by Peter Eisner
Naomi Flores
Naomi Flores had long-term connections with the United States. She had been raised in the Philippines in the family of a retired American Army officer, Colonel William E. Dosser, a longtime expatriate who had been governor of Mountain Province in northern Luzon. After the war she married an American, John F. Jackson, became an American citizen, and moved to San Francisco. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as did many of her underground colleagues.
President Manuel Roxas and Judge Mamerto Roxas
Judge Roxas, related to Claire through Manuel Fuentes, remained an influential jurist for the rest of his life. He died in the Philippines in 1954. His younger brother, General Manuel Roxas, became the first president of the Philippines after the United States granted independence on July 4, 1946. As president, Roxas granted amnesty to Filipinos who had collaborated with the Japanese during the war, unless those people had committed violent crimes. President Roxas suffered a fatal heart attack on April 15, 1948, after delivering a speech at Clark Air Base, north of Manila. He was fifty-six years old.
Roy C. Bennett
It took a long time for Roy C. Bennett to recover from nearly four hundred days of “unadulterated mistreatment in a Japanese prison cell.” At Santo Tomas “American forces won the race to rescue us and still unbelieving we tested our minds and hearts as human beings again. We lost weight, but we never lost hope.” He eventually joined his family in Los Angeles and became an editor at a local newspaper. His daughter, Joan Bennett Chapman, who had a long career as an attorney in Los Angeles, said her father never told the full story of his captivity. “He couldn’t do it; he couldn’t bear to do it. He was urged to write a book after the war and he cracked up trying to write it.” Roy C. Bennett died in Los Angeles in 1967; he was seventy-eight.
Douglas MacArthur
After General MacArthur was relieved of his command because of his position on expanding the Korean War, he was so popular that he was considered as a possible candidate for president in 1952. His onetime aide in the Philippines, Dwight David Eisenhower, was elected. MacArthur was an adviser to President Eisenhower and to President Kennedy in his final years. His memoir, Reminiscences, was published in 1964, the year he died at the age of eighty-four. “The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here,” he wrote at the end of that book. “Today marks my final roll call with you. . . . I bid you farewell.” MacArthur is buried at the MacArthur Memorial museum and library in Norfolk, Virginia.
Masaharu Homma
The United States convened a special army war crimes tribunal in Manila, separate from international proceedings conducted in Tokyo and Nuremberg. About two dozen cases were heard at the recovered headquarters of the U.S. high commissioner, which had served as the Japanese embassy during the war. Among the defendants was General Masaharu Homma, commander of Japanese forces in the Philippines from occupation until his dismissal and forced retirement in August 1943. His trial opened on January 3, 1946, lasted one month, and focused mostly on his role in and responsibility for the Bataan death march. His defense lawyers argued that Homma had not been personally involved and had not ordered the atrocities surrounding the march. Despite pleas for mercy that went directly to General MacArthur, Homma was found guilty and sentenced to death on forty-eight counts of violating international law and was executed by a firing squad on April 3, 1946.
Akira Nagahama
The Tokyo High Command had also ordered Colonel Akira Nagahama out of the Philippines before the end of the war on charges within the army that he had been too brutal in his treatment of prisoners in the Philippines. He was arrested in Japan after the war and was brought back to Manila, where he also faced a war crimes trial. Many of the charges against Nagahama involved testimony about torture and executions of civilians and military personnel at Fort Santiago. Manuel Elizalde was among the witnesses, describing his treatment and the torture of his brother at Fort Santiago when he and his brother were arrested in February 1944. He said that after the war he had found the decapitated bodies of his brother and of Blanche Jurika, Chick Parsons’s mother-in-law, both of whom were executed after being tortured at Fort Santiago. Nagahama was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging on March 11, 1946. Nagahama did not testify on his own behalf but after the proceedings wrote a letter to the court requesting a new trial on grounds of false testimony. “Witnesses for the prosecution have presented false statements and . . . I was not given the opportunity to say my part against such false statements through my defense counsel,” Nagahama told the court. After appeals and review, General MacArthur confirmed the sentence in a terse statement, and Nagahama was among eleven Japanese officers executed by hanging on July 17, 1947.
