MacArthur's Spies

by Peter Eisner

  That was the opening.

  When the men and their guards went back inside the camp gates for lunch, Naomi wrote a note with more information to say that Tiffany and Duckworth knew how the operation had worked at O’Donnell and wanted to start it up again here. She also asked for information about Peggy’s husband, Jack Utinsky. After lunch the POWs came back on the water buffalo carts; the Japanese guards were more lenient and let the Americans approach the fruit stands for a break. “They were allowed to come near us to buy bananas and peanuts.” Naomi pretended to take money but really slipped the bills back to the same man she had seen in the morning. He was Lieutenant Colonel Edward Mack. She handed over some fruit with a message concealed underneath. Mack then returned to tending the rice field.

  The following day Lieutenant Colonel Mack had a message for her, which he left dangling from a piece of straw. “After they left the field, I went there and dug out this little note in the grass.” It was confirmation from Tiffany and Duckworth that they were ready to start receiving supplies. Mack also sent along confirmation that Jack Utinsky had been a prisoner of war there. He had no further information yet.

  Soon the supply line of food, medicine, and clothing was back in operation. Naomi had some clothing and medicine on hand in Capas and went back to the field to deliver a first shipment. The prisoners were able to hide small quantities under sacks of rice and straw, along with the fruit they “purchased” from the local stands.

  “After that, we got together a few clothes and medicines and I went back to Cabanatuan to make more contacts.” Naomi then returned to Manila to report that they could resume shipments.

  When she returned as planned some days later, all the men on the prison detail had been briefed ahead of time and were ready for a young woman at the fruit stands who might be slipping messages and free food to them. Again this time they were allowed to approach the fruit stands, where Naomi and others ostensibly were selling their bananas and peanuts.

  The other women at the stands were now in on the deal. They also stuffed notes and medicine in between packages and banana leaves. Naomi did not see Mack this time, but a man walked up to her and said his name was Price. “I handed it to him by selling bananas, by covering it with the money that I was exchanging, pretending that he bought the bananas and bought it with his money.”

  This time Naomi received a note in return, a letter directly from Lieutenant Colonel Mack. When she read it, the only proper thing to do was to deliver the message directly to Peggy as soon as possible.

  Condolences

  Manila, March 1943

  NAOMI RETURNED straight to Peggy’s apartment on Mabini Street, carrying the message from Lieutenant Colonel Mack. He had made his inquiries about Jack Utinsky and this was his report:

  I am deeply sorry that I have to tell you what I found out. Your husband died here on August 6, 1942. He is buried here in the prison graveyard. I know how you have tried in every way to get word about him. I am sure that this is the true story. You will be told that he died of tuberculosis. That is not true. The men say that he actually died of starvation. A little more food and medicine, which they would not give him here, might have saved him.

  Peggy said she was too numb to cry. “In one way, it was a relief to know the truth. . . . With every atrocity story, with every hideous thing I saw, I wondered, ‘Is that happening to Jack? Is he being tortured? Is he ill? Is he starving? Where is he? Where? Where?’ Now at least I could remember him without fear.”

  Not long after that, Claire also had her answer. On a subsequent visit, Naomi asked the POWs about John Phillips. It took longer to find his name, but finally another message came through, again from Mack and from Colonel Jack Schwartz, one of the camp POW physicians. Naomi left the message with Peggy, who in turn went to see Claire on March 13, 1943. Like the message to Peggy, the letter was an expression of sadness and condolence with the confirmation that John Phillips had died of malaria at Cabanatuan on July 27, 1942. Claire tried to hold out hope it was wrong. But she knew this time it was true. She got drunk that night, then dropped into bed.

