Receiving unorthodox medical treatment from a Philippine dog began a process that came close to making me a Filipino. William Fassoth had not been caught when his camp was raided by the Japanese because he had been away in the lowlands. From there he began to make arrangements for selected Filipino families to assume the dangerous task of hiding and feeding one American each. I was inherited by Mr. and Mrs. Louis M. Franco, who lived in the village of Tibuc-Tibuc near Gutad at the extreme western edge of Pampanga province, about ten miles north of the northwest corner of Manila Bay and close to the route of the Death March. The Francos did not know a word of English, but they treated me splendidly all the same.
They built me a low hut with a grass roof near a small river that meandered through a flat field covered with cogon grass. This made it possible to supply me with food and other commodities twice a day by wading in the stream and thus avoiding formation of a trail that might betray my hiding place. They also presented me with a .16-gauge shotgun pistol for protection, a weapon I was afraid to shoot lest it blow up in my hands. Later they gave me a Lee Enfield rifle, in which I reposed more confidence.
Here I settled down and tried to regain my health. I swam in the stream a great deal, both for enjoyment and for exercise. During the heat of the day I lay in the sun for long periods. Everyone has heard cynical observations to the effect that if one does not like a given medical opinion he has only to wait five or ten years and the opposite one will come into fashion. At the present time (1985) medical orthodoxy has it that long exposure to the sun is harmful to the skin. Maybe so, but it didn’t seem true to me in 1942. Sun, swimming, rest, and ample food gradually healed my foot and restored my health. In the process I turned as brown as the Filipinos themselves. Save for my beard, which I could shave, and my Occidental nose, about which I could do nothing, a casual observer could hardly have distinguished me from a Filipino, no mean asset in the life I was to lead for the next two and a half years.
Much of the time, of course, I had to stay under cover to avoid being spotted by Japanese planes or passing patrols. These days were, I believe, the longest of my life. I soon discovered that the best way to pass the time was to read and study. The Francos brought me what books they could. Most of them were elementary school texts, but since they were all I had I read and reread them many times. From them I learned much about the history, government, religion, and customs of the Philippines. With some amazement I discovered that more than seven thousand islands comprise the Philippines, that at least eight-seven dialects are spoken by their inhabitants, that Spanish was still the official language of the Islands, that Americans had made English compulsory for school children, and that Tagalog, a smooth, flowing tongue that is pleasant both to speak and to hear, would probably replace both Western languages eventually.
I became acquainted with the Philippine national heroes José Rizal and Emilio Aguinaldo, the former considered the father of his country and the latter celebrated as the leader of Philippine resistance to American occupation after the Spanish-American War of 1898. I became acquainted with the details of the U.S. occupation, and of the insurrection that followed it; with the excellent record made by Gen. Arthur MacArthur as governor-general of the Philippines; with the career of Manuel Quezon, the first president of the Philippine Commonwealth; and of his close relations with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the famous son of the able governor-general.
Not least interesting were descriptions of how the habits of particular Filipinos had caused the U.S. Army to replace the .38 automatic with the .45 as standard issue. The Moros, fierce Moslems who inhabit Mindanao and some small southern islands, hated the Christian and pagan Filipinos and fought them periodically. They also had the disconcerting habit of occasionally running amok. This state was induced either by binding themselves tightly with bamboo or by winding an elastic vine around their genitals. In either case, half-mad with pain and quasi-religious fanaticism, they would race about wildly, killing anyone they met until someone killed them. By hard experience it was learned that a bullet from a .38 did not pack the wallop necessary to stop an amok Moro before he could slash or spear his intended victim. Only a .45 would do it.
I also began in earnest to learn Pampangano, the dialect of the area. For many days I wrote out phrases phonetically, memorized them, and practiced their pronunciation. There is nothing like concentration for learning, and eventually I developed a good command of the tongue. Mastery was not immediate, though. One day I addressed a native boy: “Magandang Hapon.” He stared at me quizzically and after some hesitation asked me if I realized what I had said. I replied that I had intended to say, “Good afternoon.” He laughed and told me that the meaning of the word “Hapon” depended on which syllable was accented. Ha-pon meant afternoon. Ha-pon meant Japanese. What I had actually said was “Good (or beautiful) Japanese.”
As my linguistic studies progressed and my health improved, I came out of hiding periodically to visit local villages and homes where I could practice my vocabulary and make Filipino friends. As a teenager I had studied the Hawaiian guitar for a time. Now some Filipinos gave me a standard (Spanish) guitar, on which I practiced a good deal. Soon I learned to sing war songs and love songs in Pampangano.
I also learned something about Filipino psychology and customs. The favorite weapon of most Filipino men was the bolo, a long, curved knife carried in a bamboo scabbard and used for a variety of purposes. Most Filipinos were good-natured much of the time but, like people everywhere, they occasionally lost their tempers and got into fights. The aftermath of a fight waged with bolos could be devastating. I have seen survivors of bolo battles reconstructed with as many as four hundred stitches.
