In Our Image: The United States and the Philippines; First Interview With Claude Buss

1941 opened with not very much thought about Manila and the Philippines' tension was in Europe. But there were many people in the United States, particularly in my contact, which was the State Department, which had to think of the possibility of the spreading of the Japanese War. The war had been going on in China for a long time. The movement had taken place into Indonesia. Japanese were in Hanoi, in northern India, China. They hadn't gone down to the southern half as yet. And there was very much the feeling that if fascism and aggression thrives on its own appetite, it's going to spread. And just as sure as it would spread beyond China, go toward the South, the Philippines was in the path. There were some that thought that the Japanese might not dare to antagonize the United States.

Everybody thought that this was out of the question. And they might take on the French and Indochina and the British have need be in Hong Kong and Singapore. And the Dutch were fair game in Indonesia. But there were a lot of people that felt that this wouldn't be America's war, even in a case like that. But I think most everyone felt that there would be no way that the United States could stay out of a global war if it spread into Southeast Asia. By this time, the embarrassment of the Netherlands in Europe and of the French with regard to their Indochina quality, the embarrassment of the French and the Dutch were bound to expose the East Indies and Indochina to the Japanese. So there was a general feeling that we were going to be next we in the Philippines.

I'd just come back from Europe and I was called into the State Department one day by Dr. Stanley Hornbeck. And we talked about what might happen in East Asia. He said that it would be very nice if we got more accurate information about the Philippines. Can I just stop your second page? Let's pick it up just where you were after the elections. Here are the presidential elections of 1940. In my view, the psychology of the United States changed very much. The President Roosevelt was inaugurated in March of 1941. And after the land lease bill was passed, I felt that the American psychology was much more determined.

And a good many of the young people of my age felt that this was no longer a question of whether we would get into war. But when we would get into war and some of us who had been specializing in the events of Asia felt there was no way that we could get involved with Germany and Hitler without getting at the same time involved with Japan. And after all, we had been following events on the continent of Asia since the Muktan incident many years earlier. And we felt if the war was going to start on the mainland of Asia, there would be no way that it would not involve the Philippines. And to us, the position in the Philippines was crucial. It was our possession, it was nobody liked the word colony, but it was our colony. And we felt that we should protect the Philippines in the same way, but we would protect California or the state of New Hampshire, for example.

And it was with this spirit that when I was asked if I would go to the Philippines that I considered the appointment and accepted it and came out here. I arrived in the Philippines in January of 1941. And in the meantime I had to leave my teaching position at the University of Southern California. And I couldn't bring my family along because the State Department said very frankly that this is not a picnic that January of 1941, that this is a so far as we are concerned, a war situation. And we are going to conduct ourselves as though we are preparing for war. Our intelligence was not all that good in those days. Our intelligence in those days was not all that good.

We had Army G2, for example, for military intelligence. But in the operations of the civil affairs, the executive branch of our government, we had to depend on the political reporting of our foreign service officers. But our situation in the Philippines is unique. We were not a foreign country. This was territory of the United States. And so my job was to be executive assistant to our high commissioner. See, he was not an ambassador. He was a high commissioner. We didn't call him Governor-General any longer because ever since the commonwealth of the Philippines was established, this 10-year period between 1945 and 1945, between 1935.

You might mention his name. This period from 1935 until 1945, the United States was to be represented by a high commissioner. And the government of the Philippines would be operated by its own elected officers. At that time, the name of President Kazan and, of course, Vice President Osmania. Those two names were synonymous with the government of the Philippines in those days. My job was to be executive assistant to the high commissioner. And my particular job was relations with the Philippine government and with the Philippine people. We had a very small staff. I suppose that our senior representative was the legal advisor to the high commissioner.

Our high commissioner then was Francis Sayer, who was the son-in-law of President Wilson. He had been identified with the Philippine affairs and with the state department for many years. And he was assisted by his legal advisor and then by an economic advisor. Anybody that was familiar with the United States and the Philippines at all in those days will remember the name of Evan Hester because he had been out here for a long, long time. And then we had a military attaché, an army officer, a naval attaché and an air attaché. But all in all, I doubt if there were as many as 60 people on our whole staff in the Philippines. And so when I came out here, it took a long time to get next to my own job, what I was supposed to do.

And those months, I arrived as I told you on the 14th of January of 1941. And in those months, we had to tackle such questions as this. Is there any way that we can prevent the resources of the Philippines falling into the hands of Japan? And feeding what we've perceived to be the Japanese conquest and what they call their greater East Asia, co-prosperity sphere. And then another question was, is there any way that we can bring the resources of the Philippines to the United States and use them for possible war effort? For example, lots of ships were laden with sugar and we didn't really need sugar that much. But we needed chrome very badly.

And I recall one of the most ticklish jobs I had early on was to ask President Kazan if he would bring influence on his own people to unload ships that were already full of sugar. And then just simply fill them with chrome and send them back to the United States. And I must say one of the most enjoyable parts of the job so far as I was concerned was to watch how President Kazan operated. He responded to human situations. The guy that was supposed to ask him to unload this sugar. Sugar is pretty precious in the Philippines. We weren't sure how he would take it at all. And when Kazan was asked what he unloaded the ship or give orders to unload the ship, he just grinned and he says, will I be glad to tell Don Vicente Madrigal who owned the ship? By God he's got to do something for good public service for a change and so the order went out and that's the way things were done.

You saw a lot of case on it on those days. Oh gosh yes. One of the most difficult parts of any job in the High Commissioner was to maintain the sovereignty of the United States. And at the same time catered to the sensibilities of the Filipinos. It was one of these cases where they were free but they were not free. And President Kazan was a person who was a very practical man and very conscious of what he felt were the prerogatives of his own office.

And this very often led to difficulties between our High Commissioner who had his responsibilities as the American representative and President Kazan who had his responsibilities the President of the Philippines. And the consequence was that I was caught in the middle. And quite early in the game I warmed up to President Kazan as an individual. I liked his way of doing things, his ability to dispense with formality when the occasion called for it. And his ability to make a quick decision and to act on it. Very much a person of impulse. One time in commenting on the differences between himself and his Vice President, Asmania, he was explaining his own character. He said, when I met, watch my eyebrows dance. And he would say something and you could see those eyebrows dance up and down.

He said, I can explode. I can't hold it very long. I don't keep any records. He said, I don't know what I said what I did five minutes ago. Now he says, contrast that with the scholar in office who's my Vice President. He can tell you everything that happens. And he's so close and holding his decisions that he won't let his heart know what his own head thinks. He says, this is just the difference in the way that we work. Well, I responded to him very warmly and that's the only way to put it. And I suppose that we discussed more problems over games of bridge than in regular office hours. And more days than I like to think about then, which I love to think about now. Around four o'clock, he would call and he'd always say, Doc, he always called me Doc. I of course called him Mr. President. He would call and he'd say, well, would you like a game of bridge? And of course we did.

