by Peter Eisner
Ramsey then alerted Ramona Snyder to check with her sources at Japanese military headquarters. Part of the story was true—the Huks had killed the guerrillas, but Ramsey’s plan to travel to Malabon was not true and was his own invention. Within days Ramona confirmed that Japanese forces were mobilizing to look for Ramsey at Malabon. Clearly, Vera Reyes was the only possible source.
Separately, another check on Vera Reyes was just as damning. Colonel Narciso Manzano had done his own due diligence. An engineer and former operative with the American military in Bataan, Manzano had been held by the Japanese for a while but released under a Japanese general amnesty. He feigned loyalty to the Japanese but claimed illness as a result of his detention and was judged exempt from joining the pro-occupation Philippine Constabulary.
To test his own suspicions, Manzano proposed a luncheon meeting with Vera Reyes at Tom’s Dixie Kitchen, a popular downtown restaurant. Tom’s was one of the few popular hangouts still open, though the menu was limited, the quality uncertain, and the prices exorbitant. Two fried eggs with rice and a tiny bit of bacon could cost as much as ten pesos, many times the prewar price and the equivalent of five dollars at the time and more than sixty dollars in 2017.
After setting the lunch, Manzano called in two former police detectives familiar with the underworld and agile in dealing with the military occupation. He told them to go to the restaurant on the same schedule and then follow Vera Reyes after lunch. Manzano was cordial during the lunch but avoided making any anti-Japanese declarations. After lunch, the agents followed Vera Reyes. They spied him coming and going several times at Nagahama’s Kempeitai headquarters. Now convinced that Vera Reyes was a Japanese agent, Manzano told his wife that he had to leave town on a special mission. He provided no details and set off for Mindanao.
On February 19 the Kempeitai raided Manzano’s house in the dark, terrorizing his wife, Rosario, and their children. When they realized the colonel had bolted, they hauled Rosario away to Fort Santiago instead. It probably became obvious that she knew nothing, only that her husband had left town a few days earlier, and that she did not know when he was coming back. The arrest was tantamount to holding a hostage. Japanese authorities announced that only if Manzano “returns to Manila and gives a satisfactory account of his absence will Mrs. Manzano be released and allowed to rejoin her children.” Manzano did not return and the Kempeitai finally gave up. By the time she was released, Rosario Manzano was so weak and starved that family members had to carry her from Fort Santiago. Blanche Jurika had been arrested shortly after the raid on the Manzano house. She shared a cell for a time with Rosario Manzano, but Blanche was never released.
Manila Dragnet
Manila, February 1944
NAGAHAMA’S MAJOR BLOW against the Manila intelligence net came on February 5, just a few days after Vera Reyes had come to town. A group of Juan Elizalde’s friends had stopped by his house to help celebrate his birthday. The friends stayed late, a soiree seasoned with drinks and friends sitting around chatting; just after midnight, Kempeitai agents swooped in and arrested them all. Next the police went to the house of Manuel Elizalde, Juan’s brother, arrested him as well, and took them all to Fort Santiago.
Once at the prison, guards took their money and possessions and made fingerprints. Manuel and Juan were led to a cell block in sight of the Pasig River. Jailers roused the men from their cells the next morning; each was questioned separately. The interrogators seemed to be interested in the Elizalde family origins and businesses. Japan still considered Spain and Spanish citizens to be friends of the Axis, but who were these men—Spaniards or Filipinos? The Elizaldes’s grandfather had come to the Philippines in the early 1800s from the Basque region of northern Spain. Over generations the clan had become one of the best known and wealthiest in Manila.
What business were they in?
Manuel answered that question: “Practically everything, shipping, broker, paint, distillery.” The Elizaldes had covered their anti-Japanese sentiments by carrying on with business as usual aboveboard during the Japanese occupation.
Despite the threat of torture and the fear generated when the interrogators invoked the name of Colonel Nagahama, Manuel was surprised that both of them were returned to their cells without mistreatment. A new round of questioning came the following day. The brothers could only look at each other from a distance; they were not allowed to speak to each other. Manuel could only guess what was happening and had no information to provide even if he had been willing to. Juan had kept much about his guerrilla activities secret; while Manuel helped raise money to support the POWs, he said he had no information to offer.
The brothers were beaten without mercy for seventeen consecutive days. If the Japanese really intended to extract information, the method was illogical and useless. They sometimes asked foolish, unimportant questions, then stood up and beat the men for inconsequential answers, using a two-by-four piece of wood, a baseball bat, or a pool cue, hitting them with blows on the back and right in the face. Other times the inquisitors asked compromising questions; when the brothers lied or avoided giving direct answers, the questioners didn’t seem to notice. Manuel began to wonder whether the interpreters could even understand the questions or the answers.
“I was punched right and left every day. It was a matter of routine the way you got hit, and it was an impossibility to defend yourself,” Manuel said. “You were completely at the mercy of the investigator. He might translate your answer in such a way that you do not know whether it was translated or he might translate it completely detrimental to your case. That was the way it appeared to me anyway.”
