Mike Guardia (17 page)

This landing party delivered more critical specialists than Volckmann had ever had before, including technicians trained in meteorology, demolition, and radio maintenance. Aside from delivering arms, ammunition, and other combat assets, they also provided an impressive display of radio equipment. This in turn allowed Volckmann to establish radio nets within each of the five districts.
²⁸⁰

On 30 November, while GHQ busied itself coordinating another contact date, Manriquez’s men in the Fifth District recovered the greatest source of enemy information that USAFIP-NL had yet to find. A Japanese liaison plane, carrying a number of high-ranking officers, had crashed in Nueva Vizcaya. Stripping the plane for any pertinent intelligence, the 14th Infantry gathered a series of papers from a conference held by General Tomiyuki Yamashita. As the newly appointed commander of all Japanese forces in the Philippines, he had reorganized the entire defense of Luzon.
²⁸¹

Apparently, Yamashita understood that Luzon was the critical juncture of the Philippine Campaign. He admitted that Japanese ground forces could not withstand the superiority of American armor.
²⁸²
Therefore, to minimize that advantage, he would consolidate his forces within the mountains of North Luzon.

The reconfiguring of the Fourteenth Army defense occurred throughout the summer and fall of 1944, and culminated in January 1945. As a result, six army divisions settled into the mountain landscape and Yamashita relocated his headquarters to Baguio. Not coincidentally, the puppet government also moved its capital from Manila to Baguio.
²⁸³
These events confirmed what Volckmann had seen in the documents from the plane; it was clear that the Japanese intended to make North Luzon their last defensive stronghold.

Two more submarine contacts were made in December 1944. The first shipment, arriving on 12 December, proved to be a huge disappointment. Instead of the arms, ammunition, and medical supplies that were so vital to Volckmann’s enterprise, they opened the crates to find nothing but propaganda items: cigarettes, rubber stamps, and candy bars bearing the words “I Shall Return.” Frustrated by the futility of this nonsensical cargo, Volckmann radioed SWPA with an appeal not to send any more propaganda material. SWPA did not reply but the message appeared to have some impact, for the very next submarine arrived with 25 tons of military equipment and not one ounce of propaganda.
²⁸⁴

At the same time, Volckmann began the painstaking task of determining a proper landing site for the invasion of North Luzon. The burden was enormous, as the success of the Allied landing hinged on Volckmann’s ability to select an area that would not be saturated with enemy defenses. The Yamashita defense plan relocated most of Fourteenth Army inland but a few coastal defense batteries still remained. Naval gunfire and close air support could dispatch these in short order, but the risk of collateral damage was too high. There were other considerations, too. Volckmann had to direct the landings to a spot that would allow the easiest access to the USAFIP-NL supply lines.

Based on the intelligence assessments provided by his scouts and district commanders, Volckmann settled on Lingayen Gulf. Reports estimated that activity surrounding the gulf had died down significantly since the start of the war.
²⁸⁵
Volckmann knew the area well; it had been where he and the 11th Infantry had built their first defenses in 1941.

Conferring with Calvert, Volckmann studied the intelligence overlay and cleared the message to MacArthur:

FROM VOLCKMANN TO MACARTHUR
THERE WILL BE NO REPEAT NO OPPOSITION ON THE BEACHES
²⁸⁶

For the next 48 hours, Volckmann had little else to do but wait for the Allied landings and hope that he had made the right decision in selecting Lingayen Gulf. The Gulf area was devoid of enemy activity, but if his correspondence with SWPA were intercepted, Yamashita would not hesitate to deploy his holed-up forces to the beach.

The suspense finally ended on 9 January 1945, when Volckmann received the following radiogram from MacArthur:

OVER ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND AMERICAN TROOPS LANDED BETWEEN SAN FABIAN AND LINGAYEN ON THE MORNING OF 9 JANUARY 1945. THE COVOY WHICH COMPOSE OVER 700 SHIPS WAS 80 MILES LONG. THERE WAS LITTLE OPPOSITION TO THE LANDING WHICH WAS PRECEDED BY A PAY AIR AND NAVAL BOMBARDMENT
²⁸⁷

From his Headquarters, Volckmann could see the ships entering Lingayen some 50 miles away. Although he had promised no resistance on the beaches, MacArthur obviously deferred on the side of caution and precipitated the landings with a hail of naval gunfire. Official confirmation of the landing included orders placing Volckmann’s guerrillas under the U.S. Sixth Army’s command.
²⁸⁸

Reassignment to Sixth Army began one of the greatest transformations in Volckmann’s resistance movement. The supply issues had largely been solved by the submarines, but now Volckmann had additional manpower and a permanent logistics base. Until now, USAFIP-NL operations had been limited to raids and ambushes. While these operations covered a large area and inflicted some losses on the Japanese, he had not had the wherewithal to stand “toe-to-toe” with the enemy in a prolonged battle. With the elements of the Sixth Army supplementing the groundwork that Volckmann had laid, it was only a matter of time before the Japanese war machine would breathe its last breath.

