from those Alabat islands.”100 The relationship between Anderson and Ramsey was not an easy one and they frequently vied for command in the regions of the East Central Luzon Guerilla Area (ECLGA) they controlled. Luis Taruc, leader of the Hukbalahap, spoke highly of the cooperative efforts that took place under the commands of Colonel Thorpe and Major Anderson. The

Hukbalahap, a acronym for Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, or

“Army to Fight the Japanese,” a movement begun in the 1930s to attain the political and economic liberation of the Philippine peasantry, had been revived to fight the Japanese

Occupation. While the Hukbalahap’s communist leanings led Ramsey to an ideological aversion, Thorpe and Anderson could see the value in cooperation. Ramsey’s unit, which was headquartered at Montalban, Rizal and was not only quarrelling with members in his own command, actively engaged in combat with the Hukbalahap in central Luzon, one of the few guerilla able to provide sustenance to locals while many citizens of Manila were starving.101

Although, the Hukbalahap came into conflict with a number of regional leaders, they had a strong relationship with Colonel Claude C. Thorpe, Captain Bernard Anderson

100General Headquarters United States Army, Pacific, The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302, Series II, 1949 (Indianapolis Indiana: Indiana Historical Society, Military History Section): III. The Guerilla Resistance Movement on Central Luzon, 9-11; Robert Ross Smith, Triumph in the Philippines (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1991), 465-6, 540-57; Bruce Nussbaum, Interview With Luis Taruc. May 29, 1974. Editorial Additions by Wayne Sanford. (Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, November 28, 1985), 2, 7. 101III. The Guerilla Resistance Movement on Central Luzon, 9-11. 86 of the “Hunter’s Guerilla”, and Yay Marking. Their relationship with GHQ and Charles

A. Willoughby, director of G-2 intelligence, was far more strained. Willoughby continuously reproduced the incorrect name of “HukbalaJap,” a racial slur perhaps indicative of his lack of attention to detail. In truth, while he my have grasped the broader strategic goals, he understood very little of the operational necessities of the joint PRS and guerilla missions. And he was one of many among MacArthur's staff who routinely underestimated the capabilities of the Filipino Guerrillas and intelligence officers. This lack of linguistic precision and cultural tact was accompanied by the standing accusation of unsubstantiated ties between the Soviet government and Luis Taruc.

Even before the outbreak of war, communism was already a concern. Hukbalahap ties with the may have been less directly threatening to U.S. interests, but it provoked a hard-line response from anti-communists in Japan. According to historian of the Chinese guerilla movement Li Yuk Wai, after the 1927 split in China between the Goumindang and the Communist Party, the American governor-general began to target the communist party in the Philippines in an attempt to stop the spread of communism. While there were some staunch anti-communists on the American side, there were just as many who were far more focused on the flood of Japanese migrants who had been ordered to move into the southern Philippine islands and find employment as dock workers, telegraph operators, or other positions that would put them in a position to keep Tokyo appraised on the islands defenses. Li Yuk Wai also asserts that there was no Chinese influencing of the communist operatives who came to the Philippines.

Describing figures involved in the Philippines who came to the islands under multiple 87 unobtrusive forms of employ, as did American Nisei agents, the assumption that their purpose in the islands was benign may be overreaching.102

Luis Taruc describes those who joined the movement during the 1930s, as tenancy farmers who planted sugar cane and rice, two labor-intensive crops. Farmers who worked within the cane tenancy system only received less than one-third of their harvest and were asked to provide portions of any other products their livestock produced, such as milk and eggs. Rice farmers kept one-third of their harvest, but were given small amounts from early harvests, which they supplemented with fresh fish. Tenant farmers who lived in regions with surplus farmland, Nueva Ecija and Bulucan, Pampanga also kept vegetable gardens. Labor was taxing and sustenance was meager for most farmers.

Luis Taruc says that he came to join the communist party despite his more moderate, socialist leanings because of the two groups, he felt the communist

Hukbalahap were far more likely to succeed in liberating the Philippines from outside influence. Pedro Abad Santos was the communist party representative within the

Hukbalahap but while many of its members were communist party adherents, even more tended to view the movement as an avenue for reform without the need for an outside guarantor like the United States. In the early 1930s, not only were Filipinos awakened by the nationalistic fervor that manifest itself in the form of the Sakdal uprising and the

102Taruc Interview, 45; Schmidt, 28 “They(Japanese immigrants) knew the countryside in some localities as nationals did not;” Li Yuk Wai, The Chinese Resistance Movement in the Philippines During the Japanese Occupation, Master’s Thesis (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University, 1991), 81-104; James A. Richardson, The Genesis of The Philippine Communist Party (PhD Dissertation University of London, 1984), 171; Li Yuk Wai, The Huaqiao Warriors: Chinese Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 1942-45 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1995.) 88

Hukbahalap Peasant Rebellion, but in those years communist and socialist leaning students were also reacting to the same anti-fascist movements that seized America and the United Kingdom. Taruc explains that he was not the least interested in abolishing class, private land ownership, or religion.103

Frustrated at the lack of communication with GHQ, or rather the unwillingness of

Americans to communicate with and coordinate operations with the Hukbalahap, their organization became increasingly isolated. Felipa Culala, in response to the brutal

Japanese campaign, organized thirty-five men and gave them arms that she had previously taken from the Japanese. Her unit was the first Hukbalahap unit to engage the

Japanese. On 8 March 1942 they took the municipal building in Candaba, Pampanga.

After that they freed eight of her men and engaged a large Japanese force, killing forty

Japanese soldiers and sixty-eight collaborating Filipino police officers. They then forced the Japanese to retreat and saved many people in the barrio.104

By the time American forces began formulating plans for a return in 1944, the

Hukbalahap were estimated to have well over 100,000 members. In addition to boasting one of the largest guerilla memberships, the Huks were able to secure food in their region by providing protection for those peasants who shared their harvest. Most peasants had been ordered by their landlord to give the crop to the Japanese, but by providing security from both the Japanese and the landlord, the Huk were able to supply food to their ever- growing army, while many in Japanese controlled Manila struggled to find more than

103Taruc Interview, 45.

104Vina A. Lanzona, Amazons of the Huk Rebellion: Gender, Sex, and Revolution in the Philippines (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), 121-122. 89 rice. This food shortage was at the heart of the occupation and often food was used to bribe those who collaborated. More dangerous than denying food to those who were not openly pro-Japanese was the Imperial Government’s decision to ban Philippine flags.

This attempt to deny Philippine national identity, much like the before it, strengthened the resolve of the Filipino people to fight the Japanese.

Marking’s Guerilla

An integral part of the Central Luzon command, “Marking’s Guerilla” were led by Marcos Villa Augustin, a former boxer and cab driver from Manila, and Yay Panlilio

Marking a Filipina American who worked as a spy in Japanese-controlled radio and newspapers when the Imperial Army first entered Manila. Originally from Denver she joined the AIB and became part of their intelligence network in the Philippines while she was working as a journalist in Manila. They centered their headquarters in the Sierra

Madre Mountains, east of Manila, and eventually moved their unit under Major

Anderson’s command.

Despite the difficulty in communicating with Australia in the later portion of

1942, the guerillas continued independently to expand their own intelligence networks as the AIB began to lay the foundation for a more integrated network they could both rely upon. While the PRS was building their network throughout the Pacific the guerillas were piecing together the information and making the contacts necessary for it to function efficiently.105

105Colonel Yay Panlilio Marking, 57-58.

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By October of 1942, the outfit was growing by leaps and bounds: full-time fighters in the hills, part time saboteurs working for the enemy and undoing what they had done; propagandists writing, printing, passing their down-in-black-and-white defiance; men and women training themselves as intelligence agents, learning to observe and retain and evaluate quickly; a countryside, bending its back to a double load: the Jap that took by force, and their own patriotic army that begged, begged, begged…From the beginning of the war to the end of it whenever the Japs got too thick for our numbers, or we were low on bullets, we pulled back our fighters far back into the hills and using courier and home guard distribution, turned to counter propaganda. We fired the paper bullets with zeal, mostly because it ired the Japs and lifted the hearts of the people. on bullets, we pulled back our fighters far back into the hills and using courier and home guard distribution, turned to counter propaganda. We fired the paper bullets with zeal, mostly because it ired the Japs and lifted the hearts of the people.106

Colonel Yay was not only the ‘mother’ of the guerillas, but also the silent power. She used her contacts from her clandestine operations in Manila to seek supplies of quinine and other necessities for her men. Much of what was obtained was requested in the letters she pounded out daily on her type-o-writer. The single greatest accomplishment of

Marking’s Guerilla was capturing Ipo Dam on 19 May 1945, protecting the largest source of water for Manila. Allied forces were now in control of the water supply, and able to focus on securing other supply networks within the island which had been disrupted by the occupation. Panlilio and Marking’s joint leadership had united all remaining

American irregular troops in Manila by 1944 and sent countless intelligence reports to

Australia. They were known throughout the region for their powerful leadership, and after the war their courtship continued and they were married.107

106Colonel Yay Panlilio Marking, 58,

107Soriano, 336-338; Report of Jesus Villamor, in the files of the Military Intelligence Division, War Department, Washington, D.C.; Letter of Luis Taruc to Raphaelita H. Soriano from San Fernando Pampanga, May 18, 1946; The Guerrilla 91

Figure 4. General Yay Panlilio and Her Husband, Marcos V. Augustin. Together the two led Marking’s Guerillas.108

Resistance Movement in Bicol Area (Australia: General Headquarters, Southwest Pacific Area, MIS, General Staff, G-2, date November 7, 1942); Smith, 407; Colonel Yay Marking, 338-339.

108 Nehalam Valley Historical Society Online Archive, Accessed 10 May, 2015. 92

Southern Luzon Commands

Southern Luzon, as defined in most official U.S. Army histories, is the portion of the island south of Laguna de Bay as well as the area stretching west from the Bicol

Peninsula. There are four Bicol provinces: , , , and

Sorsogon. The Batangas mountain range overlooks the Verde Island Passage and the channel that lies between southern Luzon and northern Mindoro, a vital shipping lane for the Japanese Roads such as Route 25 and Route 17 stretch from Cavite to Lake Taal, making the region far easier for the Japanese to control. In addition to good roads and easy transport, fighting between commands in this region at times exceeded the amount of fighting that took place against the Imperial Japanese Army. The Bicol Area command was characterized in a 7 November 1944 military intelligence report as the least productive in the Philippines perhaps because of its distance from the coast. Being so far from the coast meant that commands were less able to receive vital supplies provided by

GHQ or to provide Coastwatching intelligence from along the waterways nearby.109

The remnants of USAFFE and local civilians were focused on maintaining

Filipino law and order after the invasion, but eventually many groups in this region, lacking funds and supplies, had to combine their efforts, often with equally limited results. Camarines Norte was dominated by Major Boayes’ “Vinson’s Travelling

Guerilla,” which consisted of roughly four hundred armed men. In Albay there was the

“Bagong Katipunan”, or “the new Katipunan” under the direction of General Orobia, a twenty-seven year old former artist. The Bagong Katipunan were not known for their

109The Guerilla Resistance Movement in The Bicol Area, 21-24. 93 cache of weapons, but they kidnapped and executed the pro-Japanese mayor of Oas.

Major Miranda was allied with the LAPUS of and claimed, roughly three hundred men. Camarines Sur was controlled mainly by Major Miranda, Major Padua, and

Captain Dianela. Major Padua had roughly two thousand men and was located in the vicinity of San Miguel Bay. Captain Dianela had cooperated frequently with Boayes, but both were warring with Miranda.

The complicated relationships in Bicol intensified late in 1943, when Boayes was involved in a cooperative effort with Miranda in Camarines Sur. Miranda accused Boayes of trying to take over his unit and Boayes accused Miranda of killing two of his men.

