The Leper Spy (26 page)

Gertrude, too, kept up her activism and had several letters to the editor published in the
Times.

T. H. Richard, a writer on staff at the
Star,
noted the importance of the convergence of Joey and the Hornbostels at Carville, writing that the “chain of circumstances” had led to “rewriting the dialogue for the roles played by the general public in Hansen's disease.”

“The Major brought Hansen's disease into the headlines of American newspapers by announcing his desire to continue living with his wife,” he wrote. “Joey came to this country to become a patient at Carville and added her bit to the increasing favorable publicity that is shaking the superstitious outlook on Hansen's disease to its roots.”

Life inside the fence had improved by leaps as the fear faded. The Louisiana legislature removed “leprosy” from the category of quarantinable diseases like smallpox and yellow fever, and state workers laid blacktop over the fifteen-mile stretch of gravel road that led from Baton Rouge to the hospital. A new book about Carville, written by a former patient, was making waves and had been condensed and published by
Reader's Digest.
Millions of listeners heard Joey tell her story on the CBS
We, the People
broadcast, and newspapers across the country carried glowing reports about the “fascinating and unusual” program. “When the facts about Hansen's disease and the activities of Carville patients reach the attentive ears of some 10,000,000 listeners and the watchful eyes of 1,000,000 simultaneously, then we really are going places,” Ann Page wrote in the
Star.

Joey cut the ribbon that formally opened the hospital's plush new Club Lounge, a gift from Mrs. John F. Tims of New Orleans. The same big-city socialites who had worked so hard at historical preservation in the French Quarter found a new target for their charity up the Mississippi River at Carville. The patients held a Christmas party sponsored by the Women's Activities Club of the Louisiana Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company, and they opened gifts donated by the Campbell Soup Company in Chicago. The guard at the gate counted 366 visitors who turned out for the celebration. The American Legion Auxiliary donated another
station wagon for use at Carville, their fourth. The Louisiana Voyageurs sponsored a bicycle drive and gave a bike to every patient who wanted one. Lake Johansen, named after Dr. Jo because it was his pet project for years, opened on campus and was stocked with fish. The patients were soon having fishing rodeos and speedboat regattas. The recreation department organized a golf tournament on the nine-hole course on campus, and the American Legion Auxiliary sent seventy-five homemade cakes for the occasion. They celebrated Mardi Gras with an extravagant parade and ball. Orchestras and theater troupes were now making stops in Carville to perform, and Joey wrote reviews of the performances for the
Star.
The beautiful Broadway and Hollywood actress Tallulah Bankhead had taken a keen interest in Stanley Stein. She pestered her highsociety friends in New York to subscribe to the
Star
and often wrote notes of encouragement, which Stein printed in the magazine as “Tallulahgrams.” “My darling Stanley and all the wonderful people at Carville,” one read. “May I extend my deepest appreciation, love and congratulations to you and your co-workers on your tenth anniversary with THE STAR. It has deeply interested me, as you know, and so many of my friends. Thank you for having enlightened us.”

Perhaps the biggest event, or the most symbolic, was when men removed the strands of barbed wire atop the fence ringing the campus.

And now the auditorium was filling for the first formal school commencement exercises in the fifty-nine years the hospital had been open. At first they wouldn't let Joey take classes. She had wanted to enroll in a college correspondence course in journalism but lacked the appropriate high school credits in the States. The school at the hospital, which opened in 1949, was reserved for the younger patients. She eventually talked her way into class.

“My first day at school was uncomfortable, both for myself as well as the others,” she wrote in the
Star.
“The boys were shy at having someone considerably older than they were in the classes, and I was shy because everyone else seemed like a child to me.”

As the days went by, though, everyone relaxed. Joey started to feel like a child again, stimulated by the schoolwork and the companionship of much younger students, all full of curiosity. She made straight As and completed all the required courses.

At the graduation ceremony, a representative for Louisiana governor Robert Kennon presented Joey with a letter of congratulations from the chief of state. A petition circulated in the audience, pleading with the president of the United States to help Joey gain permanent residency and citizenship. A national radio program mentioned the effort as part of a newscast.