To organize the joint effort between USAFIP-NL and Sixth Army Headquarters, Volckmann arranged for a PT boat to take him to the Lingayen landing site. Picking him up at Darigayos Cove, the PT skipper delivered him to General Walter Krueger, Sixth Army Commander. Coincidentally, Volckmann had served under Krueger some five years earlier when the latter commanded the 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Sam Houston. The two had met previously but Volckmann was unsure whether the general would remember him after their brief meeting years earlier. Emphatically recalling the then-Captain Volckmann from years past, Krueger listened intently as the guerrilla commander gave his report on the Japanese strengths in North Luzon.
²⁸⁹

The general seemed perplexed by Volckmann’s assessment. If the numbers and capabilities that Volckmann reported were correct, the general said, then why weren’t the Japanese pushing the Allied landing party back into the sea? Volckmann’s reply was simple: the Japanese had dug their defenses into the mountainscape; they were expecting “Uncle Sam” to dig them out inch by inch.
²⁹⁰

Aside from pledging the Sixth Army’s support, General Krueger gave Volckmann full authority to deal with the Army 308th Bomb Wing and instructed him to contact Admiral Forrest B. Royal, commander of Amphibious Group Six, who would henceforth take responsibility for the rest of Volckmann’s resupply needs. Before doing so, however, he would report to General Douglas MacArthur.
²⁹¹
Arriving at MacArthur’s office, Volckmann came face-to-face with the general who had abandoned him some three years earlier. Rather than giving Volckmann an admonishment for refusing the surrender order, MacArthur congratulated him on a job well done and promoted him to Colonel!
²⁹²

With MacArthur’s blessing, Volckmann climbed aboard the next PT boat inbound for the
USS Rocky Mount
, the command vessel of Admiral Royal. Once on board the flagship, Volckmann began discussing his resupply options. Now that the Allied armada had an anchorage in Lingayen Gulf, the submarines would no longer be necessary. Darigayos Cove had previously been a rendezvous point for SWPA submarines, and since it was relatively close to the main body of Royal’s fleet, the two men agreed that Darigayos would be the optimal supply point. After settling his affairs aboard the Admiral’s flagship, another PT boat would take Volckmann back to Lingayen beach where he would go to the Headquarters of the 308th Bomb Wing.
²⁹³

His meeting with the Headquarters Staff of the 308th produced a lengthy discussion on the means of communication and coordinating air strikes. According to Volckmann, air support in North Luzon had its own unique challenges. Heavy cloud cover over most of the region ruled out the possibility of sustained high-altitude aerial reconnaissance. To offset this disadvantage, Volckmann drew out detailed plans to have his men direct low-altitude bombers around the mountains to their targets via two-way radios. This made Volckmann among the first in the Pacific theater to exploit the concept of
forward air controllers
. In a true display of tactical innovativeness, Volckmann devised a unique method of air-ground communication. Since not all of the USAFIP-NL camps had radios to communicate with one another, Volckmann devised a quicker way for them to communicate with the Sixth Army and his own General Headquarters. The result was an information retrieval device that operated in a manner not dissimilar from the way an airplane landed on an aircraft carrier. Retrofitting the aircraft of the 308th with large hooks on the underbelly of the fuselage, Volckmann instructed the pilots to fly their aircraft to the site of a USAFIP-NL camp. The pilots would then swoop down over the campsite so that their retrieval hooks would catch an encased message that hung from a wire suspended between two poles.
²⁹⁴

Departing the 308th Headquarters, Volckmann boarded an L-5 liaison plane to fly him back to GHQ.
²⁹⁵
Although he was leaving the safety of American lines, he took great satisfaction in knowing that the campaign to retake North Luzon was about to begin.

