July 30, 2025 • 56 mins
Henry Clay Conner recounts his harrowing escape from Japanese forces in the Philippines and subsequent 34-month survival in the jungle during WWII while battling tropical diseases and navigating complex political alliances.
• Escape from Bataan on April 9, 1942, as Japanese forces broke through American and Filipino defenses
• Climbing treacherous mountains and drinking contaminated water while suffering from malaria, dengue fever, and dysentery
• Finding shelter among supportive Filipino families who risked execution to hide American soldiers
• Close encounter with the communist Huk guerrillas who put Clay on "trial" before his daring escape with fellow Americans
• Evading a 300-strong Japanese force hunting them with a price on their heads
• Living among the Negrito people in remote jungle areas and adopting Filipino clothing and identity
• Learning Tagalog and other Filipino dialects to survive while navigating the complex political dynamics of occupation
If you enjoyed this episode of my grandfather's war story, join us for the next installment, where we'll continue exploring his remarkable journey of survival.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Risk and Resolve.
And now for your hosts, benConner and Todd Hufford.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Welcome back to another episode of the Risk and
Resolve podcast.
I'm Ben Conner, alongside myco-host, todd Hufford, and we're
about to embark on part two ofseven, talking about clay connor
, my grandfather's journeythrough world war ii.
(00:28):
Before we get jump into theairing of episode two, we wanted
to recap episode one.
There's a lot there.
There's a lot funny.
Yeah, it's funny.
As we were talking we're like,well, we can't like recap this
thing and so much that it's aslong as the first episode.
There's so much with howdetailed he was and just like
(00:51):
his vivid memory.
That really stood out to me asI listened multiple times to
episode one.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
You know we've had these tapes forever, obviously
since the early 80s.
Have you listened to it in itsentirety before?
I have not.
I haven't either, and I thinkit was because number one who's
got a tape player?
Number two I think it wasreally scratchy and we had it
kind of remastered and it soundsreally good.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
It's amazing and really a shout out to Ashlyn and
Catherine on our team for howthey remastered those episodes.
It doesn't even sound like thetapes.
They've cleaned it up so muchso and obviously there's still
some elements that it is from atape.
But man, they did such a goodjob.
But let's get into what weheard in episode one.
(01:39):
I mean it was an episode thatwas chronicling his quickly what
happened while he was growingup and then the early stages of
the war actually taught a coupleof things that were new to me.
I didn't realize that he was inIndianapolis for the first 10
years of his life.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Right that kind of settled in for me as well.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
So, anyway, he was in Indianapolis.
His father worked for theAllison Coupon Company Now
Allison Payment Systems Businessstill exists, but his dad
worked for them.
And then, when he was 10, theymoved to the East Coast and they
moved to a lot of differentplaces.
They're in Connecticut, newJersey I believe he said another
location in that first episode.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
He ratted off like three of them before he kind of
landed in that New Jersey, theEast Orange that we've kind of
always referenced.
That he lived in.
You know, I don't mean to be aspoiler here, but for those that
don't know, you know his, hisdad worked for the Allison
Coupon Company.
He did for a hot minute heexplained.
A lot of people may not realize, but your grandfather went on
to marry the daughter of thethen owner of the Allison Coupon
(02:41):
Company.
So it's kind of interesting topiece that all together.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That's right.
So then he went to Duke.
So he had three majors news tome.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
He only mentioned two of them, though.
He said economics and history,and I kept listening for the
third one.
Did you catch what the thirdone was?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I did not.
So we're gonna have to dig intothat.
But what's interesting is, youknow, he said that he had two
days vacation.
His dad gave him two daysvacation After graduation
commenced, which the irony inthat is apparently that's a
Connor tradition, because Iremember when I graduated
college, my dad he told me hey,ben, congrats, you graduated
(03:19):
college.
You have 30 days to live withme and then you are out on your
own.
So apparently there's a lotthat's more of like a family
tradition than I thought, butthat really resonated with me
that he had to get out and goand so he had several jobs.
He actually went to work atAllison Coupon Company as a
(03:40):
pressman.
He said he almost killedhimself.
He was so bad at what he wasdoing and he's bored, and he was
bored.
He said he almost killedhimself.
He was so bad at what he wasdoing and he's bored.
And he was bored.
He said he was interested inbusiness and not necessarily for
working on the line.
But there was this movement inthe United States of patriotism
and what was happening in thewar in Europe.
Obviously, with what was goingon, with Hitler invading
(04:02):
countries in Europe, there was alot of interest and it created
a lot of patriotism here andseemingly a lot of his friends,
and it was kind of the thing towant to volunteer for the
service.
You know, he said old men don'tfight wars.
That's right, and as a youngman you don't have the fear of
what can happen in war and justsome of those things.
So it's kind of interesting,just the national sentiment at
(04:24):
that point.
So as he enlisted, he then gotodd jobs as a fuller brush man.
He taught lessons at the ArthurDance Studio.
So he was still trying to figureit out and Todd, I mentioned
this to you earlier, but if youtook his experience and you
overlaid that into a Gen Zworker, we would probably say
about that Gen Z worker is man.
(04:45):
That's a failure to launch.
They don't know what they'redoing, they're struggling,
they're unsuccessful.
A bunch of gig jobs.
A bunch of gig jobs.
Driving for Uber maybe is thetranslation.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
The original gig economy.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, but that's not what we think when you look back
, right.
So that really stood out to meand really how hard we are on
Gen Z.
It really stuck in my mind.
But then really quickly he gotinto his war experience.
He went into the war as a groupcommunications officer and he
(05:20):
left for the Philippines inNovember of 1941, and it took
three weeks to get there.
So he's getting there lateNovember, early December 1941.
Right?
So the parallel is crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I mean I was.
These recordings were done inwhat?
83?
Yeah, a couple months before hepassed away.
So we know that.
So he's taught.
He doesn't sound like a weak manto me.
He has a strong command of thedates.
When he was talking about themilitary he had numbers of
troops and at first I thought ishe just making this up?
And interviewer asks him acouple of questions and he says
(05:57):
I don't know.
I don't know the answer to that.
So he was honest about what hedidn't know, which I guess
affirmed that when he did saysomething he did know it.
And I thought, oh my gosh, herewe are listening to me, a
stronger voice, and you and Iknow that he's dead in less than
six months.
But then he's also recallinghey, I'm doing this in the fall
of 1940.
(06:18):
I graduated in June of 40.
I hit Scott Airfield inBelleville, illinois, in January
of 41.
And I feel like I'm watching aslow motion car crash.
I mean we know what happens andit's like you're on a boat to
the Philippines.
No, don't do that.
I mean unbelievable.
And he also was there a lotshorter than I realized.
(06:39):
I thought he might have beenthere maybe six months before
everything kind of broke loose,but it was weeks weeks so, on
that note, landed in thephilippines and weeks later,
pearl harbor was attacked.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Something that stood out to me that I didn't realize
is pearl harbor and manila wereattacked within hours.
Yes, so that was actually acoordinated attack, which is
interesting to me, obviouslysomething that's not really
talked about, but it was withinhours.
Obviously, when you look atdates of when things happen, it
doesn't appear to be hoursbecause of the international
(07:14):
dateline, but literally withinsix hours of Pearl Harbor being
attacked, manila was attacked,being attacked, manila was
attacked.
And they also asked like hey,wasn't there like some
communication around?
Hey, japanese are acting funny,you know this, that or the
other?
And he was emphatically said no, like this was a total surprise
, you know.
I think the skeptic in me saidhe also talked about airplanes
(07:38):
went to australia because theydidn't have coolant and it's
kind of like okay, is that, likeI know, very?
strange, strange.
So a couple of things that Ihave as notes and we can't drone
on for too long.
But when he was asked if he hadadequate training for when the
Japanese attacked, he bellylaughed Like that's absurd, like
(07:59):
not even in the slightest.
So he just mentioned groupcommunications officers.
When they describe what acommunications officer does, we
think in modern times of likethis podcast and communications,
but he was talking about likepipes and equipment that made
him sound more like a plumberthan it did.
Yeah, and then a communication,but he just talked about that.
(08:22):
His strength was really in thepeople skills business and that
really got him through hisprobably like imposter syndrome
early on as a groupcommunications officer.
And as he continued, hedescribed that I was best at
being a scavenger.
Yeah, he knew how to get food,he knew how to get things done
(08:43):
and he maybe wasn't mechanicallyinclined but he could just
figure things out.
He also mentioned that he neverfired a gun before he arrived
at Bataan.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And never camped out.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And he never camped out.
That's how it actually ends.
It's hard to hear, but that'show it ends.
But there's just someinteresting things that he said
that I wanted to highlight.
He said in know, I wanted tohighlight is you know?
He said in war, I don't thinkyou can steal anything.
So, just talking about thatsurvival instinct, yeah, the
rules are all off.
Yeah, he said a million, amillion of the enemy shows up.
(09:15):
You're not working, you'resurviving.
So it's interesting how thatclearly transitioned when they
were invaded.
They talked about hope and andhis comment was obviously he
talked about scripture, but hesaid every day is hope, talked
about his mental, just alludedto his mental toughness.
He mentioned hearing thatPresident Roosevelt got on the
radio and talked about people inthe Philippines were expendable
(09:37):
, expendable, yep Wild.
And what's interesting isthey're like well, is that
propaganda?
Was that like a smokescreen?
And he's like.
I kind of just took it as it is.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Something on that front if you don't know your
history.
At that time, the Philippineswas a whole lot more like Puerto
Rico is today almost like aprotectorate.
It was very much Americaninfluenced and so to have the
Japanese coordinate attack itwas basically them attacking two
American soils.
Even though it was Philippineat the time, it was very much
(10:09):
aligned with America.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, it's almost like attacking America without
not totally attacking directlyAmerica.
Right, it's kind of off.
Another thing that he said thatstood out to me about survival
is he says you took the bull bythe horns and determined to
survive.
And if you're determined tosurvive, you're going to use
every feasible known tact,technique and available method
(10:34):
to do just that survive.
And that's what we did for fourmonths, and that was talking
about before he got into thejungles.
It was just this survivalmentality.
He got into the jungles, it wasjust this survival mentality.
And that four months was reallyfrom when they invaded to when
they really broke through anddecisions had to be made.
So you know his escape.
(10:54):
He used a specific date of whatthat was, which was April 9th
1942.
So between when it was invadedto April, 9th that's when that
occurred and he really kind oftalked through like I remember
the individual over the radiosaying the Japanese broke
through and were killingeveryone on their way through
the South and I thought it wasreally interesting that he
(11:17):
really talked about the Japaneseculture from his opinion of how
they viewed war and honor andthat sort of thing and he goes.
We didn't know that Japanesethought anyone who surrendered
was a coward and should be dealtwith harshly, killed and
punished and the idea was, ifyou were surrendered in numbers
(11:38):
you would be safe.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
They talked about the failure of knowing the culture
that you're dealing with and youknow how to communicate, and
just really fascinating.
But he ended that episode withthe escape taking place on April
9th 1942.
And that's where we're headedinto in episode two.
Todd, before we dive intoepisode two, anything else that
(12:04):
stood out to you?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Just to remind all the listeners that it was
estimated to be 30,000 US troops, 90,000 Filipino troops I'm
sorry, 70,000 Philippine troops.
That takes it to close to 100with a million bearing down.
So it was 10 to one, of whichyour 10, only 30% were what we
would view as trained Americansoldiers which, based upon your
grandfather's account of histraining, wasn't very that
(12:27):
strong of training.
I'm just amazed by after he'srecording this 40 years after it
happens, his mastery of thedetails.
That's a gift and I thinkeverybody as they listen to this
should think about what's thebest way for them to document
their story so their kids, theirgrandkids and great grandkids
can benefit from it.
