Fire in the Jungle

A Study of One of America's Most Successful Unconventional Warfare Campaigns

Larry S Schmidt

• Publisher: Blacksmith Publishing
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781732968127
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

December 8, 1941 brought the armed might of Japan to the Philippines as part of Japan’s effort to bring the Filipinos into the Greater East Asia Prosperity Sphere. Japan accepted the surrender of the Philippines in May, 1942. As the occupation of the Philippine nation by Japan commenced, a resistance movement was born among the defeated people. There were many guerrilla organizations operating throughout the 1, 000 mile long Philippine Archipelago. Among the many guerrilla units in the Philippines was the 10th Military District, the Mindanao guerrillas, commanded by Colonel Wendell W. Fertig. This book studies the Mindanao guerrilla organization because it was unique among the guerrilla organizations in the Philippines. Americans - military, foreign service, or civilian - may find themselves isolated unexpectedly in territory occupied by a nation at war with either the United States or a nation allied with the United States. Initially, the decision which must be made by such an individual is whether or not to surrender to the enemy, and there are many factors which will influence that decision. If the individual chooses not to surrender, than as a person non-indigenous to the occupied population, entirely unforeseen hardships may be encountered. Cunning and ingenuity coupled with strong courage and loyalty are the personal qualities which will become mandatory for survival. Beyond these personal traits, an understanding of how resistance movements grow and achieve success will be highly useful. The decision to resist is, for the people of a conquered nation, a political decision and therefore has ramifications much beyond the basic decision to survive.
The Philippine resistance movement has not been studied in any detail by American historians, yet the United States played a vital role in the organization and ultimate success of the movement. This book seeks to fill some of this void by contributing a historical study of one organization within the resistance movement - the 10th Military District on Mindanao.

Chapter One

The Commonwealth of the Philippines

“The prospects and progress of a guerrilla movement depend on the attitude of the people.” – B.H. Liddell Hart

The Filipino people have a long history of uniting against foreign incursions. In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan led a Spanish expedition to the Islands but was killed in a battle with native warriors several weeks later and his fleet departed. In 1542, the Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the islands of Leyte and Samar Felipinas in honor of the Prince Philip of Asturias who would later become the King Philip II of Spain. In time, the whole archipelago would be known as Las Islas Filipinas. The first permanent Spanish settlement was made in 1565 by General Miguel Lopez de Legazpi. The Spaniards divided the Archipelago among themselves and employed the Filipinos as tenant farmers and servants. Spanish priests also converted most of the Filipinos to Roman Catholicism. Centuries of Spanish rule brought with it the Spanish language and culture.

While the Philippines prospered economically under Spain, a growing number of Filipinos sought to rid themselves of the Spanish colonial yoke. In 1892, a Manila clerk, Andres Bonifacio, formed Katipunan, a secret revolutionary movement.¹ Despite Katipunan’s popularity, it was squashed by the Spanish colonial government. On August 19, 1896, hundreds of Filipino suspects, both innocent and guilty, were arrested and imprisoned for treason. Bonifacio and many other Filipino leaders were executed. Emilio Aguinaldo then became leader of Katipunan. To quell the nascent rebellion, Spanish colonial officials promised political reforms if Aguinaldo ended the revolt and left the Philippines.

In 1898, the United States and Spain went to war. In the aftermath, the US paid Spain $20 million for the Philippines and the Islands became an American territory. However, many Filipinos, including Emilio Aguinaldo claimed that the US had promised the Philippines independence. To precipitate matters, Aguinaldo declared the First Philippine Republic on January 23, 1899, beginning what would become known as the Philippine Insurrection (1899-1902). Aguinaldo’s troops began fighting the Americans on February 4.

While Filipino nationalists viewed the conflict as a continuation of the struggle for independence that began in 1896, the US government regarded it as an insurrection. While details of the Philippine Insurrection are beyond the scope of this study, suffice to say that the cost of the conflict in terms of human lives was 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants, and as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians who died from the ravages of war, famine, and disease. After Aguinaldo was captured by US forces in 1901, Filipino war sentiment withered and the fighting soon ended.