Filipinos love to gamble, particularly on cockfights. The owners of fighting roosters often appeared to think as much of their feathered protégés as of their own children, and spent much time and effort training them. The training itself breathed the spirit of boot camp in the Japanese army. A favorite way of “conditioning” an unfortunate chicken was to tie its feet to a wire clothesline and then flick the wire to make it spring back and forth. The terrified rooster had to strain every fiber to stay upright, a process which gradually turned his leg muscles into something like steel wire.
My Filipino mentors did not tutor me merely in their language and folklore. They also taught me various ways to augment my food supply. One such way was to make and set snares to catch wild chickens, which are smaller than American chickens. The roosters are brightly colored and crow their brains out all night long. In the 1940s they were plentiful all over the Philippines and though wild were not hard to catch in a simple noose trap that would snare one by the neck or one foot and hoist it into the air. I also learned to catch birds at night by throwing a fish seine over their roosting places in the tall cogon grass, and to catch fish from the river with the same nets. The Filipinos also taught me another way to catch fish that seemed implausible but was surprisingly effective. They would pile a lot of rocks in a streambed, leave them for a week or so, then cover them with a large net and weigh down its outer edges. Then they would slide their hands carefully under the net and remove the rocks one by one until only fish remained inside.
Coping with Philippine livestock was more challenging than with local birds and fish. Most Philippine animals are midgets compared to their American counterparts. A notable exception is the water buffalo, or carabao. Wild carabao are fierce, and those in the Philippines once experienced the distinction of being hunted by Theodore Roosevelt; but domesticated carabao are huge, patient, docile beasts, so gentle that children can tend them. They pull the plows, wagons, and carts of the Philippines at a leisurely pace with seeming contentment as long as they are fed and get a couple of baths a day in a nearby river or mud wallow. Unlike the skin of a horse, that of a carabao is loose and rolls back and forth across the animal’s back when it walks. This, I discovered, makes riding one no mean feat. I had seen natives ride them many times, so one day I climbed aboard with a Filipino boy. The carabao either did not like me or rebelled at the idea of being ridden double. He promptly took off cross-country. The Filipino boy wisely jumped off, but I clung desperately to the critter, jerking on the rope that went to a ring in his nose and shouting at him in English, a language to which he remained obdurately indifferent. With each leap and each tug on the rope, I slipped farther forward on his rippling hide until I was astride his neck, just behind his massive, ominous looking curved horns. Here I had no leverage, so I could not jump; I could only fall off. I hit the ground hard and lay motionless. The Filipino boy rushed up to me and inquired solicitously if I was hurt. Fortunately, I was only dazed—and more wary of carabao.
As I had just learned, carabao, despite their bulk, could run with surprising speed for short distances. Sometimes Filipinos would race them against horses. The carabao held their own admirably in such matches, though they certainly weren’t graceful runners. One day I watched a man train a carabao for racing. He held the guide rope with one hand and the animal’s tail with the other. The very ground shook as the thundering beast thumpety-thumped across the landscape, his trainer’s feet hitting the ground every twenty feet or so behind him. I also observed what it would have been useful to me to have known earlier: that when the animal’s skin rolled one way the trick was for the rider to roll the other.
In my many weeks in and around Tibuc-Tibuc, I became acquainted with the considerable array of foods eaten by ordinary Filipinos in that locale. Some were delicious; many more were wholesome and reasonably tasty; some I never learned to savor. Perhaps the best foods were the many varieties of fruit. Mangoes were absolutely delectable. Bananas came in a score of varieties, some of which could be fried in coconut oil. Coconuts could be prepared a dozen different ways—after one climbed a tree and laboriously wrestled the nuts out of the top of it. Breadfruit and guava were good, though, once more, procuring them could be arduous. My worst experience picking fruit came in a guava tree when I was attacked by a swarm of large, pugnacious red ants. They were all over me before I noticed them. It would have required a dozen hands to disperse them, and since I had to use one of my two to hold onto the tree I could only swat them ineffectually. By the time I got to the ground, I was painfully chewed up. Cashew nuts were abundant and tasty but had to be handled with care since the shells exuded a juice that produced an irritating swelling if it touched the skin. The best way to deal with them was to roast them slowly until the shell became virtual charcoal, and then remove the nut.
Because few Filipinos had firearms before the war, carabao, deer, pigs and chickens were plentiful. Chicken and venison were, of course, good. Wild pig was tasty enough, though very fat. Occidental pork producers have carefully bred hogs to reduce their fat content. I was invariably impressed by how much fatter were the wild pigs I riddled with Thompson submachineguns (tommyguns) in the Philippines. (One thinks little about the sporting side of hunting when hunger drives him to stalk animals for their meat.) Carabao meat had an acceptable flavor but was so tough the Devil himself would have been hard put to chew it. Filipinos also esteemed large rats that lived in sugarcane fields, though I must add in their defense that they did not eat rats of the sort that infest garbage dumps. I don’t know whether I ever ate “sugar rat” or not. Sometimes one was served stews and soups that were best consumed without asking a lot of questions.