And our partners were his own personal friends, usually his medical doctor that he kept around him. And we'd always have a break. And during those breaks, we would discuss the problems of what's going to happen to the Philippines after independence, particularly the economic relations between the United States and the Philippines. And always wondering whether the war was going to come and whether it was going to engulf the Philippines. And if you would go through those early days of, let's say April of 1941. And the date that stands out in my mind, I think was the 27th of May. We were one day ahead out here of what it was in Washington. But this was the day that President Roosevelt gave an unlimited emergency speech. And I shall never forget the words. We were sitting around the High Commissioner's office. And the short wave came out. And President Roosevelt said that it used to be don't fire until you see the whites of your eyes.

But nowadays, if you don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes, you will never know what hit you. And I don't know how that sounded in continental United States. But to the very few of us that were out here in the Philippines, it had a very ominous ring. And then we noticed that President Kazon was a very complex person and do try to make any generality which would cover the Kazon of 24 hours a day would be misleading because he could change as fast as the Manila weather. And toward the United States, this was equally true. There were times when he felt that we were doing things which were not right in his view. And he would say very much what he thought about the United States. And on other times, he would be unstineted in his praise of what the Philippines had done for what the United States had done for the Philippines.

I don't know if you've ever heard it quoted that he wished that we had been harsher in our treatment because it would have made his fight for independence much more credible because what he wanted, he didn't have to fight for. If he could establish its regionalness for the United States, conceded it to him. Sometimes those whom he looked upon as his most bitter American enemies, he considered as his staunchest American friends. Let me illustrate by two anecdotes. Both of these are as he told them to me and some other persons might have different interpretations. I once asked him which of our officials that he admired and respected the most. And without a moment's hesitation, he said General Leonard Wood and Henry Stimpson. And he reminisced over battles that he and General Wood had.

Could I just interrupt for a second when you just give those names or you say two former governors? Okay. Two former... When you asked him who he admired most? Yes. General Wood, the former Governor-General. I'm sorry. When you asked, would you take it from when I asked... Don't remember what it said. When I asked case on who he admired most, he mentioned two former governors, American governors, General Leonard Wood. When I asked him present case on who the American officials he admired most. Without a bit of hesitation, he mentioned the names of two former American governors General, General Leonard Wood and Henry Stimpson. And everyone knew the fights that he had had with General Wood.

And yet he felt that General Wood stood for American principles and he had to stand for the Philippine side. He said when we fought, as he put it one day, he said it was a hell of a fight. He said it sent General Wood to his grave and sent me to a sanatorium. In Monrovia, that was in Southern California where he entered the sanatorium to recuperate in his health. And the other incident that he recalled was he said that Governor-General Stimpson and I used to make the air blue with our curses. But not after one o'clock, because at one o'clock it was lunchtime. And we'd take the time for lunch and then after lunch we would continue whatever it was that we would argue about. But no matter how bitter the argument, the thing that impressed me was that he felt he was doing his duty and I'm sure that our representative felt the same way. He never got along too well with our high commissioner, Mr. Sayer.

Mr. Sayer was a man of very deep principles. Very much constitutional lawyer believed in doing things exactly according to the book. And I suppose what you would call a strict constructionist. And present case on simply didn't operate that way. And then when you had a situation where you had war coming and the one person being very careful to operate within his authority as prescribed by American laws, and the other feeling that he was maybe above the law and the Philippines and could do what he felt was necessary, the limits that each man saw in their areas of operation often made for very difficult situations. Present case on was not very quick to accept the American proposition that war was on the way and wouldn't golf the Philippines.

I'm inclined to think that maybe the hope was the father of the thought. None of us knew too much about present case on Japanese connections. We knew that they existed. And we were particularly curious about relationships in Davao and the southern province of the Philippines. And the fact that it might be that even if war came, the Philippines might be able to escape. I believe that that kind of thought lingered in present case on this mind much longer than it lingered in the minds of American authorities. Let me get to it in my own way.

I think a turning point came in perhaps mid-July. And again, what went on in the Philippines must be interpreted in terms of general events and the rest of Asia. And there was a time when you remember Tojo took over the Prime Minister ship as well as the war ministry which he had occupied before. And I think this had a tremendous influence on present case on thinking. And it certainly had a tremendous influence on his expressed attitudes toward the United States. See, I use this expressed attitudes as being slightly different from what he really felt inside himself. His own attitudes had ranged all the way between what are perhaps his two best known quotes.

The one quote was on a loyalty day in the Philippines. There was a demonstration that some people had arranged and had asked present case on if he wouldn't express his loyalty or not his own personal loyalty. But the attitudes, the Filipinos toward the Americans of war would be on our side and the rest of it and the order of the day was present case on and he gave perhaps one of the most thrilling speeches that he ever gave in his life. And the line that always stays in my mind was near the close of his speech when he said and when that starry flag of the United States comes down over the Philippines we will find wrapped deep in its furls the heart of every Filipino. Now, I might not have had it exactly, but in his most romantic motion he was a tremendous romanticist about the United States.

This is the way he expressed himself and then his other quote which is well known is that I would sooner have a government which is run like hell by Filipinos than one which is run like heaven by the Americans. And so you can just take it in between those two extremes on any given day you would find that that's the way that President Case on expressed himself. The second story is the time that he said I would sooner have a government run like hell by Filipinos than one run like heaven by Americans. And on any given day his attitudes would fluctuate somewhere between those two extremes.

Let me tell you one other thing that always gave me a deep insight into President Case on. If he had two American heroes I would say that they were President Wilson and President Roosevelt. President Wilson naturally with the Jones Act and all those things that Wilson was associated with. The Jones Act was the act of the American Congress in 1916 which said that the Philippines would have independent government whenever would have independence whenever a stable government was established there in. And President Case on always had a warm feeling in his heart toward President Wilson because he associated President Wilson with that promise of his own long cherry stream which was independence for the Philippines.

What is this? It's a ship. Oh. It'll go away. I'm sorry. I could just repeat that. Did he? Did he? Did he? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He admired President Wilson because of President Wilson's association with the independence of the Philippines, the Jones Act which was the act passed by the American Congress in 1916, promising the Philippines independence whenever a stable government was established in the Philippines. President Case on always gave President Wilson the credit for that particular event.

And with President Roosevelt, Roosevelt was always very friendly toward President Case on. There were letters that Case on and Roosevelt exchanged. And whenever Case on would get a personal letter from Roosevelt, he would call me over and hand it over to him and he'd say, here, read this. And sometimes if he would read in the papers or if he had a hunch that there was something happening in the High Commissioner's office which he thought of as anti-Case on. This was his way of saying, well, you boys over there in the High Commissioner's office might think that you're diving me. But look, I've got the President of the United States behind me. And there was always this feeling that he was personally very friendly with Roosevelt. And he just had a very warm spot in his heart for President Roosevelt.

Excuse me. And you reached out and pushed about the microphone in the story. Uh-oh. So I probably need to pick that back up. Well, you could just say, you know, he always had a warm spot in his heart. But I don't think you have to go back to him anymore. Okay. Of the Americans in the Philippines at that time, we were a lot of private American citizens that were doing our daily jobs. There were people in the High Commissioner's office that were interested in political developments. We had a regular general in command of what we call the Philippine Department who was on duty with the US Armed Forces in the VAR East. We had, I think, was a 16th naval base at Caviti where Admiral Beymus was in command. But I suppose that no American in Manila in those days was any better known than General MacArthur.