Because, man, these tapes havebeen sitting on the shelf for a
(12:50):
long time and a handful of yourfamily's known and listen to
them.
But I just know a lot of peopleare going to be moved by just
his words, just his voice.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Absolutely Well, everyone enjoy episode two.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
The Japanese had a chance to embed themselves into
the society.
There's no question about that.
The Filipinos were alreadypro-American in the beginning.
They were fighting on our sideto begin with.
But the Japanese homerized theFilipinos absolutely and totally
(13:24):
and only perhaps 5% of theFilipinos who were
preconditioned prior to WorldWar II and educated in Japan and
prepared for World War II, andthat helped them store parts of
artillery pieces and whatnot inmountain areas.
(13:44):
So when Japanese landed, theyhelped them, assemble them and
showed them where they were.
So these 5%, I'd say, when theywere brought to be a part of
the surrounding areas of theprison camps when the Americans
were killed, they were calledthe GANAP.
It was a party called the GANAP.
How's that spelled?
G-a-n-a-p, something like that.
(14:06):
G-A-N-A-P, something like thatG-A-N-A-P, g-a-n-a-p, I think
it's N-A-P, n-a-p is Nippon,pro-nippon, pro-japanese,
something like that.
Anyway, those 5% were wellknown and isolated out by the
pro-American Philippine.
So there weren't any difficulty.
(14:28):
Difficulty in reallyidentifying who those people
were.
They might have gotten new.
The problem that developed asthe war went along was we could
not defend those who were outand out pro-American and they
were being killed as they werediscovered in helping us to wipe
(14:49):
out a whole burial or villageof people men, women and
children because they were knownto have helped us, which was a
terrible thing and obviously wedon't want to be responsible for
that kind of thing and that wasthe penalty for helping
Americans.
And that began to get aroundand the people became they had
(15:14):
no place to turn If they helpedus.
They were in a spot.
They wanted to help us.
So it became a very delicate asthey put it, delicato and
difficult thing.
So it kind of went underground.
The help went.
They didn't discuss it amongthemselves or whatever.
It wasn't that universal helpthat we had at the beginning out
(15:36):
and out.
When did this transformationapproximately take place?
Was this in 43 or 44?
I'd say 43.
1943.
Around the end of 43 was whenit really got rough.
So about halfway through the 34months you spent in the jungle,
things really got tough on youand certainly you could
(16:00):
understand why they wouldn'twant to help anymore, because
there would be a death sentencefor everybody in the village and
there was a form of genocide.
When you first got started wereyou the only American in the
group that and I really want toget back to how you actually got
escaped from the perimeter theJapanese were closing in on you.
(16:24):
At this little barrio, littleBaguio, baguio, baguio, excuse
me.
Here was a resort up in thenorth part of the blue zone
which is a well-knowninternational resort.
It's the miami or santa barbaraor, uh, pasadena.
(16:44):
You know it's a rural resort.
So this is a little bag of eggs.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
It was a jungle.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Another thing is this would be after April 9th.
Did you tell anybody in advancethat you were going to try to
make a break for it?
And did anybody try to say, butyou can't go?
And uh, how did you actually,uh, you know, manage to, uh, to
get out of that area?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
this is something really curious, as I said.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
I went to the general state and uh, told them and the
anderson, of course, was therealso.
I was telling about his plansand, too late, talked to and he
offered to take the generalstaff or any of them.
He wanted any of them to gowith him, but you got to
remember they were all in themid and that was this is 1942,
(17:41):
so I was 23 years old, born 24years old.
So the older fellas were notprone to go through the jungle.
First of all, most of them hadbeen there for a couple, three
years and had done maneuvers onBataan and knew it was heavy
jungle terrain and high cliffsand direct drops and all that
kind of thing, very, very ruggedterrain.
(18:03):
What do you think?
Yeah, you look at the GrandCanyon at times, oh, wow, so I
didn't know this rugged terrain.
You think, yeah, you look,you're looking at the grand
canyon at times, oh my, so, uh,I didn't know this.
You have to understand that allI all I was thinking I was
escaped and they said it wasfine for anybody that wanted to
go.
So I called together my groupof communication personnel that
I had gathered together from allof the Air Force units.
(18:26):
In other words.
When we turned the Air Forceunits into infantry, I was given
the order to bring all of theclassified communication
personnel into thiscommunication center in order to
establish a centercommunication for the general
(18:49):
staff that was.
My job was to get all thesepeople together.
So I'd call them all togetherand I said, well, I need the
henderson's things to getescaped through our amount to
our marvellous, which isstraight up and top and up to
mountain, which is up in here,and get all up in to northern
Bacan and then to Pampanga andfind Colonel Thorpe and McGuire,
(19:14):
captain McGuire and all thoseguys.
And Anderson's been around awhile.
He knows what he's doing, he'sflown over this area many times
and he's got a Filipino accent.
He knows what's going on and Imust have had 50 people working
today in communications.
And he's got a Filipino accent.
He knows what's going on and Imust have had 50 people working
(19:34):
in communications and we'd do alittle show and everything else.
I had a real terrific operationgoing.
We weren't living in poverty,we were probably the best unit
in the operation because I wasgetting stuff nobody else was
getting and I'd gone back intoManila before the Japanese
cleared out.
I was the last guy to leaveManila and I had truck after
(19:55):
truck after truck and I'd comeand brought him down here.
I didn't leave all the stuff Ihad.
I had tents and all kinds ofC-rations, world War I rations,
all kinds of canned rations.
We just cleared our warehouseafter warehouse in Manila for
two and a half days and so wehad Gumo in pretty good shape.
(20:16):
It was Joe, had food, butanyway, not one of those birds.
Hey, go with me Now.
This is what the other giant.
These are all the people thatare working for me, working for
you.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Most of them are a lot older than I am.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
In other words, a few younger, but they didn't have
any confidence in me as knowinganything.
That's true, you're about 23years old, 23 years old.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
What do I?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
know about the Philippines, and why would they
go with me with $30,000 and goto surrender?
And they're going to go with meand a guy they never heard of
called henderson.
And you're going to go up therein a mountain full of pythons
and and whatever, and wild boarsand, uh, savages negritos maybe
, and and the japanese, just amillion of them coming down
(21:05):
through here looking at you.
They're going to kill you.
You're nuts.
No, sir, we're not going.
You want to go, bobowski?
No, you want to go, no.
And so I went and we just tookoff straight north from that
area a little back here.
We just took exactly straightnorth.
He had a compass, I didn't.
(21:26):
And we went right up on theside of that mountain and I'm
telling you that's somethingelse.
Well, you can see from theterrain features on the map that
you have that that is extremelysteep.
It almost looks like an extinctvolcano.
I got into one area by myself,because they left me behind.
I got sick.
I climbed down about 600 feetthrough a water fall, gripping
(21:49):
both sides of a swarmy rock areaand catching wet heat.
And I've never done that in mylife before.
600 feet, 600 feet.
There is no amount of money inthe world that would give me to
do a dumb thing like that.
But there was no way.
I either did that or nothing, Idied.
And so those that, but therewas no way out.
I either did that or nothing, Idied.
(22:09):
Right, I could sit here for aweek and tell you about that
escape, going through all that.
But that's ridiculous.
I couldn't do that again.
I mean, if somebody told me Ihad to go through that, I
wouldn't have seen.
Do you think you were in goodphysical condition?
You must have been in order toget through that area,
absolutely physical condition.
You must have been in order toget through that area,
absolutely.
If I hadn't gotten malaria anddinghy fever and dysentery, that
(22:33):
would have been great.
But I got all these thingsbecause, you see, when you get
your kids down at the top of themountain, you cast you out of
the mountains.
You know why?
No water, oh, that's right.
The other letter St Will'sLawfully.
So there's no water, oh, that'sright.
The other letter rules, awfully.
So there's no water.
And especially in April, therehadn't been a rainy season yet.
(22:53):
So there's no water.
So you've got to go to the loon, you've got to get down there
and you think you're never goingto get there to get any water.
You think there isn't any waterleft in the world.
And when you get down to thewater, what you find are
hundreds of dead bodies, withscavengers of every description
(23:16):
running through the bodies andover the bodies, and every kind
of insect, by the billions,insects so massive that they
just cover your head, your face.
You can't get them off, youjust.
They're as thick as a ruleralmost, and they're just mad.
They mat themselves all overyou because they multiplied as a
(23:39):
result of all this death in thewater, in that environment, and
you go in and you're thirstyand that's what you drink.
These were dead Americans, deadAmericans before we got to this
point, and then after that theywere dead Japanese.
Outside lines Right, that's thatruin area that you mentioned on
(24:01):
this other map.
Let's see, I can find thatPilarbegak Road, pilarbegak,
pilar, bagac, how would youspell that?
I'll go from right here toanother.
You see there, pilar, and yousay Bagac.
Shouldn't we do?
What's that?
Say Bagac, what's this?
She bettained right here.
Except Pilar, pilar, that'sPilar Bagac Road, pilar Bagac
(24:24):
Road.
Okay, b-a-g-a-c Bay and we carefor a lot of BGAC.
We can just join the two wordstogether.
Well, you know, it's 14 milesnorth and south and 14 miles
east and west, and 96,000offenders, almost 30,000 were
Americans.
Well, when you're thirsty youdrink it.
Mm-hmm Makes no difference,it's the situation the insects,
(24:48):
the bodies, everything you justswore the water was.
There's no water anyplace else,and that's what?
Well, the problem is theJapanese are still running
through the area.
So, you know, you should putsome money down in, if you had
it, or you should put sometablets, if you had them, or you
should boil the water if youcan, but you're a little
(25:10):
hesitant to build a fire.
We think that's the source ofthe diseases that you've got,
basically just the contaminatedwater.
I don't know if I'm a biologist, but it sounds like a pretty
good candidate for it.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
A few days.
A few days later, I wasclimbing these jungle mountains
and so on and I had malaria.
I didn't know what malaria was.
So you were by yourself thiswhole.
No, I was by myself for fivedays.
Then I happened to meet up withanother man.
What was his name?
Do you recall?
I don't know.
I'm asking.
(25:46):
I wrote, okay, well, I'll checkit out.
I don't know.
I've got a story.
I wrote, okay, well, I'll checkthat out?
I don't know how I could forgetit at this point, but he was
later killed.
Oh Well, he was killed on theWest Coast about a year later.
Mm-hmm I don't remember whathis name was.
His name was terrible, mm-hmm.
Well, that's all right.
She.
Well, that's all right.
She got it down here in thisarticle.
It'll probably come back to youa couple hours after I leave.
(26:09):
Well, he and another Americanwere together, man, remember the
other American?
He was a very nice fellow, hisname was Mann and he was killed.
Also, how do I spell his name?
M-a-n-n?
Oh, mann, m-a-n-n.
For one night, but he lostam atthe pool at that point, I see,
(26:30):
and they had become separated.
So what can happen is and whatdid happen to this other fellow
and how I got in touch with himI came to a place on the
mountain that fell off at aboutoh, I don't know what angle that
would be about 90 degree degree, almost 90 degree, almost
straight down, probably 70, 80degree, and it was kind of shale
(26:52):
or slate.
Imagine that half way up themountain, here's this loose.
Now I had to go about 50 feetfrom this side to this side of
this shale that I built up there.
Or, if I got caught in this, Icome straight off drop and he
started to cross and made it andhe loosened it.
Shape of it to build up there.
Or, if I got caught in this, Icome straight off Drop and he
started to cross and made it andhe loosened it and I started to
(27:13):
cross and didn't make it andslid down.
This is the guy with it beforeand I got caught on the three
limb and I had to go down thecliff, which is about, as I said
, got down about 300 feet, wentout to get in this waterfall.
