by Peter Eisner
In a final segment Edwards arranged for impressive gifts. A local developer awarded Claire, Robert Clavier (her new husband), and Dian a new house in a new subdivision outside Portland; the local Jewish Community Center provided furnishings for the house. Herbert Templeton, the chairman of the board at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, awarded Dian, now ten years old, the right to eventually claim a four-year paid scholarship to the school.
PART FIVE
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Telling the Story
I Was an American Spy
Hollywood, 1951
You’re about to witness a motion picture story of a woman who performed a magnificent service to her country under hazardous wartime conditions. In time of crisis, she recognized a call to duty and reacted as we hope all Americans will if confronted with similar circumstances. As an underground agent and civilian patriot, she acquitted herself with great courage and made an important contribution to the war effort. Her actions were exemplary and reassuring. To preserve world freedom will require sacrifices and devotion to our cause on the part of every citizen. As we face the task that lies ahead, we may all derive great inspiration from the story of the deeds of this fine American woman.
—MAJOR GENERAL MARK CLARK
WITH THOUGHTS OF WORLD WAR II still fresh, the United States was now fighting a new war in Asia—this time on the Korean peninsula. Veterans who had come home just six years earlier had returned to active duty. Among them was John Boone, who had retired in 1945 and lived for a while back in the Philippines with Mellie and their growing family.
Claire had become the personification of American heroism in the last war. She had finally sold the film rights to Manila Espionage and received $1,500 ($13,000 in 2017 dollars) from Allied Artists Pictures. The film went into production quickly, directed by Lesley Selander, a B-movie studio specialist who breezed through the production along with eight other six-week wonders that year, including one science-fiction piece called Flight to Mars. Ann Dvorak was cast to play Claire. The film also featured Douglas Kennedy as John Phillips, Gene Evans as Boone, and Richard Loo as a menacing Japanese officer. A precocious six-year-old, golden-curled child actress, Nadine Ashdown, played the part of Dian, erasing the fact that the real Dian was an Asian foster child.
Most unusual was the prologue by Major General Mark Clark, who testified to Claire’s valor and served to introduce the drama itself. Clark declared that General MacArthur himself had nominated Claire for the Medal of Freedom. The final scene of the film switched from Ann Dvorak to the “real” Claire Phillips, who stood at attention, back to the camera, wearing a subdued woman’s suit of the period, calf-length skirt, high heels, and pocketbook in hand as General Clark faced her and reenacted the ceremony of awarding of the Medal of Freedom. (He had given her the award at a ceremony at Fort Lewis, Washington, on August 19, 1948.) “Yours is a heroism of which all your fellow Americans may well be proud,” Clark said. “Your award bearing this citation was recommended by General MacArthur and approved by the President of the United States.” It is not clear why Clark would have been chosen to issue the award or appear in the film in the first place. The controversial commander of Allied ground forces in Italy was not accustomed to speaking with the news media, let alone appearing in Hollywood films. He had nothing to do with MacArthur or with the Pacific campaign during the war, though he was appointed in May 1952 (after the film was released) commander in chief, Far East, a post created for MacArthur in 1947 as he supervised the occupation of Japan.