He was a magistral figure in his own right as an individual. But when I arrived in the Philippines in January of 1941, his position was very controversial. As most Americans know, he had been a chief of staff of the American Army in the days of President Hoover and had been retired from his duty as the American officer. And it arrived in the Philippines to be in charge of preparing armed forces for the Philippines on such day as the Philippines should be independent and consequently he was always referred to and thought of in the Philippines as the Marshall of the Philippine Army. And it would be unfair to omit the hard feelings that very often existed between American officers on duty in the Philippines and this former number one American soldier who had been assigned to the Philippine Army.

And General MacArthur was very well aware of it and he let us know that because of his position, he was entitled to five-star rank, General Grunert had a two-star rank. And it might have been very embarrassing if on official occasions he had been invited to dinner at the High Commissioner's Office, an official dinner, formal, an informal dinner you can do, please. But when you got an official dinner, you've got to be very careful of problems of protocol. And it wasn't any arrogance on General MacArthur's part at all. He simply felt in order to avoid any embarrassment which might come. He would prefer not to be invited to official occurrences at the High Commissioner's Office because he felt it would be better for all concern.

I had the feeling that he was grossly misinterpreted and very often made the subject of remarks about town that I never felt were fair at all. My own relations with General MacArthur were I guess among the most precious memories that I have. I had written a book before I came out and I had sent him a copy of this book. And he read the thing and invited me to call and he would just discuss some of the things that I said in the book. It was called War and Diplomacy in Eastern Asia. And I had a paragraph in there which I said, mind you, this was the end of 1940 that I sent the manuscript in. And I had a paragraph in there and said it is not far fetched to imagine the Japanese army attacking the Philippines. And you can I had no idea then that I was going to come out here.

And there were plenty of people that reminded me of that paragraph and none too kindly terms because mid-summer of 1941 the weather was pleasant, life was pleasant. And people who had to think about the coming of war weren't all too popular in the Philippines but General MacArthur invited me to come and discuss the book with him. And this was the first of many occasions where nothing official at all but just as one person interested in history. Another person interested in history we would just discuss what we thought was happening, what was developing in Asia. And how someday it might react in the Philippines. The relations between General MacArthur and Mr. Sayer, I'll have to leave to the respective memoirs of the two men they've both written and they can tell you how they felt about one another. And it's very clear that the relations between General MacArthur and present-case-on had an element of strain about them.

But I do some things. OK, go ahead. July 26, 1941, was a crucial day in the history of U.S. Philippine relations. That was the day that it was announced that we were going to freeze the assets of the Japanese, that we were going to control all the exports of the Japanese in the Philippines. And that was the day that it was announced that the United States Armed Forces of the Far East would be created. The Philippines scouts taken into American service. And then General MacArthur was recalled into active American service and he became Lieutenant General permanent rank of the U.S. Army, U.S. Usofi, as we call it. And from that time on, General MacArthur was entirely a different person. I mean, he was the commander in chief of the American forces and he acted as the American commander in chief.

And there was no longer, let me tell you a little story, I'll explain exactly what I mean. Our military, Adiché, was a man named Major Marin. Major Marin lost his life very early in the fighting. But General MacArthur called Major Marin over. And Major Marin was a law graduate as well as a regular Army officer. And General MacArthur said I'm going to organize a very large army, a very large force in East Asia. And I would like you to be my judge advocate. I don't know if you would have called a judge advocate general or whatever, but whoever would have been the senior legal officer on General MacArthur's death. And General MacArthur offered that position to him. And this was a glamorous thing for a Major because he could immediately have visions maybe as much of a one star floating in his mind.

But he said I must tell you in all honesty, General MacArthur, that I have been among those that have criticized you in times. And General MacArthur said to him, have you ever criticized my soldiering? And Major Marin said why, of course not. And then General MacArthur said forget it. The offer still stands. Major Marin did not accept the offer. He wanted to get back to troops. He had been with us in the High Commissioner's Office and the whole idea of resuming his military career with the troops appeal to him. And so he went back with these troops and I say it was killed very early on. But it illustrates the position and the difference in the type of the temperament of General MacArthur, which was manifested from July 26 on. Could you just go back and say what is that to toward the danger of war was before January July 26 and how it did change afterward?

Yes. Before July 26, General MacArthur was always much more philosophical than his thought. And concerned with problems of democracy is a political system. And the future of democracy, the future of Christianity and Asian and much more generalities than any specific thing about the future of Japan and Asia, the future of the United States and Asia. And he allowed himself, if you will, the luxury of academic thinking. And no matter how much he thought in academic terms after July 26, he was the exponent of his own responsibility. I mean, there were no ifs ands or about or buts about it. He was the commander of the American forces, which were in combat against aggression and and it was his duty to command those forces. Then after July 26, did he do you think that after that he expected the war was inevitable?

I hate to be so sure about this, but I really think that he felt after July 26 that war wasn't inevitable. And he was very aware of our inadequacies in manpower and equipment and the event that war should come. I don't think that he underestimated the power of the Japanese. And I couldn't say that for all of our officials who felt that Japan was far less strong than Japan turned out to be. A good many of us were under the illusion that the Japanese had been mired down in China, weren't even able to conquer China what in the world would they ever do in the event that they would get into a war against Britain and the United States.

And a good many of us took consolation in the feeling that the Japanese would never go farther than they had gone to challenge the United States. I don't believe that General MacArthur shared those feelings at all. I think that he had a very deep respect for the power of Japan. At one time when some tanks were all floated down at one of the piers in Manila and just for the show of the thing perhaps for media purposes. I went down from the High Commissioner's office and were represented at General MacArthur's office and when these tanks were all floated there were the usual pictures and the feeling of confidence that now we got some tanks. And I can remember General MacArthur saying if these can only keep on coming until next April, that would have been until April of 1942.

I would be a lot more confident than I am right now. See the few that came he realized wonderful token but not going to be equal to what someday we would certainly need. What about your own personal views at that time? Did you think that the war was inevitable? I was so busy in preparing for a war assuming that war was going to come that if it comes was not part of our thinking. Our thinking was what are you going to do? For instance very early in the game. How are you going to keep any confidence on the part of the Filipino people? See in the event that war comes maybe Americans can go home, Filipinos can't. Then for example we started to make plans as early as July to evacuate American nationals and we put out notices from the height.

We began to put out notices of Americans go home. For example we said if you are planning to go home if hostilities occur don't wait. Go now. If you haven't got any home but Manila is your home then stay here and we will protect your home as much as we can. Just the same as if your home were in the continental United States. Then we had Admiral Bemos go to the microphone one day and maybe this would have been as early as August of 1941. He said I know he was our commanding Admiral for the 16th Naval District. I know that a good many of you have the feeling that if hostilities occur there will be a whole flotella of American ships come in here and we will put you all aboard and escort you home. He said that won't happen. He said every day which approaches closer to hostilities means that the Navy has more to do than evacuating civilians and the best chance we have of evacuating you is right now.