  Claire and Peggy both had known that this was a possible outcome; the grief and final confrontation of the truth were overwhelming. Peggy had heard nothing about her husband’s whereabouts since the day he left town for that one last visit at Christmas in 1941. Claire had been tormented for weeks by rumors and unconfirmed sightings and was frantically searching for news of John Phillips. She had sent notes to all of the prisons. She had obsessively searched the sad faces of the Americans trudging by in work details or crammed onto the backs of trucks. “Pray to God I can see him,” she had written. “If I don’t see [him] soon I’ll go crazy. Think of him every day. Can’t get him off my mind.” Every few days some piece of news had gotten her hopes up. In February even one of her Japanese would-be paramours, a colonel, had agreed to take a look at official death lists and had said Phillips’s name was not there. One day someone had said he had been spotted driving a truck; a day later, no, “he’s at the Ayala Bridge.” After that, one of the POWs on truck detail who came into the club occasionally had said that he had seen a guy who he thought was John Phillips. This man had been taken out of the city but was supposed to be coming back in two weeks. A few days after that, on February 21, Claire had come across Joe Rizzo, the sergeant who had been in charge of John Phillips’s platoon. Rizzo was an internee at Fort McKinley, frequently on work details in and around Luneta Park. Rizzo was sorry to say that he had heard that Phillips had died. Claire had not wanted to listen. Instead she had written love letters to Phil, as she called him, and forwarded them to every prison she heard of; she had asked every contact she could make to pass the word on. Where is Phil?

  One afternoon a few days after Peggy delivered the letter about Phillips, Ramón Amusategui stopped over to express his condolences. Claire was still in shock and still did not want to believe that Phillips was dead. Ramón suggested that she ask for confirmation from Father Heinz Buttenbruck, a German parish priest who was allowed to come and go at Cabanatuan to minister to the prisoners. Ramón said that the priest was trustworthy and apparently got along with the Japanese because of his German nationality. “There is no need to worry about him. He’s a real Christian and no Nazi.”

  The priest told Claire he would make inquiries the next time he traveled to the camp. She wanted to take advantage of Buttenbruck’s trip north and asked if she could send messages and money to the POWs. The priest said he was always searched by the Japanese guards and could not take the risk. However, he had been able to bring clothing and supplies. Perhaps if she brought a shopping bag of supplies and hid the note carefully it would get through.

  “I thanked Father Buttenbruck and hurried back to town where I bought shoes, pants, socks, a shirt, toothbrush and paste, quinine, aspirin and a few cans of food.” She packed the gear in a bag as instructed and returned to the priest. Buttenbruck said he would do his best to find John Phillips.

  “Thank you, Father. I don’t know how to express my gratitude.”

  “There is no need for that. We are all doing our best and God will repay us in His way. Good-bye and God bless you.”

  It took weeks for Buttenbruck to make the trip and get back to Claire. He returned on April 24 with a list of men who had died on July 27, 1942, nine months earlier. It included John Phillips and listed the service number on his dog tags. The final digits were “13”; she and Phillips had joked about the luck of having a serial number ending that way. She wrote in her diary that night: “Phil Darling, Father Buttenbruck arrived, said you died July 27. I know it’s not true. I know you wouldn’t leave me. I’ll always wait for you. I love you more than I even thought possible to love anyone.”

  Claire suffered Phillips’s death all over again and drank herself into a stupor. “Fely and the others carried on for me, explaining that Madame was suffering with a miserable headache. They couldn’t say heartache.” />
  In her diary she confessed to feeling on the verge of madness and despair, to nights of drinking too much and probably entertaining too much. Now convinced that Phillips was dead, she thought about killing herself. She was Madame Tsubaki at the club, the elegant, exotic songstress in the shimmering dark. But during the day, on the street, she was a subjugated woman in an occupied country. Bitterly she thought about how guards pushed her aside as they sauntered by, slapping and beating people as they went. Without hope, what did she have to live for? “Wish I could join him then, but I’m a coward.”