Well, he went on it, so he hada level of 600 feet down.
Well, I'm in a different terrainaltogether and I was to be,
alone for several days and I metup with this guy, just a random
(27:33):
kind of thing, just by accident.
You just bump into somebody.
You never saw this man thesecond man ever in your life,
probably.
In that case, just here we areout in the jungles and we got to
help each other out Boy.
So you linked up these two, Imean with this other man, then
later the other one and then theother one, so there was the
(27:54):
three of you.
Did you finally make it back towhat Anderson had been talking
about?
On four, about that rendezvous?
They were just catching up withhim.
I got up to this point calledTALA, tala, t-a-l-a, t-o-l-a,
and it's opposite Samao,s-a-m-a-l, s-a-m-a-l.
(28:16):
Right here, it's right up there.
Uh-huh, yeah, that's excellent.
The Filipinos had Tala would beright in here someplace, you
see it.
Yes, all right, I see somelittle dates down here too.
This would be.
Well, it says May 1st 42 toSeptember 15th well, 42.
(28:38):
So you're basically in thatarea during that time.
Well, that's where I was,that's where I darn near died.
Oh, I got out of them 95 cowsBased on the fevers and the
fever, the dengue fever.
Later I was determined.
I had Jonas, I was yellow,everything about me was yellow,
and I had dengue and I hadmalaria Several different.
(29:00):
You could have differentinfections.
You could have multipleinfections of malaria.
You don't just have malaria,you could have multiple
infections.
And then you one infection willhit you every other day where
you chill and fever, and thenanother one will hit you the
same day, and you're on and offdays and it's a mess.
In fact, several Americans upthere, a whole bunch of
(29:20):
Americans, were brought intothat area.
There must have been about 15of us that were picked up and
brought into that area,including me, who picked you up
to bring you in there.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Filipinos Filipinos Filipino.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
It was kind of an evacuation center.
Filipinos who had built thesetemporary houses up in Tala
where they would not live innormal times.
Up in Tala, where they wouldnot live in normal times but
went into that area because itwas away from the artillery fire
which was hitting their formerhomes and villages.
(29:56):
Down near the fishing villagesthe Americans were firing into
the Japanese.
The Japanese were firing back,so they had escaped from
southern fishing villages on ourside north into the area where
the Japanese were firing back.
So they had escaped fromsouthern fishing villages on our
side north into the area wherethe Japanese were occupied.
But they had, rather than joinup with the Japanese and get
(30:17):
involved in the Frankish, they'dgone up halfway up the side,
almost three-quarters of the wayup the side of the mountain,
and had built these temporaryareas and planted rice and were
harvesting wild bananas androots and one.
But I didn't live enough andvery skimpy, regal or sick, nice
.
So they being pro-American,when they found guys like me
(30:38):
down in the river bottom, theyknew I was going to die down
there.
They brought me up into Talaand they brought other guys up
there.
Well, several of them died.
A very hairy quarter fromWillisburg, kentucky, a very,
very, and we were together for acouple of months there.
I guess he was a very nicefellow.
And Gerald Dunlap, he was fromWisconsin.
(31:00):
He also died then.
Yeah, he also died.
And of course, the fellow thatfinally joined with me and went
through the whole war, frankGavay, was up there.
Frank's still living in Aurorathat's Aurora, illinois, right
and he just retired last year.
He was a post office a coupleof years ago.
He's had a lot of physicalproblems.
(31:21):
Well, I think about everybodythat survived.
That would probably come outwith.
This is getting ahead of thestory.
But what illness did you takeout of the war?
I mean, you finally did recoversome of your health, but Well,
I was blind for a while.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Oh, is that?
Speaker 3 (31:36):
right Because of the vitamin deficiency.
I'll tell you about that in aminute.
Oh okay, actually, I regainedmy health pretty well through
the care of a very generous andwonderful family in Tawa.
How I ever got through themultiple diseases when others
(31:57):
died I don't know.
Only God knows that, but I did.
And what did they give you toeat?
Do you recall?
Was there anything in the dietthat was different?
Primarily rice, wild boar whenthey could get it, and some fish
that they got from work.
(32:17):
I can't remember.
Down in the lowlands, which wasa low way and a small amount of
wild food when it came in season.
A little wild in the end, butit wasn't a lot because the
Japanese had poured everythingout.
Most of the trees had beenblown out with artillery, so it
(32:41):
was tough, but fortunately Iregained my health and, when I
did, decided to leave there.
What date would this be?
This would be sometime inSeptember, I suppose Late
September.
I took a head on the event.
Yeah, september looks likeabout a 15.
(33:02):
Could be Of 42.
Right.
What happened was the Hux camethrough.
Okay, now, this is a good pointto introduce the Hux.
Who were the Hux or who are theHux?
Hux, h-u-k-s is an abbreviationfor a Filipino name Hacobo no
(33:24):
Bayan Laban Sahapon, that's,army of the People against the
Japanese.
That was the Hux.
The Hux were the Army-Americanin order to establish armed
(33:51):
units of 100 men, the leader, toharass the Japanese.
But why they were not joiningThorpe and the USAFI, which is
United States Armed Forces, farEast USAFI Guerrilla Forces?
Nobody put that together.
Or was it just become part ofthe USAFI forces forces Far East
Asafi guerrilla forces?
Nobody put that together.
(34:11):
Or was one of them just becomepart of the Asafi forces?
I'm saying Asafi guerrillaforces was an established fact
because MacArthur had initiatedthe Asafi guerrilla forces under
Thorpe.
So the Asafi guerrilla forces.
I've even got orders of theAsafi guerrilla forces.
See, I was commissioned Right.
General order of BO.
I was commissioned by GeneralOrder of the BOCO Vertebrate
Board, commanding OfficerGeneral McArthur.
(34:32):
Usafiq Rural Forces has made amatch.
Well, anyway, that was a complexproblem and studying some of
the history, I began to realize,with discussing it, what had
happened, and this developedover quite a period of time.
The Chinese agrarian movement,which was known in this country
(34:54):
in the middle 30s as a communistoperation in which the
Communist Party offered tooverthrow the government of
China in order to take away theland-holding system and give the
land in partial to the peasants.
In other words, the revolutionwould give the peasants land.
(35:17):
This is nothing new.
This is the Marxian doctrine ofgetting the cooperation in
order to give the people land.
That's where the value of lifegoes.
You raise your own crops,you're your own entrepreneur.
Well, that's a philosophy.
So the Chinese agrarianmovement had moved into the
Philippines and had become anorganized group of politicians.
(35:41):
Then, when they seized theopportunity of the Japanese
occupation, organized the Hukks.
They took in Americans, becauseAmericans couldn't understand
the language, took them withthem in order to get the
Filipino support, saying theywere the same as Yusufi.
We got the Americans with us.
They got contributions, theygot food, the arms that the
(36:04):
Filipinos had picked up when theAmericans had evacuated Clark
and Nichols Field, all theseplaces, and the Filipinos come
in and took all the arms and hitthem.
They began to give them to theHuks, who were their army to
defeat their enemy, the occupiedforces of the Japanese.
Because here these people arehelping the Americans.
(36:26):
See this American with them.
Well, over a period of time, by1944, the Hucks killed off all
the Americans with them.
Oh, they did.
Yeah, because they took on theattitude that the Americans may
be coming back and they didn'twant any evidences that they
were really a political movement.
See, now the Asafi guerrillassurrendered the army,
(36:47):
surrendered their arms and laiddown their arms to the Americans
.
When the Americans reoccupiedand many of them were killed off
by the Huxlater, who didn'tsurrender their arms to the
American but went into hidingagain against from the Americans
as soon as they had theJapanese.
Well, anyway, that's a wholepolitical thing.
And I was with the Huks for awhile until, but I learned the
(37:07):
language.
Well, I was up in Tala, Ilearned two dialects, one being
Tagalog, and I began to put allthis together because I had a
semblance of knowledge relevantto Tagalog, which they were
talking and they didn't know Iunderstood it quite that well.
So I began to put together whatthey were doing, organizing the
(37:28):
Berrios as a defense forthemselves, called the Berrio
United Defense, which was a verysubtle way of putting together
a political organization wherethey're a Berrio lieutenant,
where they had the communicationthat comes down to the
lieutenant from the city wherethe Japs always said we'll vote
on raid this, we'll go.
(37:49):
Schaefer police notified theburial of the burial lieutenant,
notified the next buriallieutenant.
The hutch went down.
See, that's their form ofcommunication.
Yeah, or were they communiststhen?
Speaker 2 (37:58):
They were communists.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Oh yeah, no doubt about it.
No doubt about it.
Sure, but there were not a lotof the early people in the Hucks
.
The Filipinos themselves werenot really communist,
indoctrinated anti-Americans.
They were politicals who wantedto own land, who were really
pro-American.
That was a strange thing aboutit, oh yeah.
(38:22):
So it was kind of like thatstory of the ugly American that
came out years and years ago.
Here's a guy who's involved inthis because he was a man who
was really pro-American for thetime.
But he has to make a decision.
See, but a later date.
He has to make a decision.
That's a good point.
Yeah, so you were there withthe Hucks in, as you say, a
(38:44):
brief period of time until youcaught on to what was going on.
So this would be after 1742.
They were going to kill me oh,you found out about it right
after the war.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
I mean, I was put on trial.
They brought me in and saidthat I had actually betrayed
them to the Japanese and that Ihad escaped from prison camp.
This was in early 1944, and Ihad escaped in late 43, early 44
.
I had escaped from a prisoncamp and they'd betrayed them to
the Japanese and they were.
(39:13):
I'm telling you, it wasn't acircus.
Frank had an anchor date on hisbill which Frank of a, and
there was only two of us there,three of us in the Magala area.
I was pretty good in the .45because that practiced a lot.
They had a lot of ammunition inthe early days up in Talon they
(39:36):
had all the ammunition they hadby one.
I kept practicing faster on allthis kind of stuff.
I was a real adventurer.
I was wider and I got reallygood with this thing, vick, and,
as I said, I didn't have amechanical aptitude, but I was a
pretty good athlete For alittle man.
I was a pretty fast runner anda good, no broken heel type
(40:00):
runner.
I just wasn't big and so I wasagile, very agile, very quick,
and so I became very agile.
Well, that's where he found it,and so we were just moving and
I dropped the draft on this guy.
I was going to blow his headoff.
I really was, but I wasn'tangry with him, but I was upset,
(40:22):
terribly upset, to think thatthey were putting us in that
kind of a situation.
Well, he knew he'd had it.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
This was the Huck leader that was going to charge
us against the 101 win there.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Three of us, three of you, three Gosh.
So Frank went outside and hehad a haggard and he opened up
his hand and he said I'm goingto put the damn thing, stay in
there with him.
They say it On the outside, noton the inside.
With my gun, this guy, I justpulled real fast.
Nobody got a chance to get itdone, up the floor or on the
(40:52):
side.
The pull-up peelers were allthat fast.
I mean they couldn't believe ithappened that quick.
So we just took the leaderoutside.
It's just ridiculous.
We're taking off that lay table.
They really respected us.
That's right, that's it.
Yeah, they did For doing that.
Yeah, and they really weren'tanti-American, they're just
(41:14):
following their policy.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
But they'd let you go then with the leader and you
just left.
Yeah, we just took the leaderalong, we took him down the
aisle and talked to him and justleft.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
We didn't even fear the fact they were going to
shoot us at this, but they'dlost the game, so to speak.
Everything was unbelievable,gosh.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, just unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Just the game.
I guess the three of you thengot out of that yeah we got out
of this and the whole American,the Philippine scouts rallied.
They saw what had happened, theycame in, they rescued, so to
speak, us.
