For complete information on works cited, see the Selected Bibliography beginning on page 246.
1. There are good descriptions of both the material and the psychological unpreparedness in the United States and the Philippines in Forbes J. Monahan, S.J. Under the Red Sun, pp. 12-13; Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires, pp. 169-71, 192-95; Marcial P. Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam,” pp. 6-7; and Manuel Buenafe, Wartime Philippines, pp. 26-39. A particularly pungent condemnation of stupid and irresponsible Western “intellectuals” of that era, of American “bunglers” in the Philippines, and of assorted “sons of bitches” in Washington is delivered by Robert H. Arnold, A Rock and a Fortress, pp. 75-76, 109. Like myself, Arnold spent much of the war as a guerrilla on Luzon.
2. Samuel Grashio and Bernard Norling, Return to Freedom, p. 8.
1. Samuel Grashio, in Grashio and Norling, Return to Freedom, p. 2.
2. What training and service were like in the Imperial Japanese Army is related unforgettably in a novel by a perceptive man who served in that army in China in the 1930s. See Hanema Tasaki, Long the Imperial Way.
3. John Toland, But Not in Shame, p. 183.
4. Samuel Grashio, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
5. Russell W Volckmann, We Remained, pp. 158-59.
6. Clark Lee, One Last Look Around, pp. 271-76. Lee remarks that the air corps especially detested ground support assignments and never surrendered its official corporate faith that the war could be won by strategic bombing alone.
7. John Deane Potter, The Life and Death of a Japanese General, a biography of Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, describes many similar instances.
8. Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam,” pp. 164-65.
9. Saburo Sekai, with Martin Caidin and Fred Saito, Samurai, p. 46. See also pp. 72-74.
10. Teodoro A. Agoncillo, The Fateful Years, 2: 896-98.
1. The best brief discussion of the whole question is in Stanley Falk, Bataan, pp. 194-98.
2. Monaghan, Under the Red Sun, p. 124.
3. The last opinion is that of Monaghan, ibid., p. 108. For other interpretations of the character and motivation of the Japanese, see Bert Bank, Back from the Living Dead, pp. 52-53; Robert Considine (ed.), General Wainwright’s Story, pp. 203-4; 257; Philip Knightley, The First Casualty, pp. 292-94; Gregory Boyington, Baa! Baa! Black Sheep, pp. 361-62; Quentin Reynolds (ed.), Officially Dead, pp. 15, 35; James Bertram, Beneath the Shadow, p. 104; Agnes Newton Keith, Three Came Home, pp. 3-13, 231-33, 294, 306-14, 317; Sidney Stewart, Give Us This Day, pp. 82-83, 97, 104-5, 173-74; Falk, Bataan, especially pp. 227-30; Clark Lee, They Called It Pacific, pp. 280-82; Ernest Miller, Bataan Uncensored, pp. 366-71; Edgar Whitcomb, Escape from Corregidor, p. 267; and Ernest Gordon, Through the Valley of the Kwai, p. 53. Bank, Wainwright, Boyington, Smith, Bertram, Keith, Stewart, Miller, Whitcomb, and Gordon were all prisoners of the Japanese at one time or another.
Agoncillo, a Filipino who survived the Death March and later became a historian, says that even though he did not face up to it at the time he eventually came to realize that mortality on the march owed more to the sickness and weakness of the prisoners than to the deliberate brutality of the guards (The Fateful Years, 2: 901-2). All I can say is that there was plenty of both.
1. Vernon Fassoth, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
2. On September 14-16, 1984, I (B.N.) attended a meeting of the Indiana Oral Military History Association in Indianapolis. Also present were about twenty veterans of Bataan, Corregidor, and Luzon guerrilla life. Several of them had been in the Fassoth camps at one time or another. At the meeting a poster was displayed which listed by name all those known to have been in the Fassoth camps. There were 104 names on it. Nobody present proposed either to add or delete names.
3. Monaghan, Under the Red Sun, pp. 133-40.
4. Volckmann, We Remained, pp. 62-70.
5. Philip Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 58-62.
6. Henry Clay Conner, “We Fought Fear on Luzon,” p. 74.
7. At least this was the opinion of Blackburn (Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 58). Fassoth’s third camp was raided by the Japanese on February 22, 1943, a development tht might have produced added inducement to surrender.
8. Conner, “We Fought Fear,” p. 72.
9. Walter Chatham, personal communication to the author (R.H.).
10. Donald Blackburn relates that, in circumstances not unlike mine, he and Russell Volckmann owed their lives to a Filipino named Guerrero. The man sheltered the pair for a month when they were nearly dead from sickness and starvation. Mr. Guerrero found them places to hide, had his daughters feed them, procured a doctor to treat them, paid the doctor himself, found guides to lead them northward, and even paid for the guides, all at great risk to himself and his family, and when he had little money. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 50-56. Like me, Blackburn had a wound, in his case an infected heel, that troubled him most of one spring. Treatment was unavailing, so he just walked on it anyway. Eventually it healed (Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 164). I doubt that I would have been as lucky.
Like Blackburn and myself, Clay Conner owed his life to Filipinos who operated miniature camps like that of the Fassoths, and who taught him how to catch shrimp and eels in rivers (“We Fought Fear,” p. 71).
11. We (R.H. and B.N.) are indebted to Mrs. Ann Petrites, the sister of William Fassoth’s daughter-in-law, for making available to us a copy of Fassoth’s unpublished account of the origin, construction, operation, and demise of his three camps. I (B.N.) am grateful to William Fassoth’s son, Vernon, for allowing me to use his own taped recollections of what happened in the camps.
I (R.H.) am also obliged to Walter Chatham for numerous personal recollections of the life he shared with me in Fassoth’s second camp. Some of them corrected my uncertain memory. On the question of how many of us escaped from the camp, however, I believe my memory has been more accurate than his.