To me it wasn't a case of are we going to have to do this someday or aren't we going to have to but how do you go about it and do you start right now. But another thing that we were interested in you people who live in the Philippines suppose that Manila is attacked by bombing planes. What are you going to do with your children if you got a bomb proof shelter dig one we didn't have the same fear of big bombs then that we would have nowadays of course and instructions for bomb proof shelters which I suppose we got made. I suppose we got maybe from somebody in London that had told us how they had been doing it in England but we suggested that it might be a good idea to have bomb proof shelters here. Then I remember on occasions we would say pack a suitcase and don't put any more in that suitcase than you can carry yourself because your Filipino friends are going to be interested in looking after their own families.

If you think you're going to have a couple of wardrobe trunks that you can store to some safe place in the war is over and then resume your life it isn't going to be that way but take the food that you think will be essential maybe for one or two weeks. And then we did some things which never came to any definitive conclusion suppose you evacuate where you're going to go to. Well immediately Baguio is a wonderful place to go and so they all said let's evacuate to Baguio. Well then it came look how long is it going to be until those roads will be clogged and you won't get through and then somebody said how about Pox and Han and those the falls outside of Manila that's a nice place to go. And it very soon became clear that the reason going to be any evacuation them in time of a war the whole area of the Philippines is going to be a war theater and you better begin to think in terms of how are you going to take care of yourself wherever you are. And I must say for a present case on his behalf it took him some time to see what we in the High Commissioner's office had been thinking about were doing until he accepted yes this is a reasonable thing to do.

And then he plunged into all these things heart and soul ordered his own cabinet officers to back up these preparing for war plans. And you get back to the civil emergency emergency emergency administration. We had new officials of every kind coming out and he'd say make office space available for these people and and there's no way that present case on in his staff could have been more cooperative than they were from September say from September until Pearl Harbor Day. Let's go back again as you began to put out all these all this advice and counsel what kind of reaction did you get from the American community. Did people did creating people a sense of alarm and emergency or today.

Oh, I think the greatest reaction was that we were damn fools. Maybe I shouldn't say it that way. Well, I just remember a golf or some that I liked very much. There was a when I address myself to the question of how did the American community respond to all this. One really must be careful because there were many very knowledgeable people there are many people that had military experience reserve commissions and whatnot. And I think of two attorneys the Gibbs brothers and we could talk to them and we tried to get advice from the American community and constantly in touch with such people as leaders and the rotary club and whatnot. But as early as July when these commission when these warnings came about the possibility of war and we tried to make these things as public as we could without being alarmist. I must say that most of the American community thought we were damn fools for doing it.

They felt that somehow or other it just couldn't happen to us. And by that mid-summer of 1941, July of 1941 when these precautions took on a serious nature, living in Manila was fine. Already afternoon golf clubs nights at the polo club and the dances and whatnot. It was a wonderful place to be. And the only time that the officials felt like spoil sports were when you tried to direct the conversation around to look things like this are likely to be very serious. And we found some sympathetic souls that would sit down and try to plan with us. And it took a long time before we were able to win both Mr. Sair and present case on to a feeling that whatever personal differences they had, those differences had to be submerged in the interest of a common effort in what might be approaching hostilities. There were a lot of Americans who were aware of differences of opinion between the two offices and help like everything and trying to smooth over the lingering differences between those two units.

I like very much that a little bit about what life was like in the summer before the war. Could you just go back a little bit and say what was life like in Manila during that summer before the war with people going to dances and playing golf and tennis and so forth? Can you invoke a little bit of that atmosphere? When I think of the way life was lived in Manila before the war, there's no way that for persons who were comfortably situated. And particularly for Americans out here, I don't know any way that it could have been much more pleasant. And when one speaks of the good old days, very often they talk about good old days and the orient and we all remember what good old days in China and Japan were like, but it was the same in Manila. And Saturday afternoon, Aflo and Americans very frequently would go swimming at the club and sit around the club just enjoying an afternoon, tennis or bad men and if you felt like it or going out for a golf game and Saturday night always a dance or a party somewhere.

And I suppose nothing was more social event than an evening at the Army Navy Club. This Army Navy Club was the center of a great deal of social life in Manila. And either the Army Navy Club or the Polo Club was a place where Americans would gather with a great deal of joy, great deal of nostalgia. And maybe a great deal of board drinking that should have been going on, who knows. But what you think of is the life of prosperous people, this is just the way that life was. And now you see as far as the High Commissioner's Office was concerned, it was risky to interfere with this because when you would try to tell people that it isn't going to be so nice in the future, you don't like to get away from what you're enjoying and prepare for something which at best is guess work. And you know, anybody knows it's living in Asia that when you look at the United States from Asia, it's far, far away.

And when you looked at the events of war in Europe as they were unfolding at that time, there was not the feeling that it was really near in the Philippines. But that life in Manila, we felt, had to be disturbed. And then I traveled around the provinces a great deal for Americans in Cagayan, for example, down in Manila, where there was Del Monte plantations. It was, there wasn't a nicer place to go. What was called the Columbia Rope Company, which had their plantations in Davao at that time, Abacal plantations, the market was good. And prosperity was at every corner. And it was hard to anticipate difficulty when everything was nice. Then the other thing, the sugar market was good. And when you go into Negroes, where people prosper and live beautifully when the sugar market is good. And when they suffer, when the sugar market goes down, but you take those centers of provincial life. And then I suppose the other one that would have to be mentioned was up in Baguio, where the mining community was in its heyday.

But you take those centers of American life outside of Manila. And I think they reflected the same kind of optimism that there was in Manila. And I found very, in this social life of Manila, there were two other groups that must be taken into any account of what the Americans were like. And this were the educators and the missionaries, the attitudes in the public schools. And in the University of the Philippines were just great. I mean, there was lots of criticism about what colonialism is all about people objected to colonial status, a young, among the younger students. But not better. And the feeling that all this is going to be ended when 1945 comes along, then will be independent.

And the antagonisms, which often grow between colonial people and master political group, we always use the phrase, at least I did, of guardians and wards. And it's hard to talk about imperialists and colonialists and keep a pejorative sense out of it to just think of it as an academic exercise is very difficult. And among the missionaries was a great deal of concern. They would visit the office of the High Commissioner, very seldom in telling us what we ought to do, but asking what would happen to them in the provinces of the war would come and try to keep us informed of what was going on in their own bail-a-wicks. And there was an extremely good relationship between the people out in the countryside and ourselves in the High Commissioner's office.

And then I guess as the war came closer, I believe there was a warmer feeling. The confidence in the Americans was unlimited. And as we got closer and closer to hostilities, we didn't know we were getting closer to hostilities, but as I look back at it now, the dependence that there was on the Americans, I of times said to my American colleagues, we really ought to take a lot more backbone in our own actions, because what we could see in our Filipino friends, they knew that come war, they had nowhere to go except with us. And the good humor that you always find in the Philippine life and the fatalism that there is about it, that was the predominant feeling. With some, there were some who resented the relationship. I'll refer to one or two, both of whom are gone now, and they were dear friends of mine. And in spite of their attitudes, I will narrate a little story.

