by Ray C. Hunt
BEHIND
JAPANESE
LINES
BEHIND
JAPANESE
LINES
An American Guerrilla
in the Philippines
Ray C. Hunt & Bernard Norling
Copyright © 1986 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Club Historical Society, Georgetown College,
Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
04 03 02 01 00 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hunt, Ray C., 1919-
Behind Japanese lines.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8131-1604-X (cloth : alk. paper).—ISBN 0-8131-0986-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Hunt, Ray C., 1919- .2. World War, 1939-1945—Underground movements—Philippines—Luzon. 3. World War, 1939-1945—Personal narratives, American. 4. Guerrillas—Philippines—Luzon—Biography. 5. Guerrillas—United States—Biography. I. Norling, Bernard, 1924-II. Title.
D802.P52L895 1986 940.54′81′73 86-7765
This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents
Foreword
Preface
1 The War Begins
2 The Struggle for Bataan
3 The Bataan Death March
4 In and Out of the Fassoth Camps
5 Daily Life with Filipinos
6 Early Guerrillas of Luzon
7 Hukbalahaps and Constabulary
8 Guerrilla Life
9 The Plight of the Filipinos
10 I Get My Own Command
11 The Americans Return
12 Back into Action
13 Reflections on the War
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Foreword
When Bataan and Corregidor fell to the Japanese in the spring of 1942, all the U.S. and Philippine troops in the Philippine Islands were supposed to surrender to their conquerors. Many of them refused. Sometimes contrary to the orders of their commanding officers, sometimes with the connivance of those officers, sometimes entirely on their own, hundreds of them slipped into the mountains and jungles of various of the Philippine Islands. On Luzon their numbers were augmented by men who, in one way or another, managed to escape during the infamous Death March that followed the fall of Bataan.
Many of these men died soon of hunger or diseases, or they were captured by the enemy, or were murdered by bandit gangs. Of those who lived, some organized bands of guerrillas or attached themselves to such bodies.
These guerrillas were a forlorn lot. Most of them had no authorization from anyone to recruit troops of any sort for any purpose. They had no clear objectives. Common sense indicated that they should try to defend themselves, to collect information about the enemy, and to harass the Japanese if they could, but essentially they were on their own. Their enemies were legion: the Japanese; Japanese spies; several Filipino organizations friendly to the Japanese; the Hukbalahaps, who were impartially hostile to both Japanese and Americans; and those remorseless enemies of partisan forces anywhere—hunger, privation, disease, danger, and discouragement.
The guerrillas never knew how the war was going to turn out. Much of the time they knew little even about how it was going overall. They never knew when they might be ambushed and killed by the enemy, or betrayed by subordinates or civilians, or detected by spies, or awakened at night with bayonets at their throats. Many a guerrilla was killed after some such development. Others, taken alive, often experienced a worse fate: a slow death at the hands of their brutal conquerors.
If a guerrilla managed to survive the war, what then? If the Japanese won, he would surely be killed, most likely in some lingering, painful way. If the Americans won, would he be welcomed back into their ranks as a hero? treated as a traitor? court martialled for desertion? tried in a military or civil court for murder or other crimes committed in the course of his guerrilla activities? Perhaps he would be tried for crimes committed not by himself but by various of his subordinates who might or might not have acted under his orders? perhaps turned over to a postwar Philippine government to be honored or punished as might seem fit to whichever of several Filipino factions happened to come to power? Both the present life and the postwar prospects of guerrillas were distinctly precarious. To espouse life as an irregular in such circumstances required unusual qualities of character and personality.
This book is primarily an account of the activities and experiences of one such guerrilla, Ray Hunt; secondarily, that of several others. Originally from St. Louis, Ray Hunt joined the peacetime army, went to the Philippines just before the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific, survived the Bataan campaign, escaped half-dead from his captors during the Bataan Death March, was nursed back to health by friendly Filipinos, organized a troop of guerrillas, survived an amazing array of hardships and narrow escapes from death, made a noteworthy contribution to the eventual Filamerican reconquest of the Philippines, and was personally decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross by Gen. Douglas MacArthur near the end of the war. He stayed in the U.S. Air Force after World War II, became a fighter pilot, served again during the Korean War, and retired in 1959. He now lives in Orlando, Florida.
The book is based primarily on his own account of his wartime experiences written in the early 1960s but never published, on a longer and somewhat embellished version of the same material penned a few years later, on many conversations I have had with now long-retired Colonel Hunt, and by extensive correspondence with him.
Wherever possible, I have checked his memory and interpretation of events with recollections of his wartime associates and with published literature in the field. Every reasonable effort has been made to assure factual accuracy, though it is unlikely that this has been achieved in every instance, since people’s memories notoriously play tricks on them with the passage of time. Moreover, the guerrillas of Luzon were contentious. Those of them who have written memoirs often differ sharply in their descriptions of events; even more in their estimates of each other. Several species of critics and partisans of various “causes” have muddied the waters further. And, of course, many of those who took part in Philippine guerrilla activities in World War II have long since died.
