by Peter Eisner
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When they returned to Manila, Claire and Dian moved in for a while with Louise; Claire started looking for work instead of going back to the house she and Manuel Fuentes owned. Louise teased Claire for coming back but never explained why she herself had not gone back to the States. “We’re birds of a feather,” she told Claire. “Plenty of people keep telling me I should go home, but here I am.”
It did not take Claire long to find a job working in a club, and she soon had enough money to rent an apartment. Manila was home to thousands of young American servicemen who plied the nightspots, drank, and fell for the easygoing ways of the women they saw. The city was a tropical paradise, a dream—beautiful, willing, exotic women in every direction, nightclubs of every description to fill every desire. What better place for an alluring chanteuse, especially when so many other women, her competitors, had taken ship and returned home? Claire started singing at private parties at the posh Manila Hotel, where General Douglas MacArthur lived and maintained his offices, though there is no mention of them ever having met. Claire found a steadier job at a popular local nightclub, the Alcazar, singing American standards most every night. One of those nights she was at the club when Manila held an air-raid drill. She kept singing all through the blackout.
Young enlisted men frequented the Alcazar; it was considered a less refined nightspot than the places that officers usually frequented, especially if they were married. On October 15, less than a month after her return to Manila from Oregon, Claire was singing one of her “nostalgic torch songs under a soft cascade of shifting pastel lights” when a good-looking, strapping young man emerged from the crowd, smitten by the sight of her. He was John Vincent Phillips, a twenty-three-year-old U.S. Army private just in from California and a member of the 31st Infantry or, as it was known by reputation, the “Thirsty First.”
When her song was done, Phillips introduced himself and asked Claire to dance.
“The quiet type, I thought, watching his slow, graceful manner of dancing. I had never seen a more handsome man.”
A relationship had kindled. During the day, Phillips and other soldiers were at their posts, training, gathering supplies, and patching together vintage equipment for a battle they were not ready for. At night Claire and Phil, as she called Phillips, took long strolls in the moonlight along Dewey Boulevard, a romantic promenade that hugged Manila Bay with the Pacific Ocean beyond, thousands of miles from home. Palm trees shimmered before the mansions of expatriates that lined the boulevard.
By November Claire and John Phillips were spending all their free time together. Within weeks, Claire later said, John Phillips proposed marriage, but she held him off. She said she was worried that she was much older—almost thirty-four—and he was more than ten years younger. She said that they should wait until they could make it back together to the States. Phillips wrote home to his mother, Vada May Phillips, in Wasco, California, in the San Joaquin valley, and told her about his beautiful new girlfriend. He did not tell his mother that he was getting married. Claire had avoided mentioning to Phillips that she was already married to Manuel Fuentes, not necessarily a problem in any case. Who knew when Fuentes would make it back to Manila?
It was easier to feel the ocean breeze and look at the glow of the mansions and the trees than to consider what was happening. One air-raid drill followed another, and newspapers began issuing civil-defense information in case of attack. All the while, people played along with civil defense but pushed away dark thoughts. What could really happen? How bad could it be? The Japanese would never go to war. And even if they did, they would never try to attack the Philippines.
Infamy Across the Pacific
Manila, December 8, 1941
WHEN THE NEWS BULLETIN came through after 3:00 a.m. Manila time on Monday, December 8, 1941, some people were still awake in Manila, partying from the night before. The attack took place across the International Date Line at 7:53 a.m. on December 7 in Hawaii, and at 1:23 p.m. on the East Coast of the United States.
“AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR—THIS IS NO DRILL.”
Navy radiomen on station in Manila reported the Pearl Harbor attack to their commanding officers. At 5:00 a.m. Brigadier General Lewis H. Brereton of the U.S. Army Air Forces marched over to army headquarters to seek permission from General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of U.S. forces, to bomb the Japanese-held island of Formosa (now Taiwan), just two hundred miles from the northernmost part of the Philippines. For reasons never explained, Brereton did not communicate directly with MacArthur, who was sequestered in his penthouse suite at the elegant Manila Hotel on Manila Bay. Some of those present said that MacArthur was paralyzed into inaction for several crucial hours; others said his aides blocked subordinates from even receiving the urgent plea. Others still said the lapse amounted to dereliction of duty and that, as with Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel at Pearl Harbor, MacArthur should have been sacked. For his part, MacArthur said in his memoirs that no one had suggested such a retaliatory attack, which he considered in any case would have been suicidal.
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By 8:30 a.m., Japanese bombers had hit their first targets in the Philippines, in Davao on the southernmost major island, Mindanao. Planes then bombed and strafed airfields at Baguio in western Luzon (at the size of Virginia, the largest island in the Philippine archipelago, with Manila on its southwest coast) and at Aparri on its northern coast. MacArthur issued no orders until 10:15 a.m., when he authorized a series of reconnaissance flights over Formosa, obscured by morning fog. At 11:30 a.m., the planes, B-17 Flying Fortress bombers and P-40 Warhawk fighters, received orders to return to Clark Field, forty miles northwest of Manila. As they were refueling, high-flying Japanese bombers attacked Clark Field without American resistance, accompanied by dive-bombing Japanese Zeros that strafed the field at low altitude. Within minutes, almost half of all the U.S. bombers and fighter planes in the Philippines had been destroyed or disabled. The Japanese Imperial Army Air Force launched additional bruising assaults around Manila Bay for the next two days and devastated Philippine bases, including the U.S. naval facility at Cavite. With most airplanes gone and little prospect of reinforcements from the U.S. Navy, the Philippines was now wide open to invasion.