One of the best known columnists at the time was a fellow by the name of Dyerit, and he always had a little witty box in every morning's paper, which was called Good Morning Judge. And the barbs that he would throw at the Americans, sometimes were very poignant. But I suppose if I wanted to do a cartoon history, the United States, in the Philippines, or a columnist history, and really get it what people felt. Good Morning Judge would have to be one of the sources, and he would often make little jabs at us. And then there was a person who later became more identified with President Carino by the name of Fred Mangajas, and he wrote a morning column. And he was a very deep person, and it hurt him very deeply, that he was a second class citizen. He thought about it. He worried about it a great deal. And we did some things, which weren't just exactly smart. One of the things being discrimination against the Filipinos in the Army Navy Club, and sometimes if you would bring your guests in, and I'm not even sure we could bring Filipino guests in the Army Navy Club.

We had to be careful where we went about the feeling between Americans and Filipinos. I suppose was an individual matter much more than a social class system. For example, there were those who wanted to play golf at the Manila Country Club, where Filipinos, Americans, anybody could play. There were some that wanted to go to Wackwack Country Club, where it was primarily Filipino establishment, and we Americans would go out there, and we were very conscious of the fact that we were guests there. And look, we had some people that had their prejudices like you'll find in any community, but I never had the feeling that it was a social barrier that divides. There were individual preferences. There were some people that simply preferred to go with the American Chamber of Commerce. There were some that wanted to go with the Philippine Chamber of Commerce.

And there were some that felt that the Rotary Club was a great mixing place where you could forget all the colors of your skin. You all could be brothers together. And in my own case, my job was getting along the Filipinos, and I suppose that I associated with the Filipinos far more than I did with the influential Americans. They had their ways of taking care of their own community, but I couldn't say that there was this caste system. There were writers. It was a columnist for the Chronicle, but the name of a man by the name of Eying Sayonko. And Eying used to write very bitter criticism.

And there were those who said that it stemmed from his experiences of not being welcomed to the United States when he first immigrated into the United States. But those things were, I don't believe at the level of a national problem at that time. I'm going to talk about the Army, maybe called it a Japanese weakness. One of the things that irritated a good many Filipinos was the fact that they could not belong to the Army Navy Club. And as I said very often, the Saturday night affairs were centered in the Army Navy Club. And sometimes Filipino guests did not feel as comfortable as they might be if they were guests of someone entered there.

And I had some Filipino friends that just simply would turn down invitations to the Army Navy Club. The Filipino officials had the Columbia Club. And most of the time when there would be official affairs where the Filipinos would host both Americans and Filipinos, their affairs were very often held over at their Columbia Club, which was where everybody had the feeling, I never felt the slightest uneasy in being there. But everybody knew that this was their club and we were just among the guests there. Well, one of the first leaflets, the Japanese were aware of some of these social difficulties. And the first leaflet that they dropped and said that when we liberate you, this is the day of liberating the Filipinos. And when we liberate you, never again will you be aliens in your own land and restricted from the Army and Navy Club.

That was in the first leaflets that were dropped on that day, Pearl Harbor Day. In the High Commissioner's office, we never felt that we were neglected by Washington. We were technically a part of the Interior Department. See, in our constitutional setup, the reporting, which case? Let's not get into that if he doesn't feel it was neglected. Well, I tell you there's one thing I can say, there'll be one sentence, as civilians we did not feel neglected. The people that were responsible for the military was entirely different. They very much felt that they were neglected. What could you elaborate on that a little bit?

On which one of you shall I follow? Stanley, that's an interesting question. In the High Commissioner's office, we did not feel neglected. As a matter of fact, they were asking us to do a lot more than we could do. And we didn't need a great deal of help from them. In Mr. Ricky's office, there was a man by the name of Rupert Emerson. And Rupert had been a Harvard professor in American position in East Asia, and he was as sympathetic as any single man could be. In our responsibilities, we're something that didn't require money to enforce, it didn't require any particular equipment to do. And what we were expected to do, which was to keep the Filipinos on our side in the event of hostilities, give them the feeling that they're not going to be neglected. And I had far more arguments with Americans than I had with Filipinos.

Americans would come and say, you're not doing enough for us that you're spending too much time on Filipinos. And it was necessary to say that, look, this is not an embassy. This is a High Commissioner's office, and we are as responsible for Filipinos as we are for Americans. It was very difficult to say, because you had sympathy with these people that everything they had was wrapped up here in Manoa. And they had the prospect of losing it, and they wanted their government in the High Commissioner's office to take special care of them. And in the backs of our minds, we did take all the special care we could, but we had also the responsibility for the Filipinos. But what about the military, the American military, and its relation to Washington? Did they field in MacArthur then, and the military established from field of being neglected? I can't answer for the military establishment, because that was their responsibility.

Their chain of command went into the war department, and anybody that would talk with General Willaby when he came out later, or any of the staff members on MacArthur's command, and you knew very well that they wanted more and more and more. And I don't know if that's part of a military approach to things, but they certainly had the feeling that they were neglected. They knew what a difficult job they were going to have to stand up against the Japanese. But this was not true in the High Commissioner's office, because the feeling that we knew that we were far away from Washington, and we knew that in the orders that we had to carry out, Washington was very well aware of our dilemmas. On the eve of the war, I'm talking about two weeks before the war. Things moved very quickly, and there were not severe differences between Filipinos and ourselves.

The closer we got toward the war, the closer we became in our operations. President Kason got awfully excited at one time. He was afraid we were going to declare martial law, and he wouldn't be in on it. He called me over and was very excited, and he said, I want you to know that if you people declare martial law, and I'm not at the head of that martial law, he says, I will just embarrass you by calling out every mayor and governor in the place. There's no way of running this Philippines without me. It was a mistake that had really caused him to have this serious feeling. The commander of the British forces in Singapore and the Dutch in Indonesia had been invited to come and meet with General MacArthur. And Kason was myth that he hadn't been included in.

He said, what are you people doing? Are you planning war operations without me? And once it was cleared up, but there was no intention of carrying on without him. We were very much more careful to be sure he was clued in on everything from there on. But we had no, that was the exception. That wasn't the rule at all. And the closer we got to war, the closer the cooperation, the things that we needed, they made available. And spiritually, the Filipinos, I never met a single one that I felt was pro-Japanese as being opposed to pro-American. And no matter how many complaints any Filipino might have had against the Americans, I never met any that felt that they were looking forward to being liberated from the United States to be better treated by Japan. I didn't find any pro-Japanese on the part of these Filipinos at all.

