The Vietminh and the PKP-Hukbalahap Experience during World War II

The Vietminh and the PKP-Hukbalahap came from the same rib of the Comintern. Ho and most of the original Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries of Vietnam were developed by the Communist Party of France in line with the Comintern policy of assisting in the development of independence movements in colonies. The PKP on the other hand was a product of the initiatives of the Communist Party of the USA, the Communist Party of China and Partai Komunis Indonesia (thru Tan Malaka). Although quite a number of trainees of the later did not finish their schooling because of home sickness or the need to return home for some reason or another.

The Vietminh guerrillas develop very slow at the start but comprehensively prepared for the future. Sound Ideological, Political and Organizational Grounding for a People’s War Against Japan

The 1930, First Central Committee of the PKP were given revolutionary schooling from Leninist and revolutionary Schools in Moscow and Trade Union revolutionary work in China. Some studied in the famed Frunze Military Academy in Moscow.

The PKP had a better head start than their Vietnamese counterparts in war preparations.

The PKP intensified mass actions as soon as it was founded where it openly called for the overthrow of the US regime competing with the Sakdal Movement in ultra leftist militance. Thus within a year, the entire PKP leadership had been arrested and sentenced to exile.

It was able to correct these errors prior to the war, by consolidating and expanding its ranks and united front. The pre-war merger of the PKP-SPP and the tactical alliance between the Quezon Commonwealth Government on an anti- fascist platform (engineered by the CPUSA James Allen and Socialist Party Chairman, Pedro Abad Santos) enabled the revolutionary movement to have their leaders released from exile, consolidate their ranks and organize united front alliances freely in both urban areas and the countryside in preparation for an anticipated war with Japan. With the merger the peasant movements in Central Luzon, Rizal province and Southern Luzon provided the PKP a ready made rural mass base of several millions that would provide them with a strong foundation for guerrilla bases in the event of war. These rural bases were further consolidated through the local elections before the Japanese invasion which saw the election of 9 socialist mayors and a significant number of Provincial Board members and municipal councilors in many areas in Central Luzon. This was despite the disenfranchisement or non-inclusion for technicalities of a large part of the peasant movement as voters, which could have won the PKP-SPP governors and an overwhelming majority of mayoral seats in Central Luzon in the August 1940 local elections..

The defeat and surrender of the USAFFE in the Philippines, enabled the PKP to immediately amass weapons that littered the battlefields in Bataan, Pampanga and Tarlac; or barter food or clothes with weapons from USAFFE stragglers and several initial ambushes against Japanese soldiers. Thus, the Hukbalahap started with 5 full companies (squadrons), the standard independent guerrilla formations and grew by leaps and bounds.

Too Much Influence by Foreign Parties vs National Interests

Comintern representatives often subverted the independence of many proletarian parties. Borodin and Otto Braun brought the CCP to many disasters and was corrected only during the Tsunyi Conference where Mao became the leader of the CCP, took an independent stance and led China to victory. In the Philippine case, it was the CCP and the CPUSA while playing constructive roles in the formation of the local movement, brought strategic misdirection to the PKP-Hukbalahap during the war.

The Chinese Communist Party saw the important role of the PKP in a tactical sense in their war against Japan. They recognized the Philippines would be a jumping point of more Japanese forces that would be committed to China if they are not pinned down in the archipelago. Three Chinese communists were integrated in the Political Bureau and the Central Committee of the PKP headed by Co Sing Liat to help fortify its leadership in mass base organizing, army building, army building and logistics work. Edgar Snow’s Red Star of China, as one of the main references in guerilla warfare/people’s war thus making Mao’s guerrilla warfare as the basic tenet guiding the Hukbalahap.

A core of veteran cadres from the 4th Route and 8th Route Army were dispatched who were reconstituted into Squadron 48 served as a political-military training squadron to the Hukbalahap. The 20,000 Chinese business establishments and stalls in Manila also were harnessed as a source of revolutionary taxation to help fund the war effort. Up to this point, their role was positive.

Because of these Chinese connections the PKP-Hukbalahap pursued a political military line that tactically favored China and neglecting comprehensive foundational preparations for the revolution.