Miranda fled the region, and Boayes claimed many of the remaining troops. In addition to frequent infighting, Captain Boayes was accused of various atrocities in the region of

Carmines Norte. The violence that took place on these islands highlights the essential nature of the exchange between guerilla intelligence, Coastwatch stations, and the supply lines that kept them functioning.

While there was a great deal of inter-command fighting on the island of Luzon, with the exception of Miranda and Boayes, the guerillas in the south and north had managed to maintain their radios, and collect information contributing to the larger PRS framework. Those manning the Coastwatch stations, and throughout the areas heavily patrolled by the enemy, provided essential information without which the invasion teams would have been coming in blind. The guerilla radio operators provided weather reports, troop movements, and updates when bridges or roads became impassible. Despite the conflicts in each region of Luzon there was still a great deal contributed to the invasion— 94 information that could only come from Manila, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan, or Tayabas.

Just one example was the essential information provided by the Chinese Anti-Japanese

Guerilla Force.110

This organization was led by commanding officer Huang Chieh and vice commanding officer Chai Chian Hua. The resistance fighters were composed of Sino-

Philippine and Chinese nationals in Bataan, Laguna, Tayabas, , Nueva Ecija,

Pampanga, as well as Bulacan and Rizal, in Southern Luzon. Guo Jian became the well- known captain of the Southern Luzon CAJGF. Guo had been asked to assist in the month-long of training members of the Chinese Protection Committee along with its leader Jingcheng, and Luo Lishi, in Mandili, Candaba, Pampanga. The first week Luo

Lishi and Guo Jian taught students short-term political alliance building. The second week Xu Jingcheng focused on the communist “United Front Policy” and in the third week Guo Jian taught soldiers about the political workings of the army. The final week, taught by Huan Jie, focused on guerilla tactics and their practical applications.111

This unit maintained contact with and carried out joint operations with Major

Anderson beginning in July of 1942. Anderson believed that Guo and his men were loyal both to the Commonwealth of the Philippines and Chungking. The Chinese Anti-Japaese

Guerilla Force’s main wartime activities included distribution of news through periodical

110Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation, Volume II. Headquarters United States Army Forces Pacific. Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, 159; IV. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in The Bicol Area, 21-24.

111Li Yuk Wai, The Chinese Resistance Movement in the Philippines During the Japanese Occupation. Unpublished Master’s Thesis (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University, 1991), 120-126. 95 newspapers, organizing the Chinese in central Luzon, and spreading anti-Japanese propaganda. There were also some demolitions and trigger squads, but above all the intelligence they provided regarding the railway to Nichols Field allowed for precision bombing of Manila rail-lines to begin. Before the Battle for Luzon, the CAJGF flashed a signal to MAIN after a major air attack on Nichols Field, Fort McKinley, and Makatai airfield in September of 1944. Their assessment of the damage showed 1,000 soldiers and personnel killed or wounded at each installation.

Next the radioman from the CAJGF informed KAZ Darwin that supply storage had been repositioned in warehouses throughout the city’s suburbs. While some were more difficult to reach via airstrike, there were fuel depots that had been missed by Allied planes in Tondo and Santa Cruz. Even more crucial, the resistance force reported that the rail line, running north and south was being used exclusively for military purposes. This meant that the army had no civilian targets to avoid and could begin unrestricted bombing of the rail line, severing yet another vital supply line to the Japanese war effort in Manila.

Before the arrival of the Americans on Leyte the Japanese had been cut off from vital access points because of intelligence provided by the Chinese-Anti Japanese Guerilla

Force, Marking’s Guerillas, the Hukbalahap, and other resistance on Luzon.112

While the Bicol station floundered and some guerilla commands were notoriously corrupt, the Southern Luzon Coastwatch station at Tayabas Bay provided information vital to the success of the invasion of Mindoro, which began on 20 December 1944. In

112III. The Guerilla Resistance Movement on Central Luzon, 17; Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Headquarters United States Army Forces Pacific. Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, 164-165.

96

September a Coastwatch station from Tayabas radioed the location of a Japanese garrison at Detkai and Dibucao, as well as a warning that 100 civilians regularly worked within the vicinity. Americans were concerned with minimizing civilian casualties in an effort to boost morale after a long and brutal war, but also to ensure that their relationship with the

Philippines remained strong after the war. In addition, the watch station at Pangasinan radioed in on 7 September to warn GHQ of the Japanese effort to fortify Lingayen Gulf with defensive outposts. When Allied forces entered Lingayen they were aware of the

Japanese fortified positions and how best to avoid them due to the contributions of the

Luzon district commands.113

Conclusion

On the island of Luzon the Philippine guerilla forces, AIB agents and GHQ learned how to operate, and at times how not to conduct themselves in a region heavily garrisoned with enemy troops and flush with counter-guerilla espionage networks.

Agents of the Philippine Regional Section navigated the field of Japanese spies to make contact with the Central Luzon and Southern Luzon guerilla forces, establishing direct radio contact between Luzon and KAZ in Darwin through at least two high powered radio stations. In addition, a great number of small coast watching stations overlooked the coasts including the essential observation posts near the Surigao Straight, the Verde

113Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation, Volume II. Headquarters United States Army Forces Pacific. Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, 157-159; IV. The Guerilla Resistance Movement in The Bicol Area, 21-24; Wai, 81-104.

97

Island Passage, and the Visayan Sea. During the second phase of PRS operations on

Luzon and in the southern islands, agents, radio operators, and resistance personnel continued to be trained in a variety of skills including ship identification, counter- espionage, and ordinance at training centers in Washington D.C., the special school for training AIB agents in Cairns, Australia, and Taglagalbra. The training carried out by these organizations and continued by the guerilla leaders in the islands kept the resistance forces and their allies one step ahead of the Japanese counter-intelligence services and counter-guerilla forces. The allied communications and intelligence network together with the guerilla and allied forces were trained to handle or adapt to new threats, intelligence or security. This was evidenced by the amount of sensitive information shared by these forces from 1943-1945. The exploits of those AIB operations in the southern islands will be discussed in the next chapter.114

114General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Administrative Adjustments Directive- Memorandum Supplemental to AIB Directive. Copy Number 9. April, 16, 1943.

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Chapter 3: From Mindanao, Sulu, and Visayas, to Palawan,

The Resistance in the Southern Philippine Islands

Problems and Solutions

When the Japanese occupation began guerilla forces sprang up on each of the

Philippine islands to combat the Japanese soldiers who used violence to instill terror and exact revenge for what they saw as a rejection of their promise of a Greater East Asian

Co-prosperity Sphere. In addition to fighting the Japanese, these guerilla bands were formed to combat the lawlessness that erupted as the occupation forces weakened basic civil structures—created in most cases to stop the looting and violence, not condone it.

Guerilla leaders had been ordered by MacArthur to minimize open confrontation with the

Japanese, thus limiting their role to collection and dissemination of intelligence and propaganda, and to harassment missions—all of which they managed to accomplish under constant pressure from the Japanese counterespionage network, and the Philippine

Executive Commission, not to mention the brutality of Kempei Tai and the Imperial

Army. MacArthur hoped to delay the outbreak of continuous hostilities until Allied forces were prepared to reinvade the Philippines.115 By limiting their operations and accepting the assistance of multi-national organizations, the Philippine guerillas were

115Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation, “Development of Contact with American POW in Japanese Camps.” Volume II. Headquarters United States Army Forces Pacific. Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, 4-26; Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. “PHILIPPINE MONTHLY COMBINED SITUATION REPORT,”15 April 1944,” 2.Volume II. Headquarters United States Army Forces Pacific. Military Intelligence Section, General Staff; Schmidt, 243. 99 able to create one of the most expansive espionage networks ever maintained without the support of a regular army.116

The efforts of the Philippine Regional Section’s Filipino and American agents, and the intelligence provided by the Coastwatchers and guerillas they supported in the southern Philippines, made possible the landing at Leyte Gulf on 20 October 1944.117

The southern Philippine islands include Mindanao, the Visayas, Cebu, Negros, and many other smaller islands. The island of Mindanao had poor roads and a long history of Moro and Christian resistance against occupation, making the Japanese far less inclined to venture into the interior for much of the war. Guerillas in the district were organized under the direction of American Colonel Wendell W. Fertig, a former mining engineer, who through MAIN provided all other commands a central hub for communication relays, as well as the primary delivery point for supply runs from Australia. Panay was home to the “Free Philippines” Government, under the direction of Governor Tomas

Confesor, as well as the first communications relay to Australia, coordinated by Brigadier

General Macario Peralta. American forces were so impressed by their first

116Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation, “Development of Contact with American POW in Japanese Camps,” Volume II. Headquarters United States Army Forces Pacific. Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, 4-26.

117General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. “G-2 Staff Study of the Philippine Islands Situation, 25 February 1944.” 2-3; 10.

100 reconnaissance party to make contact with Peralta and Confesor that they quickly increased their commitments in the islands.118

Colonel Allison W. Ind arrived on the eighth floor of 121 Collins Street, a rather bland looking former bank in Melbourne, Australia where he found General MacArthur conferring with Major General Willoughby and others at their present office for General

Headquarters SWPA. This group hoped to build upon the successes of the Australian

SOA, Special Operation’s Australia, and RAN’s Coastwatchers. Those meeting on 6 July

1942 hoped to establish the Allied Intelligence Bureau, placing the head of Australian

Military Intelligence for the Army, C.G. Roberts at its head, and appointing Colonel Ind as its financial officer so that American forces continued to control the purse-strings. The

Philippine Regional Section of the AIB was to organize a series of penetration missions that would “establish a net for military intelligence and secret service”119 to be utilized by the guerillas locally and in communication with GHQ. With the help of their liaison

Charles “Chick” Parsons, the Bureau facilitated the supply, communication, and repairing relations between guerilla forces from Lingayen to Sulu. Parsons endeavored to coordinate supply and infiltrations missions following the first successful landing by

Villamor. His organization, with a crew not entirely AIB, Navy, or Army, was known as

118General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. “G-2 Staff Study of the Philippine Islands Situation, 25 February 1944,” 2-3; 10.

119Ind, Secret War, 9-12; Allison W. Ind, Correspondence With Colonel C.G. Roberts. “Subject: Proposal for Philippine Sub-Section,” 20 October, 1942.

101

“Spy Squadron or Spyron”, responsible for thirty-eight missions, and so successful that he became one of only four American men to earn the Philippine Medal of Valor.120

In March 1942, Major G. Egerton Mott of the British Army arrived in Australia with the authority to create a special task force to combat sabotage and subversive enemy activity. This organization became known as the Allied Intelligence Bureau. At its peak in 1943, the Allied Intelligence Bureau was composed of four divisions: A, B, C, and D.

The first of these sections, Section A was the “Special Operations Australia, SOA,” the first to emerge and remain under the leadership of Major Mott. Section B was “Secret

Intelligence Australia, or SIA” as headed by Captain Kendall. Section C was subdivided into the Coastwatchers under Commander Eric Feldt; the Philippine Regional Section was first under the direction of Colonel Allison W. Ind, then later Major General

Courtney Whitney. Col. Stephen M. Mellnik was in control of a parallel organization called the Philippine Regional Sectional as controlled by G-2 during the later portion of the war, while Courtney Whitney maintained his position as the more powerful head of the Philippine Sub-Section, at that time officially under G-3. On 19 June General Thomas

Albert Blamey authorized the creation of a propaganda section known as Section D, “Far

Eastern Liaison Office” or FELO as coordinated by Commander J.C.R Proud. All of these organizations operated with close allegiances to the countries most involved in their

120Ind, Secret War, 9-12; General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. “G-2 Staff Study of the Philippine Islands Situation, 25 February 1944,” 2-3; 10. Travis Ingham, Rendezvous By Submarine: The Story of Charles Parsons and the Guerilla-Soldiers. (Garden City, New York, 1945), 51-53; Ingham, 134. 102 operations, which created strong rivalries but also produced a great variety of approaches.121

Prior to contact with Planet party, the first intelligence gathering party to penetrate the enemy held islands, radio transmission was often very difficult to maintain in the Philippines. Capt. William L. Osborne and Capt. Damon J. Gause brought the first personal accounts of the Philippines, having managed to escape after the surrender at

Corregidor. They traveled from Palawan, to northern , before crossing the

Makassar Strait and arriving off northern Australia on 11 October 1942. Other than the few times operators were able to raise the KFS station in San Francisco in November

1942, or when radio WZE in Panay was able to directly contact Darwin, communications in the islands were largely limited to shortwave relays between commands. Nevertheless, as time passed more stations in Mindanao, Cebu, and Negros would join Major Walter

Praeger in Northern Luzon and Colonel Macario Peralta in Panay as part of a broader radio network. GHQ was terrified that if their operatives did not use proper cyphers,

Japanese radio operators would intercept and decipher their messages. Failing to use simple cyphers in either case, Guillermo Nakar and a radio station in Cebu found themselves in danger when their transmissions were discovered. Nakar was caught and

121Gavin Merrick Long, Australia in the War of 1939-1945. Series 1- Army. Volume VII- The Final Campaigns, “Appendix 4: The Allied Intelligence Bureau,” 1-6; Ind, Secret War, 3.