The jingoistic tone, Clark’s appearance, and his grave delivery could not be separated from the moment. The United States had entered the battle in Korea in mid-1950, led by General MacArthur, returning as head of the United Nations Command; Senator Joseph P. McCarthy had begun his communist witch hunt. Just six years after World War II, several hundred thousand Americans were now fighting and facing fierce battles with Chinese and Korean communist troops over the 38th parallel that separated North and South Korea. On April 11, 1951, President Harry Truman had dismissed General MacArthur as supreme commander in Korea, an earth-shaking political development. The dismissal was on his disagreement with Truman on Korea policy—MacArthur had publicly criticized Truman, who sought to contain the Korea fighting as a “limited war,” rather than risking a much greater world crisis. MacArthur returned home as a hero and on April 19, 1951, gave his valedictory speech before Congress: “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”
I Was an American Spy opened three weeks after MacArthur’s appearance before Congress. The film was based on the fictional persona Claire had created in her book and took off from there. The portrayals were stereotypical and just plain wrong. Claire had become a loving, demure wife and mother; John Phillips was described as a sergeant, not the private he actually had been, with impossible freedom of movement under war conditions. Among other details, Claire’s rescue in the film involved a shoot-out between Japanese guards and U.S. soldiers that never took place. Claire traveled with the film to Washington, DC, for its world premiere on May 16, 1951, and then to New York for a showing on July 4. The New York Times called the film a “little drama, while occasionally tense, [that] isn’t especially stimulating either as a narrative or as a tribute to personal courage.” The story was “pat” and the direction was “sluggish,” the reviewer said. “It is sad though to see a gallant lady on display in such a threadbare little showcase.” The most memorable feature of the film was the song “Because of You,” written by Arthur Hammerstein and Dudley Wilkinson. It was the first number one hit on the charts in the long career of a then twenty-four-year-old crooner, Tony Bennett.
As Claire traveled and made personal appearances around the country during the film’s showing, her Portland-based attorneys, Frank S. Sever and Frederic W. Young, were working on a lawsuit against the government to demand restitution that had now twice been refused by Congress.
The lawyers had now upped the ante on Claire’s claim, from $50,000 to $146,850, the equivalent of more than $1 million in 2017.
On Trial
U.S. Federal Courthouse, Portland, Oregon, November 10, 1953
CLAIRE’S CLAIM for restitution before the U.S. Court of Claims brought together survivors of the Manila underground for a final, sometimes bitter reunion. Many of the former allies testified against her, and Claire insisted until the last minute that her ghostwritten memoir was all true.
The federal hearing provided unprecedented evidence to bolster her claim to a role in supporting and providing information to the guerrillas. The court transcript and exhibits provided rare testimony from Claire, Peggy Utinsky, Lorenza Amusategui, Maria Martinez, and, notably, John Boone’s only first-person account of his activities as a guerrilla commander in Bataan. The picture he painted supported Claire’s story. According to him, Claire not only helped Boone but also brought him into contact with others in the Manila underground. Boone, in turn, put Claire in touch with guerrilla leaders in the mountains. Together they comprised a circle of people who fought valiantly against the Japanese occupation from beginning to end; the circle ultimately connected with Chick Parsons, spymaster extraordinaire, who was the pipeline to General MacArthur. Claire, for her part, connected important Philippine contacts. She was a relative by marriage of General Manuel Roxas, who sought to subvert Japanese rule and became president of the Philippines in 1946; he served as president until his death in 1948. During the war Claire was faithfully passing along intelligence gleaned by the hostesses at Tsubaki Club as they sweet-talked their Japanese military consorts. Boone said more than once that Claire had provided excellent intelligence, even though he had not had the means to use it as real-time information that might launch attacks on Japanese planes, ships, and submarines.