Rice was the staple of the Philippine diet. Because of its starch one could easily gain weight on it, though the weight was as readily lost if one fell sick. Once I subsisted for eight days on rice and tomatoes alone. “Coffee” was made from rice and corn roasted together, then served with much sugar. Cassava, the root of a common tropical plant, was cut, fried, and made into something like potato chips. Small, transparent shrimp were somewhat disconcerting when they jumped around live in a coconut shell just before they were to be devoured, but they were palatable. Fish were sometimes dried and stored for later consumption, sometimes merely cooked as they had come from the water, without being cleaned. The diner ate as much as he chose and threw away the rest. Small fish called bagong were often mashed and left to ferment, a process that turned them into a sharp-flavored, smelly seasoning. Cattle intestines were carefully cleaned and much prized. One’s craving for sweets was satisfied most easily by chewing sugar cane, though the Filipinos did make a crude brown sugar by pouring boiled cane juice into coconut shells to harden. Sometimes they made candy by boiling sugar and freshly grated coconut together. What resulted made a respectable confection—and a memorable laxative.
Filipino cooking and serving techniques required some adjustment on the part of an Occidental. Most Filipino food was either boiled or roasted, and it ran heavily to soup. Silverware was unheard of. Everything but soup was put on banana leaves spread on the floor and eaten with the fingers. I occasioned much good-natured laughter before I finally mastered the knack of kneading food into a ball before popping it into my mouth. But learn it I did, just as I learned to eat nearly everything put before me. Soon the Filipinos complimented me for not being “delicado” (choosy).
There were times, though, when I drew the line. I never became reconciled to the delicacy called balot, a fertilized egg that had been buried in manure for some time, and I never developed a taste for Philippine jerky after watching clouds of flies blow it while it was being dried in the sun.
But the worst was dog. The first time I ate it, I didn’t know what it was. When I was told, I promptly vomited my entire dinner. It was not that the flavor was repellent; it was just that I had always liked dogs and the thought of having eaten one gagged me. Maybe devouring Man’s Best Friend would not have seemed so bad had I not learned of the barbarities that preceded a dog’s appearance as the main course in a dinner. The usual procedure was to tie the poor beast to a tree, starve it for several days, then stuff it with all it could eat and batter it to death with a club. The carcass was then cut into small pieces, cooked with rice, and served with wine. Eventually I got so I could force myself to eat dog if I didn’t have to watch the butchering, but I always drank a lot of wine with it.
Later in the war I heard tales about famished Japanese soldiers who allegedly resorted to cannibalism. Though I am not so ill-balanced that I think more of dogs than of human beings, somehow the prospect of cannibalism never seemed as repulsive to me in those days as devouring a dog, and I sometimes wondered idly if I could ever become so starved that I would sink to cannibalism. Fortunately, no test case ever arose.
Usually I was alone in my grass hut, but now and then I had visitors. The least welcome one appeared one day while I was lying on my side with my ear to a bamboo floor. I heard something near my foot and looked down. There was a good-sized snake crawling alongside my leg toward my head. Momentarily I was frozen with terror: I even stopped breathing. Gradually I recovered my senses sufficiently to decide that I must grab the loathsome creature with my hands if it came much closer, since it might bite me and the closer a bite is to the heart the more dangerous it becomes. Perhaps the snake also had a premonition of impending disaster: when it reached my waist it abruptly made a ninety-degree turn and vanished into the cogon grass. My heart resumed beating.
Other visitors were more agreeable. Nobody will ever know exactly how many American soldiers escaped into the hills and jungle during the Bataan campaign or on the Death March. There must have been several hundred. Many died soon of starvation or diseases, and the Japanese caught quite a few. Others tried to live out the war in wilderness hideouts, or moved furtively from one Filipino settlement to another for months or years. Some sought a way out of the Philippines, others looked for guerrilla forces to join, still others tried to melt inconspicuously into the Filipino populace. Periodically one or more of these footloose fugitives passed through the small village of Tibuc-Tibuc. One such was a Maj. John E. Duffy, a Catholic priest whom I was to meet again in San Antonio, Texas in 1946. He had graduated from Notre Dame and enjoyed talking about his namesake, the famous Father Duffy of World War I, who had reputedly said to his troops, “May the Good Lord take a liking to you, but not too soon.” I remember him chiefly because he had what seemed to me a remarkable vocabulary of profanity for a clergyman. I used to wonder if he could swear as impressively in Latin as in English.
Another visitor was a Brooklynite named Louis Barella. Because Japanese patrols were known to be close by, he and I were moved one night into the center of a large cogon grass field. Here we were covered with a mosquito net secured at the corners by tying it to the cross stems of the grass. This arrangement foiled the Japanese and the mosquitoes but not a large rat that somehow made its way in but could not find an exit. It kept us busy until I lifted the whole net in desperation and let it scurry away. Needless to say, the mosquitoes promptly exploited the situation; but one thing you learn in war is that life is not a series of clear-cut decisions between good and evil: it is a succession of choices among alternatives all of which are disagreeable.
Another time I had several visitors rather than one. They turned out to be Hukbalahaps, Philippine communist guerrillas. I was to have much more to do with the Huks later on, and my introduction to them on this occasion was not auspicious. Their leader had a parrot which he insisted that I take in trade for my rifle. The bird was beautiful but of doubtful utility to a fugitive from the Japanese, so I declined. A couple of his armed companions then made gestures the import of which could not be misunderstood. I hastily handed over the rifle and accepted the bird.