1. Robert Lapham, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
1. An excellent account of guerrilla operations through the centuries, shorn of contemporary mythology and replete with examples of irregular operations all over the world, is Walter Laqueur, Guerrilla. For a brief critique of partisan warfare as seen by professional soldiers, see Michael Howard, The Causes of Wars, p. 88.
2. A lurid account of the bloody excesses of Luzon guerrillas, both American and Filipino, is given by Ernesto R. Rodriguez, Jr., The Bad Guerrillas of Northern Luzon.
3. Ira Wolfert, American Guerrilla in the Philippines, p. 142.
4. Trevor Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, p. 45.
5. Edward F. Dissette and H. D. Adamson, Guerrilla Submarines, p. 30.
6. There is considerable information about Fenton’s background, character, and eccentricities in Charles A. Willoughby, The Guerrilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, pp. 264-65; and also in Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, p. 160; Allison Ind, Allied Intelligence Bureau, pp. 135-42; Agoncillo, The Fateful Years, 2: 735-37; and Jesus A. Villamor, They Never Surrendered, pp. 89, 106-9, 218. A particularly scathing account is provided by Manuel F. Segura, Tabunan, especially pp. 181-202.
7. Fenton’s unpublished diary is in the possession of Morton J. Netzorg, proprietor of the Cellar Bookshop in Detroit and of an excellent private research library of materials relating to the Philippines.
8. Arnold, A Rock and a Fortress, pp. 200-201.
9. Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam,” p. 84.
10. Albert C. Hendrickson, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
11. Rodriguez, The Bad Guerrillas, pp. x-xi, 38-48, 57-98, 115-25, 130-32, contains gory descriptions of the crimes and vices of various northern Luzon guerrillas. The quotation is from p. 38. Agoncillo relates some of the charges against Escobar (The Fateful Years, 2: 755).
12. William L. Estrada, A Historical Survey of the Guerrilla Movement in Pangasinan, 1942-1945, p. 33.
13. Volckmann, We Remained, pp. 36-39.
14. Al Hendrickson says Nakar got his radio from Warner (personal communication to the author [B.N.]). For varied accounts of Nakar’s activities and fate, see Courtney Whitney, MacArthur, pp. 128-29; Charles A. Willoughby and John Chamberlain, MacArthur, 1941-1951, p. 210; Dissette and Adamson, Guerrilla Submarines, p. 31; and Agoncillo, The Fateful Years, 2: 655.
15. The whole idea may have been suggested to MacArthur by “Chick” Parsons, later to gain renown as the supreme commander’s director of submarine contacts with Philippine guerrillas. Dissette and Adamson, Guerrilla Submarines, p. 12.
General Wainwright, who formally surrendered all Allied troops in the Philippines when Corregidor fell, did not share MacArthur’s enthusiasm for guerrillas, perhaps because their very existence complicated his own problems. He called them “hotheads.”
16. Of several lists of Thorp’s entourage that I (B.N.) have seen, no two are the same. According to a sympathetic biographer, Ferdinand Marcos, who had been in the thick of the Bataan campaign and who long after the war became the controversial and embattled ruler of the Philippines, was responsible for slipping most of these men through chinks in the Japanese forward wall. The Japanese eventually found out about this, arrested Marcos, and tortured him atrociously in Fort Santiago, but he could not tell them anything because he did not know where any of the men had gone afterward. Hartzell Spence, For Every Tear a Victory, pp. 142, 156-58.
17. Personal communications with William H. Brooks (R.H.), Robert Lapham, Vernon Fassoth, and Donald Blackburn (B.N.). See also Conner, “We Fought Fear,” p. 74.
18. Estrada, Historical Survey, p. 50. Brooks describes the ambush Thorp set for the Japanese convoy (William H. Brooks, personal communication to both R.H. and B.N.). It seems virtually certain that Brooks’s memory failed him about “McIntyre.” The index to General Willoughby’s Guerrilla Resistance Movement, p. 572, lists a James McIntyre who was active as a guerrilla, but on Mindanao, hundreds of miles to the south. Thus, the dynamiter with Thorp must have been Capt. Ralph McGuire, who was killed by Filipinos in the Zambales Mountains in the following year, 1943.
19. Ind, Allied Intelligence Bureau, p. 9.
20. Ibid., p. 118; Intelligence Activities in the Philippines, p. xi, gives the date as November 4, 1942. This is typical of the differences among sources in these chaotic times.
21. Whitney, MacArthur, pp. 130-31.
22. Yay Panlilio, The Crucible, pp. 337-46; Willoughby, Guerrilla Resistance Movement, pp. 112-13.
23. Arnold, A Rock and a Fortress, pp. 17-39, 75-76.
24. Ibid., pp. 17-39, 184-88.
25. Agoncillo, The Fateful Years, 2: 655-66.
26. Conner, “We Fought Fear,” pp. 70-87, describes his exploits at length.
27. Albert C. Hendrickson, personal communication to the author (B.N.). Volckmann provides a long description of Walter Cushing and his activities (We Remained, pp. 26-36), as does James Dean Sanderson, Behind Enemy Lines, pp. 196-218. On one of his trips to Manila, Cushing persuaded high Filipino officials to give him three sets of identity papers showing him to be (1) a Filipino of Spanish extraction, (2) an Italian mestizo, and (3) a priest. This was probably the source of the allegation, made by many writers, that Walter Cushing and his brothers Charles and Joseph were mestizos. See Sanderson, Behind Enemy Lines, p. 214.
