Behind Japanese Lines (14 page)

In World War II the eyes of most Americans were fixed on Europe much of the time. Propaganda, either orchestrated by governments or manufactured wholesale by journalists, glamorized European “resistance movements” generally and the French “maquis” in particular. By contrast, the war in the Pacific was viewed mostly as a defensive action against Japanese conquest in 1941-42, and then as a slow process of reconquest, 1943-45, in either case conducted by regular armed forces. Actually, the Philippine resistance was at least as impressive as any of its counterparts in Europe, and it was carried out under more difficult conditions. It was always harder for Philippine guerrillas, whether Americans or native Filipinos, to secure either outside aid or sanctuary, since in the Far East there were no equivalents of the Swiss or Spanish frontiers to slip across when circumstances grew desperate. The tortures and beheadings perpetrated by the Japanese in the execution chambers of Fort Santiago in Manila were lesser in scale than the deeds of Hitler's Gestapo but no less ghastly. Loyalty to America and resistance to the Japanese cost the Filipinos dearly: 5 percent of them were killed; millions were terrorized by unbridled Japanese torture and rape; and scores of thousands were crippled permanently. They were impoverished from wholesale theft and destruction of their resources, and their capital was laid waste more thoroughly than any cities on earth save Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Warsaw.

If it ever could be written fully and accurately, the history of the resistance in the Philippines would fill many large volumes. It will never be written thus, for several reasons: (1) many of the most important figures involved have long since died; (2) many guerrillas never kept records lest they fall into the hands of the enemy; (3) during the war rivalry between various groups and leaders was rife, resulting in postwar accounts by survivors that vary dramatically, especially in their assessment of individuals; and (4) near the end of the war and afterward hordes rushed to become “guerrillas” or to pay someone to manufacture papers attesting that the bearer had played some heroic role in the “resistance.” Gleaning anything like the truth from this mountain of grain and chaff is problematical at best. The present account cannot claim to do more than indicate the
general character of guerrilla activity on Luzon, explain my role in it, and offer some personal estimates of others with whom I dealt.

Some Filipino guerrilla units were formed within two or three weeks of the beginning of the war, even before Manila fell to the Japanese, in madly optimistic anticipation of a short enemy occupation. Some of these raided feebly guarded Japanese centers in Manila while the battle for Bataan was going on. The numbers of such groups expanded rapidly, and they attracted all sorts of people, chiefly dislocated people. Among them were bureaucrats who had been dislodged from their jobs by the Japanese, schoolteachers with nothing to do since President Quezon had ordered all schools closed to prevent the Japanese from using them for indoctrination, operators of small boats whose craft had been seized or wrecked by the invaders, former Filipino soldiers who had escaped from Bataan or Corregidor into the jungle and who were now roaming about aimlessly on the lookout for a chance to “reenlist” with former officers or in vigilante groups, college students unable to get home from Manila, adventurous girls who preferred an uncertain life in the hills with native boyfriends to the prospect of rape by the Japanese, and everywhere the chronically unemployed and footloose. Many of these people were ragged, hungry, confused, even half-dazed, concerned mostly to protect themselves or their families. Only a few military men among them had clear ideas about resisting the Japanese. Such pathetic and bewildered people drifted easily under the control of almost anyone charismatic or forceful.