For unusual people, wartime often provides exceptional opportunities to exhibit resourcefulness. One such individual whom I had encountered in the Fassoth camp and whose path I crossed again at Tibuc-Tibuc in the spring of 1943 was an American soldier who bore the easily remembered name of Johnny Johns. Johnny and a Captain Newman had been captured at the same time by the Japanese. Johnny had persuaded the captain to write a statement calling on all Americans hiding in the mountains to surrender. They were assured that the Japanese would feed them and treat them well, but warned that if they obstinately remained fugitives they would be captured and beheaded. Armed with this piece of paper, Johnny went to the Japanese and talked them into giving him $7 cash, some cigarettes, and a five-day pass, in return for which he proposed to travel about in this portion of Luzon and try to induce American escapees to surrender. To insure that he was serious and would come back, the captain was held hostage. After five days Johnny dutifully returned from his travels without having persuaded me, or anyone else, to surrender. In fact, he proved to be more persuasive with the Japanese than with Americans, gradually convincing them that five days was too little time to accomplish anything. Eventually his captors gave him a pass of indefinite duration and sent him on his way once more.
Before the war Johnny had somehow gotten hold of a considerable sum of money, which he had hidden. Now he promptly dug up his cash, headed for Manila, and began a playboy’s life in the big city nightclubs. Before long the hostage captain heard through the grapevine what had happened and, realizing the precariousness of his own situation, tried to escape—and made it. Whether Captain Newman knew where I was, or merely happened to find me by accident, I do not know, but soon after his escape he paid me a visit. Meanwhile the Japanese too had learned how Johnny was abusing their trust in him, and arrested him, but Johnny was a slippery customer and soon got away from them again. I was as hospitable to Captain Newman as I could bring myself to be in the circumstances, for the enemy soon got wind of his whereabouts too, and swarmed into the area. The alarmed captain abruptly took off. The conclusion was irresistible that I too needed to change my address without delay.
Though I hated to leave the Filipinos who had protected me and treated me so well, I did not depart a day too soon. At one time, in fact, the Japanese had me surrounded in a field of cogon grass but fortunately did not realize it. I waited until nightfall, then stripped naked, tucked my clothes under my arm, and slipped through their lines. The reader might wonder why I chose thus to offer extra opportunities to the ubiquitous mosquitoes. The reason was that I had become so brown from swimming and lying in the sun that at night I was less conspicuous naked than clothed.
Soon after the Japanese left the area, I met two American soldiers, Sgt. Hugh B. McCoy of the Fifth Interceptor Command and Sgt. Ray Schletterer of the Seventeenth Ordnance. They were accompanied by a Philippine army machinegunner, a tiny Igorot tribesman from the mountains of north Luzon named José Balekow. The three of them were headed north. Having nowhere in particular to go, I joined them. Soon we met another escapee, a fellow alumnus of the Fassoth camp named Fred Alvides. Fred was a short, stocky, fast-talking American of Mexican descent, so dark he could pass easily for a Filipino. Most Americans in the camp had disliked him, in part because of his habit of leaving for days at a time, then coming back and bragging about all the good food and girls he had had. According to Vernon Fassoth’s recollections, later in the war Clay Conner thought Alvides tried to set him up for the Japanese, but Conner grew suspicious and left the area, whereupon the Japanese killed Fred as a consolation prize.
Whatever the accuracy of that conjecture, I remembered Fred mainly because we had once gotten into an argument in the Fassoth camp, and he had challenged me to a fight. I was so weak then I couldn’t have fought Little Boy Blue, but I told him I would take a rain check. I had fought a good deal while growing up, so when I had my health back I reminded Fred of my earlier offer. He was willing so with McCoy and Schletterer as witnesses, we had it out bareknuckled and barefooted, among the rocks along the river. We fought until we were tired, took an intermission, fought again, and quit by mutual consent. Our two referees did not render a formal decision. I would have called it a draw. Fred had a black eye and blood on his face. I had stone bruises on my feet, a swollen hand, and a sore jaw that prevented me from chewing for a week or so. Thus was honor preserved all around.
The fight over, we resumed our trek northward, wandering through the foothills by day and across flatlands by night, guided by a succession of Filipinos. After going perhaps fifteen or twenty miles we stopped at a house in the hills near Porac in Pampanga.
Ever since my health had begun to improve, I had turned over in my mind the idea of forming a guerrilla army of my own to fight the Japanese. Of course, the guerrilla bands could not hope to do battle successfully against regular army units, but they might be effective against the Kempeitai, the Japanese military police who terrorized Filipino civilians. More to the point, I knew little about either existing Filipino guerrilla operations or the plans General MacArthur had made for American guerrilla activity before Bataan fell. About the Hukbalahap guerrillas I knew nothing at all save that they had coerced me to trade them a rifle for a parrot who couldn’t speak English. I knew so little about communism then that I supposed that if I could raise a guerrilla force of my own I would be able to make common cause with the Huks.
