Awaiting MacArthur's Return, page 7
Fifty
The next penetration into the Philippines was codenamed Fifty. Initially planned to expand the network established by Planet, the focus of Fifty shifted to the delivery of needed supplies to the guerrillas on Mindanao under Wendell Fertig, who had been communicating with Australia regarding their needs via the radio network established on Negros by Villamor.56 The AIB/PRS staffs correctly assumed that the relatively secure nature of areas under Fertig’s control would assure safe delivery of the requested supplies, and some officers at GHQ further hoped that Mindanao could serve as a potential base of operations in the future liberation of the Philippines. In addition to supplies for Fertig, Fifty also had supplies intended for Peralta’s guerrillas on Panay.
Unlike Planet, which was headed by a Filipino officer in the person of Villamor, two US officers headed Fifty. The first, US Army Captain Charles M. “Chick” Smith, was an American mining engineer who was working in the Philippines when US and Filipino forces surrendered to the Japanese in 1942. After escaping to Australia from the island of Mindanao in 1943 on a small sailboat at the direction of Fertig, Smith accepted a commission as a captain in the US Army Corps of Engineers, seeking to fulfill a promise to fellow engineer Fertig to request supplies for the Mindanao guerrillas.57
The other US officer leading Fifty, the aforementioned US Navy Lieutenant Commander Parsons, was also in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded in 1941. Parsons had been working as a manager in an importing and trading company and a separate stevedoring company, living in Manila along with his wife, Katsy, and their three sons.58 With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, authorities had seized Danish ships in Manila and reflagged them as Panamanian, and, because of his previous associations with the Panamanian government, Parsons was appointed as an honorary Panamanian consul with associated paperwork to oversee the ships until the official representative arrived.59
With the Japanese closing in on Manila in 1942, Parsons burned his US Navy Reserve officer’s uniform and, because he had previously served as temporary Panamanian consul, was able to successfully claim diplomatic immunity and remained relatively free from Japanese harassment.60 Although Parsons was eventually detained by the Japanese, who rounded up all foreigners, Parsons was later released, and he and his family were able to make their way back to the United States aboard a passenger ship. Importantly, before leaving, Parsons organized an intelligence organization in Manila composed of USAFFE reserve officers, a group of contacts with whom he continued to work throughout the war.61 Parsons would eventually make several trips to the Philippines under a project called Spyron, short for Spy Squadron.62
More than keeping his promise to Fertig, after departing Australia in February 1943, Smith and his companions returned to Mindanao in March aboard the fleet submarine USS Tambor (SS-198), delivering ammunition and cash to Fertig’s guerrillas.63 Accompanying Smith and Parsons to Mindanao were two Filipino Moros who had escaped Mindanao by boat. The Moros were brought along because of their ability to speak the local dialect and their knowledge of Mindanao’s terrain.64 After landing, Smith proceeded to establish a radio station that could observe harbor traffic at Davao. Parsons for his part discussed MacArthur’s concept of guerrilla activities with Fertig and conducted a fact-finding mission on other islands in the Philippines before following Smith back to Australia.65
With the success of the Fifty mission, Parsons returned to Brisbane in July 1943, by which time operations of the PRS had expanded tremendously to include subsequent penetrations, including “Tenwest” (Sulu Archipelago) under Jordan Hamner. Hamner’s party was to watch the Sibutu Passage in the western Philippines near Borneo.66 Fatefully, AIB and PRS also agreed to send a party to Mindoro under US Major J. H. Phillips, a rather jovial officer who had been a planter on Mindanao before the war.
Mindoro and Mission I Shall Return, MacArthur (ISRM)
Leading the first AIB/PRS infiltration to Mindoro, Major Phillips was under orders to establish a coastwatcher network at Cape Calavite in order to observe traffic entering and exiting Manila Bay to the north.67 Whitney also intended Phillips to “correlate the development of information from MANILA and Central LUZON,” and potentially “assemble a fishing fleet, manned by PHILLIPS’ agents, to patrol the entrance to MANILA BAY and the west coast of Luzon,” and even perhaps make contact with Ralph Praeger’s guerrillas on Luzon.68 Phillips would head a radio control station with the call letters ISRM, for “I Shall Return, MacArthur.”69
The party bound for Mindoro was able to make use of the V-boat USS Narwhal (SS-167), one of two submarines that were larger than the fleet submarines used previously. Lieutenant Commander Parsons had been requesting these submarines for PRS missions from the US Navy for some time, and their use had finally been approved. With the Narwhal and its huge cargo capacity now available to AIB/PRS, Parsons and Colonel Whitney, despite protests from Colonel Ind, were able to push for the insertion of the Phillips party as soon as possible.70 This commenced a very rushed training program for Phillips and his operatives, which continued aboard the Narwhal under Parsons during the submarine’s run into the Philippines.