Monday morning, December 8, was misty and comparatively cool in Manila, but with the prospect of a typically hot day. The news spread quickly by radio. By 8:00 a.m. everyone on the street knew as they lined up for taxis and horse-drawn carts or walked to work. Claire’s housekeeper and nanny, Lolita, woke her with the news.
“Señora, excuse me, please, but there is a war. What should I do?” When Claire paid no attention and rolled over to keep sleeping, Lolita repeated the words with more urgency.
“I speak the truth! There is a war!”
War came to the city in a slow, torturous haze. The residents of Manila picked up the news from news hawkers in the early morning and then huddled around radio sets to learn scant details about Pearl Harbor. Collectively they began the day only as they could—lining up for buses and streetcars, cabs and horse carts to work, dropping off children before going to the office or starting their chores for the day. It was the picture of order in the tropical business center. Men sauntered along the shaded galleries in their snazzy white suits and Panama hats; women in cream colors, pineapple-thread woven blouses, and stylish shoes went to work too. Slowly, though, the city changed in a day; easy steps were transformed into a maelstrom of activity. People went to the telephone to call friends and loved ones but could not get through; lines formed where they never had been before—at banks, pharmacies, and food stores; people saw the lines and joined them, seeking what everyone else appeared to seek: security with supplies, safety for their savings, a chance, too late, to prepare for what had now come. There were Manilans of the middle and upper classes with ties to America who sought money transfers to the States, but most of the lines were blocked. Many Filipinos with no such tie
s could only go about their business, drive their water buffalo carts to and from the port, do what they were told, or do nothing but watch the increasingly frantic scene.
Soon air-raid sirens sounded and rumors circulated for good reason: The attack on Pearl Harbor meant war. Manila was in the line of fire, yet some people did not comprehend. One Manila resident went out to buy some barrels of gasoline to supply his family while he still could. “What are you afraid of?” asked the British manager of a petroleum company, claiming there was no need to stock up on supplies.
“We are under blockade.”
“Nonsense,” the Briton replied. “There is nothing to worry about.”
Life for the complacent people of Manila, an American city in denial, was about to change.
Repeated sirens broke the rhythm of the day. Though there were no bombs in Manila that day, the once calm, easy streets were chaotic. Amid the frenetic activity the blazing tropical heat of the day descended upon the city—tempers were short, and cars, people, and horse carriages careered about. People made runs on the banks throughout the day, standing in line and shielding themselves from the sun. Prices were much higher than the day before, shops imposed limits on each purchase, and they quickly were running out of food and medicine. Lolita managed to find a taxi for Claire, who raced about the city haphazardly in search of supplies. “When we reached the bank, it resembled a madhouse. After standing in line patiently for forty-five minutes, I abandoned the idea of being polite, and pushed my way through like everyone else.” That night air-raid sirens sounded and Claire lay awake in the dark. She counted six separate warnings, but still no bombs fell on the city, at least. She was nervous and smoked continually. Sleep was out of the question.
Late that first day of war, John Phillips rushed over to Claire’s apartment on a break from his job as a radio operator. He said that his 31st Infantry Regiment was moving inland from Manila to Fort William McKinley, a U.S. base on a plateau overlooking the city. There also were rumors they soon would be retreating to Bataan, and he wanted Claire to move along with them. Phillips gave Claire the keys to his blue coupé and said he would get back to her when he could.
For Claire, Bataan was the great unknown. The peninsula was a fifty-mile-long thumb-shaped appendage of coastal beaches, farms, and lush central mountains visible from the city in the western distance across Manila Bay. She could not know how long they would be in Bataan or what life would be like there.
After daybreak on Tuesday, December 9, Claire called her friend Louise DeMartini for advice. Tens of thousands of civilians were leaving Manila, but many people wanted to stay, convincing themselves that the war would be brief and the American Army would prevail. Louise said she was also nervous but was on the side of those who had decided to stay. “Oh, I don’t think that there will be any need to go far from Manila,” Louise said. “I heard on the radio that reinforcements are already on the way here.”
On Wednesday, December 10, two days after the war began, Claire frantically went searching for Phillips when she heard that Fort McKinley had been bombed overnight. Sentinels outside the fort, five or six miles inland from downtown Manila, said that Phillips’s Headquarters Company had already left for Bataan. As she pulled up to her apartment back in the city, Phillips was there waiting. He said he had gone AWOL to take Claire and Dian to Bataan with him and would rejoin his unit when they arrived. They filled the car with gas, packed some clothes, and took Dian and Lolita out to Phillips’s car.
