The Leper Spy (8 page)

Sixty-five miles they walked on the highway to nowhere.

I
ndependent guerrilla organizations sprang up across Manila, and the soldiers and ROTC boys who had escaped Bataan were forming their own groups, building mountain hideouts and learning whom among the local Filipino population they could trust. Japanese soldiers were crawling across the open city, so returning to Manila was unimaginable. What they needed was a way to communicate.

The commander of one of the organizations asked Joey if she'd like to work as a courier. She'd simply walk from 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 didn't 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. “Sir, I'm still in pretty good physical shape—I have a lot of fight left in me,” Volckmann recalled saying.

“Sure thing,” Brougher said. “I'll report you missing in action on a patrol. If you try, the best of luck to you.”

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 Luzon's 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 didn't work, or if the Japanese
learned 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 from the guerrillas, some of whom had secret radios and even communicated with MacArthur in Australia. The guerrillas relied on Joey and other couriers to dispatch the news to the people.

At first, Joey carried the messages inside her hair, which she twisted and curled and bunched up in a chignon. Her techniques of getting the messages from place to place were up to her; the guerrillas told her that if she was caught, they'd never heard of her. One day she happened to be struck by the feeling that she needed to change her hiding place. The same day a Japanese sentry tugged on her hair, and her ponytail came loose.

She often tucked messages between two pairs of socks, and if she was stopped and asked to remove her socks for a search, she simply peeled both pairs off at once. Other times she carried the messages in hollowed-out fruit in a basket and pretended to be a street vendor.

She walked miles for the underground, hiding her face behind a veil and her secrets behind her stigma, the whole time wondering how long the war would last and what would happen once she was again an outcast.

T
he general wrote the words on the back of an envelope as he rode in a private train car toward the seaside Australian city of Adelaide. Reporters now knew MacArthur had escaped Corregidor, and they'd be waiting. Roosevelt had broken the news at a press conference three days before, knowing full well that the Axis would interpret the move as the abandonment of the Philippines. For three months and ten days, the general had held the Japanese at bay on Luzon, and his retreat would appear more surrender than regrouping. “I know that every man and woman in the United States admires with me General MacArthur's determination to fight to the finish with his men in the Philippines,” the president said. “But I also know that every man and woman is in agreement that all important decisions must be made with a view toward the successful termination of the war. Knowing this, I am sure that every American, if faced individually with the question as to where General MacArthur could best serve his country, could come to only one answer.”

MacArthur, he said, was now in command of everything, including sea and air forces, east of Singapore in the southwestern Pacific. The reaction was immediate and optimistic: Americans felt the dashing MacArthur was up to the task of stopping Japan's push southward and the late move to high command was some indication that intelligence officers now saw evidence that the tides
of war in the Pacific were beginning to turn. The New York Stock Exchange even registered a spike when the news broke.

The general needed the right message, not only for Americans back home. He needed to send a message to his men—Filipinos and Americans alike—still fighting on Bataan and Corregidor and to the beloved inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, his second home. He needed to encourage them to keep fighting, to never give in to the occupiers.

“The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines,” he wrote. “I have come through and I shall return.”

I shall return.
These became the most famous words spoken during the war in the Pacific, and they lit a fire in Filipino hearts, becoming a battle cry against an impossible foe. Soon after MacArthur delivered the words, American subs began supplying Philippine guerrillas with branded materials. Gum, chocolate bars, matchboxes, buttons, playing cards, all printed with MacArthur's solemn promise.

A
ll night on April 8 and all day on April 9, the refugees from Bataan poured into Corregidor by boat,
banca,
raft, or on anything that could float. General Wainright had ordered that no troops be brought to Corregidor except one infantry unit and the army nurses, but these sad and tired stragglers refused to capitulate. Major General Moore assigned the new troops to tactical employment. The night sky on April 9 glowed red for hours as the Japanese blew up ammunition stores and bomb-laden vessels in the harbor.

With their new turf on Bataan under control, the Japanese rushed guns into place on the beaches, trained them on Corregidor, and began pounding away. The Corregidor guns were set to return fire on the beaches, but General Wainwright ordered them to hold fire. American prisoners of war now snaked along the roads of Bataan, and two nearby base hospitals were filled with sick and wounded US soldiers.

It seemed only a matter of time before the Japanese attempted a landing at Corregidor, but Moore was determined to hold the Rock for as long as possible. Soon, on April 11, five Japanese landing barges appeared off one of the points on Bataan's shoreline, hugging the shore and headed for the bay. Three Corregidor batteries opened fire and drove the boats back out of sight.

