I am sure you will be happy to know that I have received my permanent residence card. I was told that after three years, I may apply for American citizenship. At last, your hard work and concern have been rewarded. Will you also convey to your secretary the good news, as I know whenever you were away she wrote the letters and she wrote me cheerful letters of encouragement.
I want you to know that I am deeply grateful of your efforts in my behalf, and for your fight to keep me in America. Has it ever occurred to you that in all this time we have never met, and yet I feel as if I have known you all my life. I think you are a truly kind and good man because I am a total stranger to you but you have continuously championed my desire to become an American citizen. It was indeed a hard and arduous climb uphill, but we have reached the top which can only be surpassed when at long last I am allowed to become an American citizen. That will be a great day for me. Three years will soon pass and I shall be prepared for that day.
Once again, thank you for your many kindnesses in the past, for your untiring efforts to put through the bill, for everything that has made possible my stay in America. I have other letters to write to people to whom I owe gratitude, so for today, goodbye, and as we say in Filipino, marami pong salamat. I hope to come to Washington one day soon, and when I do, I shall make it a point to come and see you and greet you and it will be a memorable visit for I shall be meeting you for the first time. Kindest, personal regards to you and your secretary.
A portrait of Renato Ma. Guerrero. Courtesy of Cynthia Guerrero
Then, a surprise. Joey answered the door one day, and there stood her daughter, Cynthia, holding an infant. Her little girl was a woman now. She wasn’t tall like her mother expected. They stood about the same height, and the daughter bore a striking resemblance to the mother.
Cynthia didn’t know what to expect. She had only the vaguest memories of her mother, of the visits to Tala Leprosarium and the room full of books, but she had always wondered what it would be like to see her again. The family on her father’s side did not understand this desire. “Why do you want to meet her?” they asked. “Why would you do that?”
They blamed Joey for leaving the family, for divorcing Renato. Her father cried to the end of his life, Cynthia said, holding out hope for a cure and that his wife would someday return. He’d tried to move on, and he’d had girlfriends but never another deep relationship. He buried himself in his work. Her grandmother, Renato’s mother, would speak ill of Joey in Spanish, critical of the divorce. But Cynthia always wondered.
Cynthia took her burden to a priest, who explained that when a person contracts leprosy, when they’re forced to give up the things and people they love, when they’re sent to the edge of society, they change. Psychologically, emotionally. They are rejected, so they, too, must reject.
“You feel like a social outcast,” the priest said. “You feel left out, you feel like you’ve been ostracized. That is what happened to her. She just wanted to turn her back.”
Cynthia’s classmates, some of whom had moved to California, had offered to help her find her mother. When her father died, she was trying to settle the estate and had money for her mother from the sale of a lot in Quezon City. She flew to California to deliver the monetary gift.
Joey was thrilled to see them both and doted on the baby, her first grandchild. But, according to Cynthia years later, the baby was ill with diarrhea. “She couldn’t keep anything down. We stayed there about a week,” she said. “She got so sick, so sick. When you have a baby like that, you get scared.” She thought maybe it was the weather. She wasn’t sure if she should take her ill child to an American hospital. Her husband suggested she come home. She already had a return ticket. She told her friend to tell her mother good-bye, for she could not bring herself to say it again. And then she left.
“It’s not that I didn’t love her,” Cynthia would say years later in her little home on the outskirts of Manila. “It’s just that I didn’t know her.”
She still wonders how a mother could leave her child. There are no signs of Josefina Guerrero in Cynthia’s home, no photographs or letters or Christmas cards. She has one photograph of her father, and she is proud that he is still remembered with an annual lecture at the University of Santo Tomas. Her feelings about her mother are more complicated.
“Maybe her sickness affected the mind,” Cynthia said.
The nuns used to remind her not to hate. She said she does not harbor any hard feelings, but the hurt is always there, even in her old age.
“We’re all bidding the world good-bye, I suppose.”
