Blood Brothers by Eugene C. Jacobs (i can read book club TXT) 📕

COL. WARNER SURRENDERS THE 14th INFANTRY

(June 20, 1942)

Col. Warner officially surrendered the 14th Inf. to the Japanese on June 20th. The following day our group walked down to the river and obtained a guide and several bancas. We spent the day coasting down the river to Ilagan. On the way down, I decided that no American would be killed by my .45; I dropped it in the river.

In Ilagan, we hiked several blocks to a Japanese barracks, knocked on the door and tried to explain to some ignorant soldiers that “we had come to surrender!” We were about as welcome as a vacuum cleaner salesman. With little planning we could have “wiped them out.” We were finally directed to an empty house across the street to spend the night, sleeping on the floor.

The next day we hired a Filipino caratella (pony cart) and rode about fifty miles to Echague where we repeated the surrender process at a cavalry barracks. Six of us Americans soon found ourselves sleeping on the concrete floor of the guard house of the old Constabulary Barracks, west of Echague. Our hosts were a squadron of Japanese cavalry-probably the same squadron we used to watch going up and down the highway.

Echague was the town where Guillermo Nakar and I had frequent conferences with the Governor and provincial officials. We were only fifteen miles from the radio shack, where Nakar was persisting in his efforts to contact Gen. MacArthur.

I didn’t get to Palanan to meet General Aguinaldo! I have often wondered how different my life might have been-sitting out the war with Aguinaldo.

Guests of a Japanese Cavalry Squadron: For one month, we six Americans were assigned to perform all of the unpleasant chores of the squadron, pumping water by hand, preparing vegetables, burying garbage, etc. We were pleased when we heard through the “bamboo telegraph” (rumors whispered to us by the natives selling us bananas and coconut cookies) that the government officials that we had appointed had been accepted by the Japanese. We knew that they would maintain a certain loyalty to the United States.

The Japs called us “captives,” not P.O.W.s. Each morning and each evening, we had to stand formation with the squadron

facing east repeating an allegiance to the Emperor (we substituted our own words, which we deemed more appropriate).

Nakar Successful: About the 4th of July, Col. Nakar succeeded in contacting Australia. I quote from Gen. MacArthur’s book, Reminiscences: “After the fall of Corregidor and the Southern Islands, organized resistance to the Japanese in the Philippines had supposedly come to an end. In reality, it never ended. Unfortunately for some time, I could learn nothing of these activities. A deep pall of silence settled over the whole archipelago.

“Two months after the fall of Manila Bay Defenses, a brief and pathetic message from a weak sending station on Luzon was brought to me. Short as it was, it lifted the curtain of silence and uncertainty, and disclosed the start of a human drama with few parallels in military history. The words of that message warmed my heart: ‘YOUR RETURN IS THE NIGHTLY SUBJECT OF PRAYER IN EVERY FILIPINO HOME! - NAKAR.’

“I had acquired a force behind the Japanese lines that would have far-reaching effect on the war in the days to come.

“Unhappily, the sender of that first message, Lt. Col. Guillermo Nakar, a former battalion commander of the 14th Infantry of the Philippine Forces, was caught by the Japanese, tortured and beheaded. The word passed from island to island, and from barrio to barrio. From Aparri in the north to Zamboango in the south the fire of resistance to the invader spread. Whole divisions of Japanese troops that the Emperor badly needed elsewhere, deployed against phantom units.”

Before Nakar’s untimely capture, he had received the following message: “THE COURAGEOUS AND SPLENDID RESISTANCE MAINTAINED BY YOU AND YOUR COMMAND FILLS ME WITH PRIDE AND SATISFACTION - Stop. IT WILL BE MY PRIVILEGE TO SEE THAT YOU AND YOUR OFFICERS AND MEN ARE PROPERLY REWARDED AT THE APPROPRIATE TIME - Stop. MY AFFECTIONS AND BEST WISHES. MACARTHUR.”

