Volume 4, Issue No. 22
Fate whispered to the warrior:
“You cannot withstand the storm…”
The warrior whispered back:
“I am the storm.”
—Author unknown
SEATTLE - My father’s contemporaries tell me he was an authentic war hero -- with emphasis on the word ‘authentic.’ Of course, this makes the family genuinely proud. A war history buff, I often wonder why there are lesser stories told about victories featuring Filipino soldiers during the last world war. Were they key players or not in the triumph of the Allied Forces in the last Pacific War?
Except for the overplayed (General Douglas) MacArthur U-turn to the archipelago, military historians focus more on defeats and tales of infamy like Bataan, Corregidor, and the Death March. Commemorations of these woeful events of subjugation are held every year but rarely do people remember engagements where the Filipino soldier had helped defeat the enemy.
In one crucial and bloody military operation in the final months of World War II from January 19 till August 15, 1945, my father had led all-Filipino combatants of the 3rd Battalion, 121st Infantry, USAFIP-NL. Reinforced by gritty bolo-men from the Mountain Province, his three battalions assaulted Japanese defenses at Bessang Pass in the rugged mountains of North Luzon.
After see-saw pitch battles through muddy trails, leeches, insect bites, and freezing rain, it was Dad’s unit that first broke through the formidable defense line of the Japanese entrenched in caves and steep terrains of the Cordilleras.
Pitch battles lasted through three months of monsoon and humid season and finally led to the surrender of the Tiger of Malaya, General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Other high-ranking Japanese Imperial Army and Naval flag officers had regrouped in the Philippines from nearby Asian cities. With the fabled Tiger in command, they formed a last stand. Among them was an Admiral, the Vice-Chief of Staff of the Japanese Imperial Navy, who had co-led the submarine sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
My father, “Daddy” to his nine children and to our mother Erlinda, was not much of a talker. He was the quiet, self-effacing-to-a-fault type. In his circle of friends and comrades, he was known as an upright, ram-rod-honest soldier-scholar, a poet, writer, and an ROTC Vanguard reservist from the University of the Philippines. Friends called him “CB” or Condring.
In his writings, Daddy paid homage to poets E.E. Cummings and Jose Garcia Villa when he studied philosophy and letters as a government scholar at the Columbia U in New York following his wartime service. He took up courses there with the then General Dwight (Ike) Eisenhower. After a three-year stint in the U.S., he returned to the Philippines to help establish the English Department of what is now a premier institution, the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) in Loakan, Baguio.
Throughout his abbreviated years on this planet, he rarely spoke about his wartime service. But his comrades-in-arms had recognized his dedication to the cause of the veterans when he was unanimously elected as charter Secretary General of what is now the Veterans Federation of the Philippines (VFP), an organization that he had helped to organize so that there would be advocacy and substance to the peacetime campaigns of the forgotten Filipino soldier, his widow and family.
Dad’s comrades-in-arms (who became distinguished personages) like Fred Ruiz Castro, Ferdinand Marcos, Macario Peralta, Carmelo Barbero, Calixto Duque, Pete Bersamin, Ms. Pilar Normandy, Ms. Josefa Capistrano, Francisco Bautista, Roberto Reyes, Eulogio Balao, Simeon Valdez, Nicanor Jimenez, Jose V.H. Banzon, Arnulfo Banez, Desi Jurado, Amador Daguio, Pio Escobar…to name a few...were always in contact with Dad and Mom. They would frequent the quarters where our family lived at various military camps. Some shared what they had gone through in Bataan, the Death March and Capas. Others told stories of what they accomplished that day in June of 1944 when the morning sun was hidden by clouds in Bessang.
What Dad had dubbed in his post-war writings as “The Battle of the Clouds” is said to have marked the end of major hostilities after General Yamashita and his staff were escorted down the foot trails of the Cordilleras. From there the Japanese General was taken to a military trial in Manila and then to Los Banos, Laguna where he was executed as a war criminal.
Dad, in his journal writings, pointed to the battle in Bessang Pass as an “engagement of redemption,” coming full circle after “the shame and ignominy that was Bataan.” Poetic lines he wrote about Bessang would later be repeated by politicians seeking public office. A wordsmith at heart, Dad had laid out in after-battle reports and writings a path for aspiring north Luzon politicians.
Dad’s comrades said that PR men and campaigners of one soldier-turned-politician took liberty in creating the impression that General Yamashita surrendered to the politician’s unit.
“For every tear, a victory,” are poetic lines Dad wrote about wartime struggles and triumph. Shortly after Dad suddenly died in May 1960 at age 46 from asthma complications (and incompetence of medical staff at the V. Luna Medical Center), his writings, files, and journals vanished.
According to Mom, she had turned them over to some of Dad’s comrades-in-arms to be used in recording the role of the USAFIP-NL in World War II.
The pain and trauma of Dad’s passing was still fresh to a grieving family when a devastating flood — two weeks after he was interred at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani — nearly washed away the house he had built in Little Baguio, San Juan.