Manuel could see that his brother was receiving the same treatment. He saw Juan several times a week when they were released to the prison yard to take showers. The questioning and the beatings went on intermittently for at least two more months. On Friday, May 12, Manuel and Juan were allowed to walk near each other in the yard. Manuel wrote down the date; he did not see Juan again after that. “He was taken away with several others . . . and I never saw him again alive.”
The Kempeitai released many of the people who had been attending Elizalde’s birthday party, including the women, concluding they were of no intelligence value. The extent of Nagahama’s penetration into underground activities was not yet clear, but Juan Elizalde and his friend Enrico Pirovano, also arrested that night, offered a potential opening to incriminate General Roxas. If the torture led to an admission of Roxas’s work with the guerrillas, he would be arrested, and cascading arrests could reach the Amusateguis, Claire, Peggy, and everyone who worked with them.
The question was whether the captured men would be broken, confess, or mention the general’s name. Marcial Lichauco figured that even if Roxas was fingered in the interrogations, his standing with the Philippine people was so high that Nagahama would still need to tread carefully. On February 15, ten days after the arrest of the Elizaldes, Lichauco went to check on General Roxas and to express his concern. Roxas warned him to avoid contact. “I found him very much worried over the fate of his friend and seriously concerned about this own position.”
“Better stay away from my house until this thing blows over,” General Roxas said, “for I don’t want to see you implicated in it.”
“If Anything Happens . . .”
Tsubaki Club, Manila, February 1944
ONE MORNING Claire was still in her bedroom when she answered the phone at Tsubaki Club. Lorenza Amusategui was calling. “The cookies are about ready,” Lorenza said, the code meaning they were preparing to send Evangeline Neibert up to Cabanatuan with messages and supplies. Claire heard a strange scratching on the line and in the background the distinct sound of someone clearing his throat.
“Do you still have that bad cold, dear?” Claire said, signaling to Lorenza that she had heard the strange sounds and they were not coming from her.
“No,” Lorenza replied. “I’m feeling fine aga
in.”
The women tried to behave as though they were having an innocuous conversation about food and recipes and spoke a few moments more before hanging up. It was obvious that someone had been listening in. “I knew that my good luck had been stretched like a rubber band, and did not know at what moment it would snap.”
Whenever she used the phone after that, she thought she heard clicking sounds or breathing. What was worse, one day a Filipino boy stopped at the back door of the club and delivered a message from someone named “Captain Bagley,” supposedly one of the guerrillas, seeking help in the hills of Luzon. Claire looked at the book and looked at the note, poorly written and without any code words. It was an open request for help from someone she had not heard of and delivered by someone she did not know.
She threw the boy out, saying that she did not care about what was happening with the Americans. “At a sign from me, Mamerto followed the messenger who crossed the Luneta Park and was met by four waiting Nip military police.”
Mamerto rushed back and warned Claire that the operation had become too dangerous—they should quit and get out of town. Claire refused. “If anything happens to me, Fely and you are to get [Dian] out of this house as fast as you can and up in the hills to Boone.”
Peggy came to see Claire at the club. Claire owed her own health—probably her life—to Peggy’s quick action in September. If there had not been transportation on the day of Claire’s ulcer attack and if Peggy had not supervised, Claire might not have survived long enough to get to the hospital. Despite their rivalry, there was still a kinship between them. Peggy was recovering now from her own hospitalization after uterine surgery. Claire could see she was more nervous than ever before. Claire knew that her other friends had a problem with Peggy’s behavior, but she did not remark about it openly. Claire did know that procedures had changed and that Ramón was taking more responsibility. Ramón was now using the Malate Church as a clearinghouse and storage site for supplies destined to be taken north to the POWs at Cabanatuan. After multiple raids it was too dangerous to use Peggy’s apartment as the main storage and meeting place. Peggy was off-limits.
She surprised Claire by saying that she wanted to leave Manila and return to Bataan to join the guerrillas. Until this point there had been no indication that Peggy had had direct contact with Boone. All of Boone’s communications had been through Mellie or Pacio and the other messengers and carriers who reported to Claire. Peggy’s reaction reflected the paranoia on the street these days; people were more nervous and frightened than ever. The course of the war was barreling downhill toward both victory and chaos. The daily routines—fakery and survival—were unchanged, but life itself was more stressful than ever. It took more time than ever before to search out supplies of food staples, and the costs were increasing daily. The Japanese also seemed more edgy and suspicious.