Now, near Porac, we met an old man. I told José Balekow, the Filipino who would soon become my bodyguard, to ask him if there were any Japanese in the vicinity. The two carried on a long, animated conversation during which José, who was barefooted, shifted repeatedly from one foot to the other on the hot noonday sand. Eventually I lost patience and asked José what the old man had said. “Nothing,” he replied. The truth of the matter was that there are so many dialects in the Philippines that understanding can easily vanish within twenty miles. José had no idea what the old man had said, but was ashamed to admit it. Perhaps symbolically, in a nearby house a mynah bird chattered incessantly in still another dialect. The whole episode made me realize how much I had yet to learn if I was ever to do anything in the Philippines save skulk about as a fugitive until I was either killed or the war ended.
The next night we crossed the Manila-Baguio highway, only a stone’s throw from Camp Dau, just north of Angeles, a town lit by electric lights. By now I had been in the bush nearly a year, and the lights seemed a striking curiosity. We headed on into the central Luzon ricefields near the base of 3,367-foot Mt. Arayat, a spectacular peak because it rises all alone off a level plain just a few feet above sea level.
The area was also the home base of the Huks, with whom my second meeting proved no more propitious than the first. Soon after we were hidden in a house in a small village, at least five hundred armed and menacing men showed up in broad daylight. Here, we thought, were the guerrillas we had set out to meet. This proved true, but misleading. As Americans we had expected to be greeted joyously by any Filipino guerrillas. The leader of this band, however, strode into the grass-roofed hut where we sat on the floor and spoke to us sharply. If he and his followers hated the Japanese, they did not seem to be enamored of us on that account.
Nonetheless, they offered to help us on our way, which was, at that time, just generally north. When night fell, they set off, telling us to walk with them for protection. They assured us that later they would furnish us with guides. Meantime we should not talk. We didn’t—but we didn’t stop thinking about the cool reception we had gotten or its possible implications. After a time we came to a river, sat down, removed our shoes, forded the stream, and, once across, sat down to put the shoes back on. We exchanged apprehensive looks and made haste slowly, fumbling with the laces until the last barefooted Huk had reached us. His demeanor and actions were hardly reassuring; indeed, they stimulated the suspicions already growing in our minds. First he stopped and stared at us; then he looked toward his companions moving off. After a pause and another look at us, he hastened to the front of his column to talk to his leader. This time we shed our shoes in record time, recrossed the stream, and got out of there.
McCoy wanted to proceed northwestward along the foothills of the Zambales Mountains into Tarlac province and toward Lingayen Gulf, while I wanted to go toward the ricefields of central Luzon northeastwardly, mostly because I had heard that American-led guerrillas operated there. So we split, José choosing to stay with me.
Our guess, or luck, proved better than theirs, for McCoy and Schletterer were later reported to have been captured by the Japanese near Tarlac City. José and I, by contrast, found refuge in a house along the main highway to Manila. A religious service was held in the place almost as soon as we arrived. The sermon was given in Pampangano and then, with unfailing Philippine courtesy, repeated in English for my benefit. The language mattered little to me. All I was aware of was the roaring of Japanese trucks as they passed up and down the road just outside the building. Whenever one stopped, I put my hand on my gun just in case God’s Will might need reinforcement. I also noticed that the worshippers’ eyes betrayed comparable concern.
We had an even closer squeak a few days later. José and I had intended to stay in a grass hut in the middle of a ricefield, but neighboring people invited us to visit their village. José did not want to go, perhaps because the whole area was infested with Sakdalistas, anti-American Filipinos who at least professed to regard the Japanese with favor. Curiosity got the better of me, though, so I left José behind with all my possessions save a gun. While I was visiting, I learned that the Japanese had raided the place where we were staying. I was broken-hearted at the thought of what I assumed had happened to José, but he was a resourceful fellow and managed to escape soon after the Japanese caught him. He was overjoyed to find me quickly. He told me the Japanese had surrounded our grass hut, thrust guns and bayonets through all the windows, and told him in English, Spanish, and several native dialects that they knew both he and an American were in the house and that it would be wise for both of us to surrender. They had examined my shoes, canteen, and bedroll, after which they had slapped José around briskly when he played dumb and claimed not to know where I was. Now we wasted no time. As soon as darkness fell, we melted into the night and walked northward into Tarlac province. There I would spend the next six months, moving every few days from house to house, village to village, never knowing which day, even which hour, might be my last.
Certain aspects of this existence were not unpleasant. In villages where no American had ever set foot before, I was treated as a demigod, showered with every attention, even observed curiously when I ate and slept. I practiced the guitar and picked up native tongues sufficiently that Filipinos stopped conversing in dialects in my presence if they did not want me to hear what was said. I fished a good deal, and I learned more than I had ever expected to know, or wanted to know, about rice farming.
The latter was done in a remarkably methodical, even rhythmic, fashion from planting to harvest. When the square paddies were covered with water, carabao broke the ground by pulling one-handled plows. Rice seedlings were then transplanted by hand, by young and old of both sexes, standing in water nearly knee-deep. The young shoots were jammed into the mud with a corkscrew motion, always in a systematic way from left to right as far as the planter could reach. In the tropics people must pace themselves when working to avoid exhaustion. Filipinos did this in a delightful fashion, by having a guitar player set the tempo. I planted rice for eight days once and found that, outside of the work itself being wearing, the hardest part was to adjust to the tempo of the guitarist. Life in the paddies was enlivened by the presence of numerous leeches and occasional small but deadly green vipers. Men ignored the leeches, though their bites would bleed slowly for hours, but girls wrapped their legs as defense against them. The sight of either a leech or a viper invariably provoked much squealing and either real or feigned terror among the girls.