Combat operations of USAFIP-NL fell into three distinct phases. The first phase lasted from the middle of 1943—the date of Volckmann’s “Reorganization Plan”—until the arrival of the U.S. Sixth Army at Lingayen Gulf on 3 January 1945. The next two phases overlapped one another: the second phase, from 3 January to 15 August 1945, saw the regiments of USAFIP-NL fight within their respective districts in open combat against the Japanese. The third and final phase of operations lasted from about 1 June until Yamashita’s surrender on 1 September 1945. In this phase, three regiments of USAFIP-NL—the 121st, 15th, and 66th Infantry—fought together as a Division-sized element under the U.S. Sixth Army.
²⁹⁶

The first phase of combat operations covered the longest period. As mentioned previously, as of 1943–44, Volckmann knew that neither he nor his guerrillas possessed the resources to engage the Japanese in open combat. As a result, Volckmann divided his early operations into two categories: intelligence gathering and subversive activities, both of which took place simultaneously.
²⁹⁷
As he made plans to contact MacArthur and arrange for resupply, Volckmann directed his men to engage in a number of guerrilla activities. These included sabotage, demolition, and small raids on Japanese garrisons. The objective, as Volckmann saw it, was to put the occupying Fourteenth Army on the defensive and erode the Japanese combat power
before
the Americans arrived to retake North Luzon.

Volckmann’s decision was important for two reasons. First, a united guerrilla front would draw Yamashita’s priorities away from the North Luzon coastal defenses and, consequently, from any incoming Allied naval task force. Second, Volckmann’s operations would undercut the means by which the Japanese could repel the Allied invasion. Reviewing his options, Volckmann concluded that the Japanese supply system was his priority target. The Japanese had the numerical advantage, but Volckmann apparently knew that he could offset this advantage if he destroyed their means to continue the war. If the Japanese had no ammunition, their rifles would be useless; if they had no fuel or usable trucks, they would lose their mobility; and if they had no food or replacement parts for their equipment, their army would wither and die. Next, Volckmann set his sights on the North Luzon infrastructure. Training the local Igorots and Ilocanos in the art of demolition, Volckmann targeted the road and bridge network over which the Japanese moved their troops.
²⁹⁸
This, however, presented Volckmann with a unique challenge: he had to devise a method of demolition that would impede the Japanese movement without hindering his own or that of U.S. conventional forces once they arrived. During the course of the invasion, the Japanese had put their engineers to work building road and bridge networks to connect their garrisons and improve existing trails, with detours to their supply caches. The solution that Volckmann devised—or so it appears—was to target the Japanese service roads and leave the main highways alone for the time being. Drawing upon conventional military principles, the third leg of Volckmann’s guerrilla strategy included the use of raids and ambushes on Japanese garrisons.
²⁹⁹

The first phase of combat operations can be told through the messages sent between GHQ and the various district commands. Missions varied in their scope, intensity, and outcome, but they shared the common thread of guerrilla warfare on the rise in North Luzon.

19 September 1944
Subject: ENEMY CASUALTIES
To: 1122 [Volckmann]

1. For your information, my units had unavoidable engagements with the enemy and had inflicted the following casualties on the enemy’s part.
A platoon of “B” Co. met Jap patrols (50) in Aludaed, San Juan, La Union and engaged them. 4 Japs killed and no casualty on our part. September 5, 1944.
On September 10, 1944, “A” Co. wrecked a train with 60 Japs killed and wounded.
On September 11, 1944, a platoon of “D” Co, while having its daily training, met Japs (20). 7 Japs killed and no casualty on our part.
On September 12, 1944, the Japs tried to chase the “D” Co…36 Japs killed and 8 wounded. Captured from the enemy 1 Garand rifle, 6 Enfield rifles, and 85 rounds 30 Cal. 2 killed and 6 slightly wounded on our part.
—2-121-113
³⁰⁰
[Major Diego Sipin, CO, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry]
9 October 1944
Subject: Mission
To: 1-66-113 [Parker Calvert, First District, USAFIP-NL]
1. This is to inform that the mission to ambush Japs patrol at KP [Kilometer Post] 68 & KP 69 was very successful. The officers and EM [enlisted men] fought like fools and devils. In spite of the fact that we did not have BARS [Browning Automatic Rifles], we have given the heaviest blow to the enemy with less than 20 rifles. The enemy were caught [so] unprepared that the Japs were not given a second to fire with the machine gun and rifles. The Japs did not fire a single ammunition. They dropped from the trucks like drunken men.
2. The following listed hereunder were captured from the enemy:
One (1) machine gun, US aircool, cal.30
Four (4) machine gun belts filled with cal.30 ammunition
One (1) machine gun box
Six (6) Jap rifles (long)
Five (5) Jap bayonet
Twenty (20) Jap helmet
Four (4) Japs garrison belts
Many hundreds of cal.30 ammunition
Many hundreds of Japs ammunition
3. Detailed report will be submitted later including report of the other group posted at KP 60.
4. We are proceeding slowly toward home because of heavy load.
(Sgd) (3-1113-L-1120)
³⁰¹
[unidentified guerrilla call-sign]