52
DISAPPEAR
She was leaving a diminishing trace that she had walked the earth, that she had done great things and was recognized for them. She was tiring of being recognized, because with the recognition sometimes came judgment. She wanted to cast off her old life and try anew.
The final public attention she’d receive on a scale larger than a church bulletin came in late 1967, in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle in a story penned by William Cooney. Joey Guerrero Leaumax, diminutive Filipino war heroine and former Carville patient, had finally gained US citizenship. It had taken a grateful country twenty years to tell the leper spy, yes, you may live here.
She spoke of giving food and medicine and cigarettes to the men on the Bataan Death March and taking the same supplies to prisoners at Los Baños and Santo Tomas. The story recalled her intrepid journey to deliver the minefield map to the Thirty-Seventh Infantry Division, but she was hesitant to talk about it.
“I really don’t like to talk about it,” she said. “I have almost forgotten.”
When she finally told the story, it was not embellished by ornament. She spoke plainly, just the facts. “They gave me the map and told me to deliver it to Malolos,” she said. “I walked, went by banca, and walked. There were snipers everywhere. I hid and walked. And when I got there, the Americans had moved to Calumpit another 25 miles. So I took it there.”
There were moments when she seemed to harbor regret. She recalled the Japanese officers she befriended in order to get what she needed for the guerrillas.
“We had to get information from them,” she said. “Some of them were very nice. They would show me pictures of their wives and children … and there I was sending them to their deaths.”
After the story ran, she wrote to the Star to say she was now trying to graduate from San Francisco State College, majoring in English with a minor in Spanish. She had worked for several years as a secretary and librarian but decided she wanted to go back to school. She said she wanted to be an elementary school teacher and was working on the campus for the Experienced Teacher Fellowship Program and was hoping to study abroad in Spain. She asked the Star to publish her thanks to Robert Kleinpeter of Baton Rouge and Normal Stiller in San Francisco and Congressman James Morrison and all her friends at Carville.
It was the last time she would make headlines. The little woman who kept company with generals and cardinals would soon disappear from the pages of the newspapers and from the minds of most Americans, just like the disease that made her who she was. She would pawn her Medal of Freedom with Silver Palm. Her story would be all but lost, just as she wanted it.
53
I AM STILL ALIVE
In August 1970, Dr. Leo Eloesser began writing letters to his contacts far and wide. He was eighty-nine, living in Mexico, and trying to tie up loose ends. He had not heard from or about Josefina Guerrero since 1948, when he had written letters on her behalf, trying to cut tape to get her to America.
He wrote to doctor friends, priests, officials at Carville, asking if anyone had seen her, if anyone knew her whereabouts. “If she is dead,” he wrote, “may I ask you please to return this letter to me at the above address with a note of the date of death?”
A month later, he received an envelope postmarked Madrid, Spain.
25 September 1970
Dear Doctor Eloesser,
Dr. Paul Fasal
sent me your letter. The reason most people think I have died is because I have tried very hard to efface the past. I simply want to forget it! It was too traumatic and has given me no end of heartbreak. Joey Leaumax is my legal name now—neither Miss nor Mrs. Joey could be a boy’s name. When I left the hospital in 1957 from Carville, it took me months to find a job and I was without funds.
Whenever I said I had been in a hospital for ten years, employers looked at me as if I was some ex-criminal—I had to lie about the past to land a job—I began to invent a past. Me, who was so particular about integrity and truth and all the rest. But I just had to do it. It cost me money, time and grit to convince Uncle Sam I could be a first-rate citizen. No, I was an ex-patient, not good enough to be a US citizen. But finally, I became one. I also went hungry a good many times because I got fired from jobs whenever the past cropped up. (Can you imagine being hungry after WWII was over?) I was broke all the time. Then I was hired by Levi Strauss & Co. in the Complaint and Adjustment Department—ironical and amusing—all day long buyers and customers complained and insulted me because I had an accent. At any rate I devised a nice way to pacify them but it is a long story, so I’ll tell you another time. The Haases (Walter Haas, president) were informed about me and called me into the office. However, they were very kind and understanding. That was the turning point. However, some of the employees were not very nice. I decided to look for another job with a good working recommendation from Levi Strauss. I became secretary to a vice president in a big bank. Later, I took a job with the International Engineering Corp., a subsidiary of one of the world’s greatest engineering constructors, Morrison Knudsen, as personnel in charge of their library. I loved that job and was paid, for the first time, a really decent salary.