Roy C. Bennett, the editor of the Manila Daily Bulletin, wrote anti-Japanese editorials during the buildup to World War II. He was arrested and tortured at Fort Santiago, then finally transferred in 1943 to spend the rest of the war with his family at the University of Santo Tomas internment camp.
In January 1942, the 400-year-old University of Santo Tomas in Manila was converted into a detention camp for more than three thousand Americans and nationals of countries at war with Japan. It was liberated in February 1945.
Some internees lived in university buildings and others built grass-hut shanties in courtyards and open spaces.
Internees in Manila used communal bathing facilities during the Japanese occupation.
Claire Phillips and her adopted five-year-old daughter, Dian, in March 1945, reunited after the U.S. liberation of the Philippines. Peggy Utinsky, her friend in the Manila underground, had cared for the child while Claire was imprisoned by the Japanese for more than eight months.
Peggy Utinsky, a registered nurse, had defied her husband’s insistence that she leave the Philippines before the war and stayed in Manila to treat wounded and ill American prisoners. She joined forces with Claire Phillips and others to smuggle food, medicine, and supplies to POWs. Her husband, Jack, died at Cabanatuan POW camp in 1942.
Lieutenant Charles “Chick” Parsons, a U.S. Naval Reserve officer and spy, traveled secretly throughout occupied Philippines, bringing supplies and organizing guerrilla operations.
Parsons, who spoke Tagalog and Spanish, masqueraded as Panamanian consul-general in Manila in the first months of the Japanese invasion. He and his family left the Philippines on a detainee exchange ship in June 1942.
General MacArthur summoned Parsons to Australia in 1943. Parsons returned to Japanese-occupied Philippines on a series of submarine supply and espionage missions.
Major John P. Boone and Filomena (Mellie) Guerrero Boone, circa 1945. They were married in the hills of Bataan in 1943. Mellie carried messages and supplies between Claire Phillips and the Bataan guerrillas.
Marcial Lichauco, an American-educated attorney and diplomat, chronicled the Japanese occupation in letters he called, “Dear Mother Putnam,” written to his host mother from his time in the United States. His wife, Jesse, a Cuban-born American, worked with him to provide aid and shelter to people in need in Manila during the war.
Claire’s Tsubaki Club opened on October 17, 1942, catering to Japanese officers and boasting the best floor show in town.
Colonel Akira Nagahama was the head of the Japanese military police, the Kempeitai, in the Philippines from 1942 to 1945. While he publicly advocated gentle persuasion with prisoners, the Kempeitai were feared for their torture and interrogation techniques.
Filipino children outside a government building in Manila during the Japanese occupation. The notice lists occupation regulations, including a requirement that residents salute Japanese soldiers and obey their orders.
A POW and his victory garden at Cabanatuan. Thousands of American prisoners of war were held at the camp north of Manila. Many died of disease and malnutrition; others survived with food and medicines sent in by the Manila underground.
Fely Corcuera, the most popular performer at Claire’s Tsubaki Club, was often wooed by Japanese officers. A
n officer known only as Arita, the captain of an aircraft carrier, had fallen hard for Fely and often gave her gifts. Claire said, “Anyone could see that he was mad about Fely.”
Brigadier General Manuel Acuña Roxas had been a liaison to General Douglas MacArthur before the war. Released from Japanese custody, he served in the Philippines occupation government but secretly worked with U.S. and Filipino guerrillas. He was president of the Philippines from 1946 until his death in 1948.
American POWs hiked to safety with the help of U.S. Rangers and Filipino guerrillas on January 31, 1945, in Luzon. A day earlier, the Rangers, led by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci, rescued the 513 POWs remaining at the Cabanatuan prison camp.