And this happened the latterpart of the day and it was
turning dark and we just didn'twalk down the road saying, I
mean, this thing was scary,believe me, I made a little
(42:00):
light of it, but it wasn't allthat light.
And the scouts were greatsoldiers.
They were the Filipino eliteDream, beautiful war fighters,
excellent marksmen.
I think they're the finestsoldiers in the world.
For this they really were, andthey were written up as son of
(42:21):
the finest soldiers in the fireof World War II.
So they came to your rescue.
They came to our rescue and gotus into a bunk and took us
through the whole.
We went through three japaneseoccupied towns where the fanfara
river went and got out rightthrough under bridges where they
were in one.
Look see the papanga.
Uh, this would be.
(42:42):
We're up in this province.
Yeah, in Bulacan.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Van Pank.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Van Pank River comes down here someplace, doesn't it?
Yeah, we came all the way downinto the swamp areas and then we
got off the bunk about Maccabeeor Magalan, not Magalan, guagua
.
You see, guagua Boy, I can'tmake that out.
Guagua, here's Florida Blanca.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Well, that's too far east, that's too far west.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Oh, here it is.
Here it is All right.
Guagua, you've been paying ariver.
Go right to Guagua.
Right, there's a whole swampyarea.
Yeah, g-u-a, g-u-a, guagua.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
That's where we got.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
That's where we fought.
We came all the way from up inhere someplace.
Let's see.
Let's see Another one's here.
Mexico, oh, here's Huck, hereit is.
There's a mountain area.
Let's see, it's a mountain.
Where are you at Right there?
A-r-a-y-a-t.
It's a national park now, yeah,and it says Mount of Riot.
(43:44):
They call it, yeah, mount ofRiot.
And then there's there's a fuckD-E-C-I-A-L something.
Can't quite make that out, butI see where it is now.
That's where I caught the boatguy.
Actually, get it on the left.
Ah See, yeah, december 21st.
(44:06):
I forgot to put that on the map.
Okay, there, it is December21st.
Yeah, that's it.
So I was a little wrong on mymemory, but this would be in 40,
.
Let's see, put the year inthere.
I didn't see the year.
I guess that'd be 40, 42, Iguess December 42.
Okay, and December, oh, I guessit is.
(44:27):
It's December.
Yeah, december 1st 42, theHucks that's what that is.
I thought it says decal, butit's December 1st 42,.
Around up to Mount Arrowhead.
Yeah, right, that's it.
Okay, so that's in 42.
That dates that particularincident.
Boy, is that ever scary?
Speaker 2 (44:46):
That's as frightening as Well.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
you see how far we escaped, turned back over here
to the mountains.
We had to clear out this wholelowland area, my goodness, and
get back to known quantity, justnorth of Botanic Inn.
See, does that show that we gotback in there, that piece of
tape over which we had thisright here you seeing this
Uh-huh, which is unfortunate.
We photocopied that, but on theoriginal it showed we came over
(45:11):
here, bahrain.
Let's see what's the name of it.
I can't quite remember thelittle owl, denalupian, that's
it right.
You see where Denalupian is,the northern part of Bataan.
Oh, yes, I see it now.
Den of Lupin, right Now.
Den of Lupin was controlled byUSAFI guerrilla forces under the
Captain Boone descended ofDaniel Boone.
(45:34):
You don't recall his first namethough, do you Jug?
Captain John Boone?
That's not too far.
He was a private.
He made himself a captain.
Yeah, he refused to go toofficers, candidates, any of
that.
He didn't want to be a private,he wanted to be a corporal.
He told me he was too mean tobe anything but a private.
That's what he told everybody.
(45:56):
He was a handsome, stocky guyand he was independent.
He was in the 31st Infantry andhe was tough people and he
could handle any kind of fire.
He was amazing yeah he was outthere in the jungles.
Was he operating independently?
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Yeah independently.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
And then you went up.
But he had an American novelIndia with him, named Gardner,
and Gardner was about boom, wasabout six foot, weighed about
175 pounds.
Gardner was about 6'2", weighedabout 260, or 2450.
Oh, he was not only tough, hemeant it, and when he picked up
(46:38):
a Browning automatic rifle itlooked like he was holding a
tooth kick.
Whoa, imposing physically.
And he got drunk every time hecould.
He drank his sake and all kindsof junk that they made in the
jungle and of course noAmericans drank anything because
it was too dangerous to beintoxicated or even to be
(47:00):
inebriated in any way.
So none of them ever drankanything that had any sense at
all, except Boone and Gardner,and nobody dared go in their
area.
Isn't that amazing, bo?
Those guys sound like theyshould make a movie about stuff.
They're like that, sound likethe odd couple.
They were unreal.
Oh boy, I didn't want to givethem an argument.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Don't want to argue with those guys, they're Boone.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
No, I am.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
They lived through it too.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
And they survived the war.
Yeah, I can see why now,because they just weren't taking
a guff of anybody.
That's incredible.
There were some of those, ohboy.
So this would be when you'relinked up with Gardner and Boone
.
This is in 40, this would be in43.
February, February.
Well, the Japanese heard of it.
See, they were following us.
As a result of all that stir wemade, they rallied.
(47:48):
We had a price on our head andmoney didn't mean anything.
They were printing the room.
So if you say 10,000 pesos,that'd be $5,000 in American
money, but it didn't meananything.
But some Americans were soldout by Pygmies on the West Coast
and by Filipinos who wanted themoney, and so it became
(48:09):
somewhat of a problem.
So we became the target.
Now, we became a target,believe it or not, because the
rumor was that we had got off asubmarine to come into Manila
Bay, got off a submarine to comeinto Manila Bay, and we were
representing the Americanreturning forces.
(48:30):
And not only that, but theJapanese were out to get us and
anybody that was helping us.
They would all be massacred.
And they rallied 300 troops,300, that's a lot of troops to
come after you.
This is Filipino.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
This is.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Japanese.
Oh, japanese troops 300.
And you don't know how therumor got started, but you wish
they hadn't started it.
Oh sure, I changed my nameafter that.
Oh, you did.
Oh yeah, I wouldn't blame you,I changed my name.
I didn't let everybody call mename after that.
Oh, you did.
Oh, yeah, I wouldn't blame you,I changed my name.
I didn't let everybody call meConnor after that.
I was Sam White, sam White,uncle Sam the White man, and I
(49:18):
was wearing and my uniform woreout, so I would.
Of course, I fortunately hadsmall feet so I could wear the
Filipino.
Filipinos have bought a lot ofarmy shoes, so I always had army
shoes all during the war.
Partially, yeah, that's right,I started wearing my filipino
khakis and and because everybodywas sephora and straw hats and
(49:41):
all because I lost my, so youreally went native.
Then after that well, what time?
Uh, when did you start linkingup with the Pygmy Negritos and
organize him as a guerrilla band?
That's an interesting story too.
Well, I didn't do that for awhile.
What happened was this groupwas after us on February 22nd.
I remember that because it wasWashington's birthday February
(50:03):
22nd.
They rallied in Dunlupia and I'mbeginning to remember some of
these things that I forgot allabout.
It's been so long.
But they came in there and theydecided they were going to wipe
out, in other words, the wordGardner, boone, gervais, connor
(50:24):
and Fawcett's kid Now Fawcett,and Fawcett's camp, now Fawcett.
Bill Fawcett was an Americanthat married a Filipino and had
about 10 children, and some ofhis, several of his children,
live in Texas right now.
They're about my age.
He took in all the Americansthat escaped at one time, went
through Fawcett's camp.
They got to Fawcett's camp,which was up the mountains
behind the Olympian, north ofBoone, about four or five miles
(50:46):
north of Boone's sphere ofinfluence, and Boone was kind of
the perimeter of protection forFossett's camp.
Boone's a word in it,incredible story.
Well, anyway, bill Fossett andhis family were up there with a
bunch of Americans that werehangers-on.
In other words, everybody's notgoing to fight the war, you
know, especially when it's kindof like a mismiss, uh-huh, takes
(51:11):
some dummy life.
We need to try to find anadventure.
But anyway, here comes 300Japanese making this raid on the
early morning of February 22nd.
They always hit you around,dolan.
George Washington put the wholeway out telling.
They always hit you around.
Dolan George Woffman perked allthe way out, I'll tell you.
(51:33):
They tore that place all topieces and Gardner and I
happened to be sleeping in thesame shack because I was
fascinated with this guy and hewas sitting there and he was
getting drunk, but I lookedforward to him, asking him
questions.
I was very careful about what Italked about.
I might have been fast with agun, but I didn't know how fast
he was, but this guy was.
As I looked at him he was.
(51:53):
I was like the Louisvilletaking on the Nimitz.
You know they were way.
I was going to get throughGardner.
I couldn't kill him with a .45,in my opinion, and I didn't
want to anyway, but he was.
He became hostile when he drank.
By the way, we were up half thenight.
We hadn't been asleep verylong.
(52:13):
The firing up fortunatelystarted in Fossett's camp.
They hit the camp, which was alittle ways away from where we
were, which was a little awayfrom where Boone was, and boy,
everything broke in.
All fell, broke in andeverybody scrambled.
Gardner came out of that place.
(52:34):
He took the wall outpractically, and I went out with
him and we scrambled into thejungle and they just tore that
place all to pieces.
They killed probably eight orten Americans and killed a bunch
of Filipinos.
Frank and I got out of there.
This was Frank Gavay, frankGavay, frank Gavay.
Yeah, how do you spell his name?
(52:54):
G-y-o-b-a-y.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
It's.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
Hungarian Kandori yeah, g-o-v-a-y, but it's Gavay,
okay.
And so Frank and I went northand we decided to try to get up
to a west area in here.
My thought was that if we didthat, we'd have to get up here,
we'd have to raise, yeah,unfortunately we didn't do that.
(53:21):
So that's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to get up Right, sothat's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to do that.
So we got up this far and aboutthe midway point to be based on
the Florence-Woodsville-Griddleheadquarters Well, that's later
.
Well, that's later, okay, we'renot been here.
Say, wait a minute.
(53:43):
We decided we couldn't make itoff because there was too much
trouble.
We came back over and went intothe road right here which is
near along the plain, all acrossthis bridge.
That could be the.
That's probably a provincialboundary line at that point it's
a provincial boundary line.
That's also a rope through themoors.
(54:04):
Okay, it's called a pass Ican't think of the name of it
right now Along the pole.
Anyway, that's a real ruggedthing through there, and we
ambushed a bunch of Japanese inthere a couple of times.
But got over into Maroon.
I thought if we can get down tohere, there isn't anybody ever
going to be in there.
So that's what we did, andthat's when my first coupling up
(54:27):
with the Negritos how do youspell that, moron?
M-o-r-o-n?
M-o-r-o-n?
It's down here, see, you see itthere January 43?
.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
January 43.
Oh, I see it now.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
If you were going to pick a place on a map, wouldn't
you think that'd be about themost desolate uninhabited place
in the world?
There's no road leading inthere, right, there's nothing
there, see.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
It's on the China.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
Sea and no road Right Now.
If you figured you want to get,you've been in all these raids
and you've gone under thesebridges, you've been fired at,
you've been blown out, you'vebeen raided out, you've been
sentenced to death by the hooksand you got out of that mess.
And you've been in Vatan andyou've been up the scramble in
(55:16):
the mountains and all that andyou almost died and you buried
all these Americans withdiseases.
When you had a map, where wouldyou pick to go?
I would pick a spot by, likethat, just to get as far away
from the action as possible.
That's what I want to see Peace,peace and quiet.
There's heaven.
So I said, frank, we're goingto Maroon.
(55:36):
Well, to get to Maroon, we hadto go back across Monartip,
which is the second highestpoint in the Philippines oh yes,
is the second highest point inthe Philippines, oh yes.