103 executed in September 1942, while those manning the radio station in Cebu were arrested early the following year.122

With so many broadcasts continuing in an unsecure fashion, on 4 December

Captain Charles Smith of the area command, Jordan Hamner, and a group of Moro navigators sailed to Australia determined to make contact with General MacArthur.

Given the recent success of other AIB ventures in the Solomons, resulting in success at the battle of the Coral Sea and the initial advantage at Guadalcanal, the frustrating lack of reliable information regarding the Philippines caused Colonel Roberts and newly appointed head of the Philippine Region Section Colonel Allison Ind to seek reliable contacts even tough the Japanese regularly patrolled the seas surrounding the Southern

Philippine Islands.123

122General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. “G-2 Staff Study of the Philippine Islands Situation, 25 February 1944”, 10-11; General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948 (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): II. Intelligence Activities in the Philippines: Japanese Occupation, 7.

123General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948 (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): II. Intelligence Activities in the Philippines: Japanese Occupation, 7; Steve Mellnik, Philippine Diary 1939-1945 (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969); Ind, Secret War, 30-32, 38-41; Travis Ingham, Rendezvous By Submarine: The Story of Charles Parsons and the Guerilla-Soldiers. (Garden City, New York, 1945), 51-53.

104

The first mission to penetrate enemy held waters after the occupation was coordinated with the help of Jesus A. Villamor.124 Villamor’s operation became known as

‘Planet party’, beginning their journey to establish contact with the islands in late

December 1942. Building on the network created by Villamor, Chick Parsons led the second “Fifty Party” during which he spent six months expanding the communications network and establishing contacts with additional commands. Continuing until the end of

1943, there were additional AIB parties: “Peleven”, “Peleven Relief”, and “Tenwest” the party led into Sulu by Jordan Hamner. With each penetration party or separate mission led by Spyron, the well-organized guerilla forces were able to overcome geography via radio, and the information flooding back to Australia provided Allied command with current weather reports, enemy air, ship, and personnel movements, as well as captured

Japanese war plans just prior to the invasion. This intricate, multi-national network gave vital support to an already powerful Filipino guerilla resistance.125

124General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. “G-2 Staff Study of the Philippine Islands Situation, 25 February 1944,” 4-10; Attentiste- “the waiters”, is a term used to describe the members of the who waited to choose a side until an allied victory seemed assured; Ingham, 53; Schmidt, 99.

125Ind, Secret War, 103-127, 144, 159; Schmidt, 99; Mellnik, 285.

105

LEGEND .. A I B PENETRATIONS "" ... ,'- .. o INITIAL LAN DING POINTS ,-..... APPROXIMATE ROU TE TR AVELED , VILLAMOR 21 DEC 4 2 PARSONS-SMiTH 18 FEB 43 \ CRESPO 15 APR 43 HAMNER 27 fl.AY 43 ..... CRUZ 17 JUN 4 3 ', AMES 3 1 JUL 43 P R S PENETRATIONS 29 OCT 43 " ---...... LANOINGS WITH DATE S OF OEPARTURE FROM AU ST --... PLANNED PENETRATIONS WITH DATES APPRovED

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PARSONS 230CT43

CORPU. PLACIQO 24

B 0 R N E

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PLATE NO. 86 AlB and PRS Penetrations of the Philippines, 1943-1944

Figure 5. “AIB and PRS Penetrations of the Philippines 1943-1944.”126

126General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of 106

“Planet party” Establishes Contact with the Visayas Guerrillas

In October 1942, Air Corps Captain Jesus A. Villamor began discussing with

Colonels Ind and Roberts the idea of leading the first well-trained and well-supplied AIB party to penetrate the Japanese-held Philippine islands since the occupation had begun.

His primary concern was that with the number of tasks given to his party, contact with the guerillas would overshadow his ability to focus on discerning the attitudes of

Filipinos and second-generation immigrants regarding the occupying force. Villamor, like most within the bureau, knew that without the support of the citizens their operations could not succeed.127

Following the example of Brigadier General De Jesus of the Military Intelligence

Service earlier that year, Villamor and his men protected themselves by operating under the cell principle. This dictated that each group kept only three well-trained and trustworthy agents, and that all tertiary agents were to be cautiously added from the population, never being told anything more than was absolutely necessary. Even being suspected of knowing vital information could result in arrest, torture, and beheading.

Captain Villamor not only controlled the flow of information but also wanted to limit the number of troop engagements because, “…the Japanese to instill fear in the hearts of the

General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 305.

127Captain Jesus A. Villamor, Correspondence with Colonel C.G. Roberts, AIB Controller, as relayed through Major Allison W. Ind, Allied Intelligence Bureau, 18 November; Allison W. Ind, Correspondence with Colonel Merle-Smith, 19 November, 1942; Captain Jesus A. Villamor, Correspondence with Colonel C.G. Roberts, AIB Controller, as relayed through Major Allison W. Ind, 29 October, 1942.

107 people and to prevent guerilla forces from receiving aid from outsiders, wouldn’t hesitate to kill or perhaps even destroy communities suspected of harboring or having dealings with guerillas.”128 Minimizing the number of skirmishes with the enemy as well as the number of operatives who could be tortured into divulging sensitive operational secrets made their network far more secure in a rapidly shifting environment.129

After assessing the view of the public, next the plan was to ascertain the intentions of the Japanese. Villamor’s party also needed to discern military strength, dispositions, quality, and morale, as well as Japanese plans to thwart any invasion attempts by the Americans. GHQ realized that there was a great deal more than could be accomplished with one mission, but contacts first had to be made with the main districts of Panay and Mindanao to provide them cyphers, codes, and procedures for communications with AIB. Until GHQ could verify the reports they had been getting occasionally by radio from agents making face-to-face contact, the strength of the movement could not be assessed.130

128Captain Jesus A. Villamor, Correspondence with Colonel C.G. Roberts, AIB Controller, as relayed through Major Allison W. Ind, Allied Intelligence Bureau, 18 November; Allison W. Ind, Correspondence with Colonel Merle-Smith, 19 November, 1942; Captain Jesus A. Villamor, Correspondence with Colonel C.G. Roberts, AIB Controller, as relayed through Major Allison W. Ind, 29 October, 1942.

129General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Signal Corps Message: From General MacArthur to Fertig, Smith, Abcede, Peralta, Kangleon, Cushing, Inginiero, Young. 2 August 1944; General Headquarters Far East Command. A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948 (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): II. Intelligence Activities in the Philippines: Japanese Occupation, 18.

130Captain Jesus A. Villamor, Correspondence with Colonel C.G. Roberts, AIB Controller, as relayed through Major Allison W. Ind, Allied Intelligence Bureau, 18, 108

To infiltrate an island held by the Japanese and their Ganap clients, a force of adaptable, well-rounded Filipino nationals began training during the first week in October in Brisbane, at 171 Queen Street, just outside Barracks. Until the middle of

December, each morning Captain A.L. Davidson left his Heindorff House office, and put his trainees through grueling conditioning. This was followed by an afternoon of in-depth training with cyphers and Morse code. In the evenings they practiced infiltration, coastal navigation, mock submarine landings, and celestial navigation. These tasks were made all the more difficult by the need to avoid contact with the hyper-vigilant citizens of

Brisbane, who were all quite on edge after the Japanese bombing raids against Darwin.

These agents provided quite effective both in Darwin and in the field.131

The Planet party trainees included: Captain Jose Villamor, second-in-command

Lieutenant Rodolpho C. Ignacio, Lieutenant Delfin Yu Hico, radio operator Lieutenant

Emilio F. Quinto, Sergeant Patricio Jorge, and a man skilled in evasion, Sergeant

Dominador Malic. The trainees needed to blend in to their surroundings and matching cover story, right down to the farmer’s callouses they should have carried after months of

November; Allison W. Ind, Correspondence with Colonel. Merle-Smith, 19 November, 1942; Captain Jesus A. Villamor, Correspondence with Colonel C.G. Roberts, AIB Controller, as relayed through Major Allison W. Ind, 29 October, 1942; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Signal Corps Message: From General MacArthur to Fertig, Smith, Abcede, Peralta, Kangleon, Cushing, Inginiero, Young, 2 August 1944; General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948 (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): II. Intelligence Activities in the Philippines: Japanese Occupation, 18.

131Ind, Secret War,105-110, 5; Major Jesus A. Villamor, Air Corps AUS. Possible Ways of Returning to Australia (General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area: Allied Intelligence Bureau), 12 December 1942; Reports and Proceedings, HMA Ships and Establishments (Department of Defense, Navy, March 1944-1945.) 109 plowing fields by hand. In addition to practicing Judo and studying map sketching and reading, ship and plane identification, erasing tracks, and basic survival, they also spent days chopping wood and plowing fields. When they arrived in the islands their light cotton shirts and shorts were as indicative of their ‘life’ as magsasaka, or farmers, as their physique. The plan was to land at night in Pagadian Bay, Mindanao, where Lieutenant

Quinto and Sergeant Malic were both assigned to establish and maintain 4E7, the area command’s radio station. The remaining officers then began their individual missions to contact Colonels Peralta, Fertig, and Abcede.132

As dawn broke over the Brisbane River on Sunday 27 December, the crew of the

Planet party arrived to help another crew embark the submarine USS Gudgeon only to find that the packs had secretly been brought on board. After many days journey, they arrived off the coast of Mindanao, and had received radio warnings from GHQ that there were too many Japanese vessels in the waters surrounding Pagadian Bay. GHQ ordered them instead to reroute and continue toward Negros. Lieutenant Commander W.S. Post ordered the USS Gudgeon brought to ‘neutral buoyancy’ and used the periscope to scour the beach at Cansilan Point. Lights on the shore made it necessary to move the landing position yet again, but the next night they finally surfaced at Catmon Point near the village of Jinobaan. With members of the submarine crew prepared to provide cover fire,

132Ind, Secret War, 105-110; 5; Major Jesus A. Villamor, Air Corps AUS. Possible Ways of Returning to Australia (General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area: Allied Intelligence Bureau), 12 December 1942; Reports and Proceedings, HMA Ships and Establishments (Department of Defense, Navy. March 1944-1945); Major Jesus A. Villamor. General Head Quarters Southwest pacific Area. Allied Intelligence Bureau. Report on Planet party. Message To: Major Ind, December 26, 1942.

110

Villamor’s men began following their training and commenced off-loading supplies into their rubber rafts. Unfortunately the third raft had an irreparable hole and the supplies it was to carry had to be discarded. On 14 January, despite the dire need for medical supplies, it was decided they would have to leave everything but the cyphers and code sheets, radios, and money behind. With one set of codes hidden as microfiche in a modified dental implant, reluctantly they abandoned the rest of the supplies to ensure their mission was not jeopardized.133

As they reached the shore, they were spotted and the party members were seized.