After the rainy season the ricefields dried, the grain ripened, and the farmers harvested it with sharp hand sickles. Completing the harvest was as stylized as planting. During the day rice stalks were spread on the ground, and carabao plodded endlessly in a circle over them until all the grain was trampled from the straw. Evenings women put rice grains into hollowed logs and pounded them methodically until the husks came off. The sound was as rhythmic as that of railroad men alternating hammer blows when driving spikes. The rice was then laid on broad, hand-woven, nearly flat, circular discs and tossed into the air. The wind blew away the husks, and the rice grains, being heavier, fell back onto the discs. Eventually the rice was packed into sacks or large bamboo baskets. The whole procedure was accompanied by much guitar playing and light-hearted talk. Thus did the Filipinos make rice harvesting one of the lesser fine arts. Alas! they were never able to make it an exact science. No matter how much hand picking went on along the way, harvested rice always contained a few tiny rocks. One soon learned to eat rice cautiously; the alternative was jangled nerves and chipped teeth.
Despite these occasional happy interludes life remained in essentials what it was bound to be for a fugitive in a war zone, highly uncertain and always dangerous. I had more close brushes with death in those months than I like to remember. One night I walked up to the back door of the house of a man named José Louis. (“Just like your fighter,” he had said to me when we first met.) He had also promised to get me a pair of shoes. Now another Filipino came to the door and whispered to me that the Japanese military police were at that moment questioning “Joe Louis” in an adjoining room. I didn’t wait for the shoes.
Another time I sat on the floor in a house, a loaded and cocked .45 in my lap, and peered intently through the weave of a bamboo wall at a Japanese cotton inspector who had stopped to ask for a drink of water. On still another occasion I happened to be in a house alongside a road on a day when the Japanese chose to move troops down the road all day long. The lady of the house, Mrs. Victoriano de la Cruz de Arceo, whom I called Ina (mother), sat calmly on a bench on the porch and smiled at the enemy soldiers as they passed.
The most harrowing such episode I ever heard of had a history of some interest. It was mistakenly attributed to me by an American newsman near the end of the war. I thought it happened to Bob Lapham, with whom I subsequently became closely associated. As I heard it, one day Bob was talking to a few Filipino farmers in a little village near Tarlac City when some Japanese unexpectedly turned up. Luckily, a few of the Filipinos happened to see the visitors before the latter saw Bob. One of them was a Moro girl, a most unlikely person to be in central Luzon, for the Moros’ homeland is in Mindanao, hundreds of miles south. Anyway, with amazing presence of mind she grabbed a hollow log of the sort in which rice was pounded, pushed Bob to the ground, and turned the log over on top of him. The Japanese were friendly, made some idle conversation, and asked for a drink of water. Then a couple of them sat down on what likely would have been Bob’s casket had he so much as sneezed. Had it been I, my heart would have pounded so loudly the Japanese surely would have heard it. Actually, the whole tale is apocryphal, I learned after the war; just one of those yarns that everyone had heard but which always happened to someone else.1
Though I knew the risks involved in moving about, I found it psychologically impossible to stay hidden all the time. Many days I would go out of doors and start conversations with local people, partly as a relief from boredom, partly because it pleased me to practice some dialect I was trying to learn, partly to observe the delighted surprise of a person who is addressed in his native tongue by a foreigner, partly because I was gradually making up my mind to recruit a personal force of guerrillas. Having experienced and witnessed the cruelties of the Japanese on the Death March, I lived in constant dread of being recaptured. Moreover, the last thing I wanted to be responsible for was the death or torture of the brave Filipinos who had protected me and shown me so many kindnesses. Thus, even though I often talked to people of whose antecedents and credentials I knew nothing, I did so with some feeling of guilt and a deep sense of foreboding.
The faithful Filipinos sometimes went to incredible lengths to protect me. It would be hard to imagine a more heartening demonstration of loyalty than that displayed by Mr. Dolfin L. Dizon, the village leader of Matatalaib, a suburb of San José, east of Tarlac City, in Tarlac Province. Mr. Dizon assembled all the people of his barrio, fingerprinted them in their own blood, and ordered them to swear never to reveal my presence among them. He told them they were to die, if necessary, rather than provide any information about me to the Japanese.
By now I talked and acted like a Filipino and was the same color as most of them. A casual observer might or migh not have noticed my longer nose and the consideration that while I was of average size for an American I was bigger than most Filipinos. If the Japanese had ever caught me and examined me closely, though, they would surely have discovered the truth, with results likely to have been fatal to me. José Balekow thought it was inconceivable that I could continue to live undetected among Filipinos, so even though he was my “bodyguard” he refused to sleep in the same house with me. José soon grew restless for other reasons as well, the main one being that he longed to go back north to his family and fellow Igorot tribesmen.