And those Japanese that they found, those Japanese that found collaborators later, I think that was after the event. I don't think that there were quizzlings among the Philippine population at all. So to go back to this generalization, Filipinos and Americans got closer together as the war approached, do you think? I would like to say that categorically. The closer that we came to the war, the closer the cooperation between the Filipinos and the Americans. A little bit later, I heard a British colleague say the great difference between the American success in the Philippines and the British difficulties in Burma was the attitude of the local people. There were too many knives stuck in British backs, said my friend in Burma, where the knives were stuck in the Japanese backs in the Philippines.

And then later when we were comparing notes with Indonesia and some people were saying how the radio network and the submarine landings were so successful in the Philippines, not one bit of success was registered in Indonesia. And I used this only to substantiate my feeling that the closer the hostilities became, the closer the cooperation, and whether there was gorilla activity or collaborationist activity, I think was the result of necessity and opportunity and not the result of a choice on the part of the Filipino at all. Why don't you do this thing on why Filipinos like these? It is very difficult in looking back to understand why Filipinos, some Filipinos, and some Americans get along as well as they do.

And I think generally most Americans get along very well with the most Filipinos. One of my friends put it most succinctly, although he was one of the anti-American writers. In his heart he had an entirely different feeling and he said the reason I like Americans is I think that they are the people who are most likely to give me a break. And that thing registered very deeply so far as I am concerned. I can go into detailed things, the sense of humor, the Christian values, if you will, the adaptability to circumstances, the not getting down when things are going bad, the competitive spirit. You can just go through anyone who's dealt with the Philippines, can go through his own life experience and try to figure out why he's liked a given Filipino.

And these are the things that strike me in doing business with him. Of course it's just as difficult negotiating as it is in a business transaction with our own people. But another thing that I think helps us to understand one another better is our use of the common language. A lot of Filipinos are mighty good in English. And we Americans are at a disadvantage, we can't go at their thought processes as deeply as they can get it ours through this common language. We can very often explain our difficulties in a medium which they can go right along with our thought processes. Let me just ask you one follow the question. Don't we use Americans sometimes get on the wrong track by thinking that because they speak English, they also share a lot of our own values.

Because they have their own society and their own culture too. And doesn't that sometimes cause illusions on outside? It sometimes causes illusions that we do speak the same language and we can go astray in taking too much for granted. But they are willing and able to put us straight and very often they will perceive that we are being misled by our values. Maybe that we see it ourselves. How many Filipinos will say to us, the trouble with you is that you want democracy your style. And we don't think that democracy our style even ought to be the same thing as democracy your style. And if we make bad judgments and assume too much, we can correct ourselves and thinking over what's happened and make corrections. But they will help us too. And if they're angry about it, they'll call us very quickly that we're making mistaken judgments on the basis of miscommunications.

And so it doesn't mean that we're going to agree with them more. But to me at least it means that we understand our disagreements better. But anyway, these are things that appealed to me. And I think the sense of common danger at the time of the coming of the war was something that was very real. And when you come right down to a real crisis and we often tease about Filipinos wanting to avoid the crisis and whatnot. But the Philippine record at Baton or at Corrigador to use the most vivid illustrations the war. I think it was just as credible as the record of our own participants. And those of us that had dependence on Philippine people working for us to take care of our children or look out for our children when hard times were coming.

They would look out for our children just as much as they'd look out for their own children. Okay, let's take you now to the outbreak of the war. Where were you and what happened and what was in the first impact? I would say I had the feeling after the first of December that we were really in for it. It was my duty in the High Commissioner's Office to send in the weekly reports. And I kept a pretty careful record of these reports. And I threw these reports that I had written in a briefcase. And through them on the last PT boat that went from Manella to Corrigador. And a colleague of mine, Cabot Covell, had been evacuated with our government contingent.

And he was on Corrigador and he rescued these notes. He saw what they were and he delivered them to my wife in Philadelphia almost a year later when he was returned home. And what I'm saying is based largely on those notes which were recovered later. But on the night of the first, we knew that the Japanese fleet was somewhere where we didn't know where it was. We knew that extraordinary precautions had been taken in Thailand and Hong Kong and Indonesia. We knew that a third ordered to evacuate all American nationals had taken place from China on the first of December. And it didn't take very much imagination to know that trouble might very welcome. And we were also well aware of the negotiations in Washington that took place between the 20th of November.

Remember the Karusu Nomura conversations with Secretary Hall sometimes and with President Roosevelt sometimes. And we realized that the worldwide situation between the United States and Japan, between the United States and Germany was very tense. The morning of November of December 8 in Manila, that was December 7 Pearl Harbor Day. I was awakened very early in the morning by a telephone call from General Sutherland who was General MacArthur's number two. And told me to come down to the office immediately to inform the High Commissioner that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. And I went down to the office as quickly as I could get there. And I don't think I was there before Japanese planes were overhead.

I've never gone into the exact timing between the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the bombing of Manila. But I know before we were able to get our wits together about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese planes were overhead. They bombed immediately almost as if it were four corners of the checkerboard. And Camp Nichols, which is I think Camp Aguinaldo today, was in flames. And Cavidi was in flames. And the other corners were in flames. And the Japanese planes were so low that we could see the pilots. We could see pilots just waving out at almost like a cartoon where they were waving out to the people below. And there were people in our office that were sure that these were German pilots. So we still had such a good many of us still had such a low opinion of Japanese capabilities. We didn't believe that they were Japanese planes.

But the realities very quickly came into focus. And we realized that this was honest to God, war. And we didn't know how they would come into Manila. We knew very well that Japanese troops could not come into Manila. But there was the evidence of the planes, the casualties. Right away, we sent small boats over to Cavidi to bring in naval casualties from the 16th naval district. And we heard these reports of some of our submarines had been sunk and that what ships were able to get out had left. And for all intents and purposes, Manila itself became a deserted city. The troops went to Baton or to Corregador or wherever they were stationed. And the job of those who were left of us, of those of us who were left in Manila was to take care of our own casualties and then begin to thinking in terms of taking care of our Americans and taking care of the Filipinos.

When the Japanese came in, I was over in the Philippine General Hospital, a good friend of mine. But that was later, that was when the Japanese came in. And this morning, the first thing that we were asked to do, we still had telegraph. This is the morning of the bombing. Eighth December, I want to come back to this morning of eight December of 1941. And then our job, we were asked by Washington to get on the air immediately and inform them what had happened. The communications were chaotic and I suppose military communications took over all existing facilities and all that Washington wanted out of us was some kind of a message that could be put on the air as soon as possible, which would tell the American people of the psychology of those of us who were left here in Manila. And I can't remember exactly, I remember making that message kind of a wake up America, come along and help her, God knows what went into it.

But what we tried to do was to make a short message as dramatic as we possibly could and to say that, okay, we're under attack and that's that. And the message went back and then we had to get our what's together, what do you do, how do you get your own office organized, what kind of context you set up with the Philippine government, what do you do with the American community, what do you do with the Filipinos and with the American community. The first thing I did was to organize what we called an American coordinating committee and we took some of what we felt were the most respected citizens of Manila, there was a judge to wit here. Everybody liked him and well known a kind of a patriarch and I asked him to come down and tell me a dozen Filip Americans who knew what was going on and just forum what we called American coordinating committee and okay you see the problem now help us in what you think we ought to do. And then with the Filipinos I immediately went to Kazan and we got the same kind of a committee working with the Filipinos and Kazan took over and organized this civilian emergency administration as he called it and what we could do to think in terms of operating in Manila.