It became clear only after some marching and terse exchanges with their captors, that

Madamba was in command of the guerillas who arrested them, and that it was part of a group loyal to Lieutenant Colonel James Cushing on Cebu. Madamba explained to

Villamor that there was a command conflict between James Cushing and the dangerously eccentric Henry Fenton. As Fenton’s actions seemed to grow increasingly deadly for the local population, Villamor ordered his friend Dr. H.R. Bell to make contact with both groups, share contact information, and assess the situation. While Bell was taking stock of the conflict, Fenton began making radio calls taunting the Japanese in their area.

133Ind, Secret War, 108-115. On the subject of the launch location, Ind says the Brisbane River and Dissette says the Swan River outside Perth. While both are plausible Colonel Ind was the head of the Philippine section at the time the launch took place and his account, neither bearing citations is far more reliable; Allison W. Ind, Correspondence with Colonel Merle-Smith, 19 November, 1942; Captain Jesus A. VIllamor, Correspondence with Major Allison W. Ind, Subject: Commando Unit for Operation on Island of Mindanao, 19 November, 1942; Edward Dissette and Hans Christian Adamson, Guerilla Submarines: Daring Undersea Action— Brave Men Change the Fortunes of the Pacific War (New York: Bantam Books Inc., 1972), 1-8; Captain A.H. McCollum U.S. Navy. 7th Fleet Command File Memorandum. “Submarine Activities Connected with Guerilla Organizations in the Philippines,” No Date, 2.

111

Before Fenton was put to death, with GHQ consent for jeopardizing AIB’s larger mission, his actions had invited Japanese reprisal—the razing of Barrio Maslog, Cebu.134

Now that Villamor had improved his standing on the island and found a defensible location, Quinto and Malic were able to establish their primary objective and set up 4E7, making contact on 27 January 1943 with KAZ in Darwin. With the radio station’s set-up now complete and another command contacted, Lieutenant Yu Hico began to work on contacting the first command, Panay. Yu Hico set off to meet Colonel

Mercario Peralta and Governor Tomas Confesor, carrying the codes and cyphers intended for them tucked into a hidden patch in the ankle of his shoe. Having arrived and established contact, he radioed back to KAZ the phrase, “mission accomplished.” Colonel

Peralta instilled so much confidence that he was given control of two additional commands, and the success of his forces and the Civil Government in Panay left GHQ with the distinct impression of competence, loyalty, and a reminder that the nation was amply ready to assist in its own liberation.135

Before Captain Villamor completed his mission, leaving his radio operators to maintain 4E7, he found a trustworthy man by the name of Agent Alvarez to run Wendell

134Ind, Secret War, 113-126; Edward Dissette and Hans Christian Adamson, Guerilla Submarines: Daring Undersea Action— Brave Men Change the Fortunes of the Pacific War (New York: Bantam Books Inc., 1972), 1-8; Captain A.H. McCollum U.S. Navy. 7th Fleet Command File Memorandum. “Submarine Activities Connected with Guerilla Organizations in the Philippines,” No Date, 2.

135Ind, Secret War, 113-127; Edward Dissette and Hans Christian Adamson, Guerilla Submarines: Daring Undersea Action— Brave Men Change the Fortunes of the Pacific War (New York: Bantam Books Inc., 1972), 1-8; Captain A.H. McCollum U.S. Navy. 7th Fleet Command File Memorandum. “Submarine Activities Connected with Guerilla Organizations in the Philippines,” No Date, 2.

112

Fertig’s preliminary code sheets and cyphers to Mindanao. After conferring with GHQ about his own journey out of the islands, he sent a powerful Australian Coastwatcher

ATR4A transceiver to James Cushing for the purpose of contacting Mindanao and the newly established station at Negros. Despite some setbacks, they had given GHQ reason to expand their mission in the Philippines and the means of doing so had been provided to the two most influential guerilla commanders in the southern Philippine islands. Planet party had established a primary communications network on which all subsequent clandestine missions would build.136

Wendell W. Fertig in Mindanao still needed better radios, and so to further strengthen what seemed to be another promising command, a second party was authorized to land at Pagadian Bay. Special Mission, Spy Squadron, or “Spyron” were all names used to describe the 39 supply missions made by 18 different submarines after

January 1943, many of which were either involved in transporting clandestine teams led by Charles ‘Chicho’ Parsons, or guided by the intelligence gathered by his men. As non- commissioned personnel, Parsons was never officially in charge of any of the personnel on the submarines by which he travelled, but this was normal course. Mindanao was their

136Ind, Secret War, 113-127; Edward Dissette and Hans Christian Adamson, Guerilla Submarines: Daring Undersea Action— Brave Men Change the Fortunes of the Pacific War (New York: Bantam Books Inc., 1972), 1-8; Captain A.H. McCollum U.S. Navy, 7th Fleet Command File Memorandum. “Submarine Activities Connected with Guerilla Organizations in the Philippines,” No Date, 2.; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 295; Intelligence Activities, 11.

113 first priority when entering the islands so as to provide an in-person assessment of

Fertig’s operation to GHQ, before moving forward.137

The 7th Fleet Naval command was never enthusiastic about the idea of such high- risk missions, but they were won over when radioed the details of an attack—proof that these submarine missions, or rather the Coastwatchers these missions supplied, could provide real-time damage reports for ‘hit-and-run’ missions carried out against Japanese targets. Nevertheless, as the 7th Fleet provided both the submarines and the personnel, they still retained autonomy of command aboard their vessels. Parsons reported to

Captain A.H. McCollom of the U.S. Navy, Colonel Courtney Whitney of the Philippine

Regional Section, AIB, and decisions made by Parsons were then passed through Colonel

Whitney and Controller Roberts, but shortly after Parson’s arrival it was ultimately

Lieutenant General Richard K. Sutherland who made the decisions in GHQ. This duplication in command structure is an example of the tensions between Allied British,

Australian, and American commands, but it provided Chick Parsons with freedom of maneuver.138

137Ingham, 131-133; Schmidt, 173-176; Ind, Secret War, 160; Alan Powell, War By Stealth: Australians and the Allied Intelligence Bureau. 1942-1945 (Melbourne, AUS: Melbourne University Press, 1996), 81-83.

138Ingham, 131-133; Schmidt, 173-176; Ind, Secret War, 160; Alan Powell, War By Stealth: Australians and the Allied Intelligence Bureau. 1942-1945 (Melbourne, AUS: Melbourne University Press, 1996), 81-83; Captain A.H. McCollum U.S. Navy. 7th Fleet Command File Memorandum. “Submarine Activities Connected with Guerilla Organizations in the Philippines,” No Date, 2.

114

Prior to rejoining the U.S. Navy in 1941, Parsons, who had been living in the

Philippines for many years, had worked for the Luzon Stevedoring Company, where he managed a fleet of tug-boats pulling cargo along the Philippine coasts. These many voyages allowed him to memorize sea navigation routes throughout the Philippines, particularly around Mindanao. When he finally began running supply missions into the region he already knew the area well enough to navigate without native assistance.

Likewise, he staffed his squadron with people who knew the Philippine seas. His brother- in-law, Tommy Jurika, would serve as his supply officer and whose task it was to secure the equipment needed by the guerillas either from the Army or other civilian sources.

Jurika worked along-side Army Captain George Kinsler who assisted with supply.

Parsons was given clearance to enlist the help of Philippine national and Navy ensign

William Hagans to take charge of fueling and embarking at forward bases. Those bases well beyond their normal lanes of operation were to be handled by Navy Lieutenant Lee

Strickland. Each of these men facilitated the supply mechanism that kept the Coastwatch, guerilla districts, and AIB intelligence missions operating successfully prior the arrival of the Allied Forces.139

From 1943-1945 their missions and those of other Spyron operations provided

1,325 tons of supplies, only 50 tons of which were lost. One submarine was lost, the USS

Seawolf in October 1944, possibly due to a naval friendly fire incident. Overall no missions were unsuccessful, 327 persons were landed in the Philippines, and 466 total

139Ind, Secret War, 141-147, 182. Ingham, 135-143; Captain A.H. McCollum U.S. Navy. 7th Fleet Command File Memorandum. “Submarine Activities Connected with Guerilla Organizations in the Philippines,” No Date, 2.

115 persons were evacuated from the islands, ensuring that they were out of reach of the

Japanese. This was crucial because the Japanese government had issued a proclamation stating that any allied civilians or soldiers found in the islands after 25 January 1944 would be executed. On Panay they began the killings sooner, as these islands were part of the Free Philippine government and ‘not part of the ceasefire’.140

While expanding the intelligence net quickly and effectively was a priority,

Parsons was so successful with the guerillas because he had a concern for the individual and an authenticity that naturally hastened the mission’s progress. When planning for the second infiltration party, the first items he asked Colonel Whitney to requisition were

Quinine and Atabrine, along with niacin, salt, and vitamin tablets, to combat the rickets, beriberi, and dysentery that were plaguing residents throughout the islands particularly in the internment camps. While prophylactics would not rid the population of malaria, it would at least allow them to suppress symptoms long enough to permit their bodies to recover. These items that took up so little space not only combatted disease, but boosted morale and military effectiveness. The Japanese failed to secure and provide preventative medicines to their men after 1943, drastically reducing their fighting force’s ability to cope with the tropical environment. In addition to raising morale with medical supplies, the Americans brought cigarettes lined with “ISRM”, or “I Shall Return,

MacArthur” as propaganda pieces, and items peculiar to the personal needs of each district leader. In another effort to boost morale among civilians, “Fifty Party” was to

140Captain A.H. McCollum U.S. Navy, 7th Fleet Command File Memorandum. “Submarine Activities Connected with Guerilla Organizations in the Philippines,” No Date, 2.

116 bring with them communion wine and wafers for the predominantly Catholic nation that had been lacking of both for some time. These carefully selected items gave each of the personnel Parsons was to meet within the islands a considerate reminder of his interest in successful future cooperation.141

Spyron Commander Charles Parson, his crew, and Major Charles Smith boarded the USS Tambor outside Freemantle on 18 February and by 5 March they were surfacing at Langangan, Pagadian Bay. After providing these gestures of good faith, and pesos for

Fertig and Peralta to buy more supplies, Parsons spent another six months making contacts under the direction of Colonel Wendell W. Fertig. His first meeting was with

Colonel Ruperto K. Kangleon to balance power between Leyte and Mindanao. Kangleon had agreed that all of the intelligence gathered on Leyte would be radioed to Fertig, who would then relay the message to KAZ in Darwin, from there it went on to GHQ in

Brisbane. Parsons had established another radio network and secure contact schedule. In

November, Major Charles Smith established his own command and radio net on the island of Samar. There were four subsequent parties that successfully infiltrated enemy- held positions throughout 1943 and each newly established radio network expanded

Mindanao’s capacity as a relay station. Additionally, contact between the groups solidified command structures, expanded supply routes, boosted morale, and demanded a

141Ingham, 138-139; Caitlin T. Bentley, “Disease and Destitution: The Liberation of New Guinea and the Philippine Islands” (Undergraduate Research Thesis, The Ohio State University, 2013), 10; Intelligence Activities 12-14; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of Douglas MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: Activities of the Allied Intelligence Bureau,” Reprint 1994, 298; 324; Also discussed in Schmidt, 178.

117 clearer system of recognition from GHQ. These penetration parties were then by necessity transitioned to supply and extraction missions that continued until January

1945.142

One of the more drastic reorganizations ordered by MacArthur was the order from

GHQ to restore the ten pre-war Philippine Military Districts in February of 1943.

Demonstrating the amount of respect AIB had for Peralta’s leadership capabilities he was named commander of the 6th Military District of Panay and to asked, until permanent command was confirmed, to oversee direction of the 7th District of Negros, the island soon established under the command of Captain Salvador Abcede of the Philippine

Army, as well as the 8th district of Cebu under the command of Colonel James H.