On April 12, General Wainwright issued these words to his troops on the Rock:

Corregidor can and will be held. There can be no question of surrendering this mighty fortress to the enemy. It will be defended with all the resources at our command. Major General George F. Moore, commanding general of Fort Mills, is wholeheartedly with me in the unalterable decision to hold this island together with its auxiliary forts.

I call upon every person in this fortress—officer, enlisted man, or civilian—to consider himself from this time onward as a member of a team which is resolved to meet the enemy's challenge each hour of every night and day.

All men who have served here before will remain at their posts, while those who have come from Bataan will be assigned to appropriate tasks and battle stations. It is essential above all that the men who have joined us from the mainland promptly rid themselves of any defeatist attitude which they may have and consider themselves a part of this fighting unit.

Bataan has fallen—but Corregidor will carry on! On this mighty fortress—a pearl of a great price on which the enemy has set his covetous eyes—the spirit of Bataan will continue to live!

The bombs fell daily, pulverizing the little island. One evening around 10:00
PM
, a large group of men had congregated outside Malinta Tunnel, against orders, and a heavy shell fell in their midst. The bang launched the group into the air, killing them instantly. There were about fifty casualties.

On April 20, reports from guerrillas reached Moore that the enemy was assembling a large landing force on the east coast of Bataan. Time was short.

April 29 was Emperor Hirohito's birthday.

“As anticipated,” Moore wrote, “the enemy decided to celebrate.”

The bombs started falling at 7:30
AM
. The 260th air-raid alarm sounded on the island, signaling the start of a nightmare that wouldn't end.

0800: Extremely heavy shelling at both portals of Malinta Tunnel and North dock.

0821: Enemy shelling Topside while observation plane overhead adjusts fire.

0923: Bombs dropped on west end of Corregidor.

0935: Battery Ramsey and H-60th bombed. Fire started below Middleside Incinerator.

0957: Middleside barracks bombed; some men injured.

0958: Enemy shelling near North Point.

1002: Two ammunition dumps at Topside exploding.

All day long. The next day, too. And the next. During one five-hour period, twelve 240-millimeter shells per minute—or thirty-six hundred total—rained down on Topside. The dust was so bad it blinded the spotters.

The beach defense installations on the north side of the island were ruined. The trees and natural vegetation had been blown to hell, and the ground was covered with powdered dust. Barbed wire and land mines had been blasted away. Communication lines were down. The Japanese had somewhere in the neighborhood of 422 guns in Bataan firing on Corregidor, and in the last ten days, they had launched more than 200,000 shells at the island.

At 10:30
PM
on May 5, the radio crackled to the beach defense commander: “Prepare for probable landing attack.” Two hours later, a Marine Corps runner sprinted into the H Station, breathless. He'd come from North Point. Enemy landing. “Probably six hundred men,” he said.

A group of soldiers formed a line in the darkness across Kindley Field Water Tank Hill. They weren't done fighting. As the Japanese moved forward, a two-gun battery on the tail of the island opened fire, catching them by surprise and killing many with 193 rounds. Spotlights swung onto the landing crafts, and gunners were able to assault the vessels and the men aboard. Ten thousand Japanese soldiers followed in the second wave, and the fighting was intense as they disembarked and struggled to climb ashore. Soldiers fired on them in the moonlight. More landings followed at Infantry Point, but a counterattack drove them back. Soon soldiers were retreating for Malinta Tunnel.

General Wainwright radioed a message to President Roosevelt. “Our flag on this beleaguered island fortress still flies,” it said.

FDR wrote back: “In spite of all the handicaps of complete isolation, lack of food and ammunition, you have given the world a shining example of patriotic fortitude and self-sacrifice.

“The American people ask no finer example of tenacity, resourcefulness, and steadfast courage. The calm determination of your leadership in a desperate situation sets a standard of duty for our soldiers throughout the world…. You and your devoted followers have become the living symbols of our war aims and the guarantee of victory.”

Wainwright paced back and forth in Malinta Tunnel all night. By daylight, the Japanese soldiers were five hundred yards from the tunnel's east entrance. He had to make up his mind, which was still reeling with the task of trying to find ways and means of dodging what seemed inevitable. He walked into his own headquarters and called General Moore and Brig. Gen. Lewis Beebe inside. He had come to a decision.