ONE DAY IN EARLY March 1942, two months into the Japanese occupation of Manila, several Japanese officials walked into the radio station KZRH, also known as Radio Manila. They handed a letter to one of the station’s broadcasters, a woman. The letter was addressed to someone named Carlos P. Romulo, a Filipino journalist and the editor and publisher of the Philippines Herald who had accurately predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was now US general Douglas MacArthur’s press officer. As the “voice” behind the Voice of Freedom radio broadcasts from the Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor Island, Romulo regularly debunked Japanese propaganda and successfully encouraged Filipino resistance. The Japanese had put a price on his head.
The woman at KZRH, a reporter and photographer as well as a broadcaster, had worked for Romulo at the Philippines Herald. Did she know where he was now?
She told the Japanese officials she didn’t. But she seemed eager to help. If they knew where General MacArthur was, she said, perhaps they would find Romulo nearby. Were they willing to send her to Bataan with a map in order to search for him?
They weren’t. They walked out of the station.
The woman was in serious trouble and she knew it. She had been working as an undercover agent for US Army intelligence since before the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. During the first weeks of the Japanese occupation, she broadcast carefully worded messages directed to the Filipino American forces on Bataan, including Romulo, regarding events in occupied Manila. The Japanese high command in Manila hired English-speaking intelligence men in order to understand what they suspected were the woman’s coded messages. It was now obvious they had understood too much. She would have to disappear. But there was time for one more broadcast, one more message.
The studio was nearly empty. This final message was for Romulo. She spoke his full name on the air for the first time. She urged him to continue with his resistance work, promising that she would do the same. “We to whom you were a father,” she said, “we will keep the faith.”
Then she switched off the mike, handed the studio over to the next announcer, and tried not to walk too quickly out of the station. Within 15 minutes, there was an order out for the arrest of Yay Panlilio, journalist, broadcaster, daughter of an American father and Filipino mother, and now the declared enemy of the Empire of Japan.
When the Japanese couldn’t locate Yay, they put a price on her head. She hid with an old friend in Manila for four days, then left the city in a blouse and skirt; since she rarely wore women’s clothing, it was an excellent disguise. Then she climbed into the mountains. There was nowhere else to go.
The mountains, she knew, were filled with bands of Filipino guerrilla fighters. She would have liked to join them but quickly dismissed the idea. They were constantly on the run from the Japanese, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep up with them: the year before, while covering a story, she had broken her leg in a serious auto accident, and her bone had not been set properly. She also had a heart condition.
Plus she was a woman. How could she live among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men?
One night in July 1942, while recovering from malaria on the property of a kind farmer, Yay suddenly encountered a large group of fighters sleeping on the farmer’s property. They were so young, they filled her heart with compassion.
Yet, in the morning, she told them to leave for the safety of the farmer and his family. None of them moved. Yay didn’t yet realize they were hearing the same thing from everyone: leave for our safety. They told Yay they would make no decision without direct orders from someone they referred to as “the major.”
A short time later, Yay met him. He was Marcos Villa Agustin, known as Marking, a former boxer and bus driver who, when the Japanese first attacked, had worked for the Philippine army, convoying troops to Bataan. After his convoy was cut off, he became a scout for the army. When the Japanese captured him and found an American flag and eagle tattooed across his chest, they arrested him. But he managed to escape into the jungle, where other Filipinos eventually gathered to him, forming a guerrilla band.
Marking and Yay connected immediately. He asked her to join his unit. He understood her physical limitations but was determined to assist her with these as best he could, because he knew that her intelligence—and her typewriter—could be powerful weapons. They became a couple. Yay wrote later about their relationship in this way: “War was our marriage, the guerillas our sons.”
Yay Panlilio and Marking. The Crucible by Yay Panlilio, Nehalem Valley Historical Society
Her years as a Manila-based journalist had given Yay multiple connections; she knew exactly who was loyal to the Filipino cause and who she could rely on to help. Now she typed dozens of letters. She asked the wealthy for medicine, food, and money. To those who excelled at observation she requested information regarding the Japanese occupation of Manila. She didn’t identify herself openly but provided enough information so that each recipient would know exactly who had sent it and how to get back in touch with her. The letters were then delivered by couriers.
Marking’s guerrilla unit was courageous but disorganized. Yay did what she could to help bring order to the unit, crafting a “creed” that set official policy:
We, “Marking’s Guerrillas,” believe it is the right of every Filipino to walk in dignity, unslapped, unsearched, untied; to speak freely of honor and injustice alike; to mold our destiny as a people.
We believe that we owe allegiance to America, and that the only flags to fly in this sweet air are the Stars and Stripes and the Philippine flag until such time as the Philippine flag flies alone….