This book is a collaborative work in the full sense. While some of the material dealing with such subjects as prewar American unpreparedness, guerrilla warfare in past history, European partisans in World War II, Filipino collaborationists, and the rise of the Hukbalahap movement in the Philippines has been introduced mostly by myself, this has been done to place Colonel Hunt’s experiences and problems in historical perspective and to make the narrative more interesting and meaningful to readers. Likewise, some of the books listed in the bibliography have been read by both of us, some only by myself. Whichever the case, they have been used primarily to make comparisons between the experiences, respon
ses, and thoughts of Colonel Hunt and those of others in comparable circumstances. The finished product has been read and reread several times by both Ray Hunt and me and is justly chargeable to both of us.
Though I “wrote” Behind Japanese Lines in the ordinary meaning of that word, the book has been done in the first person throughout. Thus, everywhere save in this foreword, the words “I,” “me”, and “mine” refer to Ray Hunt. The only exception to this rule concerns the citation of “personal communication to the author” in the notes. Sometimes other ex-guerrillas or associates of Colonel Hunt talked to or corresponded with me, without reference to him. Sometimes they communicated with him, but not with me. Sometimes he passed along to me what they said or wrote to him. Sometimes they communicated with both of us. Thus footnotes of this sort are initialled to indicate who received the information.
Readers may be puzzled, even exasperated, by many seemingly inconsistent references to the military rank of various individuals. This condition arises from an insoluble problem. Soldiers in the American regular army had a permanent prewar rank but also a temporary, and normally higher, rank during the war. Most officers and men were promoted several times during the war. Finally, those who became guerrillas often promoted themselves or were promoted by others without reference to regular military procedure. Sometimes these informal promotions were later recognized by higher authorities during the war, or afterward; sometimes not. Thus, it was quite possible for an individual to have as many as three different ranks simultaneously: regular army, wartime army, and guerrilla. Hence, reference to anyone’s rank, below that of General MacArthur himself, is only approximate.
I would especially like to thank Albert S. Hendrickson, Robert B. Lapham, Walter Chatham, and Vernon L. Fassoth, all fellow guerrillas or close wartime associates of Ray Hunt, who provided me with much firsthand information, graciously answered many questions, and saved me from falling into a variety of errors. I also profited from conversations or correspondence with James P Boyd, Leon O. Beck, Robert Mailheau, William H. Brooks, and Frank Gyovai, all ex-guerrillas who did not know Ray Hunt but who provided me with useful background information about guerrilla life.
I am indebted to those in the University of Notre Dame Interlibrary Loan Office who secured many books for me, to Dr. Jack Detzler of St. Mary’s College, who read the manuscript and suggested numerous improvements, and to Mrs. Catherine Box, who helped me greatly by typing the manuscript.
My particular thanks are due to Morton J. Netzorg of Detroit, who generously allowed me to use his extensive private library of Philippiniana, whose annotated bibliography of his own collection proved an invaluable aid to research, whose own knowledge of Philippine affairs straightened me out on various occasions, and who, with Mrs. Petra Netzorg, showed me many personal kindnesses.
BERNARD NORLING
Preface
All my tribulations in World War II derived, ultimately, from my resolve not to be a combat infantryman. In the mid-1930s, in the depths of the depression, when I was earning $15 for working a seventy-hour week in a grocery store in my native St. Louis, I gradually became aware that war clouds were gathering in Europe and sensed that a major war there might eventually involve the United States. If war came, I wanted to be in the air corps rather than in the infantry. Though only the aged recall it now, in the 1930s memories of World War I were still fresh among people in early middle age, and that conflict was still avidly discussed. Aviation had a lot of glamour in the 1930s, but slogging in muddy trenches under shellfire, vividly remembered from the Western Front and recounted endlessly, had absolutely none. I yearned to be a military pilot, but I lacked the required two years of college; so I lowered my sights and aspired to become an aircraft mechanic instead.
These sentiments assumed tangible form on a cold, sunny day in January 1939 when two friends and I climbed into a boxcar in a St. Louis freightyard and headed south. We hoped to get to Randolph Field, an air base near San Antonio. A couple of weeks later we enlisted there in the army air corps. Training was prosaic, and life as a KP and latrine orderly was dull. One day I tried out for the camp baseball team but got no response from the coach. Then I went over to the St. Louis Browns training camp in San Antonio for a tryout with the pros. This time those in charge showed some interest in me, but my first sergeant refused to give me time off to go back for a second session. Thus ended whatever chance I might have had to be enrolled one day in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
But, as gamblers know, neither good nor bad luck lasts forever. By the end of 1939 I was assigned to the Twenty-first Pursuit Squadron, then stationed at Hamilton Field, California. Even better, I was sent to school for a six months course in aviation mechanics, from which I returned a staff sergeant.