The US then set up a colonial government in Manila and Howard Taft, who later became the President of the United States, served as the first governor of the colony. During the period of American rule, the US introduced widespread literacy, improved public health, promoted an expanding prosperity throughout Filipino society, established free speech, increased civil liberties, and founded a representative government that drew upon a people with an increased sense of opportunity.² And as American business in the Archipelago increased, the Philippine economy became dependent on the United States. Moreover, the US began to allow Filipinos to serve in government. Then in 1935, the Philippines became a commonwealth with its own elected government and constitution, and Manuel Quezon became its first president. As the Philippines moved toward independence, the US retained authority mainly in foreign affairs as well as the defense of the Archipelago.

By the late 1930s, Japanese activities in the Far East had become sufficiently threatening to US interests. With the winds of war brewing in the Pacific, President Roosevelt recalled retired Army General Douglas MacArthur back into service, giving him command of what become the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE). The USAFFE included a strength of some 22,000 men, including 11,937 Philippine Scouts. However sizable, the fighting quality of this force was in question.

General MacArthur saw his immediate tasks as follows: First, establish his headquarters and organize his command; second, induct and train the Philippine Army; and third, secure the necessary supplies and reinforcements to bring the USAFFE to a war footing. For this incredible task, MacArthur was given $10 million to fortify the Philippines against the looming attack of Japan. Further, on July 26, 1941 a Philippine Presidential Order transferred all organized military forces of the Commonwealth into USAFFE.

Meanwhile the War Department helped MacArthur by flying him thirty-five new B-17 Flying Fortresses, which was one-third of the existing US bomber strength. It was believed that these bombers could prevent an attack on the Philippines.³ However impressive these bombers were, the large Filipino force which made up the bulk of MacArthur’s defense was handicapped by poor training, virtually non-existent supplies, obsolete weapons and military equipment, no artillery, and inadequate leadership. As it turned out, the $10 million barely built a few training camps and induction centers.

To further compound the problem, President Quezon deemphasized the defense program during the two years preceding the Japanese invasion. Quezon naively believed that the Philippines was neither economically or military important to Japan. Thus, he hoped to steer his country on a course of neutrality in the event of war between Japan and the United States. Despite it all, optimism was high. MacArthur exuded great confidence in himself, his staff and the untried Filipino soldiers.

The American-administered Commonwealth of the Philippines also employed a host of Americans from various backgrounds. One of these was Wendell Fertig. Fertig came to the Philippines five years before the invasion during the mining boom of the 1930s with many other American engineers who had heard of great untapped gold and coal resources. Tall with an athletic build, Fertig was born in the small town of La Junta, Colorado, which in 1900 was every bit a frontier western town.

Attending the University of Colorado, majoring in chemistry, Fertig transferred to the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado to be a mining engineer. While there, he enrolled in the US Army Reserve Officer Corps. After graduating in 1924, he was commissioned a reserve lieutenant and married his wife Mary. Then, in 1936, he moved his family to the Philippines where he pursued a career as a civil engineer. His first job was an on-site supervisor of a start-up mine in the Province of Batangas, south of Manila. Later, Fertig moved to Manila to take on a consulting position. From which he made several business trips to Japan. At the time, Japan was a major importer of the minerals from the mines Fertig supervised.

As witnessed by Fertig, in the decade preceding Japan’s invasion, the Japanese had established strong economic ties with the Filipinos. The focus of this activity centered on Davao Province in Mindanao. In fact, in the period 1930 to 1939, some 19,000 Japanese immigrants came to the Philippine Islands; averaging over 2,000 a year. Eighty percent of the immigrants settled in Davao.

The Japanese immigration to the Philippines was nearly ubiquitous as they settled in nearly every province. Moreover, every town had at least one or two Japanese nationals in it.⁴ It may be conjectured that the Japanese economic penetration of Davao began in 1907. This occurred when the Ohta Development Company imported 150 Japanese laborers to work in the abaca fields. This early foothold grew into Japanese interests in shipping, fishing, lumber, and in the iron, manganese and copper mines. The immigrants established their own schools, newspapers, stores and banks. Moreover, the Japanese owned 70 percent of the hemp produced in Davao, and controlled the remainder through one means or another. All told, the Japanese investment in the Philippines was over 64 million pesos (32 million dollars), 50 million pesos of which was invested in Davao.⁵