His eventual departure was speeded by an incident that was funny to me, though not to him. He had found a girlfriend in a nearby village, and one day he set off to visit her. For the occasion he dressed in his best. He had to cross a river that ran directly behind the house where I was staying, so I offered to ride across it behind him on a carabao and then bring the animal back. All went splendidly on the crossing until we reached the opposite bank. Here the carabao’s hind legs slipped. I grabbed at José to keep from falling into the river but succeeded only in pulling him in with me. He clambered to his feet, soaked to the skin and splattered with mud. Outraged as the proverbial wet hen, he took the Lord’s name in vain repeatedly and vehemently, then went stamping off in the direction of his beloved. I wanted to laugh but did not dare.
The many weeks of inactivity, interspersed with the narrow escapes detailed above, and climaxed by the departure of José, made me increasingly restless and thoughtful. Ever since the Bataan campaign I had doubted, on the intellectual level, that I would survive the war. Yet I did not want to die, and above all I did not want to die in some anonymous way or place. I thought a lot about my family back home and wondered if I would ever see them again. In fact, I worried about the whole matter so much that I wrote a few brief accounts of my experiences, placed them in bottles and buried them, in each case telling one Filipino where one bottle was in the hope that whatever my fate might be my parents and sisters might learn of it someday. Each slip of paper promised a reward to the bearer, reflecting my hope that at least some of the Filipinos who had done so much for me might eventually receive some compensation. I was the only son of an only son of an only son, and the chance that my name and bloodline would continue seemed slim. Maybe it is a man’s ego that dies hardest.
During these months the Japanese were engaged in building an airfield at San José near Tarlac City. When it was finally completed, the first plane to land on it, a big Betty, flew directly over my current hideout on its final approach. My mind was flooded with fantasies. I longed to blast it out of the air. I dreamed of stealing a Japanese plane and flying away, though I was neither a pilot nor a navigator. Of course, I understood the mechanism of planes, I had watched many takeoffs and landings, and I had often ridden in planes piloted by others; but I knew little geography, and had I managed to steal an enemy plane and get it into the air I would not have known where to head. Besides, it would have been just my luck to run out of gas, or encounter Japanese fighters, or even be intercepted by American fighters somewhere. They would see the “flaming meatball” Japanese insignia on the side of the plane and shoot me down. Of course, there had not been an American plane over that part of the Philippines in more than a year, but one day I was certain I heard one, a P-40. I rushed out excitedly to watch it come—and go. No others followed. Most likely the Japanese had captured or repaired one, and one of their pilots was testing it.
The mere sight of the American plane affected me strangely. I began to tell everyone I met that American planes were bombing Tokyo daily and that U.S. ground forces were now scoring victories regularly in the South Pacific. These stories were all fabrications. I hadn’t heard a radio broadcast since the fall of Bataan, and I had no idea how the war was going beyond what one could guess from seeing an occasional Manila newspaper printed under Japanese auspices. About all one could glean from that source was where fighting was taking place.
Psychologists have long known that if you tell the same lie often enough you gradually come to believe it yourself. In my case the process was accentuated by the eagerness with which most Filipinos accepted the tales and spread them. Why did I do it? I still don’t know precisely. Self-delusion, I suppose. I had never doubted that the United States would win the war someday, somehow. At the moment I wanted badly to hear some good news, and to bring some to the Filipinos too. Maybe war makes us all a little crazy.
Crazy or not, it was at about this time that I began to organize a band of guerrillas; and one of my first discoveries was that spreading news about the war, even though it was spurious, possessed practical utility: it helped recruiting.
I did not undertake my new career lightly. The thought had been in my mind for a long time, and by now I had seen and heard enough about guerrillas to understand what would be involved. The most disagreeable prospect was that I might have to kill people personally and that I would surely be responsible for the deaths of many at the hands of those under my command. Guerrilla life would not be for the squeamish.
My thoughts went back to a time before I fled Pampanga province. A Spaniard had told me he could get me forged papers attesting that I was a Spanish national, and that I could then live and move about freely, even in Manila. I had turned him down for the simplest of reasons: I did not want to go to Manila and wander around in civilian clothes. Moreover, if a soldier is caught doing this in wartime he is usually executed. When the war was over, I was decorated at the same time as Maj. Edwin P. Ramsey, an officer from the Twenty-sixth Cavalry who became a Luzon guerrilla leader and who did spend considerable time roaming from town to town pursuing various personal adventures, though he also managed to lead his guerrillas effectively when he was with them. But I just did not want to do this: I wanted to fight the Japanese.
Now I began to gather my first recruits. They were Filipino laborers whom the Japanese had conscripted to build their airstrip. I talked furtively with various of them whom I trusted and outlined plans for guerrilla activity. They kept me informed of everything that went on among both Japanese and Filipinos. As mutual confidence developed, plans grew more elaborate, and long-hidden guns began to appear as if by magic.
Perhaps the thesis that I had temporarily lapsed into insanity is strengthened by the consideration that precisely when I was simultaneously filled with fears, entertaining fantasies, bemusing Filipinos with imaginary American victories, and trying to recruit a personal army of irregulars, my interest in the opposite sex began to revive for the first time in more than a year. When one is sick and starved, thoughts of romance are remote, but as I regained health and strength the girls began to look prettier. My interest in them had taken an abrupt leap upward one night before I left Pampanga when a beautiful Filipina, accompanied by a guitar player, had treated me to a moonlight serenade on the veranda of a hacienda. Most Filipinos can’t conceal their dialect when they sing English songs, but this girl was not only gorgeous personally but a flawless singer in English as well. No matter. Before anything could develop, I had had to leave Pampanga one jump ahead of the Japanese.