A sizable reception party, arranged in advance via radio, greeted Phillips and his party as they landed on Mindoro in late November 1943. According to Ind, this “doomed” Phillips from “the moment he set foot ashore,” as such a large gathering could not fail to attract the attention of the Japanese, who were headquartered on Luzon nearby.71 Besides this misstep, however, it later became obvious that one of Phillips’s men had betrayed the party and led the Japanese to Phillips’s location.72 On top of this betrayal, there were also suspicions that Phillips’s party used the same code keys to send multiple messages instead of varying them, thus allowing the Japanese to crack Phillips’s codes and track his station.73 This may have enabled them to know the location of an upcoming submarine resupply mission destined for Phillips.
Regardless of how the Japanese located Phillips’s party, a Japanese ground force attacked Phillips on February 26, near a site where he was to rendezvous with the USS Narwhal on another resupply mission.74 Japanese troops shot and killed Phillips and several members of his party while they were bathing in a stream. However, as one could expect, word of Phillips’s fate took time to reach GHQ, and caused some confusion and consternation in AIB/PRS.
By March 1944, despite the intensity of Japanese operations on Mindoro and lack of contact from Phillips, Whitney remained confident that Phillips and his party would survive. Whitney wanted to send a second party into Mindoro to assume duties on the island’s west coast, retransmitting information from Luzon radio stations.75 Willoughby agreed to the second party, and MacArthur approved the preparation of a directive to organize it.76
Gaining more complete information in May 1944, AIB and PRS finally found out that the Japanese had discovered and partially destroyed Phillips’s party on Mindoro, killing Phillips and several others. At this point, the G-2 section, and Major General Willoughby specifically, wanted Peralta to assume command of the remainder of Phillips’s party on Mindoro, continuing the mission to watch the Verde Island Passage and Apo East Pass and “correlate the development of information from Manila and Central Luzon.”77 The G-2’s intention was not to repeat the mistakes of Phillips’s party, but to give local autonomy to the operatives on the ground.
Colonel Whitney and the PRS were vehemently opposed to this plan, arguing that the importance of Phillips’s mission to the coming invasion of the Philippines required it to be “under close GHQ control and direction,” as the mission was originally intended.78 Doubtless reflecting his disregard for the Filipinos, Whitney refused to believe that Peralta “can do a job that this headquarters is unable itself better to do” in overseeing the party on Mind-oro.79 As he always did, Whitney instead proposed three potential solutions that would maintain GHQ’s control over the guerrillas: (1) Phillips’s party should be reinforced; (2) Peralta’s agent on Mindoro, Major Enrique Jurado, was to be placed under direct PRS supervision; or (3) Lieutenant Colonel Narciso Manzano, an AIB/PRS agent who was to direct an intelligence network on Luzon, was to be sent instead to Mindoro to take charge there.80 An engineer officer with the Philippine Scouts when the Japanese invaded, Manzano had escaped capture after the fall of Bataan and eventually infiltrated Manila, setting up a robust intelligence network there.81 Because of the intelligence Manzano provided to SWPA, Villamor regarded Manzano as his “most important contact” in Manila, and given his importance as an intelligence agent, perhaps it was best that he did not take charge of operations on Mindoro.82
Meanwhile, Jurado had made his way to Mindoro in May 1944, hoping to establish an intelligence base. However, he immediately ran into resistance from Filipino Major Ramon Ruffy, who had, since the capitulation to the Japanese, been in conflict with another Filipino officer, Captain Esteban Beloncio, over who would lead the Mindoro guerrillas. An uneasy agreement in October 1943 saw Ruffy take command of the guerrillas on Mindoro with Beloncio as his executive officer, an arrangement that remained tenable under Phillips until his death in March 1944.83 Jurado offered his support to Beloncio, which drew the ire of Ruffy, and the latter ordered Jurado off of the island. This was the situation into which SWPA inserted its next mission to Mindoro.