Japanese ownership of the Philippines caught the attention of the Philippine central government, albeit slowly. To stem the Japanese investments, the Commonwealth government passed the Public Land Act of 1936 which required that at least 60 percent of the capital of any corporation dealing with the public be owned by Filipinos. The Japanese circumvented this law, and by 1939 Japanese investors owned between 142,000 and 148,000 acres of land in Davao of which only 70,000 acres were legally acquired.⁶

Further, Japanese investors circumvented the Public Land Law by establishing dummy corporations. Women from the interior tribes were purchased as wives for Japanese investors. Land was then purchased in their names, and then they were returned to the tribes in the mountains. It became a commonly held view, that once the Philippines would eventually gain independence from America, the Japanese would by that time gain political and economic control. Slowly, Japan built up a fifth column in the Philippines, employing the now familiar technique of commercial penetration.⁷ All of this would fit well into the fold of the future Japanese philosophy of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. However, because the Japanese were good citizens who brought in good business, most Filipinos weren’t really alarmed. The same could not be said for the Philippine government or the USAFFE.

With the prospects for war with Japan growing daily, and the Army needing engineers, Fertig was brought on active duty on June 1, 1941 with the rank of major. His first assignment involved overseeing the preparation and improvement of airfields throughout the archipelago. Then in July, his family left for the United States on the President Taft along with the last of the Army families.

Describing the state of the USAFFE in those days, Fertig observed the soldiers were very proficient at close order drill, but little real training was accomplished beyond that. There were no adequate ranges, and no money to build them. Training ammunition was limited to ten to twenty rounds per soldier for marksmanship and familiarization training.

Moreover, the Philippine Army simply had no supplies to issue to the soldiers. What it did have was either old or did not fit. In fact, most soldiers were barefooted and lacked clothing. That the Filipinos did not have the M-1 was no surprise, of course. At the outbreak of World War II, the US Congress had still not authorized their production in any quantity for US forces which were soon to be in combat with the Germans and Japanese.

The basic infantry weapon was the old Enfield rifle which had defective extractors and a stock which was too long for most Filipino soldiers. As for machineguns, the .50 calibers were obsolete and lacked necessary water-cooling devices. The .30 caliber machineguns were unserviceable, and there were no replacement parts for them or any of the other weapons. Moreover, there were no anti-tank guns, hand grenades, gas masks or steel helmets, and the signal equipment did not work.

The peaceful archipelago would soon be the stage on which one of the world’s greatest dramas would play out. And the USAFFE would have a front row seat.

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¹ The word Katipunan literally means “association,” and was short hand for Kataas-taasan, Kagalang-galangan, Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan, which in English is “Supreme and Honorable Society of the Children of the Nation.”

² Rafael Steinberg, Return to the Philippines (New York: Time Life, 1980), 25.

³ John D. Lukacs, Escape from Davao: The Forgotten Story of the Most Daring Prison Break of the Pacific War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 11.

⁴ In fact, with some 29,000 Japanese in the islands, 64 percent (18,733) were living on Mindanao, and approximately 95 percent of those on Mindanao lived in Davao Province (17,888 residents).

⁵ Catherine Lucy Porter, Crisis in the Philippines (New York: Porter Press, 2012), 99, 102.

⁶ Teodoro A. Agoncillo, The Fateful Years: Japan's Adventure in the Philippines, 1941-1945 (Manila: University of the Philippines Press, 1965), 48-49.

⁷ A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group from within, usually in favour of an enemy group or nation. They may work in an army, political party, or industry. The activities of a fifth column may be overt or clandestine and consist of spying, sabotage an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Prolegomena
• Chronology
• The Seven Phases of the Mindanao Resistance
• Glossary of Terms
• Dramatis Personae
• Maps
• Introduction
• 1 – The Commonwealth of the Philippines
• 2 – Run to the Hills!
• 3 – Co-Prosperity Sphere
• 4 – “General” Fertig
• 5 – The Krag and the Kris
• 6 – MacArthur’s Unconventional War
• 7 – Fertig’s Fiefdom
• 8 – 10th Military District
• 9 – The Empire Strikes Back
• 10 – Kempeitai, Kalibapi and the Underground
• 11 – Beans, Bullets and Submarines
• 12 – Cargadores, Coconut Oil and Cannons
• 13 – War of the Flea
• 14 – The Jungle Telegraph
• 15 – Victor V
• 16 – Conclusion
• Appendix A: 10th Military Division Units
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author