When it was her turn to give the valedictory address, Joey walked to the microphone, smiling. “It has not been easy,” she said. “I have often been discouraged. I was sick. I was tired. I was disgusted. And there were moments when everything seemed wrong and without purpose. But I told myself that I cannot live forever on the charity of my friends. I must stand on my own two feet. But how? With crutches? With stilts? With leanings? No. I must learn to walk alone.”

She had in mind the days ahead, when the drugs had done their work and when her tests came back negative for leprosy each month over the course of a year. She'd be cleared, and she would be given the freedom to choose her own course.

“What if I should leave the hospital suddenly? What, I asked myself, could I do?”

O
n August 24, 1953,
Time
published a letter from its publisher, updating readers on the heroine who was the centerpiece of the magazine's July 19, 1948, story that generated more than four thousand letters to the editor, the vast majority expressing sympathy and interest in Joey's future.

By now most people have probably forgotten the story of a frail heroine from the Philippines named Josefina (“Joey”) Guerrero. After the Japanese invaded the Philippines, Joey became a guerrilla; when the Americans landed on Leyte in World War II, Joey continued to be a US spy, flitting back & forth across the Japanese lines, carrying messages, maps, food, clothes. She had a sure immunity from capture: her face and body were blotched with the sores of leprosy, of which the Japanese soldiers were morbidly fearful.

The publisher had received a letter from Joey herself, a short note expressing personal triumph: “Dear Mr. Linen. This is it! I thought you might like to know that I made it! I wanted you to rejoice with me.”

She was graduating from high school, she told him. He asked a
Time
correspondent named Ed Clinton to head to Carville and check on her, to send a report on Joey's school career and her graduation.

On her graduation day, reported Clinton, Joey was no longer wan and nervous. Treatment had brought her disease almost to the arrested point, and only a few pocked scars remained. Dressed in a white cap and gown, she mounted the steps to the stage of the hospital auditorium to make the valedictory address to some 400 fellow patients and friends, including the Philippine consul from New Orleans.

Joey told her story with simple feeling. The last five years had not been easy ones. Shortly after her arrival at Carville, her illness was complicated by an attack of double pneumonia.

Many years had passed since her days in the convent school in Manila. The return to studies, as Joey expressed, was not easy, but she had finished and she wanted her friends to know.

After four years of such investing, Joey collected her due interest: an accredited high-school diploma. She also landed a job as one of the paid, part-time staff members of the
Star,
the community news magazine. Now, Joey hopes to study shorthand, bookkeeping, and journalism. She also hopes to achieve her greatest ambition: permanent residence in the U.S. and U.S. citizenship.

In recent weeks that hope has been shadowed by the possibility of deportation, since her temporary visa has expired. Last year two special bills to grant her citizenship died in committee when the 82nd Congress adjourned. And a fortnight ago, an Immigration Service
official ordered Joey to leave the country, but gave her the privilege of voluntary departure. Last week, however, Joey's future was brightened again. Immigration officials in Washington promised that no action toward her deportation would be taken for several months. That will give Congress time to consider another private bill granting her permanent U.S. residence.

T
here's a fine chance that a glitch in the great American system of governance was solely to blame for the regular, soulless letters arriving at Carville for Mrs. Josefina V. Guerrero from the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), informing said leprosy patient and war hero that her temporary visa had expired and she was no longer welcome on American soil, that she should voluntarily depart the United States at once.

There were several problems for Joey when she received the letters. The first was the stress. She was still receiving treatments, and the thought of being kicked out of the country by a bureaucrat with a clipboard put her health in jeopardy. She hated the thought, hated the worry that seemed to hover over her head. The second problem was that she had nothing to return to in the Philippines. Although that was the plan originally, the letters had slowed and then stopped, and she had fallen so far out of contact with Rene and Cynthia, as ostracized as she was, that going back home lacked appeal. They had moved on with their lives, and she had moved on with hers, even to the point of dating other patients. Cynthia, in her late teens now, did not know her mother. As painful as it was, Joey had become something entirely different since she left home. Part of that transformation was learning how to survive and even thrive in a place of possible permanence. Even with the success of the
sulfone drugs, none of the patients knew for sure that they'd ever be released. They could hope. Meanwhile they had to learn to exist inside an insular world behind the fence. Joey would see Cynthia again, one last time, but the two were strangers and the meeting would be awkward and short and leave the daughter with burning questions about the mother—questions with no answers.