  A note from Captain Frank Tiffany, the chaplain POW at Cabanatuan, finally pulled her out of the funk. He expressed sympathy but he had one other message. The men needed her. He asked her “not to forget the ones that are left.” She said that Tiffany’s appeal brought her back to the world. Claire had teased herself with talk of death, with drunkenness, and with a nervous breakdown, but she also seemed to know that writing those things to herself in her secret diary was an escape valve. She was hard on herself, but she kept distance and perspective from the words of death and despair. A few weeks after closeting herself away, Claire went back to the club with new resolve. Phil had come to represent all of the men who had fought and been captured or died. He became a symbol of the fight to help the survivors. That was the role she could play in the war.

  She did keep drinking; she knew what she was doing and kept doing it. But the act of jotting it in her diary at the end of the day showed that she was fighting the urge and finding balance within herself. The days were all about hauling in supplies. The nights were about running the club, singing, shimmying on the stage, and sitting with the top officers. Plus, Japanese officers would come in sometimes, open a tab, and not pay. Claire was drowning in chits, and how was she supposed to demand payment? If the goal was to keep the club running, what was more important, keeping up profits or gathering information? So she kept up with the daily motions, counting receipts, watching prices going up, feeding Dian, gathering information, and making ends meet. Cloth was increasingly hard to come by, as was new clothing. So they took down the drapes at the club and went to work. The performers needed new costumes at the club; and the men in the POW camps also needed clothes. Some afternoons, Dian’s nurse would come downstairs, and the hostesses would arrive early and they all would stitch shirts and shorts for the prisoners. One day Claire found some more clothing that Phillips had left behind. She packed it all up and gave it to the POWs. When the prisoner work details were allowed to stop by, she gave them the best food she could—man by man, she was trying to keep hope alive.

  Peggy’s Collapse

  Manila, April 1943

  AT FOUR O’CLOCK one morning, the lights were dim on Mabini Street and all of Manila under curfew; no one was supposed to be there. A rather dowdy woman in her forties was reeling along the street, coming from some nightspot or someone’s home, extremely drunk and in danger of being arrested by Philippine constables or, even worse, by Japanese military police.

  It was Peggy or, if she could remember that much, Rosena Utinsky, the Lithuanian nurse, according to her forged identification papers. That was how Ramón and Lorenza found her, stumbling, quarrelsome, highly inebriated. It was not the first time; Lorenza and Ramón were angry and very worried. “Ramón did his utmost toward convincing her of the risk of talking too much and of drinking almost every night, sometimes into a stupor—unfortunately without results.”

  Claire had pulled herself out of mourning; Peggy had not. Both of them were drinking, but Claire admitted it. Peggy did not. Who could say why? Peggy, feeling the pressure and possibly because she was holding back the grief of losing her husband, was not admitting her problem. The danger of being noticed and picked up was too great. That was not all.

  It was true, Peggy had founded the organization and it was named Miss U—the supply operation to Cabanatuan was the embodiment of Peggy Utinsky. But no more.

  Perhaps she had cracked under the pressure; the reason did not matter. Peggy had become argumentative and dangerous and was breaking her own rules. Early on, Peggy had been adamant and vigilant on matters of operational security. They were to avoid any suspicious activities, to be careful about whom they spoke to or spoke about. The more people they spoke to, the greater the chance that there was an infiltrator among them. Now Peggy was the one to worry about.

  One of their most important contacts, Horacio Manaloto, a Filipino civilian, had visited recently. The Japanese thought he was a businessman plying his trade by selling things to the prison commissary and had given him a permit to come and go on supply runs from the Cabanatuan POW camp. Secretly he was working with the Manila underground to smuggle money and supplies on his truck into Cabanatuan. However, Peggy had been abusive to him when he came to town, so he had started dealing only with Ramón. The problems were growing. Not only was Peggy rude and bossy, but she also was talking to people outside the group and bragging about her exploits. Ramón, Lorenza, and the others needed complete secrecy. All too obviously, if Peggy or any of them attracted unwanted attention, Japanese authorities might investigate, capture, and kill them. Claire was very cautious about her contacts and never spoke to anyone until she could confirm who they were.