In another report dated 17 November 1944, men of L Company, 3rd Battalion, 66th Infantry (First District) set out on a mission to cut telephone wires and to ambush a Japanese patrol. The men of L Company succeeded in disabling the wires, but their ambush turned sour when the patrol called in reinforcements from a nearby garrison. Outgunned and overmatched, the guerrillas fled. Although the enemy patrol had won the day, USAFIP-NL claimed the lives of six Japanese soldiers and eight kilometers worth of telephone wire.

Other encounters, however, were not so successful. In a report from the Third District, a planned raid on the town of Bangui, a proJapanese town and hotbed of enemy spies, ended in disaster. At 2:30 a.m. on the morning of 29 October, a platoon from the 15th Infantry attacked the town to seize three of its most wanted spies: the mayor, the city treasurer, and a police sergeant. The residents, in a fit of panic, stormed the Japanese garrison for protection. But amidst the darkness and chaos of the predawn debacle, the Japanese opened fire on the townspeople, mistaking them to be guerrillas. In all, 300 civilians died. Hand-to-hand combat ensued as the enemy garrison fought the 15th Infantry until daybreak, when two Japanese fighter planes were called in to strafe the area. USAFIP-NL suffered no casualties that day and even apprehended their target spies, but what had begun as a simple “snatch-and-grab” mission resulted in a destroyed town and over 300 dead civilians.

Volckmann had no doubts that his men could wear down the Japanese, but to have the kind of catastrophic impact that he desired, he would need a lot more resources and much more time. His operations frustrated Yamashita to no end, but even with the resupply from SWPA submarines, Volckmann could not possibly destroy every bridge, ambush every column, or raid every garrison. To destroy the Japanese completely meant that MacArthur had to fulfill the “I Shall Return” promise.

As USAFIP-NL peeled away at Yamashita’s combat power, the worried “Tiger of Malaya” began to re-evaluate his predicament. As the Allies advanced on all fronts throughout the Pacific, the Rising Sun diverted more of its combat assets away from the Philippines. This left Yamashita with few options for resupply and fewer options for additional manpower. To correct these deficiencies, Yamashita thought it best to use the terrain to his advantage. He was still relatively unaccustomed to the mountainous jungles, but he obviously saw the utility in what they could provide for his defenses.

Volckmann, meanwhile, kept a close watch on the Allied progress— not just over the radiograms from SWPA, but from the radio station KGEI in San Francisco.
³⁰²
News of the Allied landings in the Marshall Islands, New Britain, and the Marianas all meant one thing: U.S. forces were tightening their grip on the Empire of Japan. Yamashita, undoubtedly aware of the same news, began to mobilize his forces inward.

Yamashita most likely estimated that the Allies would be at his front door by early to mid-1945. Increasingly frustrated by his inability to find and destroy Volckmann, he finally realized that he did not possess the resources to maintain his current defense scheme of Luzon while simultaneously chasing the elusive guerrillas. To do so would have been martial suicide. USAFIP-NL operations had already begun to weaken his combat readiness, and Yamashita knew that more punitive expeditions would only erode more of his resources in the long run. If he continued his wild goose chase against Volckmann, while Volckmann kept coordinating strikes on his troops, Yamashita’s forces would become little more than a Coxey’s army. Consequently, when the Allies finally returned to Luzon, he would have virtually nothing left with which to defend the island.