28. Robert Lapham, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
29. Willoughby, Guerrilla Resistance Movement, p. 418.
30. Volckmann, We Remained, pp. 82-90, describes the journeys and adventures of Moses and Noble, and Blackburn describes the variegated, often ragtag, outfits they “unified.” See Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 96-100. About the latter, Robert Arnold observes that while many American guerrillas put personal rivalry and political ambition above other considerations, at least they did not shoot at each other as their Filipino counterparts did (A Rock and a Fortress, p. 201). Filipinos were not above settling personal feuds by turning each other in to the Japanese.
31. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 94, 100.
32. Volckmann, We Remained, p. 139; Albert C. Hendrickson, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
33. Dissette and Adamson, Guerrilla Submarines, pp. 39, 233, for example. Jesus Villamor turned in a similar official report to USAFFE headquarters in Australia in 1943. See Willoughby, Guerrilla Resistance Movement, pp. 263-75.
34. After the war both Volckmann and Blackburn left long accounts of their tribulations, both before they managed to get to northern Luzon and while they were building guerrilla organizations there; see Volckmann, We Remained, and Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters.
35. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 87-88; Robert Lapham, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
36. Wolfert, American Guerrilla, p. 157.
37. Donald Blackburn, many of whose experiences and problems paralleled my own, came to the same conclusion I did about drinking when one of his guerrilla liaison men, bearing the sadly appropriate name of Fish, was caught by the Japanese while drunk. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 174.
38. Ibid., p. 131.
39. Estrada, Historical Survey, pp. 28-29.
40. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 101.
41. Margaret Utinsky, Miss U., pp. 129, 137.
42. Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, pp. 107-8.
1. Most of the debts of peasants were incurred not to improve their lands and to increase their incomes but to finance weddings, funerals, and fiestas, and to bet on cockfights. Spence, For Every Tear a Victory, p. 230.
2. A good brief account of the rise of the Philippine Communist Party is given by George E. Taylor, The Philippines and the United States, pp. 92-97.
3. More than twenty years after World War II, when Taruc was still in prison, he wrote He Who Rides the Tiger, with assistance from Douglas Hyde, an Irish ex-Communist. In it, Taruc chronicles his gradual disillusionment with communism, a process spread over some twenty-five years. At first he resented chiefly communist discipline. Then he gradually became aware that the Philippine communists were using resistance to the Japanese to serve the ends of the international communist movement, just as other communists employ local discontents for this purpose anywhere. Once these realizations became clear, he was more quickly alienated by their ruthlessness, inhumanity, dogmatism, and self-seeking, which he saw as destroying all the goodness that had infused their original common effort. Taruc, He Who Rides the Tiger, especially pp. 17-18, 20-22, 30-31, 34, 50-53, 79, 167-68.
Long before, Taruc had written another book, Born of the People. In He Who Rides the Tiger he says that José Lava, general secretary of the Philippine Communist Party, wrote a lot of doctrinaire Marxism in it that did not truly reflect Taruc’s own state of mind at that time (pp. xiii, 7). William Pomeroy, an American communist, later claimed that he wrote all of Born of the People for Taruc. See Morton J. Netzorg, The Philippines in World War II and to Independence, p. 151.
4. Teodoro A. Agoncillo, in The Fateful Years (2: 674), argues that Thorp’s capture and execution by the Japanese were important factors in the breakdown of cooperation between USAFFE guerrillas and the Huks. Blackburn says Thorp (whom he chooses to call “Crabtree”) ruined any chance for concerted action by behaving in a stupid and arrogant fashion toward the Huks. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 79. Clay Conner, William H. Brooks, and Al Hendrickson, all of whom had considerable experience with the Huks, think the political differences between the two groups would have precluded cooperation in any case. Conner, “We Fought Fear,” pp. 73-75, 78; Albert C. Hendrickson, personal communication to the author (B.N.); William H. Brooks, personal communication to the author (R.H.).
5. Among many examples of this view of things, see David J. Steinberg, Philippine Collaborators in World War II, p. 93; Teodoro A. Agoncillo and Oscar M. Alfonso, A Short History of the Philippine People, pp. 514-17; Usha Mahajani, Philippine Nationalism, pp. 459-60; Benedict J. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion, especially pp. xv, 67, 69, 71-79, 105-18, 255-67; Jules Archer, The Philippines’ Fight for Freedom, pp. 179ff.; and Hernando J. Abaya, Betrayal in the Philippines.
6. Conner, “We Fought Fear,” p. 76.
7. The phrase is that of Monaghan in Under the Red Sun (p. 144) but the sentiment is mine.
8. For a good summary of how Marxist irregulars proceeded in this manner in Europe, see Laqueur, Guerrilla, pp. 223-38; in China and the Philippines, see ibid., pp. 256-93. See also Taylor, The Philippines and the United States, pp. 96-97.
9. Even Kerkvliet, so understanding toward all Huks, acknowledges this (The Huk Rebellion, pp. 50-51). When Vincente Lava left Manila hurriedly in January 1942 just ahead of the Japanese, he left on his desk plans for a village defense corps identical to those drawn up by Chinese communist guerrillas in 1937 after the Japanese invasion there (Taylor, The Philippines and the United States, p. 95). What USAFFE headquarters in Australia knew and surmised about the Huks during the war is summarized in Willoughby, Guerrilla Resistance Movement, pp. 453-57.
10. Monaghan, Under the Red Sun, p. 144.
11. Agoncillo, The Fateful Years, 2: 668, 672.
12. Intelligence Activities, October 23, 1944, no. 81, pp. 3-4.
13. For other estimates see Taylor, The Philippines and the United States, pp. 121-22; Abaya, Betrayal, p. 219; Spence, For Every Tear a Victory, pp. 211-12; and Kerkvliet, Huk Rebellion, pp. 87, 93-94. Spence notes that the Huks themselves claimed to have killed thirty thousand Japanese in “1,200 pitched battles.”