• • •
Ramón had a convenient excuse for not working with Peggy those final days of 1943. Peggy’s apartment, not Peggy herself, was the problem—the Japanese had now come to search there at least twice, once when the Kempeitai came looking for Naomi and the American stragglers and again when they came to arrest Peggy herself. Ramón and Lorenza handled the Christmas shipment to the boys at Cabanatuan on their own. All of them had written letters to their friends and pen pals in the camp. Each letter was carefully censored and screened to eliminate anything that could incriminate the organization or anyone in the camp. No real names, no real places. After that, they packed food and supplies as always with money hidden in the woven bags. They made lists of contributions, one for Lieutenant Colonel Mack to distribute to the POWs, another for Naomi. When Horacio Manaloto showed up, he headed north by truck; Evangeline usually took the train to Capas and from there met up with Naomi on the outskirts of Cabanatuan. From the Manila side everything seemed fine. They had completed one of their final supply missions of the year, completing a full year of sending survival packages to the men of Cabanatuan. A few days later, though, Manaloto came back with a warning from the POW officers they worked with. The packages had gotten through but the Japanese overseers at the camp were acting strangely suspicious. Ramón ordered a halt to all deliveries until further notice. The letters were too suspicious. For the time being they should avoid communicating directly with the camp.
That decision led to a supply backup that created separate problems. The Manila team was storing large amounts of food and supplies at the Malate Church and had to move the goods somehow along the line. Ramón and the others did not know what the specific problem was, and neither did Naomi. They had to assume that the military police were investigating and developing information about the underground supply operation.
Ramón sent word that they should avoid congregating; instead he went to each home individually with this message: “If any of you are arrested before me, or after me, just blame everything on me—just tell them I am the leader of your group, and I am to blame, and that is all you must answer, nothing else.”
• • •
Claire was now convinced that she was being targeted. She had been careful all along about whom she spoke to and whom she worked with. Only a few people in town even knew her as Claire—even Fely knew her as Dot—short for Dorothy. In addition, hardly anyone could tie the name “Dot” or “Claire” to a message writer who signed her messages as “High Pockets.” She disclosed nothing, even when American stragglers stopped by and especially when unknown people came to the club or when she received unexpected, unexplained messages that claimed to be delivering information.
The rising sense of danger, though, brought caution and some additional safeguards. She was convinced that her diary would never be found, but she had a lot of other incriminating evidence stored around the club. She sorted out material to destroy and material to hide. She had several ledger books with earnings from the club, disbursements. It was logical for a business to keep those on hand. However, addresses of black-market contacts had to be burned. She had other personal papers—her passport, the lists of prisoners, and messages from Boone and some of the prisoners in Cabanatuan and other POW camps. She gave these to Fely, whose father, Vicente Corcuera, came in from Quezon City to pick them up. They stuffed the material in several jars and drove back to Quezon City. Corcuera buried the jars in the yard behind his house and wiped out any trace of where he had done the digging.
April 1, 1944, felt truly like April Fool’s Day. The Japanese were still claiming glorious victories in the Pacific, but no one believed them. They ordered a practice air-raid blackout throughout Manila. Claire and other businesses were expected to turn off their signs and lights, but she managed to keep the place open. The front lights were off, but she moved tables to a back storage area so patrons could come in anyway. Any business she could do helped the supply line.
Despite the tense activity those days, Claire received a piece of pleasant news. Mellie, John Boone’s wife, gave birth to a baby boy on March 13, 1944, in Dinalupihan. She showed up one day in Manila with the newborn baby for christening by Father Lalor at the Malate Church. Claire and Peggy went to the ceremony, at which the child was named Phillip, in honor of the man Claire told Boone she had married, John V. Phillips.
Losing the War
Manila, March 1944
JAPANESE MILITARY LEADERS were as adamant about holding on to the Philippines at all costs as was General MacArthur about blasting his way back as soon as possible. “With the loss of these islands, not only would Japanese communications with the southern regions be severely threatened,” said Lieutenant General Shuichi Miyazaki, chief of the Operations Section at Imperial General Headquarters. “The loss of the Philippines would greatly affect civilian morale in Japan. The islands were also essential and appropriate strategic bases for the enemy advance on Japan.”
Nevertheless, with all the Japanese setbacks in the Pacific in 1943 and early 1944, it was obvious that MacArthur would eventually attempt an in
vasion. Occupation authorities began building air-raid shelters around Manila, a mute but not subtle acknowledgment that the war was not going well. Everyone knew. The worse things looked on the war front, the worse Japanese behavior got. The petty insults gave way to greater outrages. A Japanese sergeant slammed Foke Kihlstedt, a Swedish friend of Marcial Lichauco, in the face with a stick for failing to remove a cigar from his mouth when he bowed before a sentry. It was one incident of many. A Japanese guard savagely beat Elena Moreno, a pretty girl in her twenties, when she dared to wave at American POWs riding by on a Manila street. The prisoners had to restrain themselves; if they tried to save the bleeding girl, they knew they would be killed on the spot.
Filipinos knew what the Japanese knew. The Americans were on the move. The daily war report was on the street: they had reached Bougainville in the Solomon Islands and New Britain, off New Guinea, by late 1943 and into 1944. By March, a two-pronged campaign by General MacArthur and Admiral William “Bull” Halsey had isolated Japanese forces in the Pacific. Next were the Admiralty Islands, farther north, stepping-stones toward the Philippines. There had been victories in the Gilbert Islands, and MacArthur had outflanked the Japanese on New Guinea in a series of strategic jumps from south to north. MacArthur was racing back. The Filipinos knew it, the prisoners kept themselves informed, and the Japanese occupiers knew as well.