And we got up into thebeautiful, fantastic top
mountains where we I for thefirst time saw these Negritos
(56:00):
stripping rattan.
How they were, you know, theywere the custom of stripping
these low pieces of rattan thatthey took down into the lowlands
and sold for salt.
It's recovered how quickly.
One with their hands and thisknife stripping this bubble into
the rattan.
Fantastic, agile and the coolof the mountain here in the
tropics, 14 degrees northlatitudes.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
Thanks for tuning in to Risk and Resolve.
See you next time.
You're listening to Risk and Resolve.
And now for your hosts, benConner and Todd Hufford.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Welcome back to another episode of the Risk and
Resolve podcast.
I'm Ben Conner, alongside myco-host, todd Hufford, and we're
about to embark on part two ofseven, talking about clay connor
, my grandfather's journeythrough world war ii.
(00:28):
Before we get jump into theairing of episode two, we wanted
to recap episode one.
There's a lot there.
There's a lot funny.
Yeah, it's funny.
As we were talking we're like,well, we can't like recap this
thing and so much that it's aslong as the first episode.
There's so much with howdetailed he was and just like
(00:51):
his vivid memory.
That really stood out to me asI listened multiple times to
episode one.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
You know we've had these tapes forever, obviously
since the early 80s.
Have you listened to it in itsentirety before?
I have not.
I haven't either, and I thinkit was because number one who's
got a tape player?
Number two I think it wasreally scratchy and we had it
kind of remastered and it soundsreally good.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
It's amazing and really a shout out to Ashlyn and
Catherine on our team for howthey remastered those episodes.
It doesn't even sound like thetapes.
They've cleaned it up so muchso and obviously there's still
some elements that it is from atape.
But man, they did such a goodjob.
But let's get into what weheard in episode one.
(01:39):
I mean it was an episode thatwas chronicling his quickly what
happened while he was growingup and then the early stages of
the war actually taught a coupleof things that were new to me.
I didn't realize that he was inIndianapolis for the first 10
years of his life.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Right that kind of settled in for me as well.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
So, anyway, he was in Indianapolis.
His father worked for theAllison Coupon Company Now
Allison Payment Systems Businessstill exists, but his dad
worked for them.
And then, when he was 10, theymoved to the East Coast and they
moved to a lot of differentplaces.
They're in Connecticut, newJersey I believe he said another
location in that first episode.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
He ratted off like three of them before he kind of
landed in that New Jersey, theEast Orange that we've kind of
always referenced.
That he lived in.
You know, I don't mean to be aspoiler here, but for those that
don't know, you know his, hisdad worked for the Allison
Coupon Company.
He did for a hot minute heexplained.
A lot of people may not realize, but your grandfather went on
to marry the daughter of thethen owner of the Allison Coupon
(02:41):
Company.
So it's kind of interesting topiece that all together.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That's right.
So then he went to Duke.
So he had three majors news tome.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
He only mentioned two of them, though.
He said economics and history,and I kept listening for the
third one.
Did you catch what the thirdone was?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I did not.
So we're gonna have to dig intothat.
But what's interesting is, youknow, he said that he had two
days vacation.
His dad gave him two daysvacation After graduation
commenced, which the irony inthat is apparently that's a
Connor tradition, because Iremember when I graduated
college, my dad he told me hey,ben, congrats, you graduated
(03:19):
college.
You have 30 days to live withme and then you are out on your
own.
So apparently there's a lotthat's more of like a family
tradition than I thought, butthat really resonated with me
that he had to get out and goand so he had several jobs.
He actually went to work atAllison Coupon Company as a
(03:40):
pressman.
He said he almost killedhimself.
He was so bad at what he wasdoing and he's bored, and he was
bored.
He said he almost killedhimself.
He was so bad at what he wasdoing and he's bored.
And he was bored.
He said he was interested inbusiness and not necessarily for
working on the line.
But there was this movement inthe United States of patriotism
and what was happening in thewar in Europe.
Obviously, with what was goingon, with Hitler invading
(04:02):
countries in Europe, there was alot of interest and it created
a lot of patriotism here andseemingly a lot of his friends,
and it was kind of the thing towant to volunteer for the
service.
You know, he said old men don'tfight wars.
That's right, and as a youngman you don't have the fear of
what can happen in war and justsome of those things.
So it's kind of interesting,just the national sentiment at
(04:24):
that point.
So as he enlisted, he then gotodd jobs as a fuller brush man.
He taught lessons at the ArthurDance Studio.
So he was still trying to figureit out and Todd, I mentioned
this to you earlier, but if youtook his experience and you
overlaid that into a Gen Zworker, we would probably say
about that Gen Z worker is man.
(04:45):
That's a failure to launch.
They don't know what they'redoing, they're struggling,
they're unsuccessful.
A bunch of gig jobs.
A bunch of gig jobs.
Driving for Uber maybe is thetranslation.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
The original gig economy.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, but that's not what we think when you look back
, right.
So that really stood out to meand really how hard we are on
Gen Z.
It really stuck in my mind.
But then really quickly he gotinto his war experience.
He went into the war as a groupcommunications officer and he
(05:20):
left for the Philippines inNovember of 1941, and it took
three weeks to get there.
So he's getting there lateNovember, early December 1941.
Right?
So the parallel is crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I mean I was.
These recordings were done inwhat?
83?
Yeah, a couple months before hepassed away.
So we know that.
So he's taught.
He doesn't sound like a weak manto me.
He has a strong command of thedates.
When he was talking about themilitary he had numbers of
troops and at first I thought ishe just making this up?
And interviewer asks him acouple of questions and he says
(05:57):
I don't know.
I don't know the answer to that.
So he was honest about what hedidn't know, which I guess
affirmed that when he did saysomething he did know it.
And I thought, oh my gosh, herewe are listening to me, a
stronger voice, and you and Iknow that he's dead in less than
six months.
But then he's also recallinghey, I'm doing this in the fall
of 1940.
(06:18):
I graduated in June of 40.
I hit Scott Airfield inBelleville, illinois, in January
of 41.
And I feel like I'm watching aslow motion car crash.
I mean we know what happens andit's like you're on a boat to
the Philippines.
No, don't do that.
I mean unbelievable.
And he also was there a lotshorter than I realized.
(06:39):
I thought he might have beenthere maybe six months before
everything kind of broke loose,but it was weeks weeks so, on
that note, landed in thephilippines and weeks later,
pearl harbor was attacked.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Something that stood out to me that I didn't realize
is pearl harbor and manila wereattacked within hours.
Yes, so that was actually acoordinated attack, which is
interesting to me, obviouslysomething that's not really
talked about, but it was withinhours.
Obviously, when you look atdates of when things happen, it
doesn't appear to be hoursbecause of the international
(07:14):
dateline, but literally withinsix hours of Pearl Harbor being
attacked, manila was attacked,being attacked, manila was
attacked.
And they also asked like hey,wasn't there like some
communication around?
Hey, japanese are acting funny,you know this, that or the
other?
And he was emphatically said no, like this was a total surprise
, you know.
I think the skeptic in me saidhe also talked about airplanes
(07:38):
went to australia because theydidn't have coolant and it's
kind of like okay, is that, likeI know, very?
strange, strange.
So a couple of things that Ihave as notes and we can't drone
on for too long.
But when he was asked if he hadadequate training for when the
Japanese attacked, he bellylaughed Like that's absurd, like
(07:59):
not even in the slightest.
So he just mentioned groupcommunications officers.
When they describe what acommunications officer does, we
think in modern times of likethis podcast and communications,
but he was talking about likepipes and equipment that made
him sound more like a plumberthan it did.
Yeah, and then a communication,but he just talked about that.
(08:22):
His strength was really in thepeople skills business and that
really got him through hisprobably like imposter syndrome
early on as a groupcommunications officer.
And as he continued, hedescribed that I was best at
being a scavenger.
Yeah, he knew how to get food,he knew how to get things done
(08:43):
and he maybe wasn't mechanicallyinclined but he could just
figure things out.
He also mentioned that he neverfired a gun before he arrived
at Bataan.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And never camped out.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And he never camped out.
That's how it actually ends.
It's hard to hear, but that'show it ends.
But there's just someinteresting things that he said
that I wanted to highlight.
He said in know, I wanted tohighlight is you know?
He said in war, I don't thinkyou can steal anything.
So, just talking about thatsurvival instinct, yeah, the
rules are all off.
Yeah, he said a million, amillion of the enemy shows up.
(09:15):
You're not working, you'resurviving.
So it's interesting how thatclearly transitioned when they
were invaded.
They talked about hope and andhis comment was obviously he
talked about scripture, but hesaid every day is hope, talked
about his mental, just alludedto his mental toughness.
He mentioned hearing thatPresident Roosevelt got on the
radio and talked about people inthe Philippines were expendable
(09:37):
, expendable, yep Wild.
And what's interesting isthey're like well, is that
propaganda?
Was that like a smokescreen?
And he's like.
I kind of just took it as it is.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Something on that front if you don't know your
history.
At that time, the Philippineswas a whole lot more like Puerto
Rico is today almost like aprotectorate.
It was very much Americaninfluenced and so to have the
Japanese coordinate attack itwas basically them attacking two
American soils.
Even though it was Philippineat the time, it was very much
(10:09):
aligned with America.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, it's almost like attacking America without
not totally attacking directlyAmerica.
Right, it's kind of off.
Another thing that he said thatstood out to me about survival
is he says you took the bull bythe horns and determined to
survive.
And if you're determined tosurvive, you're going to use
every feasible known tact,technique and available method
(10:34):
to do just that survive.
And that's what we did for fourmonths, and that was talking
about before he got into thejungles.
It was just this survivalmentality.
He got into the jungles, it wasjust this survival mentality.
And that four months was reallyfrom when they invaded to when
they really broke through anddecisions had to be made.
So you know his escape.
(10:54):
He used a specific date of whatthat was, which was April 9th
1942.
So between when it was invadedto April, 9th that's when that
occurred and he really kind oftalked through like I remember
the individual over the radiosaying the Japanese broke
through and were killingeveryone on their way through
the South and I thought it wasreally interesting that he
(11:17):
really talked about the Japaneseculture from his opinion of how
they viewed war and honor andthat sort of thing and he goes.
We didn't know that Japanesethought anyone who surrendered
was a coward and should be dealtwith harshly, killed and
punished and the idea was, ifyou were surrendered in numbers
(11:38):
you would be safe.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
They talked about the failure of knowing the culture
that you're dealing with and youknow how to communicate, and
just really fascinating.
But he ended that episode withthe escape taking place on April
9th 1942.
And that's where we're headedinto in episode two.
Todd, before we dive intoepisode two, anything else that
(12:04):
stood out to you?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Just to remind all the listeners that it was
estimated to be 30,000 US troops, 90,000 Filipino troops I'm
sorry, 70,000 Philippine troops.
That takes it to close to 100with a million bearing down.
So it was 10 to one, of whichyour 10, only 30% were what we
would view as trained Americansoldiers which, based upon your
grandfather's account of histraining, wasn't very that
(12:27):
strong of training.
I'm just amazed by after he'srecording this 40 years after it
happens, his mastery of thedetails.
That's a gift and I thinkeverybody as they listen to this
should think about what's thebest way for them to document
their story so their kids, theirgrandkids and great grandkids
can benefit from it.
Because, man, these tapes havebeen sitting on the shelf for a
(12:50):
long time and a handful of yourfamily's known and listen to
them.
But I just know a lot of peopleare going to be moved by just
his words, just his voice.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Absolutely Well, everyone enjoy episode two.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
The Japanese had a chance to embed themselves into
the society.
There's no question about that.
The Filipinos were alreadypro-American in the beginning.
They were fighting on our sideto begin with.