Claire Phillips wrote diary entries in a small agenda book from the day the war began in 1941 until her arrest in May 1944. The diary was unseen for almost sixty years until it was discovered in a file at the National Archives in Washington, DC.
A U.S. tank blasted through the front gate of Fort Santiago in February 1945. Japanese Imperial Army soldiers tortured thousands of U.S., Allied, and Filipino prisoners at the fort, and hundreds died.
U.S. forces battled fiercely with Japanese troops once they reached the Pasig River when the month-long Battle of Manila began on February 2, 1945. More than 100,000 civilians, 15,000 Japanese soldiers, and 1,000 GIs died, and the city was devastated.
Detainees at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila after liberation in February 1945. More than three thousand people, mostly Americans, were detained in Manila from February 1942 to 1945. They suffered from malnutrition and lack of adequate health care. About 10 percent of the internees died.
Japanese soldiers barricaded themselves in the walled city of Intramuros in February 1945. The sixteenth-century district was destroyed after a month of fighting.
Lieutenant Commander Chick Parsons (in uniform) with released American prisoners at Manila in 1945. Parsons was a long-time U.S. expatriate and remained in the Philippines after the war.
General MacArthur greets liberated U.S. prisoners of war at Bilibid Prison in Manila in February 1945. After the U.S. troops landed, MacArthur ordered them to race quickly to the city to rescue U.S. prisoners and detainees.
Former detainees at the University of Santo Tomas after liberation in February 1945. Among them are Roy C. Bennett, editor of the Manila Daily Bulletin, and his wife, Margaret, far right, background, behind an unidentified soldier. Joan Bennett, one of their daughters, is in the foreground, right, wearing a dark skirt and striped shirt.
Seven U.S. guerrilla leaders with Brigadier General Manuel Roxas at Manila City Hall on June 13, 1945, after receiving medals from MacArthur. Left to right: Major Harry McKenzie, Major Robert B. Lapham, Major Edwin P. Ramsey, Roxas, Lieutenant Colonel Bernard L. Anderson, Captain Ray C. Hunt Jr., Major John P. Boone, and Captain Kevin J. Farretta.
Peggy Utinsky, Claire Phillips’s colleague in the underground, posed at the gates of the Tsubaki Club in downtown Manila. The building was destroyed in February 1945 during the Battle of Manila.
Claire had no picture of her own at Tsubaki Club; she said that the publisher of her memoir, Manila Espionage, decided to superimpose her face on the portrait Peggy posed for after the war. Claire admitted the deception during testimony at the U.S. Court of Claims.
Peggy Utinsky, left, and Claire Phillips, center, sailed home from Manila with other Americans in June 1945. When the SS John Lykes reached California, an article about Claire had already appeared in American Mercury magazine; she quickly became a celebrity and heroine.
Claire Phillips and actress Ann Dvorak posed in a publicity photo for the release in 1951 of I Was an American Spy. Dvorak portrayed Claire in the film based on her memoir, written for Claire by a ghostwriter. Claire later acknowledged that the memoir, Manila Espionage, often misrepresented events.
Claire Phillips toured the United States to promote the release of the film I Was an American Spy.
The U.S. embassy in Manila named a meeting room for Claire Phillips, displaying a portrait of Claire as a young woman, a copy of her memoir, Manila Espionage, a description of her life, and advertisements for the Tsubaki Club.