Was there, was there, he used this phrase, people woke up to the reality of the war, the minute the bombs dropped. Yeah. And also followed with, was there any, could you describe what a feeling was a sentence, a mood of the city, was it panic or... Right, you know, in all this chaos, there's bound to be chaos in a situation like that and most of us had never been under any kind of bombing before and it was kind of like earlier things that I had seen in China. People, some of them running north, some of them running south and it's a case of where are you going down there, where'd you come from up there, where are you going?

Oh, I'm going wherever I think it's better. And a good many of them headed for the High Commissioner's Office, that's that big park in front of the President Embassy. And we couldn't, we couldn't make up our minds whether it was better to inaugurate some kind of a security system coming in or whether to open the gates and say, look, there's no place in this city that's safer than any other place. And so far as your government is concerned, it's here, here is this park, you're welcome to come in here if you want. But we have no way of knowing whether the Japanese will strike again, where they will strike next or anything else. And then among other things, we had to intern the Japanese. Those procedures were all wired to our military people by our military authority. But our legal people were instructed to see to it that whatever the rules of warfare were, and frankly none of us knew anything about what rules of warfare were in a situation like this. But we did make as many plans as we could to intern the Japanese as quickly as we possibly could.

And we honestly did it for a dual purpose. The first one was to make sure that they weren't going to be the object of a mob attacks. And the second one, if there were any fifth columnists or anything like that, the matter of protecting for ourselves. And so very early in the game, I don't know how many days it took us, we rounded up and interned the Japanese. And I think that that was important to note, because later we were interned by them, and they had the experience of first having been interned by us. And we were fantastically optimistic. We really felt that, gosh, this is just a matter of help will coming, that it's just a matter of over the horizon. There will be an American float teller, it will be there. And all these things would be straightened out. And it was only those that we felt were the most pessimistic among us, who had the realism to say that it might be a long time to you folks get out of here. Most everyone felt that this is a short term thing, and if we just manage to survive, that will be all that's to it.

And through the weeks between December 8th and January 2, when the Japanese really came in, it was almost living hand-to-mouth. The only reality was that the Japanese were landing at other places in the Philippines. We knew that they were landing at other places in the Philippines. We knew there would be a pincer's movement, which would sooner or later close in on Manila. And the problem came, when do you say to the Filipino people, yes, Manila is going to fall? Before we get to the actual service to get those aircraft in the air? You must get the... A lot of people have asked, how come our airplanes were caught at Clark Field? And what happened that morning?

Whether they were ordered to Formosa, or whether they started up and came back, whether they were ordered to go with bombs or with cameras? Those are things that are in the military record, and I don't know about. All I know is that morning we were told that our air force in the Philippines had been destroyed. When you think of the number of pursuit ships that we had here, pursuit airplanes, you know, fightercraft, it was only handful. And I don't remember how many of those B-17s that were on the field at Clark. But the Japanese transports were not all in evidence that morning. And the matter of transporting the Japanese troops was after our air force was destroyed. And there weren't any attack bombers or there weren't any planes around that might have stopped the movement of Japanese transports. And I would say two weeks after, say we come down to the 22nd of December, say two weeks after the 8th.

One morning Major Marin came in and said, I wish I were an airplane pilot. And I wish that I had an airplane and I wish that I had bombs that I could just throw over the side of my airplane anywhere in the ocean. It's so full of Japanese transports that I couldn't miss. But the simple fact is that we didn't have anything. And the transports didn't come until after these air attacks had done whatever softening work was done that they were supposed to do. And so when they came, they just headed for different parts in the Philippines and landed without effective opposition in our own part. As the military developments occurred, it was very obvious to Americans on the spot that we were not going to be able to hold up against the Japanese.

I would say that for the first two weeks, whatever propaganda there was, vanilla tribune and vanilla bulletin, those papers were going. And the thrust of our propaganda had to be keep your chin up. And there were things help is on the way. And short way would come in from the United States, which would say be brave and help will be here. And for maybe two weeks, I think that we kind of lived on the hope that help would be coming here. But it didn't take more than two weeks to be convinced that it just simply wasn't going to happen that way. And then when these Japanese troops spilled their contingents out on the various points in the Japanese territory. And we heard bravery stories from Batan and from Corrigador, where our troops were holed in. And then we heard many bravery stories of our pilots against their pilots.

It was a half-boying tonight, I think his name was. And his exploits were printed in our papers. But the whole thrust of our propaganda was hang on that help is coming. And then there was even this famous broadcast of President Roosevelt, where the Filipinos heard him say, or at least they thought they heard him say, that we would pay you for every chicken that's lost. And this featured later in claims. But at any rate, this was it. But after a while, I would say December 20th, something like that. When we read the Japanese troops that landed, then we had to begin the plan realistically. First of all, for American internment. I mean, if we are going to lose, then what's going to happen to the American community? What's going to happen for the release of the Japanese who are now interned? And how are we going to say to the Philippine people?

We Americans will come back. That's the best that you could say. But it may be that Manoa will be conquered by an enemy. And if it is, what are you going to do? Are you going to say shoot on sight? Are you going to say keep out of sight? And our thoughts had to be geared toward how are we going to prepare Filipino people? For what might be an honest agonist defeat? And we first brought out a release in one of the daily papers that said, in the unhappy event that Manoa should be occupied, we caution you not to indulge in any foolhardy acts of what looks like bravery. Don't take a shot at anybody. And the best thing to do is to keep off the street. And Jill was just as, oh, the first thing was, how can you do this to us, you know? And you mean, have you lost your nerve or you really lost your confidence?

I mean, that's the kind of criticism it came in. Before that, you're going to say that you're now in charge of the office. Okay, on December 22, orders came from Washington that the military forces should make Manoa an open city and that Mr. Sayer should get out of Manoa. The reason being that the United States did not want any formal surrender, any transfer of power from any American to the Japanese. So there couldn't be any legal law of succession occupation. And consequently, Mr. Sayer left and I was in charge of the High Commissioner's Office. And I had no written instructions deliberately so and I was simply told to do the best I can and that was all. And Mr. Vargas, he's a name that I think we Americans should know better. We always called him George Jorge Vargas.

And he was the number two to present Kazan. And whenever Mr. Kazan was too ill to take care of anything or we had requests that required follow-up action, he was the one that had to do it. And later, he worked under the Japanese and was thought of as being a collaborator. But between the time that President Kazan left, Mr. Sayer left, the forces, the commanding of our forces left. And we were left in Manoa just to do the very best we could. And from December 22 to January 2, it was just simply playing it by ear and I haven't got any idea. From December 22 to January 2, it was a matter of preparing plans for what later turned out to be sounded to Moss where we're going to put the Americans. And how we're going to release the Japanese without having wholesale murder on our hands.

