Behind Japanese Lines (34 page)

The only puzzling aspect of the whole splendid evening was that at various times during it Juan introduced me to five fine looking young Filipinas, each one of whom he identified as his wife. Eventually curiosity got the better of good manners, and I asked him how he could possibly have five wives in a Christian country where divorce was illegal. He said it was really quite simple: they were all common-law wives, the daughters of various of his tenants, all of whom acquiesced in the arrangement since it made possible a better life for the girls and also for their families. Still curious, I asked him if the women ever became jealous. He said this was rare, since he treated them all equally, setting aside one night per week for each one; but if one became dissatisfied or made trouble she was simply returned to her parents and the arrangement with her was cancelled. He added that he also owned a fishing fleet and that on weekends he often fished. He probably did so in self-defense, from need of rest. I also noticed that despite the five wives there were no children on the premises. Juan admitted ruefully that he had none. Perhaps his exceptional romantic exertions had rendered him infertile. To top off the evening, Juan suggested that I stay in the Philippines after the war. He
said he would give me some land to cultivate, build me a house, and help me collect five wives just as he had. For a young man it was a hard offer to turn down.

Some guerrillas have written that many of their people were hungry and sick much of the time, especially in 1944-45 when the Japanese began to strip the islands of much of their food to maintain their own troops. As my visit to Juan Bautista indicates, that forlorn condition was not universal. Where I was during the last half of the war, we had about the normal amount of sickness, malaria primarily; and we were always handicapped by lack of medicines and medical supplies and by a scarcity of trained doctors; but we were never seriously short of food. This was made evident to me again on December 11, 1944, one of the happiest days of my life. This was not merely because it was my twenty-fifth birthday, nor because it would be my last birthday in the Philippines (something I could not know); but because five hundred guerrillas and the poor farmers of the village of Pantabangan, near San José, gave me a tremendous party. There was much food and even a children's string band that delighted me by playing a lot of American numbers I hadn't heard since the war began. Everybody ate and drank and danced, and for a night forgot the war. It indicates how self-confident, not to say reckless, we had become by now, that the whole soiree took place with a Japanese garrison only three miles away. I remember the day distinctly for another reason as well. For the first time in three years, when Filipinos asked me when the Americans would return, I no longer had to put them off with “six months.” Now I could honestly say it would be a good deal sooner.

It was about this time, too, that I had my last confrontation of the tempestuous sort with Minang. An outsider would doubtless say that this one, like some of our earlier squabbles, was my fault. In general, Filipinas make good wives. Most of them are used to work and hardship, and they ordinarily remain faithful to one man. Of course, Minang and I were not married, but she had been for some time my common-law wife. My attention span was somewhat short in those days, though, and one day when she was gone I was having a private tête-á-tête with a pretty young Filipina when Minang returned unexpectedly. Greg tried to intercept her, but she was suspicious, and when she came into the room her eyes were blazing. My new friend fled at once, and Minang proceeded to deluge me with a torrent of unladylike language. I have seen signs in taverns to the effect that one might as well have another drink since his wife can get only
so
mad, but in Minang's case this was not true. She still berated me that night after we had gone to bed, and everything she said seemed to intensify
her outrage. For some time I closed my eyes and tried to tune her out. Then I became dimly aware that she was moving beside me. Next I heard the creak of leather. I sprang awake at once and grabbed in the dark for Minang. I caught her by the hand just as she was pulling my .45 from its holster. For the rest of that night I kept track of all the guns—and did not sleep much. I have often wondered since whether Minang intended to shoot me, herself, or both of us. Whatever the case, it would have been a helluva way to get a Purple Heart—or a funeral.

In retrospect, I believe I was attracted to Minang more because of her fiery, indomitable spirit than by romantic considerations of the usual sort. On one occasion—when we were not quarrelling—she had told me quietly and deliberately that if I left her and went back to the United States when the war was over she would be sad but would understand; but that if I ever left her for another Filipina she would kill the other woman. She added that if I was killed by the Japanese she would personally kill the Japanese commander responsible if she had to sacrifice her own life in the effort. It was hard not to take a woman like that seriously.