Joey had decided she wanted to try to stay in America, so her friends went to work. Rep. James Morrison, a Democrat from Louisiana whom she had never met in person, introduced a bill in the House to either grant Joey citizenship or grant her permanent residence in the United States. It was the shortest of bills.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that Josefina V. Guerrero shall be held and considered to be, and is hereby, unconditionally admitted to the character, rights, and privileges of a citizen of the United States.

Sen. Herbert H. Lehman, a Democrat from New York, introduced a similar bill in the Senate.

“A number of my constituents have expressed great interest in the passage of your bill,” Rep. Richard Bolling, a Democrat from Missouri, wrote to Lehman. “If there is any way in which you feel I may be helpful in this matter I am at your service.”

Even with support, both bills stalled in committee, which is what sometimes happens, even with legislation with the best of intentions. Morrison, undeterred, introduced another.

When her friends outside of Carville learned of the mess, they began organizing on her behalf. The American Legion passed a resolution offering their support and promising to petition the INS. Their letter-writing campaign reached more than twenty members of congress. “As a matter of fact, there have been so many letters in Joey's behalf addressed to myself and the committee that they are
far too numerous to record in the Congressional Record,” James Morrison wrote.

Joey had great hope it would all be over by Christmas of 1953. “It isn't the burdens and difficulties along the road of life which makes it discouraging or heartbreaking for the yoke is made lighter when others extend a helping hand to ease the weight from one's shoulder,” she wrote in the
Star.
“It is a constant source of wonder and amazement to me the way people everywhere have given of their time and effort to make my yoke sweet.”

The “Joey Campaign” was especially encouraging. Led by the Baton Rouge Business and Professional Women's Club, it aimed to generate unprecedented letters in support of Joey. A simple mailing was passed around, and members were encouraged to make copies and spread it throughout their own networks.

Subject: “JOEY”—Mrs. Josefina Guerrero

* * * * * * * * * *

Mrs. Guerrero, a native of the Philippines, is now a patient at the United States Public Health Service Hospital at Carville, Louisiana. During World War II, she gained international recognition for her acts of heroism as an underground agent in the Japanese-held Philippines and for her invaluable assistance to the United States Army during the period of invasion. She accomplished many daring and courageous missions, such as the smuggling of food, messages, and medicine to United States prisoners of war, the mapping of enemy fortifications for our Air Force, and, on one occasion, by walking 56 miles through enemy lines to report a mine field where the United States 37th Division was scheduled to attack Manila.

As a token of appreciation for these accomplishments, the United States Government awarded Mrs. Guerrero the Medal of Freedom with Silver Palm, the highest award given to any civilian for services rendered
to this country during the time of war. Cardinal Spellman presented to her a Medallion in recognition of “Christian fortitude and concern for fellow sufferers.”

In July 1948 she gained admittance to this country on a temporary visitor's permit under the Ninth Proviso to Section Three of the act of February 5, 1917, for treatment of Hansen's disease (leprosy) at Carville. Her admission was subsequently extended to August 20, 1951. In order that she might receive additional treatment for her disease, and, on or about the same time, a private bill was introduced in Congress, seeking to grant her citizenship in the United States. This bill,
HR 2412,
is still pending in the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, a hearing on Mrs. Guerrero's case was held July 31, 1953, and it was decided that under immigration laws, she must be deported. This decision has been appealed, and the US Board of Immigration Appeals will eventually pass on the question of her deportation. It is, therefore, essential that
HR 2412
be passed at the earliest date possible. The American Legion, at its national Convention in St. Louis in August 1953, and the Louisiana Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs in August of 1953, passed resolutions opposing the deportation of Mrs. Guerrero.