It seems to me that draftees, who are usually reluctant soldiers at best, never have any idea of the esprit de corps that can exist in a first-class regular outfit composed of men who know what they are doing and like it. In the Twenty-first everybody—cooks, clerks, mechanics like myself, and pilots—took pride in what they did, got on well with the others, and never worried about doing more than someone else. No doubt this happy condition owed much to our commanding officer, Capt. William E. (Ed) Dyess, a splendid flyer and a man whom we all liked and respected.
For more than a year at Hamilton I worked on the latest U.S. fighter planes (P-40 Tomahawks) and other aircraft, assembling and disassembling them, inspecting the work of others, managing repair crews, and getting in some flying time. But despite the pleasant surroundings and the satisfaction one feels when doing something worthwhile, I grew restless and began to look for adventure. Once I volunteered for service as a civilian mechanic in Gen. Claire Chennault’s famed “Flying Tigers” in China, only to be turned down because I had applied after the quotas were filled. Then, on November 1, 1941, our outfit was sent to the Philippines.
Soon after the war began five weeks later, I was swallowed up in the battle for Bataan. Ironically, immediate needs compelled me to become an infantryman and to learn to fight with a rifle, precisely the fate I had taken such pains to avoid by joining the air corps.
Before the struggle for Bataan commenced, I lost all contact with my family. They did not know I was one of the thousands of Americans who surrendered after that struggle, or that I endured the Death March that followed. Fortunately, they were also unaware of the atrocities visited on me by the enemy, much less the savagery I witnessed as a prisoner which led me to escape and fight as a guerrilla until the American liberation forces returned to Luzon on January 9, 1945. The many hardships I endured were insignificant when compared to the anguish of my parents and sisters. They were left to wonder, day by day for three long years while I was listed as missing in action, whether I was dead or alive. It would be six and a half years before I would actually see any of them again.
Somewhere along the line my father, swayed by the opinions of his friends, decided that I was dead; but this my mother never accepted. She wrote to me repeatedly, disregarding each returned letter marked “Undeliverable.” She wrote to one government office after another, to the Red Cross, and to a fighter pilot in the Twenty-first Pursuit Squadron, Maj. Samuel C. Grashio, following his escape from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in 1943. Finally, on November 24, 1944, my parents received an official War Department message informing them that I was alive and safe with guerrilla forces.
No matter how tough it was on me, it must have been worse for my folks. How much, I never realized until my own son Gregory spent two tours of combat in the air over Vietnam. Though he was never wounded, I imagined him aboard every American aircraft reported shot down. I wanted so badly to trade places with him because I realized it would be easier fighting than worrying.
To those today who have relatives or loved ones missing in action, maybe it would be best to assume as did my father and to proceed with your lives. If at some later date you are proved wrong, you will be forgiven as I forgave those who assumed I had been lost forever.
RAY C. HUNT
Chapter One
The War Begins
At midday on December 8, 1941 (December 7 in Hawaii, east of the international date line), I was sound asleep on a camp cot at Nichols Field just outside Manila in the Philippine Islands. Suddenly my slumber was interrupted by a horrendous racket. Bullets were coming down like hail, interspersed with bombs that shook the ground like a series of small earthquakes. I sprang into a half-dug foxhole. A second later a bomb buried itself in the ground no more than thirty feet from me. Providentially, it did not explode. Nearby a friend was buried alive by another bomb burst, but his luck was running: he was dug out after a third man buried up to his neck yelled for help. Still another soldier close to me had a canteen shot off his hip. Thus did World War II begin for me, as it did for the American people, with a shattering surprise.
There was no excuse whatever for our people, or our political and military leaders, or myself personally, being caught so dramatically off guard. The explanation is simplest with regard to the whole country. Most Americans are blithely ignorant of other peoples and nations, most of us are bored by foreign affairs much of the time, and we have a national addiction to utopian hopes for perpetual peace. It is a ruinous combination that no amount of experience, no succession of disasters, has ever shaken out of our people. In the 1930s, specifically, it left our national defenses woefully deficient everywhere, but worst of all in the Pacific.
After we had “won” the first World War, our European allies reneged on their war debts and remained as quarrelsome as ever, so we had lapsed into disgruntled isolationism, vowing never again to be drawn into their disputes. At the Washington Naval Conference (1921-22) we limited our fleet and agreed not to upgrade our military installations in the Far East. This left the Philippines, only 600 miles off the coast of Asia, defended mostly by naval bases 5,000 miles eastward in Hawaii and 7,000 miles away in California. In 1934 we promised the Filipinos their independence twelve years later. Soon after, we declined to fortify Guam. Tokyo observed this sequence of events and, not surprisingly, concluded that America was withdrawing from the Orient. The British, the Dutch, even the Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, regarded our heedlessness with foreboding since their colonies and their interests now lay, thinly defended, beneath the shadow of Japan. Meanwhile the depression had descended, distracting the attention of Americans even more from foreign affairs and strengthening the voices of all those who always want to spend money on domestic programs and trust to good luck for national defense.