It was then that I decided to resume my education. This was in 1965. I applied for a scholarship on the strength of the entrance examination which I did very well. I didn’t have enough money. I returned to school and did part time jobs at San Francisco State College, typing, filing, etc. You may well imagine how it was to go back to school after being away 18 years. All my classmates were 19 and 20 year-olds. This was good for me and they kept me on my toes, but my thinking had been dulled and it needed to be oiled and worked on. That freshman year was the hardest, but I came through. In 1967–68 during my junior year, I was selected for study abroad—I had just started taking Spanish but I passed the Princeton test—it cost 1,800 dollars—I got all my savings which was about 900 and applied for a loan to pay the rest (it was a federally insured loan, so I don’t begin paying until I teach—it better be soon or I’ll be needing a cane to reach school). After a year here, I decided I needed another year if I were to reach that level of understanding and some dexterity in the language. I applied for an extension and was given it. I applied for another loan.
I graduated last June, got my B.A. with excellent grades, 4-As and 2-Bs. Not bad for an old lady, eh? Early this year I made an application to the Middlebury Graduate School in Spain for my master’s—I was accepted. That was a gamble because I don’t have any money. Unfortunately my application for loan got delayed by the mail strike and it came too late for deadline. I applied for another federally insured student loan and the bank just wrote to say all I can have is $1,000. $850 of that goes to tuition and $150 is not even enough for 3-months room and board. I have been writing people I know asking them to help me out. I need at least 7,000 pesetas to live. Room and board—the least expensive—is 5,500 pesetas, but I’ll need books, supplies, laundry, etc. One good friend promised to send me $20 each month and another $10. I am looking for an hour or so a day teaching-English job which should net me at least 3,000 pesetas. The $30 plus the possible 3,000 pesetas is only 5,100 pesetas—not even enough for my room and board. Oh well, something will turn up. So far, the good Lord has provided for me.
I am still alive and full of the zest for life. I hope I will be able to earn my master’s—it will be until June here, and from June to September in Middlebury, Vermont, where I will get my certificate. Then, Deo Volente, I may hopefully teach. It will be nice to earn some money again and not to be dependent upon the kind charity of my friends and the loan department of Uncle Sam. I now owe the Student Loan Department over $4,000—when I start teaching they will deduct about $50 each time I get a check. But it will all have been worth it! I am sending you one of my carnet photos—I look horrible in it but these carnet photos never make you look half-way decent. If you want to write me, just address it Joey Leaumax at the above address. I almost forgot, what is it I can do for you? Do tell.
Kindest personal regards,
Joey
Josefina Guerrero, 1970. Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California.
54
ANONYMOUS
If you could slow down that last morning, June 18, 1996, as she lay dying quiet and alone in the bustling capital of a country that had forgotten who she was and what she had done, if you could reverse the record of her seventy-eight years and spin it backward with your finger, you might start to see a familiar story arc develop. A woman serving others, quietly waiting in the wings for her moment to do something great, then standing to the challenge, then being honored and remembered in death.
This is not that story, but if you follow the trajectory backward, you see on her deathbed a woman who had chosen to be alone for more than three decades, who had shucked her given name, who had disappeared completely from the headlines, whose obituary made no mention of the moments that defined her, the fighting of two different but important wars. She had chosen to be forgotten. The three hundred friends and correspondents in her address books had never learned of her origins. No generals sat at her bedside. No cardinals graced her hospital doorsill. You still wonder about heroes. As George Washington University Medical Center faded from her eyes, you wonder if her ears caught the strains of Daphnis et Chloé or Clair de lune.