14. Robert Lapham, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
15. Russell Brines, Until They Eat Stones, pp. 48-51.
16. Buenafe, Wartime Philippines, pp. 226-28.
17. Willoughby, Guerrilla Resistance Movement, p. 363. Marcial Lichauco, a law partner of Manuel Roxas, says he asked a Constabulary patrolman late in 1943 what he would do if American and Filipino troops landed some day and the Japanese put him on the firing line. The man replied that he and several of his friends had put the same question to their commanding officer. He had told them that every man would have to decide for himself, and that he wished all of them well. Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam,” pp. 136-37. It was well known among Constabularymen that General Francisco’s sentiments were similar. See Teofilo del Castillo and José del Castillo, The Saga of José P. Laurel, p. 304.
1. Allison Ind, Allied Intelligence Bureau, p. 116.
2. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 223-26. Arnold, in A Rock and a Fortress, p. 192, also alludes to his plight then.
3. Panlilio, The Crucible, p. 111.
4. Ibid., pp. 239, 248-49.
5. Panlilio acknowledges that for all the trouble she and Marking had with their guerrillas, much of their time was spent a good deal like most of ours. She said Marking himself was the only doctor they had, and his knowledge came from a correspondence course in nursing he had once taken. She learned some from him, and everyone learned from experience. Marking’s guerrillas were often close to Manila. There many of them posed as civilians and got jobs on the Manila docks, where opportunities for sabotage were much greater and more diversified than they ever were for our men. The Crucible, pp. 56, 58, 110.
6. Blackburn says Enoch French was killed by a Filipino subordinate who thought French had given him too little Japanese military scrip for his wedding; that the killer surrendered to the Japanese, who then let him join the Philippine Constabulary; and that one of French’s officers ambushed him on a patrol soon after. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 175. I think this is a reference to the same person and the same incident, and that either Blackburn’s recollection of the details, or mine, is faulty, but it is impossible to be certain so long after the events. Conceivably, there were two different persons and two separate events. Either way, the moral is the same: one could never be entirely sure of the loyalty of even his closest associates.
7. Panlilio, The Crucible, p. 185.
8. Blackburn relates that he once let a Filipino subordinate ambush a Japanese patrol just to keep up everyone’s spirits, only to have the man botch the job. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 201. My luck was better.
9. Laqueur, Guerrilla, cites many examples of guerrillas’ efforts to cope with bandits, going back as far in time as the Spanish resistance to Napoleon, 1808-13. See especially pp. 36, 95.
10. Vernon Fassoth, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
11. Laqueur believes that one of the main reasons for the effectiveness of Russian guerrillas in World War II was that they were in regular radio communication with their general staff and thus were never burdened with a feeling of isolation and abandonment (Guerrilla, p. 212).
12. Ibid., p. 21.
13. For a thoughtful survey of the problems and dilemmas of the Japanese, see Steinberg, Philippine Collaborators, pp. 56-58.
14. Monaghan describes such an episode that took place in Tayabas province early in the war (Under the Red Sun, p. 147).
15. This particular ruse seems to have been commonest around Manila. See Panlilio, The Crucible, p. 192.
16. Willoughby, Guerrilla Resistance Movement, p. 247. Rufino Baldwin, a north Luzon guerrilla, was captured in 1943 when his ex-fiancée learned that he had acquired a new girlfriend and turned him in to the Japanese. They tortured him every day for two weeks in Baguio, then sent him to the infamous Fort Santiago in Manila, from which he never emerged. Harkness, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 158, 175.
17. This particular barbarity was even inflicted on women, one being the Filipina wife of Fish, Blackburn’s liaison man who had been taken by the Japanese while drunk. Fish himself was flogged into unconsciousness before being executed. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 184.
18. Panlilio, The Crucible, pp. 206-7.
19. Aubrey S. Kenworthy, The Tiger of Malaya, pp. 61-62.
20. This was done to Jack Langley, who had commanded a small guerrilla outfit before he was captured. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 182.
21. Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, p. 40.
22. Conner, “We Fought Fear,” p. 75.
23. For instance, Agoncillo and Alfonso, Short History, p. 466.
24. Wolfert, American Guerrilla, p. 147.
25. Ibid., pp. 184-85. Appalling atrocities of this genre were commonplace in irregular operations in centuries past. Wars between Balkan peoples and the Turks in medieval and early modern times were notoriously savage and bloody. Russian partisans harrying Napoleon’s army on its retreat from Moscow were extremely cruel. One village elder asked a partisan leader if he knew a new way to kill a Frenchman: all known methods had already been tried. Laqueur, Guerrilla, pp. 15-18, 46, 61.
26. Panlilio, The Crucible, pp. 196-98.
27. Ibid., p. 218; Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 179, 184, 194; Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, pp. 124-25.
28. Volckmann, We Remained, p. 107. Though I subsequently had considerable trouble with Volckmann (see chapters 10 and 13), his assessment of these knotty problems is virtually identical with my own. Volckmann, pp. 125-26, 131.
29. Panlilio, The Crucible, pp. 158-59, 218.
30. Monaghan, Under the Red Sun, p. 142.
31. Ibid., p. 223.
1. Willoughby and Chamberlain, MacArthur, pp. 213-14.
2. For an extended analysis of Japanese policy in the Philippines, see Agoncillo, The Fateful Years, 2: 74-150. For brief synopses, see Robert S. Ward, Asia for the Asiatics?, especially pp. 56-58; and Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, p. 162.
3. These facets of Filipino psychology are discussed in Steinberg, Philippine Collaborators, p. 26; and Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires, pp. 24-31.
4. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 139. For an excellent discussion of what constitutes treason on both the intellectual and the practical levels, though mainly in a European context, see Margaret Boveri, Treason in the Twentieth Century.
5. Elliot R. Thorpe, East Wind, Rain, p. 163.
6. For a consideration of traditional Philippine policy in trying circumstances, see Steinberg, Philippine Collaborators, pp. 13, 60; Friend, Between Two Empires, pp. 182-83; and Mahajani, Philippine Nationalism, p. 433. That Quezon urged other Filipino politicians to cooperate with the Japanese when they had to in order to spare the Filipino people is claimed by Antonio M. Molina, The Philippines through the Centuries, p. 335; by Castillo and Castillo, Saga of José P. Laurel, pp. 118-19; as well as by all those prominent Filipinos who did collaborate with the conquerors or appeared to do so.
James K. Eyre, Jr., The Roosevelt-MacArthur Conflict, pp. 55, 76-102, claims that rivalry between the American president and the famous general was more bitter than is usually recognized, that MacArthur and his entourage regarded presidential military strategy as virtual betrayal of themselves and their forces, and that MacArthur not merely saw to it that information about Quezon’s rages and threats made its way to Washington but used Quezon’s outrage to pressure Washington to send more support to his forces in the Far East.
7. Archer, The Philippines’ Fight for Freedom, p. 177.
8. Ricarte’s actions are defended by two fellow Filipinos of quite different philosophical orientation: Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam,” pp. 15-16, and Agoncillo, The Fateful Years, 2: 918-19.
9. Information about all these groups, their antecedents, sponsorship, and activities may be found in Taylor, The Philippines and the United States, p. 106; Agoncillo, The Fateful Years, 2: 918-19; Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, pp. 163-64; Brines, Until They Eat Stones, pp. 73-75; F.C. Jones, Japan’s New Order in East Asia, 1937-1945, p. 367; Panlilio, The Crucible, pp. 26, 43-44; José P. Laurel, War Memoirs, pp. 25, 64, 301; and Castillo and Castillo, Saga of José P. Laurel, p. 93.
10. For instance, Abaya, Betrayal, especially pp. 35-40.
11. See Steinberg, Philippine Collaborators, pp. 23-24, 73-84, 87-95, 98-99; and, more briefly, Mahajani, Philippine Nationalism, pp. 440-41; and Friend, Between Two Empires, p. 244. Ironically, Laurel was himself an indecisive man. See Buenafe, Wartime Philippines, p. 216.
12. Apologies for Laurel are his own War Memoirs and Castillo and Castillo, Saga. Other sympathetic considerations of his plight and intentions are provided by Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam,” pp. 112, 124, 182-83; Agoncillo, The Fateful Years, 2:912-15; and Spence, For Every Tear a Victory, pp. 172-73, 297, 303.
13. See Peter Calvocoressi and Guy Wint, Total War, for an extended description of Japan’s administrative deficiencies (pp. 673-710, 721-22, 783-89, especially pp. 703-5).
14. One of the most unbridled condemnations of all the “collaborators” was delivered in Abaya, Betrayal in the Philippines, for which Ickes wrote a foreword. See especially pp. 9-11, 21-33, 50-53, 86-91, 104-8, 151-62. The quotation is from p. 102. More moderate variations on the same theme are Taruc, He Who Rides the Tiger, pp. 144-47; Kerkvliet, Huk Rebellion; Thorpe, East Wind, Rain, pp. 152-53, 156-58, 163; and Archer, The Philippines’ Fight for Freedom, pp. 193-95.
15. Laurel, War Memoirs, pp. 40-41.
16. Castillo and Castillo, Saga, pp. 3-4.
17. See Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam,” p. 119, for Vargas’s ambition to become president of the Republic; p. 77 for the anecdote about the apples.
18. Steinberg, in Philippine Collaborators, discusses Filipino collaborators, their problems and intentions, exhaustively. See especially pp. 37-38, 60-69, 115, 131-66.
19. Ibid., pp. 160-62.
20. See Archer, The Philippines’ Fight for Freedom, pp. 194-95; Eyre, The Roosevelt-MacArthur Conflict, pp. 173-93; and, most vehemently, Abaya, Betrayal, pp. 9-11, 22-33, 59-76, 84.
21. D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2, 1941-1945, pp. 691-93.
22. Panlilio, The Crucible, pp. 177, 188-92.
23. Elinor Goettl, Eagle of the Philippines, pp. 181-82, 188, 194.
24. Ind, Allied Intelligence Bureau, p. 153; Spence, For Every Tear a Victory, pp. 173-75; Willoughby, Guerrilla Resistance Movement, pp. 39, 45-61, 205-6, 285, 340, 383, 387, 390-97. Lichauco, Roxas’s prewar law partner, presents the same favorable picture of his colleague’s purposes and activities (“Dear Mother Putnam,” pp. 19, 92, 113-14, 134). A further indication of Roxas’s true colors is that the Kempeitai recorded his name as head of the American spy network in the Philippines, Intelligence Activities, p. 78.
25. Taylor points out that the Huks were avid to punish collaborators because they knew it would divide the country, but adds that true nationalist guerrillas like Confesor and Tomas Cabili also wanted them punished from patriotic motives (The Philippines and the United States, p. 112). Archer notes (The Philippines’ Fight for Freedom, p. 195) that it was difficult to hold trials because the Japanese had destroyed so many official records. Abaya, Betrayal, pp. 110-15, grumbles that the most prominent defendants were to be tried by judges whom they had earlier appointed rather than by “resistance” judges, as in Europe. At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials the same parties acted as both prosecutors and judges.
Steinberg, in Philippine Collaborators, pp. 131-66, and especially in a lengthy description of the Sison case, pp. 134-41, examines all the arguments from constitutions and laws, both American and Philippine, from precedents and circumstances, from the habits of peace and the exigencies of war, that bear on accusations of collaboration.