Dad’s library books, priceless journals and files were damaged beyond repair. Whatever he had kept in his library about “The Battle of the Clouds” were lost forever. Only the writings and testimonials of those who had fought with him remain.
Perhaps the tamper-free World War II files of the United States Military Archives would reflect rosters of Filipino fighting men in the benighted peninsula of Bataan, the defense of Corregidor, the infamy of Death March, the agony at the Capas P.O.W. concentration camp. And the valor and gallantry in the final battle that was Bessang Pass.
On hindsight, many wonder to this day if envy and prejudice that lurked in the hearts of those who had revisited military episodes would diminish the glory reaped by Filipino soldiers who fought a war that was hardly theirs.
A book written by Dad’s communication officer in Bessang, Visayan Ernesto Rodriguez Jr. (founder of the College Editors’ Guild (CEG), entitled “Bad Guerillas of Northern Luzon,” is said to be a first-hand chronicle of the war campaign in that region.
The book relates how war makes monsters out of men, how Filipinos fight each other, some siding with the enemy for survival.
Serialized in a politically partisan tabloid, the book about war in the northern region became controversial. Commentaries by the author were quoted in news articles criticizing President Ferdinand Marcos’ war records. Author Rodriguez was an ally of Marcos’ adversary, Ninoy Aquino, who he visited often in Boston. Rodriguez was later rewarded with an appointment as Mayor of his hometown in Iloilo when Marcos went on exile.
I learned to my dismay more misleading reports created in the aftermath of Bessang Pass. Because Mom was loyal to her high school chum and later her boss Marcos, she had deliberately avoided meeting book author Rodriguez who had desperately sought an interview and to secure a photo of Dad.
Rodriguez recounts operations about Yamashita’s retreating army. Filipino combat units under the command of Col. Russel Volkmann of the United States Armed Forces in the Philippines-North Luzon (USAFIP-NL) earnestly tracked the enemy. Desperate Japanese Imperial Army (re-enforced by kidnapped Koreans) troops had ravaged Manila, destroyed roads and bridges, terrorizing towns ofLuzon as they retreated northward.
In a rare storytelling episode on our way to Dolores, Abra one summer in the early 50s, when we were still in grades school, Dad parked the car on a roadside along the national highway. He pointed to mountain ranges in the distance. There he said he had fought side-by-side with brave soldiers and bolo-men as they assaulted Japanese forces in the rugged Cordilleras. Bessang, he said, is 20 miles away from historic Tirad Pass where Filipino General Gregorio del Pilar sacrificed his life battling another foreign army.
Dad told us that many who fought against his Third Battalion, 121st Inf., USAFIP-North Luzon, were young Koreans not more than 16 years old. Frightened, hungry and sick, the Korean boys were prisoners of war (POWs) who were forced by the Japanese to wear ill-fitting uniforms and fight the Filipinos. Many ran from the trenches to surrender. #
Epilogue
Two decades after Dad was buried at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani in Fort Bonifacio, I met some of his comrades-in-arms who fought with him in Bessang Pass. They expressed dismay over a battle that could have been a profound glory hour for the Filipino soldier in WW II. The surrender of the highest-ranking Japanese Imperial Army General to Filipino combat officers supported by Ilocano Bolomen from Abra, Ilocos Sur and the Mountain Province was all forgotten. Why? For some reason, American officers behind the battle lines—in the lowlands at San Fernando, La Union----upon hearing the breakthrough of Yamashita’s defenses and the Tiger of Malaya cornered by the USAFIP-NL 3rd Bn, 121st Infantry---were in disbelief. They radioed the Filipinos: “Do not move until further orders.” Only when the Americans arrived in Bessang Pass the next day that Yamashita’s surrender was bannered to the world. Dad’s aging comrades shake their heads in silent scorn. One outspoken Filipino war veteran commented: “Well…the full-bore ‘I Shall Return’ propaganda had to have a glory spin to it and the victory in Bessang Pass was a sure fit…”
The other spin to the Tiger of Malaya’s surrender was that he reportedly refused to emerge from his cave unless there were Americans to receive him --- for fear that vengeful Filipinos would kill him right there. This was pure rubbish, Dad and his comrades declared. For war crimes, Yamashita was executed by the Americans anyway.
And so, Filipino warriors remain forgotten and invisible under the WWII radar of valor and sacrifice. Like that haunting song, Dad and his comrades “…will never die, they’ll just fade away…” To those who revere truth and fairness, a conviction that redemption comes in the end lives on. - SR
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Conrado (Sluggo) Rigor, Jr. resides in Seattle, WA and is an advocate for aging Filipino WWII veterans, widows and orphans. He is adviser to the Filipino War Veterans of Washington (FWVW) headed by 96-year-old Commander Greg Garcia, a retired civil engineer from Batac, Ilocos Norte and who had participated in the Bessang Pass campaign as a radio engineer for the 15th Inf., USAFIP-NL. # (Copyright 2022. All Rights Reserved).
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