See her behind the folds of the curtains at the Kennedy Center, a smile on her lips as the music comes upon her, then kneeling at Mass at St. Stephen Martyr, then lost in the flows of humanity on the sidewalks of DC. You see her on a park bench in Paris, then London. She pawns her Medal of Freedom for travel money. See her giving books to the children of friends, for she had no children of her own. Before that, see her in the Peace Corps, a volunteer in 1976, teaching at the national university in El Salvador, serving as a professor in the foreign language department, volunteering every Saturday to teach children English at the local parish. In similar roles in Niger, always helping. Then in school in Middlebury and Madrid and earlier in San Francisco, trying to make herself a better citizen. See her receiving word that her daughter has gone back to Manila. See her leaving the hospital at Carville, a place that will soon no longer be of use because of the advancements in treatment that came about during her stay. See her in the newspapers, a woman of culture fighting a disease she refuses to stigmatize. See her bent over a sewing machine, a typewriter, a circular saw. Then she is in San Francisco, framed by a hospital ship and surrounded by the GIs who felt like they owed her their lives. Then she waits in the saw grass at Tala Leprosarium, a place she had come to die but that she had made new. Then she is receiving a blessing from Father Forbes Monaghan, then riding in an army jeep beside Lulu Reyes, then leaving the Ateneo de Manila for the last time, fearlessly fearful.
Then the crack of war, the waft of smoke, the bomb-torn palm fronds on the gray sky, the closing of the eyes of the dead. The ministering angel walks through the cross fire, resigned to meet her savior, the stench of death on her skin. She is greeted by the starved at Santo Tomas, greeted by the GIs with the Thirty-Seventh Infantry at Malolos, greeted by the Japanese soldiers she would betray. She walks thirty-five miles to deliver a map taped between her shoulder blades. She maps the gun emplacements. She stands outside the Ateneo, looking for Father Fred Julien with money tucked into the folds of her dress. She stands beside the dust-and-ash highway, cigarettes and candy in her hands, as the shrunken and starved battling b
astards of Bataan stumble past. She stands before her five-year-old daughter, afraid to give her one last kiss. She stands before the doctor, with a prolonged headache, some fatigue, a single blemish on her cheek.
Stuff the bombs back into the chutes and the bullets back into the barrels, rebuild the rubble and retread the tires, and she is with Rene, a promising young medical student, in Manila on their wedding day, the future before them.
She is playing basketball in the schoolyard under the golden Manila sun. She is studying the expression of the jovial nun at Good Shepherd Sisters. She is listening to the music spilling out of a phonograph. She is soft and young and unblemished, imagining that she is Joan of Arc, listening for the voice of God.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My sincere thanks go to the following people, who heard me out, encouraged me, offered advice, gave me a place to stay, or otherwise helped shape this book: Michael Kruse, Kelley Benham French, Tom French, Lane DeGregory, Leonora LaPeter Anton, Thomas Lake, Tony Rehagen, Wright Thompson, Paige Williams, Justin Heckert, Kim Cross, Liddy Lake, Mike Wilson, John Timpe, Neil Brown, Bill Duryea, Michael Mooney, Jacqui Banaszynski, Laura Reiley, Scott Lambert, Mark Johnson, Oliver Mackson, Lance Strother, Heather Curry, Tom Curry, Mary Curry, and Tom Bernard.
My agent, Jane Dystel, is simply the best. And I deeply appreciate the crew at Chicago Review Press, including Jerome Pohlen, Lindsey Schauer, Mary Kravenas, and Meaghan Miller.
Thanks to B. J. Alderman and Donald Mounts for their invaluable research assistance, and to Elizabeth Schexnyder, curator at the National Hansen’s Disease Museum, who went out of her way many times to help me tell Joey’s story. I’m in debt as well to Cynthia Ma. Guerrero-Madrigal and Manuel Ma. Guerrero III for their encouragement and support. Alex Tizon, Dona Lopez, and Rodelio Juanitas helped immensely with arrangements in the Philippine Islands.
The Leper Spy Page 22