Cushing in Cebu and Major Ismael Igeniero of . Colonel Fertig’s was responsible for commanding the 10th District of Mindanao, and overseeing the 9th district of Leyte under the command of Colonel Rupert K. Kangleon, as well as a number of effective but

142Ingham, 138-139; Caitlin T. Bentley, “Disease and Destitution: The Liberation of New Guinea and the Philippine Islands” (Undergraduate Research Thesis, The Ohio State University, 2013), 10; Intelligence Activities, 10, 12-14; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of Douglas MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: Activities of the Allied Intelligence Bureau,” Reprint 1994, 298; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Military Intelligence Section. Philippine Islands: Channels of Communication From Philippines to GHQ. *Traffic is now separated into intelligence and classified “AIB only”, with 100- watt transceivers that can directly contact KAZ, or “Guerilla”, with all stations reporting to “Main” or Mindanao, and Mindanao reports to GHQ.

118 factional guerilla bands on the island of Samar and radio operator Charles Smith. Smith was later named commander of Samar operations during the invasion of Leyte Gulf.143

143Intelligence Activities, 10, 12-14; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of Douglas MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: Activities of the Allied Intelligence Bureau,” Reprint 1994), 301-302; 311-318.

119

... "" COMMANDING OFFICERS RECOGN IZE D " .. OR APPOINTED BY GHQ, SWPA ,) .. ,,, ..... ,'.'C'U ," 5 4 TH DISTRICT MAJ J M RUFFY. PA (MINDORO) MAJ P MUYCO PA (PALAWANI .... ,. , 5 TH DISTRICT CAPT M DONAtO, PA () CAPT S UNTALAN,PA(MARINDUOUEI 6TH DISTRICT COl. M PERALTA, PA 7TH DISTRICT" LT COL ABCEDE, PA 8TH DISTRICT MAJ f INGENfERO, PA (BOHOL AREA CO MMAND) LT COL J M CUSHING, AUS (CEBU ARE A COMMAND) 9 TH DISTRICT COL R. K KANGLEON, PA (LEVrE AREA COM MA ND) LT COL C M SMITH, AUS (SAMAR AREA COMMAND) 10TH DISTRICT COL W FERTlG,AUS(MINDANAO) LT COL A SUAREZ. PA (SULU N AREA CO MM AND) I .}oo--XX -- No other di strict commonders were oppointed . 5 Lu zon guerrillas were not recoorllzed on the basIs of area controlled :t.-lx 3

- 3 -

4 TH DISTR ICT

A • - o

.. I ,a...... ,u", .'

o b En 5 " l.5 SEA

5 aGeIS T">! 1- . .) • PLATE NO. 85 Military Districts, 1943- 1945

Figure 6. “Military Districts 1943-1945.”144

144General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of 120

Also in January 1943, a simplified system of operations was put in place directing messages to their destination with greater speed and improved accuracy, simply by duplicating the message the first time it was sent. Monitors at each relay station would not need to double back through great lengths of telegraph tape, in order to locate a single message if it were not received on the first attempt. Instead, they sent two copies of every message to each destination to assure their arrival. With so many of the lower guerilla districts now provided equipment and plans by Villamor, Parsons, and others, information began to flow back to Allied Air, Naval, and Land forces SWPA, as well as

AIB headquarters in Brisbane. Net Control Station KAZ in Darwin, Australia was responsible for controlling all radio traffic for the Philippine Regional Section and forwarding information to Naval Commands in Perth, or wherever else the intelligence was most needed. Responsibilities of KAZ operators included assigning call signs, times, and frequencies; giving preference to messages of greater import; and maintaining the call-in schedule for operators within their network. This vast system of operators in

Darwin and Mindanao ensured the rapid communication of information to where it was most needed while the information was still crucial to theater security.145

General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 303. See also Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. “PHILIPPINE MONTHLY COMBINED SITUATION REPORT, DATE: 15 April 1944,” Volume II. Headquarters United States Army Forces Pacific. Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, 141.

145General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. “G-2 Staff Study of the Philippine Islands Situation, 25 February 1944,” 4-10; NSA, (Author is Classified) The Origination and Evolution of Radio Traffic Analysis: World War II, No Year.

121

Mindanao

Mindanao is the second largest island and is separated by Illigan and Pagadian

Bays into Zamboanga, which covers the rugged terrain of Western Mindanao, and

“Central”, or rather the remainder of central and eastern Mindanao. Both bays, but particularly the latter, were an essential part of the guerillas’ shipping network.

Submarines would surface at night, and after scanning the shore, they would receive the all clear from Fertig’s men and their homeguard supporters. The supplies were rapidly offloaded into bancas and shipped to the military districts in greatest need. As there were very few usable roads—the Sayre Highway running north to south and Highway 1 running east to west—the civilians on the island were left to continue their lives largely free from harassment while they and the guerillas were in control of roughly ninety-five percent of the island through the middle of June 1943.146 The control of these valuable shipping routes allowed for the success of Spyron despite the number of enemy craft searching for Charles Parsons, who, despite having a sizable bounty on his head, was never turned in to Japanese authorities.

Colonel Wendell Fertig had been a mining engineer, working for a company in

Luzon prior to the war, and he easily fell into the role of strategic planner for the

Mindanao radio and supply network. He spoke at least some of each local dialect and was

146Schmidt, 111-16, 26; General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, Tenth District, 27; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of Douglas MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: Activities of the Allied Intelligence Bureau,” Reprint 1994), 308; Guerilla Resistance Movement, 83-85.

122 able to connect with and bridge the gap between warring Christian and Moro factions on the island. His interpersonal skills were at times tested by other regional commanders, but with Charles Parsons working as liaison even the rival leader of the region

Salipada K. Pendatun was convinced to come under Fertig’s authority. By unifying rival commands Parsons alleviated pressure on the Mindanao radio forces and strengthened the possibilities for future operations in the region.147

Fertig situated his headquarters inside a former Spanish fort on the outskirts of

Misamis City with a population of 250,000. The civil government in Misamis had continued to function largely because the Japanese had never troubled themselves with the area, but also because there was a large guerilla force present for added security. Life was continuing much as it had before the war—factories continued to manufacture goods and roughly half of those were being circulated among the southern islands by banca. The

Mindanao movement also was able to use their force of 38,000 men to keep the airstrips at Barobo, Lala, Labo and Dipalog prepared for the Americans’ return. After the arrival of the Allied submarines the Japanese began to see the guerillas as a serious threat, one that was becoming increasingly integrated, and well aligned with Allied Forces SWPA.

To address this threat they increased patrols, ‘volunteer guard’ numbers locally, and anti-

147Schmidt, 19-20, 23; Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, Tenth District, 27; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of Douglas MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: Activities of the Allied Intelligence Bureau,” Reprint 1994), 308; Guerilla Resistance Movement, 85.

123 guerilla operations in an effort to sever these lines of communication before they took hold.148

Realizing that the guerillas had become enough of a threat, Japanese General

Morimoto ordered Operation Big Voice to be undertaken with the goal of killing Colonel

Fertig, shutting down the radio stations, and eliminating resistance fighters in and around the command. Using radio detection finders, the Japanese had located Fertig’s headquarters by pinpointing his location during his daily broadcasts. In an odd twist of fate, both Morimoto and Fertig had been classmates in the same La Junta, Colorado High

School, but now Morimoto had received orders from Manila that the attack against

Misamis would take place on 26 June and that he was to execute his former schoolmate.

Facing naval bombardment and close air support, Fertig’s plan was for his forces to temporarily fade into the surrounding area before flanking the invasion party. Fertig’s plan soon turned into all of the 10th District’s forces fading out and falling back. As with the forces on Luzon, their headquarters frequently needed to move to avoid pursuit.

Fertig’s two primary forward base locations were Esperanza near the Wawa and Agusan rivers and later Talacogan further upstream. With the increased Japanese presence on the island, PRS supply runs into the waters surrounding Mindanao and the extraction parties

148Schmidt, 19-20, 23, 111-16; General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, Tenth District, 27; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of Douglas MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: Activities of the Allied Intelligence Bureau,” Reprint 1994), 308; Guerilla Resistance Movement, 85.

124 they brought now frequently found themselves openly engaging with the Japanese, often with a submarine full of civilian evacuees.149

While guerillas became increasingly targeted, and many Filipino prisoners had returned home or joined the resistance, American prisoners of war on the islands were still being exploited for hard labor. Luzon held the largest concentration At each of the following locations, roughly 200 malnourished prisoners were being used by the

Japanese: they were being forced to rebuild the airfields at Puerto Princesa, Palawan; the defenses at Malinta Tunnel, and Corregidor; repair railroads and bridges, do stevedoring work, or the unloading of cargo from ships, in Luzon; as well as laboring in the Hospital at Biliabid Prison. Conditions in all camps were lethal, whether they were designed to house prisoners temporarily or long-term, with a mortality rate of forty percent for the

American service personnel held on the island of Luzon. In 1942, those above the rank of colonel were sent to Formosa or Japan in what became known as “Hell Ships.” Few ever returned. The largest concentration of prisoners, 9,000 were held at Cabanatuan, Luzon.

Cabanatuan was very difficult to contact given its central location in Luzon, in Nueva

Ecija province Once PRS agent Colonel Cruz had established firm contacts between

Roxas and GHQ establishing communications and monitoring the security of the prisoners would now be possible. In the Davao Penal Colony on Mindanao there were still 2,000 prisoners being held in a far less secure compound. When Brigadier General

Steve Mellnik managed to escape captivity in Davao and arrived in Washington, D.C. he

149Schmidt, 125-129; As mentioned in Schmidt, see also: John Keats, They Fought Alone (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1963), 127-128, 224-225, 249; Edward Haggerty, Guerilla Padre in Mindanao (New York: Logmans Green and Co., 1946), 169.

125 began working with Lieutenant General Richard K. Sutherland and his contacts to plan a mass prison escape from Mindanao.150

Brigadier General Steve Mellnik was given the honor of meeting with the ailing

President Quezon, exiled to Washington, who expressed his pride and humility on the subject on the guerillas and his desire to help their cause. Mellnik then began to discuss his ideas with Captain Harold A. Rosenquist of the Military Intelligence Service’s X

Section regarding infiltration of the Davao Camp. This very low profile office, known as

X Section or MIS-X, focused on escape and evasion or E&E, facilitated the extraction of downed airmen, and maintained communications with the POW camps. Once Brigadier

General Mellnik explained to him the intricate supply and information network that had already been established by the guerillas and their Philippine Regional Section counterparts, Rosenquist immediately asked to be personally assigned as part of the team to infiltrate the islands.151

One of the greatest problems facing Captain Rosenquist’s mission was that 800 of the 2,000 prisoners held at Davao were in the hospital and even those on work details would likely not be able to travel great distances or at any reasonable pace. This meant that while the infiltration could begin earlier to ensure the security of those interned, their attempted extraction would have to begin just before the full invasion of Davao, but with

150General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, “Report on Conditions in the Philippines as of June 1943: Prisoners of War (Military),” 2-3; Mellnik, 282.

151Mellnik, 282-283; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, “Report on Conditions in the Philippines as of June 1943: Prisoners of War (Military),” 3.