But the Japanese homerized theFilipinos absolutely and totally
(13:24):
and only perhaps 5% of theFilipinos who were
preconditioned prior to WorldWar II and educated in Japan and
prepared for World War II, andthat helped them store parts of
artillery pieces and whatnot inmountain areas.
(13:44):
So when Japanese landed, theyhelped them, assemble them and
showed them where they were.
So these 5%, I'd say, when theywere brought to be a part of
the surrounding areas of theprison camps when the Americans
were killed, they were calledthe GANAP.
It was a party called the GANAP.
How's that spelled?
G-a-n-a-p, something like that.
(14:06):
G-A-N-A-P, something like thatG-A-N-A-P, g-a-n-a-p, I think
it's N-A-P, n-a-p is Nippon,pro-nippon, pro-japanese,
something like that.
Anyway, those 5% were wellknown and isolated out by the
pro-American Philippine.
So there weren't any difficulty.
(14:28):
Difficulty in reallyidentifying who those people
were.
They might have gotten new.
The problem that developed asthe war went along was we could
not defend those who were outand out pro-American and they
were being killed as they werediscovered in helping us to wipe
(14:49):
out a whole burial or villageof people men, women and
children because they were knownto have helped us, which was a
terrible thing and obviously wedon't want to be responsible for
that kind of thing and that wasthe penalty for helping
Americans.
And that began to get aroundand the people became they had
(15:14):
no place to turn If they helpedus.
They were in a spot.
They wanted to help us.
So it became a very delicate asthey put it, delicato and
difficult thing.
So it kind of went underground.
The help went.
They didn't discuss it amongthemselves or whatever.
It wasn't that universal helpthat we had at the beginning out
(15:36):
and out.
When did this transformationapproximately take place?
Was this in 43 or 44?
I'd say 43.
1943.
Around the end of 43 was whenit really got rough.
So about halfway through the 34months you spent in the jungle,
things really got tough on youand certainly you could
(16:00):
understand why they wouldn'twant to help anymore, because
there would be a death sentencefor everybody in the village and
there was a form of genocide.
When you first got started wereyou the only American in the
group that and I really want toget back to how you actually got
escaped from the perimeter theJapanese were closing in on you.
(16:24):
At this little barrio, littleBaguio, baguio, baguio, excuse
me.
Here was a resort up in thenorth part of the blue zone
which is a well-knowninternational resort.
It's the miami or santa barbaraor, uh, pasadena.
(16:44):
You know it's a rural resort.
So this is a little bag of eggs.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
It was a jungle.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Another thing is this would be after April 9th.
Did you tell anybody in advancethat you were going to try to
make a break for it?
And did anybody try to say, butyou can't go?
And uh, how did you actually,uh, you know, manage to, uh, to
get out of that area?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
this is something really curious, as I said.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
I went to the general state and uh, told them and the
anderson, of course, was therealso.
I was telling about his plansand, too late, talked to and he
offered to take the generalstaff or any of them.
He wanted any of them to gowith him, but you got to
remember they were all in themid and that was this is 1942,
(17:41):
so I was 23 years old, born 24years old.
So the older fellas were notprone to go through the jungle.
First of all, most of them hadbeen there for a couple, three
years and had done maneuvers onBataan and knew it was heavy
jungle terrain and high cliffsand direct drops and all that
kind of thing, very, very ruggedterrain.
(18:03):
What do you think?
Yeah, you look at the GrandCanyon at times, oh, wow, so I
didn't know this rugged terrain.
You think, yeah, you look,you're looking at the grand
canyon at times, oh my, so, uh,I didn't know this.
You have to understand that allI all I was thinking I was
escaped and they said it wasfine for anybody that wanted to
go.
So I called together my groupof communication personnel that
I had gathered together from allof the Air Force units.
(18:26):
In other words.
When we turned the Air Forceunits into infantry, I was given
the order to bring all of theclassified communication
personnel into thiscommunication center in order to
establish a centercommunication for the general
(18:49):
staff that was.
My job was to get all thesepeople together.
So I'd call them all togetherand I said, well, I need the
henderson's things to getescaped through our amount to
our marvellous, which isstraight up and top and up to
mountain, which is up in here,and get all up in to northern
Bacan and then to Pampanga andfind Colonel Thorpe and McGuire,
(19:14):
captain McGuire and all thoseguys.
And Anderson's been around awhile.
He knows what he's doing, he'sflown over this area many times
and he's got a Filipino accent.
He knows what's going on and Imust have had 50 people working
today in communications.
And he's got a Filipino accent.
He knows what's going on and Imust have had 50 people working
(19:34):
in communications and we'd do alittle show and everything else.
I had a real terrific operationgoing.
We weren't living in poverty,we were probably the best unit
in the operation because I wasgetting stuff nobody else was
getting and I'd gone back intoManila before the Japanese
cleared out.
I was the last guy to leaveManila and I had truck after
(19:55):
truck after truck and I'd comeand brought him down here.
I didn't leave all the stuff Ihad.
I had tents and all kinds ofC-rations, world War I rations,
all kinds of canned rations.
We just cleared our warehouseafter warehouse in Manila for
two and a half days and so wehad Gumo in pretty good shape.
(20:16):
It was Joe, had food, butanyway, not one of those birds.
Hey, go with me Now.
This is what the other giant.
These are all the people thatare working for me, working for
you.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Most of them are a lot older than I am.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
In other words, a few younger, but they didn't have
any confidence in me as knowinganything.
That's true, you're about 23years old, 23 years old.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
What do I?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
know about the Philippines, and why would they
go with me with $30,000 and goto surrender?
And they're going to go with meand a guy they never heard of
called henderson.
And you're going to go up therein a mountain full of pythons
and and whatever, and wild boarsand, uh, savages negritos maybe
, and and the japanese, just amillion of them coming down
(21:05):
through here looking at you.
They're going to kill you.
You're nuts.
No, sir, we're not going.
You want to go, bobowski?
No, you want to go, no.
And so I went and we just tookoff straight north from that
area a little back here.
We just took exactly straightnorth.
He had a compass, I didn't.
(21:26):
And we went right up on theside of that mountain and I'm
telling you that's somethingelse.
Well, you can see from theterrain features on the map that
you have that that is extremelysteep.
It almost looks like an extinctvolcano.
I got into one area by myself,because they left me behind.
I got sick.
I climbed down about 600 feetthrough a water fall, gripping
(21:49):
both sides of a swarmy rock areaand catching wet heat.
And I've never done that in mylife before.
600 feet, 600 feet.
There is no amount of money inthe world that would give me to
do a dumb thing like that.
But there was no way.
I either did that or nothing, Idied.
And so those that, but therewas no way out.
I either did that or nothing, Idied.
(22:09):
Right, I could sit here for aweek and tell you about that
escape, going through all that.
But that's ridiculous.
I couldn't do that again.
I mean, if somebody told me Ihad to go through that, I
wouldn't have seen.
Do you think you were in goodphysical condition?
You must have been in order toget through that area,
absolutely physical condition.
You must have been in order toget through that area,
absolutely.
If I hadn't gotten malaria anddinghy fever and dysentery, that
(22:33):
would have been great.
But I got all these thingsbecause, you see, when you get
your kids down at the top of themountain, you cast you out of
the mountains.
You know why?
No water, oh, that's right.
The other letter St Will'sLawfully.
So there's no water, oh, that'sright.
The other letter rules, awfully.
So there's no water.
And especially in April, therehadn't been a rainy season yet.
(22:53):
So there's no water.
So you've got to go to the loon, you've got to get down there
and you think you're never goingto get there to get any water.
You think there isn't any waterleft in the world.
And when you get down to thewater, what you find are
hundreds of dead bodies, withscavengers of every description
(23:16):
running through the bodies andover the bodies, and every kind
of insect, by the billions,insects so massive that they
just cover your head, your face.
You can't get them off, youjust.
They're as thick as a ruleralmost, and they're just mad.
They mat themselves all overyou because they multiplied as a
(23:39):
result of all this death in thewater, in that environment, and
you go in and you're thirstyand that's what you drink.
These were dead Americans, deadAmericans before we got to this
point, and then after that theywere dead Japanese.
Outside lines Right, that's thatruin area that you mentioned on
(24:01):
this other map.
Let's see, I can find thatPilarbegak Road, pilarbegak,
pilar, bagac, how would youspell that?
I'll go from right here toanother.
You see there, pilar, and yousay Bagac.
Shouldn't we do?
What's that?
Say Bagac, what's this?
She bettained right here.
Except Pilar, pilar, that'sPilar Bagac Road, pilar Bagac
(24:24):
Road.
Okay, b-a-g-a-c Bay and we carefor a lot of BGAC.
We can just join the two wordstogether.
Well, you know, it's 14 milesnorth and south and 14 miles
east and west, and 96,000offenders, almost 30,000 were
Americans.
Well, when you're thirsty youdrink it.
Mm-hmm Makes no difference,it's the situation the insects,
(24:48):
the bodies, everything you justswore the water was.
There's no water anyplace else,and that's what?
Well, the problem is theJapanese are still running
through the area.
So, you know, you should putsome money down in, if you had
it, or you should put sometablets, if you had them, or you
should boil the water if youcan, but you're a little
(25:10):
hesitant to build a fire.
We think that's the source ofthe diseases that you've got,
basically just the contaminatedwater.
I don't know if I'm a biologist, but it sounds like a pretty
good candidate for it.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
A few days.
A few days later, I wasclimbing these jungle mountains
and so on and I had malaria.
I didn't know what malaria was.
So you were by yourself thiswhole.
No, I was by myself for fivedays.
Then I happened to meet up withanother man.
What was his name?
Do you recall?
I don't know.
I'm asking.
(25:46):
I wrote, okay, well, I'll checkit out.
I don't know.
I've got a story.
I wrote, okay, well, I'll checkthat out?
I don't know how I could forgetit at this point, but he was
later killed.
Oh Well, he was killed on theWest Coast about a year later.
Mm-hmm I don't remember whathis name was.
His name was terrible, mm-hmm.
Well, that's all right.
She.
Well, that's all right.
She got it down here in thisarticle.
It'll probably come back to youa couple hours after I leave.
(26:09):
Well, he and another Americanwere together, man, remember the
other American?
He was a very nice fellow, hisname was Mann and he was killed.
Also, how do I spell his name?
M-a-n-n?
Oh, mann, m-a-n-n.
For one night, but he lostam atthe pool at that point, I see,
(26:30):
and they had become separated.
So what can happen is and whatdid happen to this other fellow
and how I got in touch with himI came to a place on the
mountain that fell off at aboutoh, I don't know what angle that
would be about 90 degree degree, almost 90 degree, almost
straight down, probably 70, 80degree, and it was kind of shale
(26:52):
or slate.
Imagine that half way up themountain, here's this loose.
Now I had to go about 50 feetfrom this side to this side of
this shale that I built up there.
Or, if I got caught in this, Icome straight off drop and he
started to cross and made it andhe loosened it.
Shape of it to build up there.
Or, if I got caught in this, Icome straight off Drop and he
started to cross and made it andhe loosened it and I started to
(27:13):
cross and didn't make it andslid down.
This is the guy with it beforeand I got caught on the three
limb and I had to go down thecliff, which is about, as I said
, got down about 300 feet, wentout to get in this waterfall.
Well, he went on it, so he hada level of 600 feet down.
Well, I'm in a different terrainaltogether and I was to be,
alone for several days and I metup with this guy, just a random
(27:33):
kind of thing, just by accident.
You just bump into somebody.
You never saw this man thesecond man ever in your life,
probably.
In that case, just here we areout in the jungles and we got to
help each other out Boy.
So you linked up these two, Imean with this other man, then
later the other one and then theother one, so there was the
(27:54):
three of you.