The Court of Claims case convened at the imposing Renaissance revival federal courthouse on a typically drizzly November morning in downtown Portland. The Portland session was dedicated to Claire’s testim
ony and supporting appearances by her old friends Louise DeMartini and Bob Humphries, now married and living in Canada. Claire’s attorneys, Frederic Young and Frank Sever, presented their case with confidence, as if they expected they were headed toward a quick victory. However, Warren E. Burger, a future chief justice of the United States, then a little-known assistant attorney general, asked the FBI to investigate Claire’s case for restitution. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who already had been involved in tracking Claire’s activities after returning to the United States, enthusiastically took up the case. Hoover ordered “that this matter be given prompt attention by all offices and that the investigation be completed at the earliest possible date.” The FBI investigation outflanked and overwhelmed Claire’s attorneys and their ability to respond. Testimony began before federal claims commissioner George H. Foster without a jury. Louise and Bob Humphries and five former POWs at Cabanatuan spoke first and confirmed that Claire had in fact provided the food, medicines, and support she said she had. Most important among the POW testimony was that of Dwight Gard, the president of Multnomah Bank and a prominent figure in Portland. As a former prisoner at Cabanatuan, Gard said that Claire had regularly sent food and medicine into the camp and written letters that gave hope to the prisoners. Claire’s lawyers also introduced depositions that supported her claim. Claire’s protector and guardian, Judge Roxas, who remained an eminent and highly respected jurist after the war, confirmed in a written statement that he had monitored Claire’s activities all along. “I do not in the least doubt that Mrs. Claire Phillips had been helping the American prisoners during the war, as all that information which she had been giving me had been confirmed by Ramón Amusategui, in whose office at the Calvo Building, at Escolta, I used to assemble with a few friends almost every day to talk and comment on the war.” Fely’s father, Vicente Corcuera, submitted an affidavit that confirmed that Claire had hidden documents with him; and Carlos Sobreviñas wrote as well, saying that he had worked with Claire, sheltered her, and guided her to Manila from the mountains in mid-1942.
With all of the character references and depositions supporting her case, Claire took the stand confidently, assuming that everyone would see that she was simply asking for what she deserved. She related her story along the lines she had told for over eight years, in American Mercury, in her memoir, Manila Espionage, and finally in the film about her life, I Was an American Spy. She said it was all true, but her confidence evaporated under cross-examination. The attorney for the government, Thomas C. Fleming, began to challenge Claire’s reliability and truthfulness. Had she really married John Phillips? Wasn’t she already married to someone else? Hadn’t she planned to seek widow’s compensation from the U.S. government as Phillips’s wife? How could she substantiate the claims she was making? Fleming then introduced an early bombshell in miniature.
“Did you have a little book in which you used to write in, issued by the Insular Life Assurance Company?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“A sort of running diary, was it not?”
“Well, if you call that a diary, I guess it is.”
The government attorney then entered the diary into evidence.
“I now show you a bound volume . . . and ask you if you recognize the book?”
“I do.”
“What is it, please?”
“Part of it is notes on different activities. There are probably phone numbers and addresses in there. It’s been so many years.”
Claire said that she had kept the diary well hidden at Tsubaki Club; she had not seen it since the war. Over the course of three days of testimony, the attorneys and the federal commissioner examined many of the scrawled entries (hard to read and coded enough so that even Claire sometimes could not decipher what she had written) and transcribed them. The government used the diary to build a case that Claire’s real story varied from the Hollywood version and, central to undermining her claim, that she had not been making as much money at the club as she said she had and therefore could not have been providing very much money to the POWs.
Claire’s diary was a window into her experience of the war, a contemporaneous, unadorned account of her life before a better-educated, profit-minded scriptwriter could grab hold of the story. There was no indication, however, of how the government could have found it. Claire said she was surprised when she recognized her little lost diary. “I wondered how they could find it when I couldn’t find it,” Claire said in redirect questioning by her attorney, “and the Japanese couldn’t find it.” A writer for a Portland newspaper made a glancing mention of the diary and its introduction in court, reporting that it had been found in a bar. Not likely. The answer likely will never be known, but there were only a few possibilities—since Claire didn’t have it when she was arrested, her friend Fely must have rescued it between May 24, 1944 (the day of Claire’s arrest), and February 1945, when the Tsubaki Club building at the corner of Mabini and San Juan was destroyed. However, Fely didn’t have it—the U.S. government had it. The only other person who had access to the diary was Peggy Utinsky. Court proceedings were recessed without explanation after Claire’s testimony and sessions did not resume for nine months.