126 little delay in between. Once contact was established it was believed that it would be easy to maintain as work details frequently went in and out of the camps, to and from the hospital, and freedom of movement was not restricted within the camp. With only 250 guards an escape was far more feasible at the Davao camp prior to liberation, because the local guerillas under Major Laureletta were willing to provide assistance, and Captain

Rosenquist was willing to accept. Not only had Major Laureletta established courier contact with Colonel Fertig, he had Captain Rosenquist and the MIS-X infiltration party when they arrived, making their would-be infiltration that much easier.152

With MIS having not been in contact with the guerillas for some time when

Rosenquist arrived in mid October, the prison camp was found completely abandoned. A short time before his arrival the 1,200 ailing prisoners had been loaded onto a steamer and shipped to Manila in the tropical heat. The unmarked steamer was bombed part way through the journey by American aircraft. One survivor, Maurice Shoss, recalls that as their hold began to fill with water they went to the upper deck, but were beaten back with rifle butts. Treading water for some time, many drowned. Those who had enough space in the hold to stay above water and survived long enough, finally heard life boats being lowered and emerged one last time to jump from the ship. MIS-X agents were not successful in their work on Davao due to a lack of updated intelligence, but prior to the invasion they and other agents were able to provide vitamins to the those prisoners in dire

152Mellnik, 284-288; General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948 (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): II. Intelligence Activities in the Philippines: Japanese Occupation, General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation, Volume II, 86-90. 127 need, while also attaining documentation on POW camp conditions in Luzon for the war crimes trials that would take place in 1946. Clandestine missions are not always successful and this mission illustrated the conflicts inherent between the two competing

Philippine Section commanders. Mellnik, who was perhaps too personally involved, had thought this would be a brilliant plan to boost morale, while Major General Courtney

Whitney was concerned that the mission could endanger Colonel Fertig’s entire command. Ultimately the plan was one of great interest to the intelligence community after the war, but this MIS-X extraction mission not taking place meant no unnecessary risk to the 10th Military District or their communications relay. The fate of POWs shaped the timing of each reinvasion and order of islands chosen, and often far more successful extraction parties were sent ahead of the larger force to ensure that the prisoners were already secure when the Americans approached a city so as to prevent executions by the

Japanese military.153

Captured Plans and a Return to the Visayas

On 31 March 1944, members of the home guard who helped to support the Cebu area command and Coastwatchers reported that a Japanese Zero had crashed just off the

153Mellnik, 284-288; General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948 (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): II. Intelligence Activities in the Philippines: Japanese Occupation, General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II, 86-90; Charles Parsons, “Report on Conditions in the Philippines as of June 1943: Prisoners of War (Military),”1-6; Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 339,348; Charles Parsons “Memorandum To: A.C. of S., G-2, GHQ, S.W.P.A., 4 December 1943.”

128 beach outside the town of Balud. As local fishermen rowed out to the wreckage, they found a fire beginning. They quickly moved the pilot and crew onto the boats. While helping to load the detainees, their quick survey of the wreckage produced a waterproof package that appeared to contain documents of some significance. This guess was made as the package had been carefully sealed and hidden under the protection of the officer charged. The package was immediately sent to the nearest of Cushing’s command posts, the Eighty-Seventh Area Command. Using the ATR4A set provided by Villamor, the guerillas sent an urgent coded message to 4E7. From there it travelled to MAIN in

Mindanao and to KAZ Darwin. From Darwin, GHQ was notified that Cushing’s command was in possession of Japanese military documents of great significance as well as the cypher system. Even though the documents had yet to be decoded, the Japanese wasted no time in letting the Americans know that what the guerillas now held was of great significance. They immediately began scouring the countryside for the captive

Japanese, devastating villages that failed to provide them with what they sought. When

Lieutenant Colonel Homisi, the Japanese commander on Cebu finally surrounded

Cushing and the slow moving band of prisoners GHQ had ordered him to protect,

Cushing disobeyed orders and made a pact with the Japanese military that his men would hand over the prisoners, if the Japanese stopped terrorizing the civilian population of

Cebu. In exchange the Japanese allowed his men to leave unharrassed.154

154Ind, Secret War, 202-206, 209-210, 212; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 315, 325.

129

Cushing’s prisoners were Vice-Admiral Shegeru Fukudome and his staff, whose plane had crash-landed during a storm. The documents that Cushing’s men had captured from them became known as plan “Z”, Admiral Mineichi Koga’s call for a concentration of all Imperial naval and air strength for one abrupt strike against the west-moving allied naval forces. With few chances to change the tide of the war in May, Koga felt this could be his last option. The plans hand been in Allied hands and even with a duplicate returned, command in Tokyo felt that the sensitive informative could have been compromised. For the Allies, the plans they captured from the Japanese made GHQ aware of an impending large-scale naval attack and as such all watch stations were asked to increase their level of vigilance.155

The Coastwatchers within the Mindanao and Sulu command radio networks all maintained the flashes and relays for those stations, and with personnel at these five stations, the AIB and Allied Naval Forces were capable of watching all of the major waterways within the southern islands. marks the southernmost reaches of the Philippine island group and guards the entrance to the Surigao Straights; the

Northern Mindoro Coastwatcher station reported on the movements around the Verde

Island Passage and the entrance to Manila Bay; ’s station observed the

San Bernadino Straights, while its eastern station alongside the Eastern-Central

Mindanao Coastwatchers were responsible for reporting on movements eastward that did

155Ind, Secret War, 209-212; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 315.

130 not come through the easily observed Visayan passageways; the heavily travelled route between Takao and Malaya, and Indo-China, through the South China Sea were all monitored by an observation station on Palawan, one of the most heavily garrisoned southern islands. All of these stations reported with intelligence flashes twice a day relayed through MAIN, but to confuse the Japanese counter-intelligence units regarding their position, they began to simultaneously radio local submarines the same information to ensure that submarines were kept abreast on small craft positions and that the Japanese were unable maintain a fixed position on either the station or its personnel.156

Colonel Alejandro Suarez, former member of the Philippine Constabulary, had come to TawiTawi in the Sulu Archipelago in January 1943 when there were only thirty armed men as part of the island’s guerilla forces. While the forces of the 125th regiment on Tawi-Tawi, Siasi, and Jolo increased in number and established a free government to provide most basic services, they would become best known for their diligence in matters of intelligence and the pivotal Coastwatch stations they operated. Colonel Suarez’s second-in-command, Captain Frank Young, had been a third Lieutenant in the Philippine

Army when the invasion of Manila began and he had fought to repulse the flood of

Japanese forces entering Lingayen Gulf. For his work with the guerillas he was promoted

156General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Intelligence Activities in the Philippines During the Occupation. Volume II. Charles Parsons, “Report on Conditions in the Philippines as of June 1943: Prisoners of War (Military),” 14-17.

131 to Captain. While only part of the Coastwatcher apparatus his relay would change the situational awareness of the Allied forces in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.157

On 23 May 1943, “Tenwest” Party had been sent in under the direction of Captain

Jordan Hamner to establish an observation station on Borneo and later to resupply the

Sulus. When Captain Hamner took ill, necessitating early extraction in March 1944, the mission not only failed to provide supplies, but endangered the party and nearly sent the local guerillas into rebellion. Somehow the Japanese had become aware of the extraction party and just as the last of Hamner’s personnel had boarded the USS Narwhal two

Japanese destroyers came at full speed directly toward the submarine. With all of the supplies intended for the Sulu command still strewn along the top of the USS Narwhal, they were forced to dive as quickly as possible. If they made it to a deep cavern in the bay they might be just out of reach of the depth charges, and by maintaining complete silence, the Japanese might miss them. While they avoided the depth charges, they were hit by depth charges numerous times. Fortunately, it was not enough to threaten their structural integrity of the submarine, but the men, women, and children who were part of this extraction party were witness to the Narwhal’s closest call.158

Even without the promised supplies, Captain Frank Young was able to use his charismatic presence to disrupt a coup and maintain his command and Coastwatch

157The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines: X. The Guerilla Resistance Movement on Mindanao and Sulu. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302, Series II, 1949 (Indianapolis Indiana: Indiana Historical Society, Military History Section: 31 January 1945), 19-22; Ind, Secret War, 166-175.

158Ibid.

132 stations. The Japanese had improved their garrisons, which made maintaining a presence increasingly difficult for the guerillas in the Sulus. As such, Captain Young began coding all of his G-2 messages and insuring that they were bilingual, so as to make their deciphering difficult for those outside of MAIN and AIB. On 20 April 1944, Young reported twenty-seven ships entering the Sulu Sea. After multiple aerial attacks off of

Rabaul, Truk, and Saipan in the Marianas, the Japanese fleet sought safe harbor to reposition itself for a possible assault on Guam. GHQ radioed back to watch the Japanese fleet, as Captain Young would be the last to see in which direction they intended to make their heading. After maintaining a brief radio-silence, Young responded, “DOS GUYS

ARE MOVING EAST.” The Japanese Imperial Fleet was on their way to Leyte Gulf and now the Allied Naval Forces knew their number and heading and maintained a copy of previous naval plans and current radio cyphers to assist with incoming intelligence for what would be one of the largest naval battles in history.159

Phase Three of the Allied Intelligence Bureau’s three-part plan for the Philippines was about to begin, with the PRS intelligence networks providing timely combat information and Coastwatch intelligence required by the Allied forces.160 The invasion of

159General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 190; The Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines: X. The Guerilla Resistance Movement on Mindanao and Sulu. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302, Series II, 1949 (Indianapolis Indiana: Indiana Historical Society, Military History Section: 31 January 1945), 19-22; Ind, Secret War, 166-175; Mellnik, 294.

160General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, Planet party Communications, “Communications Required for Philippines Operations,” (Military Intelligence Section, General Staff 10 March, 1943), 2-3, (49 out of 149.) 133 the Philippines promised to free seventeen million Filipinos from an increasingly extirpative Japanese occupation. General MacArthur sent a message alerting guerilla commanders in the southern islands that the United States 6th Army’s landing on the island of Leyte would likely result in an attempt by the Japanese to expel them and to reinforce their Mindoro garrison and the island’s key observation posts. As such he directed all Coastwatchers and radio personnel in the region to demonstrate “maximum diligence” in reporting any enemy movements, either by land or sea. And to all the guerillas in the Visayas he issued the following order:

The campaign of reoccupation has commenced. Although your zone is not at present within the immediate zone of operations, it is desired that your forces be committed to limited offensive action with the specific mission of harassing the movement of the enemy within your area and as far as possible contain him in his present positions. Intelligence coverage must be intensified in order that I be fully and promptly advised of all major changes in enemy disposition.161

This order coincided with the invasion of Leyte on 20 October 1944. It was on Leyte where 6th Army forces first joined with Colonel Rupert K. Kangleon’s guerilla units during the landings at Dulag and Tacloban. After a beachhead was established,

Kangleon’s men were attached directly to the 6th Army Corps. They worked to destroy enemy supply depots and bridges, harassed enemy patrols, while also conducting

161General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Signal Corps Message: From General MacArthur, to Volckman, Anderson, Lapham, Cabangbang, Ramsey, 18 December, 1944; General Headquarters Southwest pacific Area, Signal Corps Message: From General MacArthur, to Placido, Cabais, Rowe, Smith, Peralta, Abcede, Cushing, Stahl, Anderson, Lapham, Volckman, Smith, Kangleon, CabangBang, Torres. 18 December, 1944; General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 317.

134 scouting missions, acquiring intelligence, providing current weather conditions, and engaging in combat operations. These joint military operations were made far more flexible by the use of multiple fighting forces and many lines of communication to prevent chaotic radio traffic. By allowing the primary channels to remain free for military purposes and adding small amounts of non-essential traffic to the massive PRS intelligence network the primary stations and their operators did not become overburdened, which ensured that intelligence was relayed to its essential location through station KAZ.162

Once the invasion had begun on Leyte, the invasion of the southern islands, or

“Montclair III”, Operation Victor, began with preliminary joint operations by the 6th and

8th Armies, and their allies working to secure the islands of Samar and the rather small island of Maricaban at the cape of Batangas Bay on 19 February 1945. Controlling these islands ensured access to the San Bernadino Straight, the Verde Island Passage, and the

Sibuyan Sea. The major sea lanes throughout the Visayas were now under allied control, promising further success in the urgent extraction of civilians from the lower islands, something of utmost importance after the change in Japanese policy to permit the specific targeting of civilians after 25 January 1944.163

162General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 317, 326-328.

163General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 327-328; Ingham, 182.