My next encounter with romance was strictly as a spectator, and it was considerably more sobering. In most parts of the Philippines then courtship was still patterned on the Spanish model. Young men serenaded girls, and if a meeting took place there was a chaperone. One day in a small village where I was hiding, a handsome young fellow arrived begging for food, lodging, and employment. He was accepted by the local inhabitants and given work cutting sugarcane. One day he either misinterpreted the feelings of a young Filipina or could not control his emotions: he grabbed the girl and kissed her in front of others. Whatever the girl’s true sentiments, in the circumstances her only respectable recourse was to complain, which she did by screaming loudly. Soon the entire village had learned of the incident. Barrio leaders took counsel and solemnly asked the boy why he had so rashly bussed the girl. He said he loved the dalaga (maiden) and wanted to marry her.
Though this sounds like the prelude to an idyllic romance, it didn’t turn out that way. The girl was asked, in private, how she felt about her suitor’s unorthodox advances. She said she was unimpressed. The village leaders then told the boy a lie: that the girl had accepted him and that all of them should have some drinks to celebrate the joyous occasion. They took him to an isolated hut, and amid the drinking one of them split the boy’s skull with a bolo. He was then buried secretly in an unmarked grave. I learned about the whole matter only later when I missed the boy and asked what had happened to him. It cooled my romantic ardor abruptly.
Love will not be denied forever, though. One day two Filipina sisters came to see me. I was astonished not only by the beauty of their features and complexions but also by their excellent command of English. They belonged to the de Leon family, which was partly Spanish. Their father owned a small roadside store in San José, Tarlac. They were brave enough to invite me for dinner at their home, situated just behind the family store. One of them, whose name was Chinang, I fell for immediately. She obviously liked me, too, and soon I began to pay her almost daily visits, to the distress of her father, who feared that the Japanese would see me. After many lingering conversations I decided I wanted to get married; partly from genuine affection for Chinang but more, I think, from the fear that I would not survive the war and the consequent desire to leave behind some trace of myself: a son, I hoped. Chinang accepted my proposal readily, though I did not tell her that I had no intention of taking her with me on the constant travels that I knew would be an inescapable part of my life if I ever got my guerrilla band organized.
Whoever said the path of true love was never smooth could easily have been thinking about us. While Chinang appreciated the practical necessity of being married secretly, managing this was not easy. The first minister she contacted advised her against the marriage. Considerable time passed before she worked up nerve enough to approach another. This was not just timorousness on her part. There was some risk involved in telling any minister about even the existence of an American, not to speak of the danger the minister would court by officiating at a Filipino-American wedding or the risk involved for anyone else having anything to do with the matter. Perhaps equally frustrating, Chinang had the normal feminine desire to tell her friends all about her impending wedding, but she dared not do it.
As if matters were not complex enough on the matrimonial front, I developed a severe toothache that throbbed with every heartbeat, day and night. There were no dentists in the vicinity nor even any dental instruments. In fact the only tool I had seen thereabouts that bore any resemblance to a dental implement was a pair of pliers owned by a Filipino friend, Felix Garrovo. One day I grew sufficiently desperate to try to pull my own tooth. It was no use. A dentist’s forceps are curved to fit a tooth. Pliers are not, and squeeze and pry as I might all I accomplished was to chip off enough enamel that my mouth felt like it was full of sand. By now the pain was so bad I began to think favorably of that ancient mode of anesthesia, hitting the patient alongside the head with a flat rock. I even asked Felix if he could gather some strongarm types who could knock me out and pull the tooth before I regained consciousness.
Then Chinang came to the rescue. Somewhere she found a dentist, who was properly armed with the weapons of his trade. He came to see me barefooted, with his pants legs rolled up and his eyes darting furtively as if he feared a Japanese might be lurking behind my door. He gave me a shot of worthless Japanese novocaine, then applied his tools and yanked out the tooth. The pain was excruciating momentarily, but relief was almost as fast. How many people in ages past must have endured horrendous pain that modern drugs and medical procedures alleviate routinely!
Alas! the tooth was still not the end of our troubles. When Chinang at last told her father that she planned to marry me, he burst into such a rage and talked so wildly to village people that they feared he would report my existence to the Japanese. This caused Chinang to grow so despondent that she attempted suicide. That was enough for me. I gathered my meager belongings and headed off northward once more, this time accompanied by a few followers.
But a woman in love is hard to shake off. Chinang followed after and spent a night with me. That was enjoyable in an obvious way, but, more important, we had a long, serious talk in which I gradually convinced her that the best course for her was to return home. I promised to visit her when I could later on, but I never saw her again. It was not that I forgot her utterly, or deliberately avoided her; in fact, I once visited her village in 1945 after it had been liberated by American troops. I came to deliver some food to the local inhabitants. It so happened that Chinang was out of town that day.
This was a major turning point in my odyssey. A fugitive I remained until the end of the war, but from this time forward I was at least a fugitive at the head of a body of armed men.