The road to Bataan hooked around Manila harbor and extended along the coast to the west of Luzon. Under normal conditions it was a couple of hours or a pleasant boat ride west across the bay. But the road was crowded and pocked with bomb craters, an eight-mile traffic jam at five to ten miles an hour snaking around the northern rim of Manila Bay. They shared the road with other members of the 31st Infantry, which had begun its company-by-company withdrawal from the city. The army had commandeered private cars, pickups, buses, and any other vehicle it could find. Nightfall came and they drove on, headlights darkened under the enforced blackout. Driving was frightening and dangerous.
At 1:00 a.m. they arrived at their destination, Pilar, a small barrio within a few miles of the new 31st Infantry camp. They found two decent rooms on the second floor of an inn just off the town square for two pesos (one dollar) per night. Phillips set off for his camp. Claire made sure Dian was comfortable and then lay down, exhausted. She slept for a few hours, the most since the Japanese attack three days earlier.
When Claire went for a walk the next morning, admirers trailed behind her. The locals were fascinated by the sight of a white woman in their little village in the hills. Adults and children followed her, gawked, and smiled. Others gathered around the water pump in the town square outside the rooming house, watching and waiting. When she didn’t come outside, men climbed trees to catch a glimpse of her through the window. The village routine on those early days was punctuated by the sound of thunder when the sun went down, but it wasn’t thunder: “Bombing far away . . . nearly every night.”
The little store on the ground floor below their room sold warm Coca-Cola and gin, nothing more. They needed food. Claire caught a carretela—horse-and-buggy taxi—up the road to the closest market. What provisions she could find were expensive. Pilar and vicinity appeared to be safe despite the reverberation of bombs in the distance. Claire began compiling a diary during those days by scribbling notes with a nub of a pencil in a pocket date book, the kind given out by banks and insurance companies to their customers. The leather-bound 1941 date book, published by the Insular Life Assurance Company Limited, was embossed with an inscription in silver type: LIFE INSURANCE IS A PROOF OF DEVOTION. She complained to herself that she had brought along only three changes of clothing; after a while it made no difference. This was hardly a place for singing and dancing. She had no need for elegance in the hills. Before long, her dresses were threadbare; makeup and fashionable shoes were a distant memory of the city. Claire waited for Phillips, who had said he would visit as often as he could.
Invasion
Bataan Peninsula, December 12, 1941
GENERAL MACARTHUR KNEW the military situation was hopeless. Without reinforcements from the U.S. mainland, the Philippines was lost. Four days after the first attack, 2,500 Japanese troops landed at Legazpi on the southeastern tip of Luzon Island, about three hundred miles from Manila, the first wave of the assault on the Philippine archipelago. MacArthur rallied his forces as best he could, having long known that the Philippines was not adequately equipped for war. Japan’s invasion force was as large as the American contingent, but better trained and with better access to reinforcements. MacArthur’s commanders had been rushing to train up to 100,000 members of the Philippines citizens’ army, but they had run out of time and could muster “little artillery, few tanks and only old Enfield rifles that had been discarded early in the First World War.”
“Our air force in the Philippines contained many antiquated models,” MacArthur recalled later, “and were hardly more than a token force with insufficient equipment, unfinished air fields and inadequate maintenance. The force was in process of integration, radar defenses were not yet operative, and the personnel was raw and inexperienced. They were hopelessly outnumbered and never had a chance of winning.” For months MacArthur had been lobbying for an upgrade to antiquated Philippine air defenses, but Washington had not responded adequately.
Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma, the erudite English-speaking commander whose nickname was “the Poet,” had been tasked with leading the Japanese invasion of the Philippines on a tight schedule. Securing Manila and the Philippines would give the Japanese forces a supply and transfer base for managing their Pacific conquests and would allow them to withdraw and leave behind a smaller occupation force. The Japanese High Command in Tokyo expected victory to be secured within fifty days. To meet the deadline, Homma intended to keep up pressure and overwhelm the U.
S.-Philippine contingent. A main invasion force with eighty transports began landings at Lingayen Gulf, about 150 miles north of Manila, on December 21. General Homma came ashore himself on December 24, boasting that Japan was willing to lose ten million men to secure victory. “How many were the Americans prepared to lose?”
That same day, sixteen days after the Japanese attack, MacArthur initiated the long-standing U.S. defensive strategy against Japan known as War Plan Orange. He declared Manila an open city, meaning that he would withdraw military forces to avoid fighting in the capital. The intent was “to spare the metropolitan area from ravages of attack either by air or ground.” Following the next step in War Plan Orange, he ordered the strategic retreat of U.S. troops and Philippine forces to the Bataan peninsula and to Corregidor Island, the impenetrable fortress that controlled access to Manila Bay. By then, troops had already moved several months’ worth of supplies and ammunition to the hammer-shaped island citadel and to the town of Mariveles on the Bataan coast across the bay from Manila. The plan foresaw up to six months of defensive action on Bataan, during which time the United States was expected to mount a rescue operation, bringing in reinforcements and supplies to break the deadlock.
