by James Green
At the subsequent trial of Sakay and his officers the accusation laid against them was that of ‘bandolerismo’, a capital offence under the Brigandage Act, instituted by the American government of the Philippines in 1902. This act held that all and any armed resistance to American rule were acts of banditry. Sakay and his officers were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. This verdict was upheld by the Philippine Supreme Court and on 13 September 1907 the execution took place.
Before he died General Macario Sakay made the following statement:
Death comes to all of us sooner or later, so I will face the Lord Almighty calmly. But I want to tell you that we are not bandits and robbers, as the Americans have accused us, but members of the revolutionary force that defended our mother country, the Philippines. Farewell. Long live the republic and may our independence be born in the future. Long live the Philippines.
The story of General Macario Sakay almost disappeared from the history books of the Philippines and certainly never appeared in any US history texts covering the American annexation and occupation of the Philippines. His name, when it was remembered at all, was only to refer to a man with long hair who needed a haircut.
However, the truth has a way of finding the light no matter how well or deeply it gets buried by those who would wish it forgotten. Today the story of Philippine armed resistance to American colonial rule is being told and learned. Filipinos are now able to look on men such as Macario Sakay as heroes deserving of remembrance.
On 13 September 2008, the hundred and first anniversary of his execution, a life-size statue of General Sakay was unveiled by the Manila Historical Heritage Commission. In the same month the Philippine Senate adopted two resolutions honouring him and his fellow freedom fighters for giving their lives in the cause of Philippine Independence.
And then …
The Philippine Assembly convened and peace prevailed, except in the Provinces of Mindanao, Sulu, and Palawan where the Catholicism brought by the Spanish hadn’t displaced the Muslim faith which had been planted before their arrival. The struggle of the Moro people begun against the Spanish and continued with the occupation of the country by the Americans is referred to by Western historians as the Moro Rebellion, and lasted until 1913. In 1934 the Tydings-McDuffie Act produced a procedural framework for the independence. There would be a two-year period for the drafting of a constitution for the Commonwealth of the Philippines. This, subject to certain conditions such as the approval of the new constitution by the US president, would then lead to a ten-year transition period. Had the act been allowed to run its course Philippine Independence, subject to certain conditions concerning US naval requirements, would have been granted by 1946. However, the Second World War intervened and Japan invaded and occupied the country. America recaptured the country in 1945 and honoured its commitments on the cessation of hostilities. On July 4 1946 the United States formally recognised the independence of the Republic of the Philippines.
Dominador Gomez, having negotiated the surrender of General Macario Sakay, entered political life and in 1909 was elected to the National Assembly. He died peacefully in 1929, remembered as a successful and respected political figure and tireless worker for Philippine independence.
Governor Henry Clay Ide served only ten months as governor general of the Philippines. On his departure the Manila Times praised Ide as one who, ‘in his social relations re-established the good times of Taft which the latter’s successor tried to make us forget’. He died at his home in St Johnsbury, Vermont, on 13 June 1921.
The Maine Enquiries. The tragic loss of the Maine was followed up by several enquiries. The Spanish commissioned two naval officers to look into the likely causes of the explosion which sank it. They collected evidence from officers of naval artillery who concluded that the cause of the explosion of the munitions store which ripped the ship apart had been the result of a combustion in the coal bunker adjacent to the store. They were unable to identify what had caused this combustion. They discounted the idea that the ship could have been mined as no column of water had been observed, as should have been the case had a mine been used; also a mine would have to be detonated by electricity using cables and none were found; no dead fish were found in the harbour which would have been the case had an explosion happened in the water. The conclusions of this Spanish enquiry were not reported in the American press.
The United States ordered its own board of inquiry which was convened under Captain William T. Sampson. The board took evidence from witnesses, survivors, and their own divers. It also took expert testimony from Commander George Converse of the Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island. The Board concluded that the Maine had been blown up by a mine which in turn had detonated the reserve store of six-inch ammunition.
In 1911 another inquiry was set up by the US: the Vreeland Board of Inquiry. This board of inquiry instituted the recovery of the Maine. A coffer dam was built round the wreck to facilitate the recovery. The intact aft portion of the Maine was made watertight and towed out to sea where she was scuttled on March 16 1912. The newly recovered bodies found during the operation were taken back to the US and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The examination of the hull carried out during this operation provided evidence which conflicted with that of the Sampson Inquiry. In 1974 Admiral Hyman G. Rickover began his own private investigation. From his reading of contemporary reports, newspaper articles, personal papers and plans of the construction of the Maine he concluded that there had been no mine and the explosion of the ammunition store had been the result of a spontaneous combustion in the adjacent coal bunker. He published a book of his findings in 1976: How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed.
In 1998, to commemorate the centennial of the sinking, the National Geographic magazine commissioned an analysis of the incident by Advanced Marine Enterprises. AME used computer modelling and other advanced techniques but finally declared its findings inconclusive. A fire could have caused the explosion but there was also some evidence of another detonation which may have been a mine.
In 2002 The History Channel produced an episode entitled, ‘Death of the USS Maine’, as part of its ‘Unsolved History’ series. The conclusion of this documentary was that there was a weakness in the bulkhead separating the coal store from the ammunition store and a fire caused the explosion.
Apart from official and unofficial inquiries there have always been persistent rumours that the sinking was the result of ‘black ops’ or a ‘false flag’ operation carried out by the US government to create a pretext for initiating war with Spain. This remains the official view of the Cuban government. A monument to the dead of the Maine was erected in 1926. On 18 January 1961, after the Cuban Revolution when the Communist government led by Fidel Castro came to power, the eagle with outstretched wings, the busts of Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt and that of Leonard Wood, first military governor of Cuba, were removed and the following inscription added to the monument:
A las víctimas de El Maine qui fueron sacrificadas por la voracidad imperialista en su afán de apoderarse de la isla Cuba.