We believe that it is the right of every Filipino to raise his or her weapon against the enemy, be that weapon a rifle, a bolo, poison, or a sweet I-don’t-know-a-thing smile….
We believe that the nature and function of the guerrilla is [to] harass the enemy, occupying as many enemy troops as possible in their own “occupied” territory, thus keeping them out of their own front lines.
One Filipino guerrilla who witnessed the Bataan Death March claimed it was directly responsible for the formation of Filipino guerrilla units:
After the march of death was seen by the Bataan people in tears, the people met together to form some sort of association to continue the fight…. In the [minds] of a simple people was etched a determination to show that the Philippines had fallen but the Filipino people have not and shall never bow their heads in submission to the rule of a nation which used nothing but brute force and inhuman deeds upon a conquered people. The fall of Bataan was the commencing date of the guerilla organization in Bataan and it marked the guerilla warfare against the Japanese that would become a menace to their occupation throughout the war.
Propaganda poster used outside of the occupied Philippines during the war, to bring awareness to the role of Filipino guerrillas. National Park Service
Marking often left Yay in charge of their main base while he took a steady stream of new recruits into the jungles for training.
Yay repeatedly warned Marking not to get himself killed needlessly in hopeless rescue operations or ill-planned attacks. “You are the brain of your fighters,” she would say. “Who teaches them to spot the enemy and outthink them? Who keeps their morale up? … Who knows more about guns than you? And who do they look to more than to you?”
Marking knew Yay was right, and he often followed her advice. But sometimes getting him to listen took enormous effort. One day a guide named Pascual was brought into the camp by a guerrilla who accused him of working with the Japanese. Marking immediately ordered his execution.
Yay knew the accused man. He had once risked his life to hide some Americans. His wife had sheltered Yay. The present evidence against him was circumstantial and weak.
“We’ll kill him for betrayal,” said Marking.
“You’ll prove betrayal first,” replied Yay.
“Prepare a firing squad,” said Marking.
“You can’t kill him, Marking,” said Yay.
“I will kill him,” he insisted, pulling out his .45 pistol.
Yay stood next to the condemned man. “Then shoot us both,” she said.
The other guerrillas moved slowly out of the line of fire. It was silent. Yay and Marking stared steadily at each other. Neither one would back down. Marking wanted to prove he was in charge. Yay wanted him to be reasonable and just.
Finally, Marking gave in. “You know I can’t shoot you. I love you.”
This incident became a legend among Marking’s guerrillas: Yay had openly challenged Marking and won. And when she knew him better, and discovered that his sense of justice was even sharper than her own, Yay realized he might have been bluffing, testing Pascual.
But even Yay was not opposed to taking a life when necessary. The occasional discovery of a genuine traitor was clear grounds for execution: to free them would sentence the entire unit to death. In these situations, however, Yay would order the men to kill quickly and humanely. She did this not only out of a sense of humanity for the condemned traitors but also for the sake of the guerrillas, in order to prevent them from being permanently “scarred by their own brutalities.”
Although Yay didn’t engage in the same physical exertion as the fighters, her own work exhausted her: “I was a one-woman staff,” she wrote later. She did whatever needed doing: not only all the paperwork “but the hours after three a.m. when Marking talked, insisting that I listen and I reminded him of things, encouraged him, tried to clarify things for him.”
But in spite of her fatigue, Yay was determined to “fight to the end.”
That determination would soon be severely tested. On January 3, 1943, the unit’s lookout reported a group of Japanese soldiers fast approaching, led by a Filipino man they didn’t recognize.
As they scrambled to evacuate, bullets began flying over their heads. Yay knew they’d been fired from Japanese guns: they had a different sound than the American guns used by the Filipinos.
The unit evacuated in time and made a different camp. But the Japanese eventually discovered them there too. For months, they were on the run, going from camp to camp, always one step ahead of the enemy, fighting them as they traveled. Dangerously low on food and ammunition, Marking’s guerrillas were often forced to ask villagers for help.
But they were not always welcome. The Japanese would brutally punish an entire village if they suspected that just one of its residents had helped a guerrilla: once, after Marking’s guerrillas had rested in a certain village, they found it burned to the ground on the following day.
So they traveled away from the villages, away from any possible battles with the Japanese. “To leave them,” Yay wrote, “was to save them.”
They finally found a place to rest and regroup far from civilization, among some Filipinos called the Dumagats. One day, while among the Dumagats, a barefoot, gaunt American named Andy walked into their camp. His real name was Captain Bernard L. Anderson. He was one of many American guerrilla leaders in the Philippines during this time, some of whom had purposely sneaked behind enemy lines during the Battle of Bataan, with MacArthur’s blessing, in order to engage in acts of sabotage; some who were cut off from their units during the fighting; some who were sent to the Philippines by submarine after the fall of Bataan and Corregidor; and a miraculous few who escaped at the beginning of the Bataan Death March or from prison camps.