135

To the horror of Charles Parsons and GHQ the Japanese began killing civilians before their proposed timeline, gradually increasing their violence as American involvement became more apparent. With the Visayan sea-lanes were secure, the next issue of import became securing the island of Palawan and liberating the remainder of those prisoners held at the Puerto Princesa work camp. The significance of the seizure was summarized in the following communication:

The air bases of Palawan command the western end of the southern water passage through the Philippines by way of the Sulu Sea and interdict the north and south channel of the South China Sea, the enemy's main water transportation line to Indo China, Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, Burma, and the East Indies…The progressive securing of the Philippines as a base thus tends to cut the enemy in two and condemn all his conquests to the south to recapture.164

The elongated island of Palawan lay between the South China Sea and the Sulu Seas and by capturing it, this ensured that Allied forces would once again possess the sea routes between Singapore and Palawan as well as those that lay between the Dutch East Indies and the home islands of Japan. Liberating the prisoners of Puerto Princesa provided both a boost to morale and propaganda, but most importantly it cut the Japanese supply line in two while providing the staging area for air and naval engagements throughout the South

Pacific.165

164General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific, Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 332; Ingham, 182.

165General Headquarters United States Army, Pacific, the Guerilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines: VII. The Guerilla Resistance Movement on Panay and Neighboring Islands. Military Intelligence Series General Staff, General Intelligence Circular 302, Series II, 1949 (Indianapolis Indiana: Indiana Historical Society, Military History Section: 31 January 1945); General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, 136

The fighting on Luzon and throughout the Philippines continued in the form of mopping-up operations long after the Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945. The U.S.

6th Army, and by extension the guerillas who fought alongside them, held the record in the Pacific for 219 days of continuous combat in the archipelago. While coordination of forces managed to ensure that the Japanese Army felt surrounded, this also served to further exacerbate their brutal reprisals against civilians, whether or not the civilians were cooperating with Americans in the province. The most infamous example of such violence became known as the Rape of Manila.166 While the exploits and unit histories of the invading parties are featured more prominently than the guerillas, there is a vast literature on the ‘liberation’ of the Philippines for further research. The guerillas were the force that provided the information necessary to keep the Allied forces informed before, and during the invasion. The communications apparatus created by the allied intelligence bureau functioned only with the assistance of the data they provided, and both groups greatly benefited from multi-national cooperative efforts headed by the Australians,

General Staff, Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 328-329, 332.

166Allan A. Ryan, Yamashita’s Ghost. War Crimes, MacArthur’s Justice, and Command Accountability (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2012), xiii. “A year that saw horrendous atrocities committed by Japanese troops in Manila and elsewhere in the islands.”

137

British, Americans, Dutch. Malay, and other ASEAN allies as part of the Allied

Intelligence Bureau’s Philippine Regional Section.167

167General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter X: The Philippines Resistance Movement,” Reprint 1994, 317-319.

138

Conclusion

The Rape of Manila, Japanese Brutality, and American Carelessness in the Reclamation

of the Philippines

Station WAX of Vitali, Zamboanga on Mindano began reporting daily after 17

March 1944 the indiscriminant strafing of schools, churches, and small houses sheltering civilians who had fled from the Imperial Army troops. The Japanese army dropped leaflets stating that civilians should return to the cities and that they would not be responsible for those living in guerilla areas, but with the proclamation promising the execution of all unsurrendered guerillas, or suspected guerillas, civilians needed the protection of the resistance movement now more than ever.168

On 18 March 1944, for the first time the Americans lost control of their own cryptographic system, when Colonel Fertig reported to GHQ that the U.S. Naval Station on Mindanao’s equipment was captured by the Japanese before it could be destroyed.

GHQ was deeply concerned that their cypher would be broken in the same manner as

ULTRA, the British Military Intelligence Service’s code-word for all allied cryptanalysis, and PURPLE, the code for all cryptanalysis done by American agents of Japanese intercepts. Luckily no cyphers or codes were with the machine when it was taken and it could not be operated without a great deal of experimentation. Their work with the

Enigma machine they had been given by the Polish resistance and deciphered at

Bletchley Park, taught them cyphers could be learned if one had the proper machine. As

168General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff, Message From: Fertig, To: General MacArthur, NR: 857 6 April, (7 April 1944).

139 the Japanese began to increase their targeting of civilians and their forces on Mindanao,

Cebu, and Negros, the resistance forces had to become increasingly mobile, requiring smaller, lighter radio equipment and frequently moving their forward operating bases. As a result of later mission failures, a number of false reports were sent out by captured equipment that led GHQ to release more information to enemy operatives than intended on at least two occasions. Just as the Allied forces began to improve the strategic position of their military in the islands their secure intelligence channels had been at least briefly compromised, leading GHQ to second-guess otherwise accurate and essential information coming in from guerilla intelligence within the islands.169

Throughout the occupation, the price of rice had climbed in Manila to shocking heights, leaving even those outside of the internment camps in need of sustenance; and many of those within the camps lost half their pre-war bodyweight. Having suffered major loses at the hands of the allies since he had become commander of Japanese forces in October 1944, General Yamashita, felt the mounting desperation among the high command. This was apparent in the acceptance of Vice Admiral Takajiro Onishi’s plan to utilize kamikaze planes to destroy the American fleet at Leyte Gulf. General Yamashita’s plan for the Philippines, was to delay the Allied forces and prevent their invasion of the

Okinawa for as long as was feasible. To do so he took most of his troops into the mountains of Baguio, 125 miles north of the city. Those that remained in the city

169General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Message From: MACA (Smith) To: General MacArthur, NR: 55, 26 March. 27 March 1944. *Initially the phrases “PURPLE” and “ULTRA” referred only to their specific operations, though later in the war the terms had become generalized to refer to each broader intelligence operation.*

140 were18,000 naval troops, only technically under Yamashita’s ‘command responsibility’ given that they were out of touch with Tokyo, despite the fact that Yamashita claims he lost contact with Manila early in the conflict as well.170

MacArthur’s forces met little resistance until just before they reached the

University of Santo Tomas. Americans faced smaller numbers of soldiers in Manila, and with the aid of superior American tanks, residents in the University district and the internees were back under Allied protection in a matter of hours, though the brutal fight for the city had only begun. When Filipino guerillas and MacArthur’s 6th and 8th Army entered the city on 3 February they were greeted by weary, but resilient residents. This success was short lived as those remaining Japanese forces, aware of their untenable position in the walled city, resorted to incredible acts of violence against the civilian population as fighting continued to move from house to house. With combat taking place on each street, even when American forces attempted to insolate civilians, the Philippine death toll continued to climb as a result of both the battle itself and the intentional targeting of civilians by the Japanese Navy. As a result of the many deaths from the fighting and misplaced barrages, residents of Manila have accused American forces of carelessness in their return that resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians. The issue of the shelling of Manila by American ships, possibly ending in the destruction of a red- cross hospital without a doubt contributed to the destruction of city. General MacArthur, whether to save the citizens of insulate his command from blame, issued a formal request

170General MacArthur Reports, 253- 272; Ann Marie Prévos, “Race and War Crimes: The 1945 War Crimes Trial of General Tomoyuki Yamashita,” Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press: August, 1992): 304-307. 141 to once again make Manila an open city, a request denied by General Yamashita. Both the allied forces and the Japanese Navy in Manila engaged in house-to-house fighting and open bombardment that left the city in ruins.171

In a legal first General Yamashita was tried for the crimes of his troops, the argument being that anything that took place under his command was ultimately his responsibility, a concept we now term ‘command responsibility.’ As Allen Ryan argues, despite hundreds of years of nations legally codifying how nations should conduct themselves in war, actual enforcement of these laws had yet to be pursued. In the documentary, The Fog of War Robert S. McNamara says of the war that for the firebombing campaigns alone American military command would have been tried as war criminals if they had lost the war, sparking claims of “victor’s justice” to parallel concerns that American trade interests in Japan and Germany allowed both nations to give short shrift to acknowledging their own war crimes. Command responsibility had only been utilized as a blanket definition that did not address General Yamashita’s knowledge of his troops’ actions, a key determination in trials in Nuremberg, because this would have weakened the case against the General. This swift and vague imposition of a new definition, and with it summary imposition of guilt for all Japanese war crimes, allowed for the swift recovery of Japanese-American trade and industry, but also viable claims of the American imposition of a racialized peace. While many scholars continue to

171General MacArthur Reports, 253- 272; Ann Marie Prévos, “Race and War Crimes: The 1945 War Crimes Trial of General Tomoyuki Yamashita,” Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press: August, 1992): 311-316.

142 debate the exact percentage of civilian casualties each side is accountable for, in Manila at least 100,000 of the city’s population of 700,000 perished in the battle alone, and as

Ann Marie Prévos argues the majority of those civilians were murdered by Japanese forces.172

The commission in Manila found that, “A series of atrocities and other high crimes have been committed by members of the Japanese armed forces, under your

(General Yamashita) command against the people of the United States, their allies, and dependencies throughout the Philippine Islands; they were not sporadic in nature but in many cases were methodically supervised by Japanese officers and noncommissioned officers.”173 For the first time the laws of war had been imposed and General Yamashita was sentenced to death for his ineffective control of his troops. This case’s swift decision and the actions of Japanese forces in Manila began a new discussion about how to deal in concrete terms with war crimes, “which result from a failure to act when under duty to do so”, as opposed to the unintentional killing of civilians through unavoidable circumstances in close quarters combat. War crimes now were clearly defined, but within the American military justice system issues in accountability persisted through the My

172Ryan, 6-7; “Affidavits of Two Women who Survived the Manila 1945 Atrocities”, pg. 93 of the Allied Translator and Intelligence Service. 2 February 1945 *200 pages of survivor testimonies and photographs of both Manila and the those provided by survivors of Puerto Princessa POW camp in Palawan; General MacArthur Reports, 253- 272; “Statement by Modesto-Farolan, Acting Manager of the Philippine Red Cross,' in connection with the -atrocity by the-Japanese against the Philippine Red Cross.” 14 February 1945. Manila, Rizal. Allied Translator and Intelligence Service, 2 February 1945; Prévos, 309-314.

173Ryan, 250.

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Lai , continuing complaints of an unequal and racialized imposition of a victor’s justice when prosecution war crimes.174

A Nation Rebuilding

On 28 February General MacArthur reestablished the Commonwealth

Government in the city of Manila before addressing its residents:

More than three years have elapsed— years of bitterness, struggle and sacrifice—since I withdrew our forces and installations from this beautiful city that, open and undefended, its churches, monuments and cultural centers might, in accordance with the rules of warfare, be spared the violence of military ravage. The enemy would not have it so and much that I sought to preserve has been unnecessarily destroyed by his desperate action at bay but by these ashes he has wantonly fixed the future pattern of his own doom.175

Playing on the horror recently experienced by the residents of Manila and throughout the

Philippines, MacArthur sought to bridge the gap created by decades of American imperialism by recovering the memory of a common Philippine-American experience and a shared enemy.

While Filipinos hold a deep reverence for their nation’s wartime resistance, there is also a far less obvious understanding quietly offered to wartime ‘collaborators’. The first President of the Third Republic of the Philippines, Manuel Roxas, was elected with the support of fifty-four percent of the nation. An outspoken politician, Roxas was placed under house arrest as he refused to recognize Japanese authority. Still he worked as

174Ryan, 318-324, 340-341.

175General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter VIII: Leyte in Retrospect,” Reprint 1994, 276.

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Secretary of Finance in the collaborationist regime of Jose Paciano Laurel during the latter part of the war, all while maintaining a wide network of contacts with collaborators like General Guillermo Francisco, prepared to overthrow the Japanese should they push for Philippine mass conscription. Roxas was willing to utilize Kalibapi, Japanese, and

American allies to achieve Philippine liberation, but he also risked his life to offer intelligence to the resistance making any claims that he was a collaborationist at heart appear unlikely. Once General MacArthur stated publicly that he had kept in close contact with Roxas, who aided in contacting guerilla parties in Luzon, many citizens felt he was exonerated. Some Filipinos still speculated that he was simply a close friend whose reputation MacArthur did not want to see tarnished, but as Colonel Cruz’s statement attests, Roxas’s assistance was authentic. Collaboration, including those who cooperated as part of a covert operation makes the prosecution of collaborators even more difficult. With the Tydings-McDuffy Act honored by the United States the first elections were held on 4 July 1946. When Manuel Roxas was sworn in at Manila Bay, the city lay in ruins yet Roxas stood before a beautiful skyline and the tropical breeze promised the possibility of a better future. From a desire to unify rather than divide the islands, Roxas issued a broad amnesty for wartime collaborators.