26. Taylor, The Philippines and the United States, pp. 101-2.
27. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, who had surrendered Corregidor, was later given the Distinguished Service Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor, reportedly over the disapproval of MacArthur.
28. Taylor, The Philippines and the United States, p. 99.
29. Reprinted in H. de la Costa, S.J., Readings in Philippine History, pp. 279-80.
30. Taylor, The Philippines and the United States, pp. 110, 119, thinks this almost certainly would have been the case. Of course at this writing (1986) the communists, now styled New People’s Army (NPA) rather than old Huks, appear once more to have a chance to come to power.
31. Spence, For Every Tear a Victory, particularly pp. 100-200, recounts Marcos’s exploits in war and peace. The tone of the book is laudatory. A reader’s skepticism is aroused, though, by the author’s carelessness about details: e.g., putting the Sierra Madre Mountains on the wrong side of Luzon, locating the province of Nueva Ecija on the Pacific coast when it is in the middle of Luzon, and having Marcos make preparations to meet Walter Cushing at a time after Cushing was dead. See pp. 166-67.
32. For example, Primitivo Mijares, The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Mijares was once Marcos’s top public relations man. He disappeared somewhere on a flight between Guam and Manila. Officially, no one knows what happened to him.
33. See, for instance, Newsweek, Feb. 3, 1986, pp. 24-25; and, in greater detail, Philippine News (published in San Francisco), Jan. 29-Feb. 4, 1986, pp. 1, 4-5.
34. There are two documents that bear my signature and that call for the arrest of unauthorized guerrilla organizers in Pangasinan. Both are dated October 9, 1944. One of them, hereafter referred to as Annex B, is brief and is addressed to “All Sector Commanders, P.W.A., 2 Military District.” It reminds recipients that the only authorized command in that part of Luzon is the one headed by Major Lapham, and orders the arrest of all organizers not working under that command. It is signed with my full name, and it is unquestionably genuine.
The other document, hereafter referred to as Annex A, is much longer, is written on paper with a printed letterhead rather than a typed one, and even though it bears the same date as Annex B it was clearly written on a different typewriter. It is addressed to a particular individual identified only as “I.C.” A postwar Filipino congressman, Cipriano S. Allas, who identifies himself as a captain and former head of the intelligence division of Marcos’s Maharlika guerrillas, says “I.C.” is Captain Crispulo Ilumin. I never heard of Ilumin and cannot imagine any reason why I might ever have written to him, much less given him orders about anything. Annex A also calls for the arrest of Ferdinand Marcos “specially,” which I would have written “especially,” even had I singled out Marcos, which I almost certainly did not do. At that time I did not know him well or attach any particular importance to him. Finally, Annex A is signed simply “Ray,” a practice I did not follow when issuing formal orders. For all these reasons I think Annex A is a forgery, most likely invented after the war to bolster claims for back pay by supposed followers of Allas and Marcos.
The forgery thesis is supported by another letter, written by Allas in 1947 to “The Commanding General, Philippine Ryukyus Command.” In it Allas, who is clearly trying to secure official recognition of claims that Marcos’s Maharlika forces and his own intelligence unit were well established by 1943, says that some of his men joined my unit in May or June of 1943, when in fact I did not get my own command until June 1944. He adds that there were different guerrilla units in eastern Pangasinan, when only my own were there. Finally, he alleges that Maharlika guerrillas actively supported American regular troops along the Villa Verde Trail in the spring of 1945, though I was there at the time and do not recall seeing any. Thus, I am not impressed by “Captain” Allas’s concern for accuracy.
35. One of the documents secured from the National Archives and reprinted in the Philippine News (Jan. 29-Feb. 4, 1986, p. 5), with a letterhead that reads “Headquarters Philippines-Ryukus Command,” dated March 24, 1948, and sent from Capt. E.R. Curtis to Lt. Col. W. M. Hanes, says that I arrested Marcos in December 1944 “for illegally collecting money to construct an air field near Baguio for the purpose of rescuing General Roxas,” and that I would have held Marcos permanently had not Roxas appealed to Lapham to have him released. All I can say, forty-one years later, is that I have no recollection of this. In a long article devoted to these matters, the Philippine News implies strongly that, far from being heroes, both Allas and Marcos were engaging in black market sales to the Japanese. The Philippine News is decidedly hostile to Marcos. It supported his opponent, Mrs. Corazon Aquino, in the election campaign of early 1986.
36. Willoughby, Guerrilla Resistance Movement, p. 488.
37. Al Hendrickson regards with profound skepticism all claims that Marcos commanded large numbers of guerrillas. Personal communication to the author (B.N.).
38. Robert Lapham, personal communication to the author (R.H.).
1. Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, especially pp. 20, 38-39, 51-52. General Willoughby expresses his appreciation of Parsons’s talents and achievements (Guerrilla Resistance Movement, p. 101).
2. See chap. 9 herein for the Cruz mission. For an account of the expeditions of Parsons, Villamor, and Smith, see Willoughby and Chamberlain, MacArthur, pp. 215-18, 231.
3. William Manchester, American Caesar, pp. 378-79. Eyre, in Roosevelt-MacArthur Conflict, pp. 168-69, calls Whitney an undiplomatic and belligerent racist.
4. Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, p. 131; Dissette and Adamson, Guerrilla Submarines, pp. 69-70. It is worth noting that General Willoughby, who knew Whitney well, calls him a “brilliant executive” and praises him warmly. Willoughby, Guerrilla Resistance Movement, p. 101; Willoughby and Chamberlain, MacArthur, p. 214.