Yamashita’s new defense scheme reflected a simple idea: if he could not find Volckmann, he would get Volckmann and the Allies to come to him. Yamashita thus withdrew nearly 150,000 troops into the Cordillera Central of North Luzon. By digging into the mountains, he placed his men into fortified defensive positions with orders to stay put.
³⁰³
From a tactical standpoint, it was an ideal defense: if USAFIPNL wanted a fight, they would have to dig the enemy out inch by inch. Essentially, this plan let Yamashita kill the proverbial “two birds with one stone.” He had created a new defensive position that would deter both guerrillas and U.S. conventional forces from digging his troops out, or so he thought. The rugged landscape negated the use of everything that gave American forces their superiority—most notably tanks and mechanized infantry. Yamashita could now command the initiative. However, there were four things that he had not counted on: (1) Volckmann accepting the challenge, (2) Volckmann maintaining regular contact with MacArthur, (3) the submarine resupply system and, (4) that the new defense scheme put his headquarters right in the middle of Volckmann’s largest operational area.

Forcing Yamashita out of the mountains could be done but not without enormous casualties and loss of life. Volckmann’s native guerrillas knew every square inch of the terrain, but the incoming Allies had no such luxury. With no probable means of aerial reconnaissance available, the Allied cause would have to rely on Volckmann to provide intelligence on Japanese positions and the surrounding terrain. Without it, U.S. conventional forces would be walking into a bloody stalemate as they tried to pry the Fourteenth Army from their mountainous redoubts.

From 9 January until 15 August 1945, Volckmann directed each of the USAFIP-NL regiments to fight within their respective districts, each obtaining strategic goals that collectively led to the defeat of Yamashita’s forces in Luzon. Meeting with General Kruger, Volckmann outlined the situation in Luzon and the requirements needed to defeat the Japanese.
³⁰⁴
Aside from the obvious necessity for more arms and ammunition, Volckmann would need his forces supplemented by conventional infantry and air units. The first utilization of Sixth Army assets in this regard began with an attack on the southern end of the Yamashita perimeter.
³⁰⁵

The Sixth Army landings at Lingayen beach put U.S. forces geographically closest to the 66th Infantry Regiment. As the U.S. I Corps began to attack the enemy’s southern flank—thereby diverting Yamashita’s attention—Volckmann sprang into action. With a fresh contingent of rifles, machine guns, bullets, and artillery pieces—courtesy of the Sixth Army—Volckmann began the planning phase for the 66th Infantry’s assault against the enemy enclaves in the area surrounding the Highway 11 road juncture.
³⁰⁶

The Japanese had built a triangular defense bounded by Bontoc, Cervantes, and the Loo Valley—with Highway 11’s Kilometer Post 90 being the southernmost apex. This area was collectively known as the Lepanto-Mankayan region, so named for the two prominent mountain ridges that dominated the area.

Lepanto-Mankayan represented one of the most strategically important regions in North Luzon, and as such the Japanese defended it for four reasons: (1) it was the gateway into the Loo Valley, known as the “Japanese breadbasket”; (2) in addition to the rich deposits of manganese and iron, the area was home to Luzon’s largest network of gold and silver mines; (3) Lepanto-Mankayan housed the largest cache of Yamashita’s reserve weaponry; and (4) as indicated in the 66th Infantry’s combat reports, Lepanto-Mankayan guarded the approaches into Ifugao, where the enemy had determined to make their last stand.
³⁰⁷

In 1941, only a small, unimproved road connected the town of Cervantes to the Lepanto-Mankayan pass. When the Japanese invaded, they converted the trail into a hard-surface road to transport copper from the Lepanto mines. Of late, this road had become the primary defensive line on the Japanese position and, consequently, it became a priority target for the USAFIP-NL. Going up against Volckmann’s guerrillas were the elements of the 19th Tora Division and the 58th Independent Brigade.
³⁰⁸

The planning phase for the Lepanto-Mankayan assault began with Field Order #27, issued by Volckmann himself. The order called for the assault to be conducted in three phases: (1) the initial artillery preparation and demolition, (2) the ground assault, and (3) consolidation around the Japanese perimeter.

The assault began with coordinated artillery fire on key enemy positions. Because Volckmann knew that the 19th Division and the other units guarding Lepanto-Mankayan were motorized, he anticipated that they would mobilize their troops via the road and bridge network to defend the precious mines. This realization is where the demolition aspect came into play: as artillery fell on the Japanese, Igorot demolitionists would simultaneously blast the thoroughfares, rendering them impassable. This action, in turn, would isolate the Japanese elements and prevent them from reinforcing one another.
³⁰⁹
As the main body of the 66th closed in on the enemy, rear guards would stay behind and occupy the same area that had once been the Japanese perimeter. With guerrillas now occupying the perimeter, American conventional forces could move in to secure the mines.