To the victims of the Maine who were sacrificed to imperialist voracity and its desire to annexe the island of Cuba.
The sinking of the Maine remains an open and ongoing question.
As for the other possessions the US acquired from Spain …
Cuba After the Spanish-American War and a period of US occupation the Platt Amendment laid down how Cuba would be allowed to function as an independent country, securing US commercial and military priorities. This was replaced in 1934 by the Teller Amendment which effectively made Cuba a vassal state of the US confirming the continuing American position that Cuba was within America’s legitimate sphere of influence and therefore liable to a strong element of control. This attitude did not change when Fidel Castro came to power and the US embargo of the country began.
Guam remains an important strategic military base and is designated an ‘unincorporated t
erritory’ by the US. Quite what that means in terms of international law is beyond me.
Puerto Rico came under US military control as a result of the Treaty of Paris. In 1917 President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Jones Act which made the country an ‘organised but unincorporated territory’. This meant that Puerto Ricans could be conscripted: 20,000 were sent to fight in Europe in the First World War, but were not allowed to vote in such things as the US presidential election. From 1948 to 1952 it was a crime to display the Puerto Rican flag in public. The only flag permitted was the Stars and Stripes. Puerto Rico has a population of almost four million people yet it remains, like tiny Guam, in an international limbo. Its future is uncertain.
And what, meanwhile, of the American Secret Service?
The outbreak of WWI created a security crisis for the United States. Joseph C. Grew, undersecretary of state, in his book, Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years 1904-45, described the pre-war period as ‘a fool’s paradise’. While Europe was at war and America remained neutral it still suffered considerably from German espionage and sabotage. Among other things, a German naval attaché, Karl Boy-Ed, with the knowledge and support of the military attaché at the German embassy, Captain Franz Von Papen, were suspected of masterminding explosions at ten factories across the US which produced munitions for the Allies. Secretary of the Treasury, and therefore head of the Secret Service, William McAdoo admitted that the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Post Office Inspection Service were failing to co-ordinate and share information on incidents sponsored by foreign agents and by not doing so were unable to deal with German espionage, fraud, and sabotage.
In response secretary of state, Robert Lansing, moved to create a new inter-agency body, the Bureau of Secret Intelligence, which would act as a co-ordinator and clearing house of information. His proposal met with a mixed response. It was supported by the Treasury, reluctantly supported with reservations by the postmaster general, and actively opposed by the attorney general’s office. By 1917 President Woodrow Wilson had still not made a decision as to whether the new bureau should go ahead, not that it mattered so very much because on April 4 1916 Lansing, on his own initiative, had created the Secret Intelligence Bureau which he admitted was, to use his own term, ‘extra legal’. He appointed Frank L. Polk, counsellor of the Department of State, as director.
This more or less set the pattern for US Intelligence where, at certain times and under certain circumstances, highly placed individuals would deem it expedient to move outside the law or fail to inform the president or Congress. The spirit of President James K. Polk: that the Secret Service must remain unanswerable for its actions to Congressional oversight, had somehow spread out to include oversight by the White House.
After hostilities ceased in 1918 there were considerable political efforts to rein in the growth of the US Intelligence services but, as America was emerging as a new superpower and had an expanding diplomatic presence across the globe, the need for diplomatic security ensured that the Secret Service continued to grow. However, the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent depression put huge pressure on all government budgets and Security Services were not spared. In 1933 the Department of State abolished nearly all of what was left of its diplomatic courier services. The state of US government finance was such that it was said that when the French government offered to transport diplomatic pouches free of charge from Le Havre to Paris the US Embassy refused the offer as it couldn’t afford the taxi fares for Embassy personnel to retrieve the pouches from the railway stations when they arrived. Another victim of government cuts was a counter-intelligence, code-breaking department founded by US code clerk Herbert O. Yardley in 1917. The department, known as the Black Chamber, was axed in 1929 partly to save money but also because in essence its role was to spy on foreign governments, even friendly ones. Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson was concerned that this sort of counterintelligence work might compromise the Department’s main purpose: that of diplomacy. Stimson considered himself an honourable man and saw the bedrock of diplomacy as gentlemen dealing with gentlemen. In connection with the demise of the Black Chamber he famously said, ‘Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.’
In 1931 Yardley, struggling to support his family in the Depression, published a book about his work entitled The American Black Chamber, in which he described the clandestine work done by his department. His book was an instant success worldwide and caused an outcry in the US because it revealed the extent to which the US had intercepted and deciphered confidential Japanese government messages. The response of Washington was to pass Public Law 37, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt in June 1933 which made it a crime for any former government employee to publish or share confidential information pertaining to past or present diplomatic codes and confidential diplomatic correspondence. Yardley, unable to continue with his second book on the same subject, left the US and established cryptological bureaus for the Chinese from 1938 to 1940 and Canadians from 1940 to 1941.
The Second World War was looming and when Pearl Harbour exploded the US into the conflict the intelligence services exploded as well.
Which brings me to the fifth and final book in this series: Winston’s Witch.
I am indebted to the US State Department for the information on which the above text is based.
James Green
Agents of Independence Series
Another Small Kingdom
A Union Not Blessed
The Eagle Turns
Never an Empire
Winston’s Witch
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Published by Accent Press Ltd 2016
ISBN 9781682994108
Copyright © James Green 2016
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The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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