The next hearing opened at the U.S. Court of Claims in Washington, DC, on August 23, 1954. Fely Corcuera had come to Washington from her home in Hawaii, where she was now married to a physician. She testified about accounting at the club and confirmed Claire’s role in sending supplies and intelligence to Boone and food and medicine to POWs at Cabanatuan and prisons in Manila. She withstood questioning from the government about the financial standing of Tsubaki Club and confirmed that Claire had provided material support on a regular basis to the guerrillas and to POWs in Manila and at Cabanatuan. She was unable to confirm the amount of money Claire had spent on these items. She and Claire had burned some documents when they realized the Kempeitai might raid them at any time. She agreed with Claire that other documents and receipts were missing or stolen.
After another hiatus of more than a year, the Court of Claims held another hearing, again in Washington, on September 14, 1955. Now, however, the government was ready to present its case. Two of Claire’s former colleagues were there to testify against her. One of them was immediately recognizable as he stood there in an army sergeant’s uniform. Government attorney Walter Kiechel Jr. presented him to the court. It was John Boone. The expressions on the faces of old friends and the glances across hearing tables can only be imagined.
Claire had not seen Boone since just after the end of the war. His name would have been listed in advance, so Claire would have known he was coming and the anticipation of the encounter with her old friend would have been nerve-racking. Would he truly testify against her?
It was thirteen years after Boone and Claire had met in the hills of Bataan. Boone had reverted to enlisted status in the regular army. Claire was back in Portland, newly divorced from Robert Clavier, her fifth husband (not counting John Phillips), and was living with Dian, now a teenager. Boone was now forty-two years old and balding a bit, but he was trim in his uniform and still had that thin-lipped, world-weary look that almost betrayed a smile. He told the court he was now stationed at Fort Ord, California. For some reason the government had elected to fly him in cross-country instead of presenting his testimony two years earlier when the proceedings had convened on the West Coast. Boone’s testimony was not wholly negative, but he betrayed disappointment in and frustration with Claire.
Boone had seen Claire at least once since their time in the Philippines. He had surprised her a decade earlier in Santa Barbara, California, in late 1945 while she was appearing at an event to talk about her wartime experiences. Afterward Claire and Boone drove together by car back to San Francisco, at least an eight-hour trip if one were to take it nonstop on Highway 1, which winds along the Pacific Coast. During their 325-mile trip, the subject of compensation came up and they calculated the amount Claire was owed for h
elping his guerrilla operation. When they got to San Francisco, Boone was shocked to learn that she was married to Manuel Fuentes, a man he had never heard of before. Boone had thought Claire was a war widow. Boone was still married to Mellie, but he was upset and felt deceived. “I remember when I went to her apartment, to Fuentes’s apartment in San Francisco, the fact that she was living with this guy amazed me. But she never made any effort to tell me anything about it, and of course, I didn’t want to stick my nose into it. It has always been a great mystery to me.”
Despite the unexpected news, Boone signed an affidavit later that year, on October 12, 1945, saying that Claire had sent supplies to his guerrilla operation “in a value exceeding 30,000 pesos or Fifteen Thousand Dollars ($15,000).” Neither of them ever spoke publicly about other details of their time together, and the court case did not delve further into the subject.
Boone testified before the Court of Claims that Claire had provided excellent intelligence information in addition to the material support she gave to the guerrillas. He recognized the current climate, in which the government had been inundated with requests for money from civilians and veterans. He said those requests sometimes exceeded people’s actual service and what they should have claimed. But he described his strong feeling that Claire merited compensation for her role during the war. If all the others had been paid, he said, Claire definitely deserved to be paid as well.
“I felt that in view of what the American government had done in the Philippine Islands, after the liberation, I felt that if every other little so-called resistance movement operator there had been compensated, I felt this woman was entitled to some sort of U.S. government compensation. And I feel right now, when I look at this—I feel that I leaned over backwards to sign” the affidavit for a $15,000 claim. Now he said, however, that amount probably was an exaggeration. “It is true if I can stretch my imagination to the maximum,” he told the court hearing. “I did it out of the goodness of my heart.”