Did you finally make it back towhat Anderson had been talking
about?
On four, about that rendezvous?
They were just catching up withhim.
I got up to this point calledTALA, tala, t-a-l-a, t-o-l-a,
and it's opposite Samao,s-a-m-a-l, s-a-m-a-l.
(28:16):
Right here, it's right up there.
Uh-huh, yeah, that's excellent.
The Filipinos had Tala would beright in here someplace, you
see it.
Yes, all right, I see somelittle dates down here too.
This would be.
Well, it says May 1st 42 toSeptember 15th well, 42.
(28:38):
So you're basically in thatarea during that time.
Well, that's where I was,that's where I darn near died.
Oh, I got out of them 95 cowsBased on the fevers and the
fever, the dengue fever.
Later I was determined.
I had Jonas, I was yellow,everything about me was yellow,
and I had dengue and I hadmalaria Several different.
(29:00):
You could have differentinfections.
You could have multipleinfections of malaria.
You don't just have malaria,you could have multiple
infections.
And then you one infection willhit you every other day where
you chill and fever, and thenanother one will hit you the
same day, and you're on and offdays and it's a mess.
In fact, several Americans upthere, a whole bunch of
(29:20):
Americans, were brought intothat area.
There must have been about 15of us that were picked up and
brought into that area,including me, who picked you up
to bring you in there.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Filipinos Filipinos Filipino.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
It was kind of an evacuation center.
Filipinos who had built thesetemporary houses up in Tala
where they would not live innormal times.
Up in Tala, where they wouldnot live in normal times but
went into that area because itwas away from the artillery fire
which was hitting their formerhomes and villages.
(29:56):
Down near the fishing villagesthe Americans were firing into
the Japanese.
The Japanese were firing back,so they had escaped from
southern fishing villages on ourside north into the area where
the Japanese were firing back.
So they had escaped fromsouthern fishing villages on our
side north into the area wherethe Japanese were occupied.
But they had, rather than joinup with the Japanese and get
(30:17):
involved in the Frankish, they'dgone up halfway up the side,
almost three-quarters of the wayup the side of the mountain,
and had built these temporaryareas and planted rice and were
harvesting wild bananas androots and one.
But I didn't live enough andvery skimpy, regal or sick, nice
.
So they being pro-American,when they found guys like me
(30:38):
down in the river bottom, theyknew I was going to die down
there.
They brought me up into Talaand they brought other guys up
there.
Well, several of them died.
A very hairy quarter fromWillisburg, kentucky, a very,
very, and we were together for acouple of months there.
I guess he was a very nicefellow.
And Gerald Dunlap, he was fromWisconsin.
(31:00):
He also died then.
Yeah, he also died.
And of course, the fellow thatfinally joined with me and went
through the whole war, frankGavay, was up there.
Frank's still living in Aurorathat's Aurora, illinois, right
and he just retired last year.
He was a post office a coupleof years ago.
He's had a lot of physicalproblems.
(31:21):
Well, I think about everybodythat survived.
That would probably come outwith.
This is getting ahead of thestory.
But what illness did you takeout of the war?
I mean, you finally did recoversome of your health, but Well,
I was blind for a while.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Oh, is that?
Speaker 3 (31:36):
right Because of the vitamin deficiency.
I'll tell you about that in aminute.
Oh okay, actually, I regainedmy health pretty well through
the care of a very generous andwonderful family in Tawa.
How I ever got through themultiple diseases when others
(31:57):
died I don't know.
Only God knows that, but I did.
And what did they give you toeat?
Do you recall?
Was there anything in the dietthat was different?
Primarily rice, wild boar whenthey could get it, and some fish
that they got from work.
(32:17):
I can't remember.
Down in the lowlands, which wasa low way and a small amount of
wild food when it came in season.
A little wild in the end, butit wasn't a lot because the
Japanese had poured everythingout.
Most of the trees had beenblown out with artillery, so it
(32:41):
was tough, but fortunately Iregained my health and, when I
did, decided to leave there.
What date would this be?
This would be sometime inSeptember, I suppose Late
September.
I took a head on the event.
Yeah, september looks likeabout a 15.
(33:02):
Could be Of 42.
Right.
What happened was the Hux camethrough.
Okay, now, this is a good pointto introduce the Hux.
Who were the Hux or who are theHux?
Hux, h-u-k-s is an abbreviationfor a Filipino name Hacobo no
(33:24):
Bayan Laban Sahapon, that's,army of the People against the
Japanese.
That was the Hux.
The Hux were the Army-Americanin order to establish armed
(33:51):
units of 100 men, the leader, toharass the Japanese.
But why they were not joiningThorpe and the USAFI, which is
United States Armed Forces, farEast USAFI Guerrilla Forces?
Nobody put that together.
Or was it just become part ofthe USAFI forces forces Far East
Asafi guerrilla forces?
Nobody put that together.
(34:11):
Or was one of them just becomepart of the Asafi forces?
I'm saying Asafi guerrillaforces was an established fact
because MacArthur had initiatedthe Asafi guerrilla forces under
Thorpe.
So the Asafi guerrilla forces.
I've even got orders of theAsafi guerrilla forces.
See, I was commissioned Right.
General order of BO.
I was commissioned by GeneralOrder of the BOCO Vertebrate
Board, commanding OfficerGeneral McArthur.
(34:32):
Usafiq Rural Forces has made amatch.
Well, anyway, that was a complexproblem and studying some of
the history, I began to realize,with discussing it, what had
happened, and this developedover quite a period of time.
The Chinese agrarian movement,which was known in this country
(34:54):
in the middle 30s as a communistoperation in which the
Communist Party offered tooverthrow the government of
China in order to take away theland-holding system and give the
land in partial to the peasants.
In other words, the revolutionwould give the peasants land.
(35:17):
This is nothing new.
This is the Marxian doctrine ofgetting the cooperation in
order to give the people land.
That's where the value of lifegoes.
You raise your own crops,you're your own entrepreneur.
Well, that's a philosophy.
So the Chinese agrarianmovement had moved into the
Philippines and had become anorganized group of politicians.
(35:41):
Then, when they seized theopportunity of the Japanese
occupation, organized the Hukks.
They took in Americans, becauseAmericans couldn't understand
the language, took them withthem in order to get the
Filipino support, saying theywere the same as Yusufi.
We got the Americans with us.
They got contributions, theygot food, the arms that the
(36:04):
Filipinos had picked up when theAmericans had evacuated Clark
and Nichols Field, all theseplaces, and the Filipinos come
in and took all the arms and hitthem.
They began to give them to theHuks, who were their army to
defeat their enemy, the occupiedforces of the Japanese.
Because here these people arehelping the Americans.
(36:26):
See this American with them.
Well, over a period of time, by1944, the Hucks killed off all
the Americans with them.
Oh, they did.
Yeah, because they took on theattitude that the Americans may
be coming back and they didn'twant any evidences that they
were really a political movement.
See, now the Asafi guerrillassurrendered the army,
(36:47):
surrendered their arms and laiddown their arms to the Americans
.
When the Americans reoccupiedand many of them were killed off
by the Huxlater, who didn'tsurrender their arms to the
American but went into hidingagain against from the Americans
as soon as they had theJapanese.
Well, anyway, that's a wholepolitical thing.
And I was with the Huks for awhile until, but I learned the
(37:07):
language.
Well, I was up in Tala, Ilearned two dialects, one being
Tagalog, and I began to put allthis together because I had a
semblance of knowledge relevantto Tagalog, which they were
talking and they didn't know Iunderstood it quite that well.
So I began to put together whatthey were doing, organizing the
(37:28):
Berrios as a defense forthemselves, called the Berrio
United Defense, which was a verysubtle way of putting together
a political organization wherethey're a Berrio lieutenant,
where they had the communicationthat comes down to the
lieutenant from the city wherethe Japs always said we'll vote
on raid this, we'll go.
(37:49):
Schaefer police notified theburial of the burial lieutenant,
notified the next buriallieutenant.
The hutch went down.
See, that's their form ofcommunication.
Yeah, or were they communiststhen?
Speaker 2 (37:58):
They were communists.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Oh yeah, no doubt about it.
No doubt about it.
Sure, but there were not a lotof the early people in the Hucks
.
The Filipinos themselves werenot really communist,
indoctrinated anti-Americans.
They were politicals who wantedto own land, who were really
pro-American.
That was a strange thing aboutit, oh yeah.
(38:22):
So it was kind of like thatstory of the ugly American that
came out years and years ago.
Here's a guy who's involved inthis because he was a man who
was really pro-American for thetime.
But he has to make a decision.
See, but a later date.
He has to make a decision.
That's a good point.
Yeah, so you were there withthe Hucks in, as you say, a
(38:44):
brief period of time until youcaught on to what was going on.
So this would be after 1742.
They were going to kill me oh,you found out about it right
after the war.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
I mean, I was put on trial.
They brought me in and saidthat I had actually betrayed
them to the Japanese and that Ihad escaped from prison camp.
This was in early 1944, and Ihad escaped in late 43, early 44
.
I had escaped from a prisoncamp and they'd betrayed them to
the Japanese and they were.
(39:13):
I'm telling you, it wasn't acircus.
Frank had an anchor date on hisbill which Frank of a, and
there was only two of us there,three of us in the Magala area.
I was pretty good in the .45because that practiced a lot.
They had a lot of ammunition inthe early days up in Talon they
(39:36):
had all the ammunition they hadby one.
I kept practicing faster on allthis kind of stuff.
I was a real adventurer.
I was wider and I got reallygood with this thing, vick, and,
as I said, I didn't have amechanical aptitude, but I was a
pretty good athlete For alittle man.
I was a pretty fast runner anda good, no broken heel type
(40:00):
runner.
I just wasn't big and so I wasagile, very agile, very quick,
and so I became very agile.
Well, that's where he found it,and so we were just moving and
I dropped the draft on this guy.
I was going to blow his headoff.
I really was, but I wasn'tangry with him, but I was upset,
(40:22):
terribly upset, to think thatthey were putting us in that
kind of a situation.
Well, he knew he'd had it.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
This was the Huck leader that was going to charge
us against the 101 win there.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Three of us, three of you, three Gosh.
So Frank went outside and hehad a haggard and he opened up
his hand and he said I'm goingto put the damn thing, stay in
there with him.
They say it On the outside, noton the inside.
With my gun, this guy, I justpulled real fast.
Nobody got a chance to get itdone, up the floor or on the
(40:52):
side.
The pull-up peelers were allthat fast.
I mean they couldn't believe ithappened that quick.
So we just took the leaderoutside.
It's just ridiculous.
We're taking off that lay table.
They really respected us.
That's right, that's it.
Yeah, they did For doing that.
Yeah, and they really weren'tanti-American, they're just
(41:14):
following their policy.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
But they'd let you go then with the leader and you
just left.
Yeah, we just took the leaderalong, we took him down the
aisle and talked to him and justleft.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
We didn't even fear the fact they were going to
shoot us at this, but they'dlost the game, so to speak.
Everything was unbelievable,gosh.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, just unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Just the game.
I guess the three of you thengot out of that yeah we got out
of this and the whole American,the Philippine scouts rallied.
They saw what had happened, theycame in, they rescued, so to
speak, us.
And this happened the latterpart of the day and it was
turning dark and we just didn'twalk down the road saying, I
mean, this thing was scary,believe me, I made a little
(42:00):
light of it, but it wasn't allthat light.
And the scouts were greatsoldiers.
They were the Filipino eliteDream, beautiful war fighters,
excellent marksmen.
I think they're the finestsoldiers in the world.
For this they really were, andthey were written up as son of
(42:21):
the finest soldiers in the fireof World War II.
So they came to your rescue.
They came to our rescue and gotus into a bunk and took us
through the whole.