5. Uldarico S. Baclagon, Philippine Campaigns, pp. 238-43, 251-54.
6. Villamor, They Never Surrendered, pp. xiii-xv, 134-35, 200, 207, 215-17, 232-33, 235-36, 264, 272, 284. Villamor wrote most of this memoir but died before it was finished. The book was completed from Villamor’s notes by Gerald S. Snyder.
7. Panlilio, The Crucible, pp. 249-54, 285; Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, p. 15.
8. Panlilio, The Crucible, p. 165.
9. Whitney himself describes this evolution in considerable detail in MacArthur, pp. 91, 132-43, 146-47. That he does not exaggerate his own role is indicated by similar though briefer descriptions by James, The Years of MacArthur, pp. 509-10; and Beth Day, The Philippines, p. 104. Neither writer is a partisan of Whitney. Willoughby, Guerrilla Resistance Movement, p. 194, and Robert Ross-Smith, Triumph in the Philippines, pp. 26-27, also describe Whitney’s accomplishments.
10. Blackburn describes all the trouble early guerrillas had trying to rig up some kind of transmitter that would work even part of the time. Their single most persistent problem was keeping batteries charged. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 142-45, 151-63, 170-71.
11. Blackburn says this was a misapprehension that arose, possibly, from the consideration that most of Volckmann’s guerrillas were not former soldiers but ex-stevedores, litter bearers, guards, informers, and supply carriers, all men who might routinely carry bolos. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 251. Blackburn also says that, when Volckmann first tried to organize all the north Luzon guerrillas under his command in November 1943, the move was welcomed by all save Capt. Ralph Praeger (ibid., p. 189). Since Lapham did resist such an effort, and since Praeger had been captured by the Japanese in August 1943, Blackburn’s memory is clearly faulty on this point. It is yet another example of how difficult it is even to reconstruct events accurately in the wartime Philippines, much less interpret everyone’s actions and motives fairly.
12. Baclagon, Philippine Campaigns, p. 237.
13. Donald Blackburn, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
14. Villamor, They Never Surrendered, p. 183.
15. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 1-15.
16. Ibid., pp. 166-68, 172.
17. Volckmann, We Remained, p. 118.
18. Intelligence Activities, appendix 5.
19. Whitney, MacArthur, p. 147.
20. Arnold, A Rock and a Fortress, pp. 194-95.
21. Wolfert, American Guerrilla, p. 278.
22. Activities of this sort were undertaken at the same time by Volckmann’s guerrillas farther to the north. See Volckmann, We Remained, pp. 168-75; Whitney, MacArthur, pp. 183-84.
23. Conner, “We Fought Fear,” p. 86; Frank Gyovai, personal communication to the author (B.N.); Panlilio, The Crucible, pp. 258-59.
1. Potter, Life and Death, describes Yamashita’s plans. See especially pp. 61, 69, 106, 126, 129, 141.
2. Intelligence Activities, no page given.
3. Conner acknowledged similar awkwardness on both sides after he and several of his men ran into American soldiers after three years in the jungle. “We Fought Fear,” p. 87.
4. Samuel Grashio experienced comparable inability to write to his wife in circumstances not unlike mine. Grashio and Norling, Return to Freedom, p. 140.
5. A lengthy description of plans for liberating the prisoners, and all the problems and misgivings involved, are in Forrest Bryant Johnson, Hour of Redemption, especially pp. 139-40, 163, 208-10, 227, 255-56.
6. Ibid., p. 346.
7. Albert C. Hendrickson, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
8. James, The Years of MacArthur, pp. 642-43.
9. That I am not exaggerating the contribution of the guerrillas to the success of the raid is indicated by the remark of a Filipino historian: “In this rescue the guerrillas covered themselves with well deserved glory.” Buenafe, Wartime Philippines, p. 253.
10. Johnson, Hour of Redemption, pp. 210, 337-38.
11. Lapham recalls General Krueger’s attitude, typical of so many Americans at all times, that all that mattered was defeating the enemy quickly and that anyone who would fight the Japanese was to be welcomed. Lapham discussed the Huk menace with Philippine President Sergio Osmeña and with Carlos Romulo, but they felt powerless to interfere with Allied military operations. Robert Lapham, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
1. I am grateful to Tom Chengay for writing a moving commendation of me to General MacArthur. Tom stayed in the Philippine army long after the war. I lost contact with him for many years and rediscovered his address only in 1983. I wrote to him then and looked forward keenly to seeing him once more, or at least corresponding with him, only to receive from his wife the disheartening news that he had become completely incapacitated. He died April 17, 1984.
2. One of the lessons the Huks learned from the war was the defensive strength of these mountain fastnesses in northern Luzon. The present (1986) headquarters of the reconstituted Hukbalahap movement is in this wild region.
3. John M. Carlisle, Red Arrow Men, pp. 34-35.
4. Carlisle gives vivid descriptions of road construction under these conditions. Ibid., pp. 77-81, 108-11.
5. H. W. Blakeley, The 32nd Infantry Division in World War II, p. 248.
6. William de Jarnette Rutherfoord, 165 Days: The 25th Division on Luzon, p. 137.
7. Ibid., pp. 113-14.
8. Carlisle, Red Arrow Men, p. 144. General Blakeley covers the whole subject of combat problems and how they were overcome along the Villa Verde Trail, briefly but capably and in a measured tone, in The 32nd Division in World War II, pp. 220-49. Carlisle, a war correspondent for the Detroit News, writes in a fashion at once thickly patriotic and reminiscent of the famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle. The 32nd Division is “the best in the world”; all the officers are fearless and inspire their troops by staying in the front lines; all the enlisted men are “great guys,” well-trained Gary Cooper types, even braver than usual if wounded; they write sticky letters to Super Girls back home; et cetera. Even so, Carlisle provides much specific information about the struggle for north Luzon in the spring of 1945. Rutherfoord’s book, 25th Division on Luzon, is essentially a collection of drawings, accompanied by a brief running commentary, by an infantryman who fought along the Villa Verde Trail. It is both more informative and more analytical than one would expect.