Before Philippines independence, the U.S. embassy on Manila Bay was headquarters of the U.S. High Commission to the Philippines. During World War II, it was occupied as the Japanese commander’s residence and the Japanese embassy.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The search for the “mysterious woman known to the prisoners only as ‘High Pockets,’” took me 8,500 miles from the National Archives in Washington, DC, to the corner of Mabini Street and Kalaw Avenue (formerly San Juan Avenue) in front of Luneta Park in Manila. Urban sprawl made it difficult to imagine the little two-story wooden building once enclosed by a fence that housed Tsubaki Club on the second floor, where Claire and Fely once sang and entertained Japanese officers. Now there are nondescript buildings, a gas station, and a jumble of cars, motorbikes, and people clicking along in their flip-flops as they dodge the jeepneys—the distinctively painted minibuses that careen around the city. Mabini is a narrow urban street that runs one way toward the park, a few blocks away from what was once Dewey Boulevard—now renamed Roxas Boulevard in honor of President Manuel Roxas.
Only at the Luneta can one imagine Claire holding Dian’s hand as they strolled along to get close to the POWs on maintenance detail. The monument and grave of José Rizal stand apart at one end of the park, where army soldiers guard his burial site. Families picnic, friends play games, and a mini trolley guides tourists around the circumference of the 140-acre (58-hectare) park. A Japanese garden was built to one side of the park, intended to promote friendship between Japan and the Philippines. Beyond it are the outer walls of Intramuros, the old Spanish city, which never fully recovered from the destruction of the war. Across Roxas Boulevard is the still-imposing Manila Hotel, severely damaged but restored after the war. General MacArthur’s penthouse suite and offices overlooking the port have been rebuilt and redesigned in his honor.
A few blocks away the U.S. embassy also commands a privileged view of the Pacific Ocean. It was ground zero in one of the cruelest battles of World War II. A scorched, bullet-pocked flagpole stands as it did in 1945, marking the entrance of the three-story bayside building that was rebuilt after having been taken over by the Japanese in 1942 and wrecked under repeated bombings during the recapture of Manila. Even as the battle raged, General MacArthur raised the American flag here on February 22, 1945, completing his pledge—“I have returned.”
Before the war the embassy had been the headquarters of the U.S. high commissioner to the Philippines. During the occupation it became the residence of the Japanese occupation commander and the Japanese embassy. Going past the flag and into the restored embassy building, one approaches the main embassy meeting room, which is named for Claire Phillips. A copy of her ghostwritten memoir, Manila Espionage, is part of a display there. Two other portraits of World War II heroes flank a painting of Claire. One is General Douglas MacArthur; the other is navy commander Charles “Chick” Parsons.
The tribute, touching though it is, is replete with errors, propagated by using Manila Espionage as the source. Perhaps the strangest aspect of the display is the fact that in death Claire has managed to disguise even how she looked. The portrait shows a confident, smiling young woman, arms folded, looking out at the world. It is based on a popular photograph identified as her when she was quite young, possibly even in high school. A physiognomist would need to confirm without a doubt that this early photograph and the painting are the same woman known to be Claire Phillips in photographs after the war. I was left with the impression that Claire was victorious finally in disguising her true self. With all her aliases and altered photographs, who was to say that Claire Phillips was Claire Phillips?
Claire is rightly honored on the U.S. embassy wall, and she is mentioned in some anthologies as one of the great women war heroes. She was among those who risked their lives during the war; o
thers have received more recognition and more compensation for doing less. I would not take her name down, though I might add a few others to the list.
Claire died decades before this tribute was arranged. Other than the commemoration, she has been recalled in books and in occasional broadcasts of the old film I Was an American Spy. A local historian in her hometown, Portland, Oregon, spoke of raising money for that purpose. Until now, little has been known about Claire’s wartime record, and she still defies full disclosure.
• • •
From the U.S. embassy I drove to the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in Taguig, a southeastern suburb, the former site of the World War II U.S. base Fort William McKinley. John L. Silva, executive director of the Ortigas Foundation in Manila, provided a comprehensive historian’s view of the creation of the memorial during our tour. By coincidence, we were linked by friends in common, the Aboitiz family and Maitena Aboitiz, who has helped me so much on this book and my other work in understanding both the history of the Philippines and its relation to the Basque country, where she and my wife’s family are from.