Partially in accordance with Whitney’s recommendation, US Navy Lieutenant Commander George F. Rowe’s Mission ISRM inserted into Pandan Island off Mindoro in order to set up a new radio net on Mindoro and provide intelligence on Japanese movements in and around Manila Bay.84 In addition to the nineteen men intended to accomplish those missions, four trained weather observers were also to accompany Rowe’s party, to be dropped off on Bohol and Leyte.85 The establishment of stations there, in addition to those already in existence, were deemed adequate to gather “reliable weather data” on the Philippines by the SWPA Air Force staff. With the addition of these two new stations, GHQ SWPA had coverage of Luzon, Mindoro, Panay, Negros, Mindanao, Bohol, Leyte, Samar, and Palawan.
On July 8, 1944, Lieutenant Al Hernandez and Sergeants Peter Aguilar and Julio Balleras conducted the initial reconnaissance for Mission ISRM, going ashore in a small life raft to confirm the weather and security situation were suitable for landing the rest of the party and their fifteen tons of supplies on Pandan.86 Hernandez eventually signaled that the area was clear, and around midnight the rest of the party landed with their supplies following several harrowing trips in the rubber boats.87 In contrast to the landing of Phillips’s party, Rowe’s more covert landing helped ensure greater secrecy for this subsequent mission to Mindoro.
The fate of Major Phillips provided a cautionary tale to Mission ISRM as Rowe assumed the duties of GHQ SWPA representative on Mindoro.88 By carefully avoiding direct contact with the Japanese and using more secure message codes, Mission ISRM turned out to be a success, with the intelligence network providing crucial information on Japanese movements, including the threats from Japanese suicide boats and Japanese reinforcements bound for Leyte.89 Rowe did succeed in his mission to set up a radio network on Mindoro, but he was unable to prevent conflict between Ruffy, Beloncio, and Jurado, conflict that broke out into violence in October 1944.90 The infighting resulted in the killing of Jurado on October 10 and Beloncio’s subsequent movement to Panay in November. Eventually, the agents and guerrillas on Mindoro were placed under Brigadier General William C. Dunkel, commander of the Mindoro Landing Force, on December 15 when US forces landed.91 Ruffy and his 700 guerrillas would receive official recognition from GHQ SWPA on March 15, 1945.
Map 4. Philippine Islands Communications, December 1943
Charles M. Smith and the Mission to Samar
Following the Fifty mission, AIB sent Captain Charles M. Smith on a trip to the United States to acquire supplies for further clandestine missions. After returning to Australia, Smith, now promoted to major, began organizing another party to conduct a penetration into the Philippines. Intending to get further north in the archipelago than his last mission, Smith sought to land on Samar and southern Luzon to set up a radio and intelligence network.92 The network would assist GHQ in planning the coming Allied invasion of the Philippines.93 With him were two other Americans, Captain James L. Evans (a doctor, but along because of his skills as a radio operator) and enlisted radio operator and cryptographer Bob Stahl, and also nine Filipinos selected by Colonel Whitney from the 1st and 2nd Filipino Infantry Regiments in California.94 The Filipinos were all fluent in Visayan and Tagalog, the most common languages on Samar and Luzon.95
On December 2, 1943, the USS Narwhal surfaced at Butuan Bay off the northeast coast of Mindanao to drop off Smith’s party and deliver supplies for the guerrillas.96 Smith’s diligence allowed him to set up a radio control station and make contact with GHQ SWPA by December 20.97 By the end of December, Smith’s party departed from Mindanao after spending time with Fertig, undertaking the hazardous journey to Samar but arriving safely. Once on Samar, Smith began setting up a series of ten stations to watch the sea-lanes running between Luzon and Samar. The call sign for Smith’s station was MACA, a reference to the way MacArthur signed papers, “MacA.”98 Besides serving on Samar, agents manned locations on Masbate, Cebu, and south and central Luzon.99 The MACA stations were well established and running smoothly by March 1944, but the humid climate began to short out critical parts, and even though Smith’s party had brought spares with them, the need developed for more.100
By April 1944, Smith was requesting from SWPA “all radio equipment and operators you can give me” and cryptographic equipment, along with weapons, “propaganda supplies,” and morale items, such as cigarettes, magazines, and books.101 He put particular emphasis on the need for additional radio equipment, and Colonel Whitney agreed to honor this request with the approval of Major General Sutherland.102 Whitney and Sutherland also approved a shipment of 500,000 units of Japanese currency, USD $50,000, and 100,000 Filipino pesos to Smith. GHQ SWPA also dispatched a number of agents to augment Smith’s operations in May 1944.103