Many of these Americans were discovered by Filipinos who requested they organize and lead them against the Japanese. Andy was one of these Americans approached by Filipinos, and his eventual band of 7,000 guerrillas focused on intelligence work. He wanted to authorize Marking to provide intelligence for the US military.
“I don’t need to be authorized to fight for my own country!” Marking shouted. “Nobody has to give me permission to fight. I’d like to see anybody stop me! I’d like to see MacArthur stop me!”
General MacArthur had to convince President Franklin Roosevelt to let him keep his earlier promise to return to the Philippines. But Roosevelt was hesitant to initiate an invasion that might prove costly in terms of American lives. MacArthur persuaded him that the numerous Filipino guerrilla units would provide enough intelligence on the whereabouts of the Japanese military to ensure a successful invasion. When the president agreed, MacArthur sent urgent word to the Americans working with Filipino guerrillas, telling them to be prepared to take orders from him.
Andy let Marking go on like this for a while, listening patiently, respectfully. Then he said, simply, “Authorization means bullets.”
Marking’s tone suddenly changed. He and Andy talked for a while. Finally, Andy asked, “Will you take orders from MacArthur?”
“Yes, but not from anybody else!” Marking replied.
“I will merely relay the orders,” said Andy, smiling.
Marking invited Andy to a dinner in his honor. Then he quietly directed Yay—who had listened to the entire interchange in silence—to hammer out the precise details of their agreement.
As the return of MacArthur drew near, Marking’s guerrillas worked closely with the Americans, providing them with important information regarding Japanese troop movements, which proved invaluable in making MacArthur’s return a military success. But in order to observe the Japanese, Marking’s guerrillas had to be near them. The fighters were often in great danger, even more so by what occurred during the liberation: when the Japanese realized defeat was inevitable, they considered every civilian in Manila a spy. The Japanese burned, raped, and killed civilians in enormous numbers. Before Manila was in American control, 100,000 of its civilians were dead, including some who had been simply caught in crossfire.
However, most of Marking’s unit managed to elude the enemy, sometimes by mere minutes and yards.
As the Japanese were being pushed out, Yay and Marking had a major disagreement. Yay decided to return to her parents’ home in California to regain her health and to put some distance between herself and Marking. She wrote to Carlos Romulo that the war had “wrenched” her soul while exposing her “to every possible emotion” and had been “by far the stiffest test of the human character” she had yet endured.
While resting in California, she received dozens of letters from Marking and his fighters. The first was a “pledge” that read in part:
Whereas, This organization, “MARKING’S GUERRILLAS,” had been duly inducted into the United States Army; …
Whereas, henceforth this regiment will be known and called the “YAY REGIMENT” in honor of our beloved guerilla mother … who nursed us, comforted us, bawled us out, and loved us all those years we were hiding in the hills and mountains, and pulled through despite hunger and starvation.
Approximately 250,000 Filipino fighters officially joined the US Army during World War II. They were promised full military benefits in return. But the Rescission Act of 1946 canceled that promise, except to the families of veterans who had died or been wounded in combat. The faulty reasoning behind the Rescission Act was this: because the Philippines was now completely independent from the United States and no longer a US colony (1898–1935) or a US commonwealth nation (1935–1946), the Philippine government should provide for its own veterans. But the war had devastated the Philippine economy.
In 2009, the Filipino Veterans Equity Compensation Fund was organized to provide Filipino World War II veterans with at least the possibility of claiming some financial compensation, in the form of modest one-time payments. While 18,000 such claims have been approved, not all attempts to access these payments have been successful.
After the war, Yay and Marking were married and spent their immediate postwar years in the Philippines, working tirelessly to gain official recognition for Marking’s guerrillas. With this in mind, Yay wrote her memoir in 1950, gearing it for American readers unacquainted with the enormous Filipino contribution to the war effort. Later that year she received the Medal of Freedom from the US government for her wartime work.
Yay’s marriage to Marking didn’t last, and she returned to the United States in the 1970s when martial law was imposed in the Philippines.
She died in New York City in 1978.
LEARN MORE
The Crucible: An Autobiography by Colonel Yay, Filipina American Guerrilla by Yay Panlilio Marking (1950; repr. Rutgers University Press, 2009).
I Saw the Fall of the Philippines by Carlos P. Romulo (Doubleday, 1944).
I See the Philippines Rise by Carlos P. Romulo (Doubleday, 1946).
Lieutenant Ramsey’s War: From Horse Soldier to Guerrilla Commander by Edwin Price Ramsey and Stephen J. Rivele (Brassey’s, 1990).
