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Authors: Ben Montgomery
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place to place carrying secret communication between units organizing in north Luzon and the resistance in Manila. They also wanted Joey to bring back word on resistance activity in the countryside, which could then be relayed to American submarines off the coast.
Joey accepted the assignment and began striking out into the city, then to the perilous mountains, praying no one caught on. The problem was the Japanese sentries stationed throughout the city. They were suspicious of everything. And the military police had begun beating citizens suspected of spying. An outfit of military police known as the Kempeitai performed savage interrogations at Fort Santiago in the walled city. American soldiers who had escaped the death march had a price on their heads: five pesos each, dead or alive. Some of them escaped only to be captured later. They would testify to the torture. One, Cpl. Walter Chatham Jr. of the air corps,was caught after escaping Bataan and interrogated. He didnât know anything of importance about US plans, but the Kempeitai beat him with a blackjack and baseball bat, then clamped his hands to a table, drove bamboo slivers under his fingernails, and set fire to them. When he passed out from the pain, they splashed water on him and started again.
The guerrillas operating in the mountains were a ragtag but exceptional bunch. Among them was Capt. Russell Volckmann, a West Point graduate from Iowa, who refused to surrender after Bataan fell.
When things were looking dim, he appealed to Gen. William Brougher. âSir, Iâm still in pretty good physical shapeâI have a lot of fight left in me,â Volckmann recalled saying.
âSure thing,â Brougher said. âIâll report you missing in action on a patrol. If you try, the best of luck to you.â
Volckmann and his friend Capt. Donald Blackburn, from Florida, made an escape to North Luzon with the help of friendly Filipinos. They joined up with other American and Filipino officers in the mountains, who informed them of the developing guerrilla structure. Capt. Ralph Praeger was active in Cagayan Province and Apayao. A Philippine governor named Roque Ablan had refused to surrender and now commanded a large guerrilla unit in the northwest. Robert Lapham, a reserve lieutenant in the army, was organizing some thirteen thousand fighters in Luzonâs central plains and pulling off ambitious sabotage operations. Volckmann saw the need for more organization among the various units, so he decided to divide North Luzon into seven geographical districts and put in place a typical military structure of command in each district. This provided a tight communication system.
One of the biggest challenges to the units were spies and informers. Brilliantly, the Japanese hired local mayors or other government officials, then plied them with money to hire their own network of spies, who were offered payouts if they turned in important information on guerrilla activities. If that didnât work, or if the Japaneselearned of local townsfolk or villagers cooperating with the Americans, they would hold public beheadings to send a message of fear through the populace.
The Japanese in large part had cut off news from the rest of the world, starting by rewiring all shortwave radios, which locals referred to as castration. If you owned a shortwave radio, you had to purchase a license from the government and pay an annual fee. Of course no one destroyed those records, so the Japanese knew every family who owned one. They broadcast a demand that all radios be brought in, and hired Filipino technicians to remove the shortwave coils so the radio could only receive AM signals. The newspapers had all but stopped publication, and those that kept printing, besides underground newspapers like the
Free Philippines,
were monitored by the Japanese and used as a vehicle for pro-Japanese propaganda. So one of the few ways citizens got unembellished reports on the war was
Joey accepted the assignment and began striking out into the city, then to the perilous mountains, praying no one caught on. The problem was the Japanese sentries stationed throughout the city. They were suspicious of everything. And the military police had begun beating citizens suspected of spying. An outfit of military police known as the Kempeitai performed savage interrogations at Fort Santiago in the walled city. American soldiers who had escaped the death march had a price on their heads: five pesos each, dead or alive. Some of them escaped only to be captured later. They would testify to the torture. One, Cpl. Walter Chatham Jr. of the air corps,was caught after escaping Bataan and interrogated. He didnât know anything of importance about US plans, but the Kempeitai beat him with a blackjack and baseball bat, then clamped his hands to a table, drove bamboo slivers under his fingernails, and set fire to them. When he passed out from the pain, they splashed water on him and started again.
The guerrillas operating in the mountains were a ragtag but exceptional bunch. Among them was Capt. Russell Volckmann, a West Point graduate from Iowa, who refused to surrender after Bataan fell.
When things were looking dim, he appealed to Gen. William Brougher. âSir, Iâm still in pretty good physical shapeâI have a lot of fight left in me,â Volckmann recalled saying.
âSure thing,â Brougher said. âIâll report you missing in action on a patrol. If you try, the best of luck to you.â
Volckmann and his friend Capt. Donald Blackburn, from Florida, made an escape to North Luzon with the help of friendly Filipinos. They joined up with other American and Filipino officers in the mountains, who informed them of the developing guerrilla structure. Capt. Ralph Praeger was active in Cagayan Province and Apayao. A Philippine governor named Roque Ablan had refused to surrender and now commanded a large guerrilla unit in the northwest. Robert Lapham, a reserve lieutenant in the army, was organizing some thirteen thousand fighters in Luzonâs central plains and pulling off ambitious sabotage operations. Volckmann saw the need for more organization among the various units, so he decided to divide North Luzon into seven geographical districts and put in place a typical military structure of command in each district. This provided a tight communication system.
One of the biggest challenges to the units were spies and informers. Brilliantly, the Japanese hired local mayors or other government officials, then plied them with money to hire their own network of spies, who were offered payouts if they turned in important information on guerrilla activities. If that didnât work, or if the Japaneselearned of local townsfolk or villagers cooperating with the Americans, they would hold public beheadings to send a message of fear through the populace.
The Japanese in large part had cut off news from the rest of the world, starting by rewiring all shortwave radios, which locals referred to as castration. If you owned a shortwave radio, you had to purchase a license from the government and pay an annual fee. Of course no one destroyed those records, so the Japanese knew every family who owned one. They broadcast a demand that all radios be brought in, and hired Filipino technicians to remove the shortwave coils so the radio could only receive AM signals. The newspapers had all but stopped publication, and those that kept printing, besides underground newspapers like the
Free Philippines,
were monitored by the Japanese and used as a vehicle for pro-Japanese propaganda. So one of the few ways citizens got unembellished reports on the war was
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