Many of the guerrilla leaders were reasonably sound, cautious, and able men. Others were mere desperadoes, reminiscent of characters from mystery novels and adventure movies. Worst of all were the monomaniacs. As I hope this account will make abundantly clear, I have many reasons for admiring and feeling grateful to the Filipino people; yet, like all people, Filipinos have their faults. One weakness widespread among them is vindictiveness. Many a Filipino “guerrilla” was concerned mostly to take advantage of current confusion to avenge himself on old enemies, destroy some rival family, betray a political foe to the Japanese, or simply to indulge a taste for sadism. Cruel as the Japanese were to everyone else, cruel as some despicable Americans were to suspected Filipino collaborators, nobody exceeded the savageries various depraved Filipinos inflicted on their own countrymen.
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Sinister guerrillas of this sort, especially the outright bandit types, struggled among themselves for followers, for territorial jurisdiction, for the opportunity to plunder hapless civilians, and merely
for survival. Kidnappings, executions, even lilliputian wars were endemic among these rival bands. In one such case, on the island of Leyte, a pitched battle between the followers of Kangleon and Miranda resulted in the deaths of two hundred men.
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Also on Leyte, in March 1943, were two other guerrilla outfits, one led by a “Captain” Gordon Lang, and the other by a swashbuckler, “Major” Chester Peters. The latter had a mestiza wife who called herself Joan of Arc. The two gangs spent most of their time fighting each other.
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When Wendell Fertig proclaimed himself a brigadier general on Mindanao, a worthless “Colonel” Gador on Panay could not bear the thought of being outranked and so promoted himself to “major general,” even though he commanded fewer than thirty men and had never fired a shot at a Japanese.
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In many ways the most intriguing guerrilla of the “maniac” variety was an ex-radio announcer on the island of Cebu named Harry Fenton. Trying to render a fair estimate of Fenton's role in the war illustrates a common problem in historical research. Both Americans and Filipinos who have written about Fenton have depicted him as a murderous semi-lunatic. They agree that he hated the Japanese with a passion approaching insanity; that he refused to acknowledge that many ordinary Filipinos had to continue to work under the Japanese at the only occupations they knew; that he regarded all such people as Japanese agents and slew so many of them on the slightest suspicion that he eventually alientated his own troops; that he was paranoically hostile to any suggestion that guerrilla leaders from elsewhere acquire any influence on Cebu; that he was an unbridled womanizer whose sexual excesses disgusted his subordinates; and that he was probably plotting to overthrow Maj. James Cushing, his co-leader of the Cebu guerrillas, when he was abruptly seized, court martialled, and executed by one of his subordinates.
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The main points of contention about Fenton are whether his wild extravagances were due to a cruel nature, an inordinate fear of being captured by the Japanese, or the onset of insanity.

Yet Fenton kept a diary, which survived him. In it there are numerous references to the execution of spies, but these are interspersed with many more notations about guerrilla plans, war rumors, problems of getting food and supplies, familiar references to “Jim” (Cushing), the co-leader he was allegedly trying to supplant, and expressions of concern for his wife and child. The tone of the whole diary is calm, even matter-of-fact. No one reading it alone would assume that there was anything unusual about its author.
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Of course, Adolf Hitler was kind to animals and loved Wagnerian music. Still,
one wonders if Fenton was really the monster of legend. Lots of guerrillas were jealous of lots of others, and only those who survived wrote books.

On Luzon conditions were deplorably reminiscent of those on the other islands. Throughout the central part of Luzon the Hukbalahaps (communists) and USAFFE (United States Armed Forces Far East) irregulars fought each other savagely, with luckless civilians caught in the middle. On one occasion early in the war a conference of competing Filipino bands was assembled. All parties agreed that nobody should come armed, but the conferees were shooting at each other before dinner was served.
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Even when rival leaders were not quarrelling among themselves, their men were sometimes so trigger-happy that they would do such things as shoot at any car on a highway on the theory that only people who collaborated with the enemy would have cars.
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Luzon had its quota of “crazies” too, though separating truth from legend about them is often difficult and sometimes, by now, impossible. One such, about whom many lurid tales were told, was an ex-Brooklyn policeman, John O'Day. Yet Albert Hendrickson, who was to be my commanding officer and friend, and who knew the man, said the stories about him were nonsense circulated by other guerrillas out of jealousy.
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An alleged criminal lunatic in north Luzon was a Filipino, Lt. Emilio Escobar, known locally as Sagad (broom). This reputed monster, whom one writer calls “The ruthless Attila of the resistance movement in northern Luzon”,
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boasted of having killed four thousand people, nearly all of them his own countrymen. Escobar was reported to have done such things as leap at the throats of persons he disliked, behead women who gave him wine he did not fancy, execute women procured for him who did not perform to his satisfaction, and murder an eight-year-old girl who refused to go to bed with him. Other less celebrated brutes, some Americans, some Filipinos, were said to have kept harems of the daughters and relatives of accused collaborators, to have slashed at civilians with bolos on the slightest pretext, and to have forced victims to indulge in cannibalism before they were killed. In Pangasinan, where I eventually operated, a Col. Antonio Costas ordered the liquidation of his own father as a Japanese spy.
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When such ogres unquestionably existed, and grisly tales about others were widely believed, it was little wonder that many civilians feared a knock on the door at night by a Huk or a USAFFE guerrilla more than they did the Japanese.