Within a few weeks we learned that an unfaithful Filipino had betrayed Col. Nakar. The Nipponese had captured him and the regimental radio in a mountain cave near Jones, and had taken him to the old Spanish Fort Santiago in Manila where they threw him in a dungeon to face starvation, thirst, water rats, the ingenious system of Japanese questioning and torture by the Kempie Tai Qapanese Secret Police), and finally beheading.

Col. Nakar’s short war was far from fruitless. His tender years did not prevent him from becoming a “champion of liberty!” His message to MacArthur actually signaled the end of Allied defeats and withdrawals, and the beginning of an unbroken series of crushing defeats for the Japanese Empire. It kept “Freedom’s Flame” burning brightly throughout the Philippines and gave the Filipinos the necessary strength and courage to resist-and finally to defeat the invaders. Col. Nakar’s “Brief and pathetic message from the Cagayan Valley” gave MacArthur the reassurance he needed:

To plan his aggressive warfare;

To fulfill his pledge to the Filipino people: “I shall return!”

and

To know he had a friendly base from which to attack Japan.

MacArthur’s First Guerrilla Regiment (later the 14th Inf.) had produced a much needed diversion for the hard-pressed forces on Bataan and Corregidor. Thirty months later, these same guerrillas of the 14th Inf. played an important part under the brilliant leadership of Col. Russell Volckmann in assisting MacArthur’s invasion of Luzon at Lingayen Gulf on January 9th, 1945.

MacArthur stated, “The guerrillas had been busy ever since receiving my orders ‘to open up!’ They cut telephone wires and otherwise disrupted Japanese communications. They blew up bridges and mined roads; they blocked supplies to the front lines; they smashed patrols and burned ammunition dumps. Their shining bolos began to turn red. I estimated that Col. Volckmann’s northern Luzon guerrillas accomplished the purposes of practically a front line division.”

(Still nine months later, these same guerrillas helped Col. Volckmann at Kiangan-both defeat and capture Japan’s distinguished General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the “Tiger of Malaya.” The Tiger was quite amazed and chagrined to find his veteran troops both surrounded and beaten by guerrillas in the northern Mountain Province.

On September 2, 1945, General Yamashita surrendered to Col. Volckmann at Kianhgan. The following day, Sept. 3rd, he surrendered to General Wainwright at the High Commissioner’s mansion at Camp John Hay, ending World War II in the Philippine Islands. Yamashita was then taken to Bilibid Prison

in Manila to await war crime trials.

In December, 1941, some of the newly recruited Filipino soldiers ‘“broke and ran” for the mountains when the big guns were fired from the cruisers and destroyers in Lingayen Bay, but in 1945, these same Filipinos were ideally suited for guerrilla warfare; they thoroughly enjoyed twisting the “Tail of the Tiger.” “This was their kind of war!” Actually Japan never conquered the Philippine Islands, nor did they ever gain the friendship of the Filipinos.

The Nipponese merely occupied some of the larger cities and controlled the main roads for three years, during which time they established much ill-will of the Filipinos, only serving to strengthen the resistance movements. Who could have ever dreamed that World War II in the Philippines would both begin and end at Camp John Hay, a Rest and Recreation Center?

Captives on the Move - July 20, 1942: Six of us the American captives, guests of the Japanese cavalry squadron stationed in Echague Constabulary Barracks in Isabella were placed aboard a charcoal burning truck, with a half dozen Jap guards, bound for an internment camp.

When we reached Bambang, our truck stopped to pick up a junior Japanese officer, who was being transferred to another area. The Nips wanted to give him a big send-off; they had gathered and instructed a group of Filipino children to express their great fondness for the officer by waving Japanese flags, by shouting: “Banzai, Banzai, Banzai!” and by presenting the officer with a small bouquet.

The performance was quite dull, until one of the children discovered the Americans in the back of the truck. The little faces brightened and broke into smiles; “V” signs began to appear, followed by a chorus of “Hello, Joe! Hello, Joe! Hello, Joe; Mabuhay, Joe!” The Japs were plenty irked and hurried the truck down the highway.

In the early afternoon we passed through the barrio where we had encountered the Japanese Chevy and tanks seven months before.