9. Rutherfoord, 25th Division on Luzon, p. 118.
10. Ross-Smith, Triumph in the Philippines, pp. 394, 398, 503-4, 511.
11. An apt characterization by Rutherfoord, 25th Division on Luzon, p. 106.
12. Though I did not actually see this, Carlisle mentions a number of such instances. See Red Arrow Men, pp. 27, 57-60.
13. Rutherfoord, 25th Division on Luzon, p. 159.
14. As in so many instances during guerrilla life in the Philippines, Donald Blackburn’s experiences and thoughts about them were remarkably similar to my own. See Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 312-13.
15. On this point Rutherfoord offers one of his typically pithy aphorisms: “You cannot realize the cost of war until you start collecting your own dead.” 25th Division on Luzon, p. 46.
16. Once more Blackburn was struck by the same thought as I. One day in December 1941 when everything connected with the war was going catastrophically for the Allies, he watched the Japanese cruise in a leisurely, arrogant way along the Luzon coast, and move men and equipment ashore, while planes rose unhurriedly from carriers. “The scene [he said] had a contradictory quality of beauty, the ugly beauty of naval power massed for a death blow.” Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, p. 19.
1. Volckmann, We Remained, p. 226.
2. Liddell Hart, Strategy, pp. 379-82.
3. These instances are discussed by Laqueur, Guerrilla, pp. 41, 48-49.
4. Ibid., p. 230.
5. Kenworthy, The Tiger of Malaya, pp. 20-21. Agoncillo offers some thoughtful estimates of the importance and limitations of the Philippine guerrillas, as seen by a professional historian twenty years after the event. The Fateful Years, 2: 760-61, 775-77.
6. Trevor N. Dupuy, Asian and Axis Resistance Movements, p. 32.
7. See Ross-Smith, Triumph in the Philippines, pp. 421-22, 458-78, 540-78; James, The Years of MacArthur, pp. 683-90; Whitney, MacArthur, pp. 183-84.
8. Volckmann, We Remained, pp. 175-97.
9. Ibid., p. 216.
10. Ross-Smith, Triumph in the Philippines, pp. 573-78.
11. James, The Years of MacArthur, p. 690.
12. Volckmann, We Remained, p. 197.
13. Manchester, American Caesar, p. 430.
14. Potter, Life and Death, p. 152.
15. Ross-Smith, Triumph in the Philippines, pp. 421-22.
16. Whitney, MacArthur, p. 184.
17. Rodriguez, Bad Guerrillas, names names and specifies offenses. See pp. 115-42, 185.
18. Arnold, A Rock and a Fortress, pp. 209-10, 216.
19. Harkins, Blackburn’s Headhunters, pp. 223-24.
20. Ibid., pp. 178-93.
21. Ibid., pp. 206-7.
22. Ibid., p. 278.
23. Estrada, Historical Survey, p. 55.
24. Ibid., p. 50.
25. Such fears were not imaginary. One major kept a diary in which were the names of all those who had harbored him. When the Japanese captured him, they also got the diary and proceeded to kill all the kind-hearted people listed in it. Monaghan, Under The Red Sun, p. 142.
26. Leon O. Beck, who travelled about among several guerrilla bands on Luzon, says it was common for guerrilla leaders to keep records but that these were usually buried in bottles to prevent their seizure by possible Japanese raiders. Beck, personal communication to the author (B.N.). Perhaps some others did this, though I doubt it; certainly I (R.H.) never did. Hendrickson says he kept some rosters. Albert C. Hendrickson, personal communication to the author (B.N.).
27. For a more detailed consideration of the matter see Estrada, Historical Survey, p. 37; and Johnson, Hour of Redemption, pp. 350-54.
28. Many a Filipino guerrilla wanted to buy U.S. war bonds with the pittance he was paid intermittently during the war. Ingham, Rendezvous by Submarine, p. 170.
29. Leon O. Beck and James P. Boyd, personal communications to the author (B.N.).
30. Robert Lapham, personal communication to the author (B.N.). Things weren’t much different elsewhere. War correspondent Clark Lee relates that shortly after the war he asked someone he knew in Bangkok how many Siamese guerrillas there had been. The man answered that he estimated 10,000 at the end of the war but that he expected to see at least 25,000 in a parade the following Tuesday. Lee, One Last Look Around, p. 196.
31. Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam,” pp. 11-12.
32. Ibid., pp. 80-81.
33. These conditions and the circumstances that gave rise to them have been dissected by many writers. The following are a sampling. Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam,” pp. 11-12, 105, 148, 153, 169-70, 192-94; Day, The Philippines, pp. 123, 223-24; Monaghan, Under the Red Sun, pp. 271-79; Agoncillo, The Fateful Years, 2: 545-91, 759, 853, 886; Castillo and Castillo, Saga, pp. 224-26, 298-99; Taylor, The Philippines and the United States, pp. 119-20; Eliseo Quirino, A Day to Remember, pp. 130-49.
34. Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam,” p. 23. The passage was written in his diary February 7, 1942.
35. Robert Lapham, personal communication to the author (B.N.). Villamor, They Never Surrendered, p. 286, delivers the scathing characterization. Villamor had become acidly anti-American by the time he got around to writing his memoirs, a generation after the war.
36. Molina, Philippines, p. 377.
37. Bernardo M. Morada to Ray Hunt, October 14, 1983; Manila Courier, August 7, 1983, p. 5.
38. Utinsky, Miss U., p. 92.