My own experience with Filipino guerrillas, however, was that most of them were much better men than this motley array of
bandits, adventurers, psychopaths, and wastrels. Some of the Filipinos were ex-soldiers who, like myself, had escaped during the Death March, or prisoners who had been released by the Japanese to go home and die but who had recovered and chosen to fight the enemy again. Others, particularly leaders and organizers, were either educated people or local officials, though the rank and file were ordinary folk of little or no education. But whether they were ex-soldiers or civilians, educated or not, they felt humiliated by defeat. They were deeply loyal to General MacArthur and to their own president-in-exile, Manuel Quezon. They believed that MacArthur would return and that the United States would eventually win the war. Meantime, enraged by the savagery of the Japanese, they wanted to strike back.

On several of the southern Philippine Islands it was not difficult to organize guerrillas, for in the south many soldiers never surrendered but just went home, hid their arms, and later emerged as vigilantes in the interiors of islands where the Japanese controlled little more than a few coastal towns. On Luzon, by contrast, there were fewer undefeated ex-soldiers, fewer arms, and because Japanese control was tighter and more pervasive, fewer opportunities to recruit, arm, and train men.

Nonetheless, two native leaders of irregulars on Luzon stood out in the first months of the war. In the far north, a provincial governor, Roque A. Ablan, organized a guerrilla force and even got permission from President Quezon to issue his own currency. As early as January 28, 1942, he ambushed fifty Japanese. In bloody reprisal the enemy bombed several villages, killed twenty civilians, began an extensive mopping up campaign against guerrillas, and put a huge price on Ablan's head. One day he disappeared; the only guerrilla chieftain in north Luzon whose fate was never discovered.
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The other leader was Guillermo Nakar, a captain in the Philippine army who commanded a battalion of the Fourteenth Infantry in north Luzon when Corregidor fell and who refused to surrender. Early in the summer of 1942 Nakar secured a radio from Capt. Everett Warner before Warner surrendered to the Japanese. Warner had earlier sent a weak radio signal addressed to MacArthur that was picked up in Java and passed on. Now Nakar sent a few other messages, the last on August 22. Few events in the whole war heartened the supreme commander more, for they told him that neither Filipinos nor Americans had given up, that there were still organized units on Luzon raiding actively and distributing propaganda pamphlets. Soon after, one of Nakar's subordinates, Lt. Leandro Rosario, revealed Nakar's hideout to the Japanese.
On September 29 Nakar and his whole staff were captured without a fight. They were publicly tortured and executed.
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Nakar's fate was to be sadly typical of that of many guerrilla leaders. If one alienated a subordinate or the local civilian population, it was usually not long until a Japanese patrol learned of his whereabouts.

Even before the war began, General MacArthur had made tentative plans for guerrilla operations. Unlike many in Washington and elsewhere in those years, he and his staff believed that Filipinos would continue some kind of resistance to a Japanese occupation, particularly if they received aid, encouragement, and leadership from Americans.
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Accordingly, his chief of intelligence, Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, had enrolled American miners, plantation owners, and businessmen, along with a larger number of Filipinos, in an intelligence apparatus which was to operate in case Japan overran the Philippines.

How many people were involved in this enterprise is uncertain. Al Hendrickson, the commander of USAFFE guerrillas in Tarlac, for whom I eventually became executive officer for many months, once rescued seven American miners at Lusod, near Baguio, early in the war, and found that none of them knew anything about plans for guerrilla operations. Of the Americans who
were
involved in the scheme most appear to have been killed during the war, though many of the Filipinos were not. It was the latter who formed the nucleus of an “underground.”