In truth, I owed Minang a lot, as did all our guerrillas. Near the end of the war I was able to get her commissioned a lieutenant in recognition of her wartime services. It was a position that secured for her some much needed money but, more important, she deserved it, and it pleased me greatly to get it for her.

While the struggle for Leyte raged during the last two months of 1944, farther north both the Japanese and ourselves were laying plans. For the enemy, Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, whom the Japanese called “The Tiger of Malaya,” had about 100,000 men on Luzon. With that irreverence which never seems to desert Americans even in the most dire adversity, GIs later renamed Yamashita variously as the “Badger of Baguio” or the “Gopher of Luzon,” but Tiger, Badger, or Gopher, by now Yamashita had no illusions about his prospects. He did not control either the Japanese navy in Manila or the Fourth Japanese Air Force. He knew there would be no reinforcements from Japan, and that food shortages would eventually become his most pressing problem. Long before, he had urged his troops to behave with dignity toward civilians and prisoners of war, but by now he knew that they had done neither and that they were, consequently, hated wholeheartedly by nearly all Filipinos. The roads and railways of Luzon, once the best in the Orient after those of Japan itself, had fallen into ruin from a combination of Japanese neglect and sabotage by guerrillas. Munitions were in short supply, and there was so little gasoline that distilled pine root oil was being used as a substitute.

Yamashita knew that defeat in Luzon was inevitable. All he would be able to do would be to defend the island for as long as possible, weaken the American invaders as much as he could, and thereby give his government the maximum time to prepare the Japanese home islands for the titanic battles that would decide the war. In short, Yamashita's predicament was not unlike that of Douglas MacArthur three years earlier. Where MacArthur had made his
last stand on Bataan and Corregidor, Yamashita decided to try to hold the two-hundred-mile-long Cagayan Valley in north Luzon until he could strip it of stored food and harvest the rice crop there. He would hold down the civilians by terror, and then retreat into the northern mountains to wage a protracted, suicidal war against the Americans and Filipinos.
¹

Of course, I was not privy to all of General Yamashita's plans, but I had learned enough to be filled with foreboding. Our intelligence indicated that thousands of Japanese troops were streaming into Luzon, massing in towns and along beaches, determined to fight to the death. Some eight thousand of them were in Pangasinan alone.
²
The fact that they paid little attention to us guerrillas now was in itself ominous. Even if many of the worst battles of the war might now be behind for the American army as a whole, it was virtually certain that my fiercest battles lay in the near future. I thought of all the faithful Filipinos who were certain to lose their lives, or their property, or both. What could be left for survivors after the showdown? I thought every day about our growing conviction that, because of the strength of the enemy fortifications at San Fernando, the Americans should land in Lingayen Gulf. It was imperative that this be judged correctly since we had been forwarding our opinions about it to Australia and we planned to send runners in advance of the landings to convey our final information and advice. If we were right, many American lives would be saved. If we were wrong, our own men might never get ashore. Every day more U.S. bombers and fighter planes crisscrossed the skies. Tension mounted apace.

The first break came January 4, 1945. Our camp was then situated in the mountains east of San Quintin along the eastern border of Pangasinan province. That morning I came upon one of our guards peering intently at a narrow pathway that snaked upward from rice fields into the foothills far below us. Slowly my man slipped his submachinegun off his shoulder, flipped the safety catch, and edged into a firing position. He was absorbed in some sort of movement down the trail. My immediate thought was that enemy troops must be approaching. I asked the guard what he had seen. He said someone was on the trail, coming our way. I called at once to Greg to bring me one of our prized possessions, a set of captured Japanese artillery binoculars, heavy and clumsy but extremely useful because they were powerful and graduated with range markings.