We went through three japaneseoccupied towns where the fanfara
river went and got out rightthrough under bridges where they
were in one.
Look see the papanga.
Uh, this would be.
(42:42):
We're up in this province.
Yeah, in Bulacan.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Van Pank.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Van Pank River comes down here someplace, doesn't it?
Yeah, we came all the way downinto the swamp areas and then we
got off the bunk about Maccabeeor Magalan, not Magalan, guagua
.
You see, guagua Boy, I can'tmake that out.
Guagua, here's Florida Blanca.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Well, that's too far east, that's too far west.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Oh, here it is.
Here it is All right.
Guagua, you've been paying ariver.
Go right to Guagua.
Right, there's a whole swampyarea.
Yeah, g-u-a, g-u-a, guagua.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
That's where we got.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
That's where we fought.
We came all the way from up inhere someplace.
Let's see.
Let's see Another one's here.
Mexico, oh, here's Huck, hereit is.
There's a mountain area.
Let's see, it's a mountain.
Where are you at Right there?
A-r-a-y-a-t.
It's a national park now, yeah,and it says Mount of Riot.
(43:44):
They call it, yeah, mount ofRiot.
And then there's there's a fuckD-E-C-I-A-L something.
Can't quite make that out, butI see where it is now.
That's where I caught the boatguy.
Actually, get it on the left.
Ah See, yeah, december 21st.
(44:06):
I forgot to put that on the map.
Okay, there, it is December21st.
Yeah, that's it.
So I was a little wrong on mymemory, but this would be in 40,
.
Let's see, put the year inthere.
I didn't see the year.
I guess that'd be 40, 42, Iguess December 42.
Okay, and December, oh, I guessit is.
(44:27):
It's December.
Yeah, december 1st 42, theHucks that's what that is.
I thought it says decal, butit's December 1st 42,.
Around up to Mount Arrowhead.
Yeah, right, that's it.
Okay, so that's in 42.
That dates that particularincident.
Boy, is that ever scary?
Speaker 2 (44:46):
That's as frightening as Well.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
you see how far we escaped, turned back over here
to the mountains.
We had to clear out this wholelowland area, my goodness, and
get back to known quantity, justnorth of Botanic Inn.
See, does that show that we gotback in there, that piece of
tape over which we had thisright here you seeing this
Uh-huh, which is unfortunate.
We photocopied that, but on theoriginal it showed we came over
(45:11):
here, bahrain.
Let's see what's the name of it.
I can't quite remember thelittle owl, denalupian, that's
it right.
You see where Denalupian is,the northern part of Bataan.
Oh, yes, I see it now.
Den of Lupin, right Now.
Den of Lupin was controlled byUSAFI guerrilla forces under the
Captain Boone descended ofDaniel Boone.
(45:34):
You don't recall his first namethough, do you Jug?
Captain John Boone?
That's not too far.
He was a private.
He made himself a captain.
Yeah, he refused to go toofficers, candidates, any of
that.
He didn't want to be a private,he wanted to be a corporal.
He told me he was too mean tobe anything but a private.
That's what he told everybody.
(45:56):
He was a handsome, stocky guyand he was independent.
He was in the 31st Infantry andhe was tough people and he
could handle any kind of fire.
He was amazing yeah he was outthere in the jungles.
Was he operating independently?
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Yeah independently.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
And then you went up.
But he had an American novelIndia with him, named Gardner,
and Gardner was about boom, wasabout six foot, weighed about
175 pounds.
Gardner was about 6'2", weighedabout 260, or 2450.
Oh, he was not only tough, hemeant it, and when he picked up
(46:38):
a Browning automatic rifle itlooked like he was holding a
tooth kick.
Whoa, imposing physically.
And he got drunk every time hecould.
He drank his sake and all kindsof junk that they made in the
jungle and of course noAmericans drank anything because
it was too dangerous to beintoxicated or even to be
(47:00):
inebriated in any way.
So none of them ever drankanything that had any sense at
all, except Boone and Gardner,and nobody dared go in their
area.
Isn't that amazing, bo?
Those guys sound like theyshould make a movie about stuff.
They're like that, sound likethe odd couple.
They were unreal.
Oh boy, I didn't want to givethem an argument.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Don't want to argue with those guys, they're Boone.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
No, I am.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
They lived through it too.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
And they survived the war.
Yeah, I can see why now,because they just weren't taking
a guff of anybody.
That's incredible.
There were some of those, ohboy.
So this would be when you'relinked up with Gardner and Boone
.
This is in 40, this would be in43.
February, February.
Well, the Japanese heard of it.
See, they were following us.
As a result of all that stir wemade, they rallied.
(47:48):
We had a price on our head andmoney didn't mean anything.
They were printing the room.
So if you say 10,000 pesos,that'd be $5,000 in American
money, but it didn't meananything.
But some Americans were soldout by Pygmies on the West Coast
and by Filipinos who wanted themoney, and so it became
(48:09):
somewhat of a problem.
So we became the target.
Now, we became a target,believe it or not, because the
rumor was that we had got off asubmarine to come into Manila
Bay, got off a submarine to comeinto Manila Bay, and we were
representing the Americanreturning forces.
(48:30):
And not only that, but theJapanese were out to get us and
anybody that was helping us.
They would all be massacred.
And they rallied 300 troops,300, that's a lot of troops to
come after you.
This is Filipino.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
This is.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Japanese.
Oh, japanese troops 300.
And you don't know how therumor got started, but you wish
they hadn't started it.
Oh sure, I changed my nameafter that.
Oh, you did.
Oh yeah, I wouldn't blame you,I changed my name.
I didn't let everybody call mename after that.
Oh, you did.
Oh, yeah, I wouldn't blame you,I changed my name.
I didn't let everybody call meConnor after that.
I was Sam White, sam White,uncle Sam the White man, and I
(49:18):
was wearing and my uniform woreout, so I would.
Of course, I fortunately hadsmall feet so I could wear the
Filipino.
Filipinos have bought a lot ofarmy shoes, so I always had army
shoes all during the war.
Partially, yeah, that's right,I started wearing my filipino
khakis and and because everybodywas sephora and straw hats and
(49:41):
all because I lost my, so youreally went native.
Then after that well, what time?
Uh, when did you start linkingup with the Pygmy Negritos and
organize him as a guerrilla band?
That's an interesting story too.
Well, I didn't do that for awhile.
What happened was this groupwas after us on February 22nd.
I remember that because it wasWashington's birthday February
(50:03):
22nd.
They rallied in Dunlupia and I'mbeginning to remember some of
these things that I forgot allabout.
It's been so long.
But they came in there and theydecided they were going to wipe
out, in other words, the wordGardner, boone, gervais, connor
(50:24):
and Fawcett's kid Now Fawcett,and Fawcett's camp, now Fawcett.
Bill Fawcett was an Americanthat married a Filipino and had
about 10 children, and some ofhis, several of his children,
live in Texas right now.
They're about my age.
He took in all the Americansthat escaped at one time, went
through Fawcett's camp.
They got to Fawcett's camp,which was up the mountains
behind the Olympian, north ofBoone, about four or five miles
(50:46):
north of Boone's sphere ofinfluence, and Boone was kind of
the perimeter of protection forFossett's camp.
Boone's a word in it,incredible story.
Well, anyway, bill Fossett andhis family were up there with a
bunch of Americans that werehangers-on.
In other words, everybody's notgoing to fight the war, you
know, especially when it's kindof like a mismiss, uh-huh, takes
(51:11):
some dummy life.
We need to try to find anadventure.
But anyway, here comes 300Japanese making this raid on the
early morning of February 22nd.
They always hit you around,dolan.
George Washington put the wholeway out telling.
They always hit you around.
Dolan George Woffman perked allthe way out, I'll tell you.
(51:33):
They tore that place all topieces and Gardner and I
happened to be sleeping in thesame shack because I was
fascinated with this guy and hewas sitting there and he was
getting drunk, but I lookedforward to him, asking him
questions.
I was very careful about what Italked about.
I might have been fast with agun, but I didn't know how fast
he was, but this guy was.
As I looked at him he was.
(51:53):
I was like the Louisvilletaking on the Nimitz.
You know they were way.
I was going to get throughGardner.
I couldn't kill him with a .45,in my opinion, and I didn't
want to anyway, but he was.
He became hostile when he drank.
By the way, we were up half thenight.
We hadn't been asleep verylong.
(52:13):
The firing up fortunatelystarted in Fossett's camp.
They hit the camp, which was alittle ways away from where we
were, which was a little awayfrom where Boone was, and boy,
everything broke in.
All fell, broke in andeverybody scrambled.
Gardner came out of that place.
(52:34):
He took the wall outpractically, and I went out with
him and we scrambled into thejungle and they just tore that
place all to pieces.
They killed probably eight orten Americans and killed a bunch
of Filipinos.
Frank and I got out of there.
This was Frank Gavay, frankGavay, frank Gavay.
Yeah, how do you spell his name?
(52:54):
G-y-o-b-a-y.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
It's.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
Hungarian Kandori yeah, g-o-v-a-y, but it's Gavay,
okay.
And so Frank and I went northand we decided to try to get up
to a west area in here.
My thought was that if we didthat, we'd have to get up here,
we'd have to raise, yeah,unfortunately we didn't do that.
(53:21):
So that's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to get up Right, sothat's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to do that.
So we got up this far and aboutthe midway point to be based on
the Florence-Woodsville-Griddleheadquarters Well, that's later
.
Well, that's later, okay, we'renot been here.
Say, wait a minute.
(53:43):
We decided we couldn't make itoff because there was too much
trouble.
We came back over and went intothe road right here which is
near along the plain, all acrossthis bridge.
That could be the.
That's probably a provincialboundary line at that point it's
a provincial boundary line.
That's also a rope through themoors.
(54:04):
Okay, it's called a pass Ican't think of the name of it
right now Along the pole.
Anyway, that's a real ruggedthing through there, and we
ambushed a bunch of Japanese inthere a couple of times.
But got over into Maroon.
I thought if we can get down tohere, there isn't anybody ever
going to be in there.
So that's what we did, andthat's when my first coupling up
(54:27):
with the Negritos how do youspell that, moron?
M-o-r-o-n?
M-o-r-o-n?
It's down here, see, you see itthere January 43?
.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
January 43.
Oh, I see it now.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
If you were going to pick a place on a map, wouldn't
you think that'd be about themost desolate uninhabited place
in the world?
There's no road leading inthere, right, there's nothing
there, see.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
It's on the China.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
Sea and no road Right Now.
If you figured you want to get,you've been in all these raids
and you've gone under thesebridges, you've been fired at,
you've been blown out, you'vebeen raided out, you've been
sentenced to death by the hooksand you got out of that mess.
And you've been in Vatan andyou've been up the scramble in
(55:16):
the mountains and all that andyou almost died and you buried
all these Americans withdiseases.
When you had a map, where wouldyou pick to go?
I would pick a spot by, likethat, just to get as far away
from the action as possible.
That's what I want to see Peace,peace and quiet.
There's heaven.
So I said, frank, we're goingto Maroon.
(55:36):
Well, to get to Maroon, we hadto go back across Monartip,
which is the second highestpoint in the Philippines oh yes,
is the second highest point inthe Philippines, oh yes.
And we got up into thebeautiful, fantastic top
mountains where we I for thefirst time saw these Negritos
(56:00):
stripping rattan.
How they were, you know, theywere the custom of stripping
these low pieces of rattan thatthey took down into the lowlands
and sold for salt.
It's recovered how quickly.
One with their hands and thisknife stripping this bubble into
the rattan.
Fantastic, agile and the coolof the mountain here in the
tropics, 14 degrees northlatitudes.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
Thanks for tuning in to Risk and Resolve.
See you next time.
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