  Claire spoke with the others about their problems with Peggy. “She did start and do a good job, and I tried to stick with her,” Claire said, but she saw the clashes. “There is no love lost on my part. . . . None of the gang and Miss U got along too well.” But she didn’t abandon Peggy and tried to maintain the friendship.

  Theoretically, Claire was in the more dangerous situation, spending time with Japanese officers every evening, yet she was discreet and so managed to avoid any suspicion. Not so, Peggy. “Unfortunately,” Lorenza said, “Mrs. Utinsky, the so-called head of our group, was very fond of talking and arguing, thereby creating an atmosphere of tension in the group.”

  Naomi also noticed the change in Peggy’s behavior and quietly began to make plans to get away. She had brought a longtime friend, Evangeline Neibert, into the group to help her carry shipments to Cabanatuan. Eventually Naomi would leave Manila and move closer to the POW camp so she could manage shipments and supplies at Cabanatuan; Evangeline would take over the deliveries from the city to the camp. Peggy, however, had berated Evangeline more than once, leaving her crying and thinking about quitting entirely. Peggy also had been crude and abusive with Naomi and had even drunkenly threatened the Filipino helpers that she would turn them in to the Japanese. Whether it was a reaction to Jack’s death or a sign of the pressure they all were operating under, even one mad tirade was too much. Whatever its cause, Peggy’s behavior could be lethal to them all. As early as April 1943, Ramón “without her knowledge . . . took over her place as head of the group.”

  Ramón did this without embarrassing Peggy, slowly taking on a larger role. Ramón and Lorenza were concerned that if Peggy realized what was happening, she would follow through on her drunken outbursts and turn people in. Operations to pack supplies for the north slowly shifted from Peggy’s apartment to the Malate parish church, where Father Lalor and the other priests coordinated and stocked supplies until shipment. The group avoided gathering at Peggy’s apartment when possible.

  • • •

  Naomi, however, was living in Peggy’s apartment, and it was hard to move out without a reason—no one wanted to set off Peggy and make things worse. The opportunity finally came, although the circumstances were almost a disaster. A friend had begged Naomi to help hide two American stragglers trying to evade capture. They were young soldiers who had escaped Bataan, traveling ever since then in the shadows, liable to be caught at any moment. Naomi took them in but needed help and advice on what to do with them.

  “Their names were Tommy and . . . Tommy Larson and Barney. I don’t know his last name,” Naomi said. The men said they had been on Corregidor and in Bataan when the surrender came but managed to evade the Japanese and the death
march. Hungry and ragged, they had been hiding for months. Claire did what she could and gave them food and something to drink. This was dangerous enough, because the Japanese military police had been systematically conducting house-to-house searches. The club was tacitly endorsed by the Japanese officials who came to drink and see the show every night. Madame Tsubaki was not under suspicion. Nevertheless, it would have been foolish to hide Tommy and Barney at the club with Japanese officers on the other side of the wall.

  Naomi turned to Peggy. She said that since Charles, the American owner of Naomi’s beauty parlor, had been detained and his business was shuttered and abandoned, it would be a safe hiding place for a while. Eventually, perhaps, the boys could make their way up to the hills to join the guerrillas.

  “In the meantime,” Peggy said later, “we would at least be able to feed them and no one ever entered the deserted shop.”

  Naomi took Peggy’s suggestion, set up cots, and sneaked Barney and Tommy over to the beauty shop. A woman who lived across the street saw the men through a window and reported suspicious activity at the closed shop to the police. Japanese troops raided the beauty parlor, shot and wounded both Americans, then took them away. Now the Kempeitai were looking for Naomi. Peggy told Naomi they had to take the offensive. If Naomi ran, the Japanese would take it as an admission of guilt and it could lead to a larger investigation of all of them. “Go to them,” she said. “Ask what they wanted, tell them [you] had hired the boys—whom [you] took for mestizos—to guard the shop.”

  Brave though frightened, and for good reason, Naomi went to Fort Santiago the next morning to say she had heard that Kempeitai officers were looking for her. The police interrogators asked their questions and made her repeat the story many times.