I focused in on the trail. A rider was coming toward us as fast as he could urge his sweat-lathered horse up the precipitous path. Several of us grabbed rifles and dashed down the trail to our lower level
outpost. Just as we arrived, the winded pony stumbled forward, struggling to hold its footing on the steep ground. The rider hit the ground running and thrust a message toward me. I hastily tore open the envelope. It was from Major Lapham. The first line hit me like a stunning physical blow. I read it and reread it, but was so overcome with emotion that I could not read further. It said, “Begin operations immediately herewith in accordance with Operations Plan 12.” It meant that the American invasion was coming in five days.

It has been observed many times that discontented intellectuals of a certain type agitate for revolution and plan carefully for it for many years, but when a revolutionary situation actually develops they become as bewildered and helpless as lost children. That was about my state. For what purpose had I strained every fiber to stay alive for the past three years? Why had I raised and trained a troop of guerrillas at all? Why had I tried so hard to collect information about the Japanese and send it to Australia if it was not in anticipation that some day my countrymen would return to begin a new war for the liberation of all of us? Now the time had come at last, and I couldn't believe it. I read the message still another time. At last it began to sink in. I composed myself enough to read it to those around me. They responded much as I had, dumbly at first. Then we all burst into tears. Whether I ever cried earlier in the war I can no longer remember, but this time the tears flowed in torrents. No doubt the nerves of all of us had become somewhat like a rubber band that has been stretched—and stretched—until it suddenly snaps.

As soon as we calmed down, I ordered the news dispatched to all company commanders in the province, as well as specific instructions about what each was to do in the immediate future. I took special care to make each message transparently clear since, for some reason, I happened to recall a story someone had once told me about Napoleon. Bonaparte had occasion to promote several of his officers, and he included on the list a member of his staff renowned chiefly for the slowness of his mental processes. One of the emperor's subordinates complained that this particular promotion should have been given to someone more talented. Napoleon replied that the dullard was especially valuable since it was his job to read all orders before they went to field commanders. If he understood an order, anyone else surely would!

No sooner had the orders been dispatched, than somebody in our headquarters detachment, perhaps Greg, suggested excitedly that we attack the Japanese garrison in nearby San Quintin that very night. One look at the faces of the others told me that enthusiasm for the
idea was universal. I was in a quandary. The garrison was supposed to be attacked in due course by another company of ours. If we butted in now, we would upset long established plans. Worse, it was conceivable that in the darkness we might get into a battle with our own men. I began to remonstrate with the others in this vein but soon gave up. Every half-perceptive football coach has known times when his team was so eager to get at the opponents of the hour that the best thing he could do was simply to name the starting lineup and get out of the way.

That night we set off single file down the trail. It was after dark when we reached the outskirts of San Quintin. Here we seized the first civilian we met and told him to take us to the mayor. That dignitary and other village leaders were overjoyed to hear that American liberation forces were due to land somewhere on Luzon in five days, but they were much less enthusiastic about our proposed attack on the Japanese garrison in their town. Only when we told them that we intended to shoot up the garrison whether they helped us or not, did they swallow their quite reasonable fears and agree to cooperate. Soon they drew us a map of the enemy compound. Inside a protective wire fence were two large rice warehouses, side by side. At the north end of them, like the cross on a
T
, was a third large building, a barracks that housed perhaps a hundred Japanese troops. The Japanese had only one guard. He was stationed outside the middle door of the barracks, facing a corridor between the two warehouses. We decided to attack from the south side of the stockade.

Somebody once said that confusion is the first flower that grows on a battlefield. He was dead right. We had hardly started off to get into position to attack when noise arose in a crescendo all about us. Dogs barked, pigs squealed, horses neighed, and frightened civilians dashed back and forth through the town loading
calesas
and carts and trying to get themselves, their families, and their possessions out of the area. One could hardly blame them, but I was sure the racket would alert every Japanese in the vicinity—which it did. Nonetheless, we made our way without incident up to the fence that surrounded the encampment. This we would have to climb. Immediately we stopped and sent two men, stripped down to their sidearms and dark-colored shorts, over the fence first. They were to slip down between the two rice warehouses, surprise the sentry and, hopefully, kill him without making any noise. Then the rest of us, armed with light machineguns and automatic rifles, would follow close behind, burst through the barracks door, turn back to back and blast all the Japanese in their beds.