Co Sing Liat a member of the PKP Military Committee and Political Bureau advised the PKP to adopt a militarist line of “Relentless Attacks” against the Japanese forces and their puppets in Central and Southern Luzon. This policy only attracted attention to the Japanese forces to concentrate its forces against the Hukbalahap without clear political, economic and military advantages. It only wasted revolutionary energy that would have been best used for national expansion and strategic positioning in the whole of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

It was only much later during his retirement years that Jesus Lava in his memoirs realized that the military policy that were pushed by their Chinese counterparts (headed by Co Sing Liat) was in furtherance of China’s interest and not the PKP’s. . China wanted to strategically pin down potential Japanese reinforcement forces in the Philippines to prevent further Japanese reinforcements against China. More than 700,000 Japanese forces had been deployed to conquer China even before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The influence of patriotism of the CPUSA to their motherland that was more damaging to the PKP’s bid for independence.

Both Japan and the US were imperialist nations. The alliance of the PKP with the US was only tactical in so far as permitting the revolutionary forces to grow unmolested during the eve of the war. With the defeat of the US in the Philippines, and MacArthur’s instructions to all USAFFE guerrilla forces to lie low and await their coming, there was no reason for “relentless attacks” because clearly liberating the country from both Japan and the US was not yet possible at this time in terms of subjective forces, the revolutionary army, organized masses, bases, weapons and logistics etc.. The Vietminh carried out calibrated attacks in support of expansion and strategic positioning all over Vietnam. This made it possible to have cards to play, a US card, a French card and a Japanese Card. This made it possible to negotiate the surrender of all Japanese arms to the Vietminh when Japan surrendered. . At the start of the war, with Crisanto Evangelista, Pedro Abad Santos and Capadocia in prison at the National Bilibid Prison, Japan tried to make peace with the PKP- Hukbalahap proposing an alliance against big landlords.

The Japanese forces figured that they could sacrifice Filipino landlords to the guerrilla movement who could unite with the Japanese supported Sakdal peasant movement who had a very radical independence and agrarian reform program during the 1930’s. This way Japan could operate unmolested and become popular to the masses. Capadocia was released by the Japanese to negotiate. This could possibly have been a good opportunity to exploit, to permanently and physically remove landlords as a class all over the country and effect a revolutionary land reform openly without molestation through a truce with the Japanese imperial forces without giving up their firearms or revolutionary initiative.

This way MacArthur with no landlords to ally with in taking over Central and Southern Tagalog, would become open to a Guatamo Bay type of compromise (where Fidel Castro compromised Guatanamo Bay as a US base indefinitely in recognition of their independent republic) with the PKP-Hukbalahap. Accordingly, Crisanto Evangelista and Pedro Abad Santos never forgave the Lava leadership on this issue, when he outrightly threw out the suggestion of a tactical alliance and arrested Capadocia instead. This could have made national expansion and strategic positioning possible, the establishment of revolutionary local governments and prevented Japanese brutality against the people. Because the PKP-Hukbalahap refused the offer, it was the politicians such as Roxas, Benigno Aquino II, etc. and the big landlords who took over collaborating with the Japanese and shifting allegiance to the US when MacArthur came.

Like the Vietminh, the PKP-Hukbalahap would have become a national force to reckon with after Japan’s defeat if Gen Yamashita with more than 100,000 weapons including artillery and mortars surrendered their arms to the revolutionary forces instead of the Americans. But with the policy of “relentless attacks” bridges had been permanently destroyed and had become an impossible option. Too many Japanese soldiers had died in the hands of guerrillas for any peaceful dialogue to take shape.

It would have been better to have pitted the US and Japan against each other shifting to where tactical advantages presented themselves in favor of the growth of the independence movement. National interest should have been the guiding light in foreign policy of the PKP with imperialist nations.

Japan was only interested in the Philippines because it was a strategic base in its operations against China and in controlling Southeast Asia. Economically it was more interested in other parts of Southeast Asia for their large metal and oil deposits. Only sugar production interested them in the Philippines which they converted into alcohol fuel for their vehicles. Strategic basing was also the key consideration of the US in the Philippines and not its natural resources. Their strategic control of South, Central and North America for industrial resources

While the PKP Balibago Conference overturned the “Retreat for Defense” policy of the Hukbalahap and returned to an offensive position at the eve of US military landings against Japan, the Conference ideologically disarmed the PKP with regards their direction vis a vis the US.