Similarly to Villamor, Smith recommended keeping the intelligence net he was developing on Luzon separate from those developed by Parsons and Fertig because “by this method we can get information which can be checked against other sources” and it would “also eliminate the possibility of the capture of one or two people causing the stoppage of all sources of information.”104 This proved largely correct, and despite some difficulties, Smith’s agents were generally able to avoid Japanese patrols and operations and send their reports unhindered, avoiding the fate of Phillips’s party on Mindoro.105
Ultimately, Smith’s network was successful in providing GHQ SWPA timely and accurate intelligence on Japanese movements, while also assisting the guerrillas by transmitting requests for needed supplies to MacArthur’s headquarters. Significantly, coastwatchers gave reports that contributed to the US victory at the Battle of the Philippine Sea.106 They also assisted in locating and rescuing downed Allied pilots.107 Although not all requested supplies were sent, those that did arrive were crucial to sustaining intelligence-gathering and guerrilla operations. As will be discussed in chapter 3, Smith’s party, in large part because of Smith’s larger-than-life personality, was also successful in managing the competing guerrilla factions on Samar, which in part validates Whitney’s view that GHQ SWPA representatives should have managed the guerrillas.
Chick Parsons
A prominent figure, Lieutenant Commander Charles “Chick” Parsons eventually undertook eight submarine missions to the Philippines to supply the Filipino guerrillas and liaise with them in the central and southern Philippines under the Spyron program, which among other accomplishments developed a system of coastwatchers to monitor Japanese naval movements.108 Parsons also used his talents to improve and oversee the use of naval facilities to transport supplies to the Philippines via submarines.109 According to Colonel Whitney, Parsons was able to make the most of the space available to him to transport supplies to the Philippines: “It is impossible to visualize the quantity of stores that he succeeds in forcing into the available space, at best extremely limited.”110 These supplies were much appreciated by the guerrillas and PRS agents in the Philippines.
Following Parsons’s first mission to the Philippines, Manuel Quezon had sent Philippine Army Major Emigdio Cruz to the islands after consultation with MacArthur and his staff. Landing on Negros on July 9, 1943, Cruz made his way to Manila, arriving there on October 22, to gain insight into the Filipino puppet government.111 Cruz proceeded to contact General Manuel Roxas, a Filipino politician with a detailed knowledge of the Japanese puppet regime in the Philippines. After several meetings with Roxas, Cruz gained sufficient detail on the puppet government to journey back to Australia, which he successfully did by early 1944, bringing valuable intelligence to GHQ SWPA. Meanwhile, Parsons had established contact with Roxas by the late summer of 1943 via his own private agents in Manila and was working to evacuate Roxas from the Philippines.112 Whitney made it clear that he thought Roxas should stay, and Roxas remained in the Philippines through the Allied liberation of the archipelago.113
Parsons eventually made a second trip to the Philippines in October 1943, staying on Mindanao for several months to expand his network of contacts in the Philippines and assist Fertig in consolidating the guerrillas on the island.114 Parsons would return to the Philippines a total of six more times, each time bringing supplies to the guerrillas, liaising with their leaders, and bringing intelligence and evacuees, including US civilians, back to Australia. On January 29, 1944, Whitney recommended that Parsons be sent on the Narwhal’s fourth mission to the Philippines to deliver supplies to the guerrillas on Sulu, Cebu, and the Tenth Military District on Mindanao, and to supply Major Phillips on Mindoro while obtaining intelligence documents from him. As always, Whitney also recommended increasing GHQ SWPA’s span of control by making the Ozamiz Intelligence Net in Manila directly responsible to MacArthur’s headquarters, ostensibly to “organize [the net] toward greater efficiency and utility.”115 The following month, Parsons did return to the Philippines, bringing supplies to Mindanao, Tawi, and Mind-oro in partial accordance with Whitney’s recommendations.116