During the last months of the war guerillas and collaborators had killed one another with impunity and the amnesty was designed to stop the killings, but also to put a stop to revenge killings to avenge the death of loved ones. Much blood had been shed on both sides, but in the hopes of establishing a new Philippines the assumption needed to be that each side had done so for the nation, not for personal ambition. As Filipinos, like the 145 rest of the globe, began to ‘come to terms with the past.’ This was similar to what emerged in France the group referred to as Les Attentistes, or “the waiters”.176 These groups, both in France and the Philippines, were comprised of members of the resistance who had joined only when an allied victory assured, having previously tried to simply survive the occupation, neither collaborating nor resisting actively. While there was certainly a larger percentage of the Philippine population resisting passively or actively to support the vast guerilla network, it is important to remember that most of the population simply wanted to provide for the sustenance and security of their families and communities.177

176Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 45-57.

177Alfred W. McCoy, “Politics by Other Means”: World War II in the Western Visiyas, Philippines, 159-203 in Southeast Asia Under Japanese Occupation Monograph Series 22, Alfred W. McCoy, Editor (New Haven, CT: Yale Universities Southeast Asia Studies): 158-160; Kerkvliet, 278; Robert Aura Smith, Philippine Freedom 1946-1958 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 113-114, 126.

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The Spratlys, the South China Sea, and the Pacific Partnership

Figure 7. “Enemy Shipping Routes Destroyed During the Leyte Operations.”178

The were a priority for the allied powers and ASEAN nations long before their oil and gas reserves had been discovered, particularly because of their location astride the shipping lanes necessary to supply the empire Japan was slowly acquiring during the late 1930s. Stein Tonneson argues that in 1937 the French and

178General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area, General Staff. Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific. Volume I. “Chapter VIII: The Leyte in Retrospect,” Reprint 1994, 239.

147

British were quite concerned that the Japanese intended to occupy Hainan island and use this vantage point to challenge their naval supremacy in the South China Sea. When an

Anglo-Chinese expedition to establish a military presence in the Paracel islands was unsuccessful, the French established a presence on Woody and Pattle islands to ‘combat .’ The Japanese and French continued to maintain a heavy garrison on both islands through 1939 when Japanese forces finally invaded Hainan island. The British once again pushed their claims to the island, but the Dutch and Americans were equally concerned as allowing the Japanese to possess these islands ensured strategic control of portions of essential shipping lanes between Singapore and Hong Kong.179

With the French forced to sign the 22 June 1940 armistice with Germany and

Vichy France becoming a defacto ally of Japan, and with Britain fighting its own war in

Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, the Japanese turned toward oil in the Dutch East

Indies. In addition to shipping, the Japanese used the Paracels and the Spratlys as listening and weather stations, and Itu Aba served as a submarine base. By early 1942

Jakarta (or Batavia), Singapore, and Manila had all fallen under Japanese occupation.

With the Chinese coast, Hainan, , Borneo, Malaya, Singapore, and the Philippines all under the control of Japan, the South China Sea was a ‘Japanese lake,’ the undisturbed hub of communications and shipping that connected the empire.180

179Stein Tonnesson, “The South China Sea in the Age of European Decline,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Feb., 2006): 9, 11-14.

180Stein Tonnesson, 14-16.

148

The Special Operations Australia unit of the Allied Intelligence Bureau was sent into Timor, Java, and the Moluccas with the hope that the commonwealth intelligence services would be able to recapture some of the shipping routes vital to the execution of the war and the reclamation of previously British territories. Knowing that in places like the Dutch East Indies European assistance to overthrowing the Japanese often came with a return to imperial domination, Javanese and other Southeast Asians frequently betrayed the SOA operations. This led to the failure of many missions and resulted in the capture or execution of teams during all three phases of SOA missions conducted from July 1942 to August 1945. When planning for the Tonkin offensives, American personnel in GHQ planned to use Hainan island for the employment of land-based air support, but the smaller Spratlys and Paracel islands were not even included on the invasion maps making clear that American forces underestimated their strategic value in the region, even in the midst of an offensive.181

British and Dutch officials hoped that by embedding SOA operatives from an early southern push into the Netherlands East Indies in July 1942, that the invading force could then be provided with operational intelligence. Of the thirteen parties sent in to the

Aroe Islands, Ceram, Celebes and Java during the first phase of operations seven parties were captured and only four were fully successful in their missions. The second phase is often referred to as ‘the phase’, involving the successful insertion of Lizard Party into Portuguese Timor where they operated successfully until well after they were joined by a combined Australian-Dutch Sparrow force. After this forward movement,

181Operations of the Allied Intelligence Bureau, “SOA Operations in Timor- Lessor Sundas- Java” (National Archives. College Park, MD), 61-75. 149 unbeknownst to Headquarters until 1945, two of its recently inserted parties, Lagarto and

Cobra, had been captured and their equipment compromised. In one instance GHQ was not aware until much later that information had been provided to Japanese operators, until these operators made some mistake with the reporting procedure, and personal details could not be verified. The number of captured parties illustrates the danger posed to agents of both the AIB and OSS in this region yet the success of the Sparrow force and

Lizard party laid the foundation for the establishment of a number of bases between

Darwin and Lesser Sundas for the purpose of more securely inserting field parties. The initial title for this project was ‘mugger-sounder’, but it was soon reorganized under the more colorful titles of Sunfish-Salmon, Carp, and Cod now with the goal of establishing bases in the Java Sea. These brief successes were not enough to erase the number of agents lost in the memory of the high command, and the necessary intelligence they provided to assist in regaining these essential shipping routes came at a high cost.

Throughout the Moluccas, Java, Borneo, and East Timor feelings of resentment among the populace after centuries of Portuguese, Spanish, British, and American intrusions left the region primed to continue nationalist resistance.182

British and Dutch post-war policies were marked by varying rates of decolonization, but soon the Cold War sparked a series of proxy wars in the region, the

United States had an unprecedented access to political capital, personal assessments of

182Operations of the Allied Intelligence Bureau, “SOA Operations in Timor- Lessor Sundas- Java.”(National Archives. College Park, MD) 61-65; Ronald H. Spector; In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia (New York: Random House Trade Paperback, 2008), 168-175.

150 political candidates, personalized contacts in numerous industries, and with the establishment of the CIA in 1947 a continuing legal framework by which to maintain all that their department had established throughout the war.183 Since the early 2000s the

South China Sea and the Spratly islands in particular have been hotly contested between

China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Indonesia issued a declaration of non-recognition in

2009 so as not to legally give credence to China’s presumptive claims that have become known as the ‘nine dash line’. By acknowledging that this imaginary line overlaps with

Indonesia’s Natuna Island and its territorial waters or EEZ, both of which have been recognized as Indonesian by the U.N. Convention on Laws of the Sea for decades,

Indonesia would be in effect validating their claims. Despite China’s hope that the issue could remain shelved and certainly that all negotiations involving outside arbitrators be deferred, tensions continue to escalate. Small-scale engagements within the South China

Sea continue to occur between fishermen and members of the Chinese Coastguard, and such incidents coupled with the increase in regularly scheduled joint American and

Australian, as well as American and Philippine naval exercises in proximity to the South

China Sea have been making many ASEAN nations understandably nervous. In mid-

1946, as the Philippines tried to slowly establish itself as a nation separate from the

183For more information on CIA front organizations during the Cold War, particularly those of the Student movement in Madison Wisconsin see Karen M. Paget’s autobiographical, near-expose, as reviewed by Louis Menand in “A Friend of the Devil: Inside a Famous Cold-War Deception,” (New York: The New Yorker. March 23, 2015 Issue.) What Paget and Menand seem to miss, however, is that espionage in a Republic is not new by any means, and certainly the use of front organizations and networks of liaisons is quite possibly the least invasive means of amassing political capital, when compared to directly influencing politicians, heads of industry, etc. Perhaps this invisible hand is the least dangerous.

151

United States, the newly minted third Republika ng Pilipinas sought to establish a

“Kalaya’an”, or “freedomland”. Given the proximity of the Philippine islands to the

South China Sea, ensuring the security of their territorial waters, particularly those around the island of Palawan were understandably of concern after their recent invasion and occupation. For this reason the Philippines sought to establish its own claim based on previous usage and proximity.184

Whether in theater or at home one of the biggest difficulties faced by the AIB was centralization of command among competitive parallel organizations. The pages of

Australian and American Allied Intelligence Bureau documents tell the tale of too many commanders, an almost fanatical degree of secrecy that often resulted in parallel organizations not even knowing the other existed let alone what they were doing or how each could function cooperatively. The document a Brief History of G-2 Section, GHQ,

SWPA and Affiliated Units ends on the supposition that this problem was not solved in the SWPA, and William Powell notes that this issue and the constant vying for authority pushed both the Australians and Americans to set up their own national intelligence

184Stein Tonnesson, The South China Sea in the Age of European Decline. Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Feb., 2006): 31; J. Scott Bentley, Mapping the Nine Dash Line: Recent Incidents Involving Indonesia in the South China Sea; Unofficial Translation: The Permanent Mission of the Republic of Indonesia to the United Nations, New York. Dated 7 May 2009, “The so called, “nine-dotted-line map’ as contained in the above circular note number CML/17/2009 dated 7th May 2009, clearly lacks international legal basis and is tantamount to upset the UNCLOS 1982;” See also, J. Scott Bentley, On the Razor’s Edge: Indonesia’s South China Sea Policy for a discussion of whether recent developments indicated that comments from the Indonesian military are indicative of a change in Indonesia’s official stance toward one that will allow them to, as Armed forces Chief General said, “do what is necessary to protect our (Indonesian) sovereignty;” David Scott, Conflict Irresolution in the South China Sea. Asian Survey, Vol. 52, No. 6 (November/December 2012), pp. 1019-1042.

152 agencies after the war as a result. This was not necessarily the mark of a failed venture, and its successes, collectively and separately, should be watched closely given the rapid changes in stability regarding the American and ASEAN positions in the Pacific over past decade.185

Stein Tonneson argues that with China’s political minds set on refusing multilateral talks or responses within the region it becomes far more necessary to consider expanding the current Pacific Partnership between the ,

Australia, Japan, and other ASEAN allies, but also to consider the possibilities of looking at the benefits as well as the difficulties posed by previous models for joint intelligence forces in the Pacific. While the competition between commands necessitated the creation of sovereign intelligence services, with the establishment of such fully autonomous agencies, cooperation between previous nations would be far less ambiguous, and less likely to insight the same sort of command feuds were the operational protocols agreed upon by these already sovereign operations. Effective cooperation with the intelligence organizations in each region of interest now is the only means by which to ensure that these critical shipping lanes, so crucial during World War II, and even more so to the nations involved in the present conflict to preserve the sovereignty so recently and

185General Headquarters Far East Command, A Brief History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and Affiliated Units. Military Intelligence Series General Staff. General Intelligence Circular 302. 8, July 1948. (U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA): II. Intelligence Activities in the Philippines: Japanese Occupation, 125 (227/347).

153 repeatedly challenged by Chinese attempts to alter legal precedent regarding the present

Laws of the Sea.186

186For more information on China’s attempt to challenge recent legal precedents see: Scott Bentley, The Australian Defense Force, “Malaysia’s “Special Relationship” with China and the South China Sea: Not So Special Anymore.” ASEAN Forum, An Online Journal, 31 July, 2015. 154

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