They mistakenly believed the US would accommodate the PKP and even compensate all the officers and members of the Hukbalahap based on their ranks as MacArthur had promised. Earlier in the war, during the negotiations with the USAFFE overall guerrilla chief, Lt. Col Thorpe, the PKP-Hukbalahap leadership submitted a rooster of their officers with the positions of “Major Generals, and Lieutenant Generals, Generals and Colonels” for their top commanders. They believed that they would be paid for their war time services based on these ranks.

It ws their thinking that they could concentrate and participate in parliamentary elections and struggles and found no more necessity for armed struggle as the main form of struggle. . A taste of conditions during their pre war tactical alliance with Quezon where they were given a free hand in organizing trade unions, and middle forces alliances and participate in the local elections in 1940 at the eve of the war may have also contributed to this sense of false security. They were unaware that Macarthur after they had landed would issue a directive to the US Eight Army to use the Hukbalahap in taking out the Japanese but to immediately disarm them after the mission had been accomplished. They were considered as a hostile group more than the Japanese collaborators who were seen as convenient allies.

Thus the PKP disarmed themselves from other conditions that may develop. They did not take into consideration the necessity of strategic positioning and the development of impregnable future war theaters if the contrary events occurred. Shortcomings in Foundational Work

While the Vietminh took national expansion and strategic positioning for a long war, the Hukbalahap did not.

Since the start of World War II, the leadership of the struggle were content in positioning and operating the bulk of their forces in the great plains of Central Luzon and the swamps of Candaba, and using Mt. Arayat as its rear, serving as its central headquarters, training area, place for various conferences and harboring ground for squadrons in times of military operations in the plains that surrounded it.

The vast plains of Central Luzon could easily be contained militarily.

National expansion and development of strategic rear areas were neglected. During the war there was a surplus of so many squadrons that had been formed that most of them had to be dispersed to communities and put on call if they were needed. These forces could have been used for national expansion in the whole of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

In Kirkvliet’s study, a total of 76 Hukbalahap Squadrons were tallied in 1944, of which 73 were deployed in Central Luzon while Laguna had 2 Squadrons, and the other was the mobile training Squadron No. 48, the Chinese squadron. Only two to three squadrons for Central Luzon were already sufficient while the rest could have been deployed to the rest of the country for national expansion.

In Central Luzon, three squadrons could swim and easily disperse without being a burden logistically. Their military capability could have been supplemented by the organization and presence of militia units in each barrio who are sufficiently armed and employing landmine warfare, booby traps, sniping and tunnel warfare to make life short and dangerous to the enemy on the move as was the case of the Vietminh armed forces.. Failure to Develop Strategic Rear Areas and Future War Theaters Demographic and terrain studies were never made in relation to a political military strategy for the country. The lure of parliamentary struggle engulfed the leadership in its strategic perspective.

For an example, in Luzon, the vast Sierra Madre mountain range which connected Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, Quezon, Bulacan, Rizal, Southern Tagalog and the Bicol Region potentially could provide a strategic rear for guerrilla units to sustain armed struggle and make it impossible for the enemy to destroy the revolutionary forces.

However, much work had to be done to transform this area for this purpose. In its current state, it had a very small population that made it impossible for large guerrilla units to stay in these areas for extended periods of time without bringing their own logistics. These areas could have been opened for human resettlement areas, freeing many tenants from Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog from landlord bondage. It had to be peopled with self reliant communities from the organized masses in the plains to provide a chain of strategic bases for guerrilla warfare. The strategic potentials of the Cordillera mountain range where large tribal communities resided was also neglected.

In these areas a myriad of tunnel systems should have also been prepared as hidden camps in the stretch of the mountain range. Ordnance factories could also have been set up in these areas for the extensive use of land mine warfare. There were attempts to develop land mine warfare, with Angel Baking taking the lead but it was not backed up with the necessary personnel and experts on this field.

Without the necessary development of these potential rear areas, this same areas would be death traps to guerrillas who would starve to death. Recall at one time, the best commanders of the HMB were assembled in a training camp in Sierra Madre for refresher training. Government troops pinpointed and attacked it. While all survived the attack, nearly all would die of starvation lost in the Sierra Madre fastness.

Foreign military powers that covet the country had to be given due respect with serious strategic planning and preparations. This is where the Vietminh and the Hukbalahap differed.