And by this time, there had been many bombings in Manoa. There were fires all over the place. And then there were conflicting councils among the Americans in Manoa. We didn't know if we were to drive our cars out, destroy our cars and try to have a... Remember what the taxi cab March was in Paris, whether we should try to stop the advance of Japanese coming in from North and South. Or whether we should just say, okay, this is it. And the Japanese take over the city and from here on, it will be up the Japanese to take care of Americans and Filipinos both. We had some particular problems in the High Commissioner's office. We wanted to make sure that we were not deserting the Filipinos. And when it was known that General MacArthur had gone, that Mr. Sayer had gone, though easy thing for everybody to do was to say the Americans had run out on us.

And therefore it was absolutely up to those of us remain here to keep as high a profile as we possibly could. We didn't have any TV in those days, but that meant that any instructions which could be given by radio. Just to let them know that there were still Americans around, I think that that was our number one thing. And then the port area was bombed. And this port area is where all the ships cargoes were unloaded, where lots of consumers goods were being stored. And I went to the radio and said, fires have destroyed a lot of these goods at the port area. But all of you get out and help yourselves. Anything that you can take, it's a lot better for you to have it than for the Japanese to have. And it was kind of like a madhouse.

And it was interesting to see how some organize themselves to take big things away. And others would take anything they could get their hands on. But at any rate, that was one thing that we had to do. And then another thing that interested us in the High Commissioner's office is what are you going to do with the American flag? We weren't going to permit anything to happen that wasn't just right. We had a legal counselor that remained behind with me and I. There were 16 of us that stayed behind while the main part of our office went away. And George Gray studied everything he could find, what to do. And several people in our compound learned how to take the flag down, the respect with which you're to burn it, and what you're to do with the ashes and so forth. And it was a great delight later when those ashes were found and restored.

But that was very much concerned to us. And then there was helping people to black out and whatnot. And then when it came to be very, we knew that Japanese were right at the outskirts. I had known that a lot of the troubles that had happened in China when troops get drunk and get out of hand, that things happen. And we went to the radio and told everybody, I said, you can party it up if you want, drink all the liquor that you want. But whatever you don't drink, destroy it, throw it away, and make very sure that any approaching soldiers don't get their hands on it. And one Chinese wholesale merchant said, I've got 250,000 cases of liquor that I brought in here expecting to make a big profit. Will the government reimburse me if I destroy this?

And we said, we have absolutely no idea if the government real burst or not. And he said, well, will you organize some volunteers to come down here and help us destroy it? Some of the guys went down and they painted targets on the wall and just take a bottle of champagne, the bottle of whiskey and break it. You couldn't throw cases in the bay, we tried throwing cases of liquor. In the bay we found that cases floated, so we had to break open the cases and destroy them one by one. And I think that was a very good thing to do. And then we destroyed the radio system in the city so that the Japanese would have to set up their own communications. And then there were engineers left behind that destroyed all, for example, the tanks of petroleum. We didn't want that gasoline to fall in the hands of Japanese. It isn't easy to blow up a petroleum tank filled with gasoline. And we had to have people there that knew how to do it.

And they did it. And the day the Japanese came in, it was almost as dark as midnight, even in midday because the fall of the city flame was just as it was. That day I was over in the Philippine General Hospital in the bombing. One of my good friends who was a secretary of the Treasury, P.O. Padrosa, had had his knee injured and we all had our blood types registered. And my blood type was the same as his and I gave him a, was giving him a transfusion. And when I came out of the hospital, I saw my first jeep load of Japanese. They didn't come marching in. They came in jeeps and they seemed to know everybody knew exactly which corner he was headed for. And some went right for Jones Bridge, some went up Paison Boulevard, some to Paragyaki. They seemed to know exactly where they were going. And in nothing flat, they had the city under control. And then the Japanese consul general came down to my office and said that we would all have to stay where we were. And he would come and tell us what was going to be done to us.

And all my Philippine staff went in one room and all us Americans went in another. The Japanese consul general came over to my office and said, I want you to assemble all your Americans in this room. Could you start that one more time? Your voice stopped very low. Okay. The Japanese consul general came to my office and said that the Americans should go in one room and the Japanese in another. And they pow out for a little while and said that after a while that all you Filipinos can go home. You said the Americans in one room and Japanese in another room? Sorry. All the Americans that... Okay. The Japanese consul general came over to my office and he said, all you Americans go in one room and all your Filipino employees go off into another room. And we will come back after a while and tell you what to do.

And our office was a mess. We had all our windows were blocked out and we had all the furniture stored up against the windows and the doors. We didn't know if we were going to be stormed or what. But we had as much protection as we felt we could get by protecting ourselves and the inside. And we were huddled in this room. The Japanese consul general came in again. And he said, all you Filipino employees go home. Our war is not against the Philippines. Our war is against the United States. And then he said, we will tell you Americans later. And I suppose it was by midnight on the night of January 2nd and 3rd that he said that he came back and said that he would take all of us Americans where he wanted to go. And my staff, they took to a place which was called the Enchausty House. And this is a house that Salvador Araneda had made available and said, if you will need a hospital for sick Americans, you can use my home as a hospital.

But they didn't want my staff to be with the Americans whom they took to Santa Tomas or to other places which they designated. And they immediately gave the story that there were no officials, American officials left, the American officials had all gone. And the Americans had been interned in Santa Tomas. I had during this time a wonderful American advisor. He was a bishop, a bishop been stead of the Episcopal Church. And he had been a bishop for many years in Tokyo and he knew a great deal about Japanese. And I ask him if he wouldn't come and live with me, we all moved in to the High Commissioner's office. We abandoned our own homes and we simply lived there as one family while all these events were taking place. And Bishop Binstead was with me all the time right by my side.

So if any Japanese came in, his Japanese was absolutely bilingual. He would be there and advise on what the response would be or make sure that the questions were understood and all the rest of us. And with his help, we prepared a plan of what would happen the American community. As I recall, it was something like 8,000 somewhere around there. And we drew up a plan of where we would send some to the American school and we would send some to Santa Tomas. And they had agreed that we could use their facilities. And we had these plans drawn up. And Bishop Binstead said, it's so much better to have a plan to present to them. Rather than let them come in and then make their own plans, they said they'll criticize it, they'll tear it apart. But at least they've got a base of operations. And this is exactly what happened. Immediately they said, well, our plan is to consider it. It's too kind to the Americans. And they said instead of putting them hither and yon, we're just simply going to put them all in Santa Tomas.

That's enough space for all of them. And they'll just simply have to make do the very best they can. But my staff was moved down to in Chowstie House. And we were all maybe two, three miles from Santa Tomas, something like that. And then the Japanese that were put in charge of Santa Tomas for a while. They came and reported to us and said, this is what conditions are like in Santa Tomas. And until the 16th of January, we were in Chowstie House and the Americans were over there in Santa Tomas. Well, we don't really need all so many percent of these things. The Japanese civilians who came with the army were, so far as they dealt with me, very educated people. And very well aware of their obligations as members of the international community.

One of the first that I dealt with was a Colonel Kadaki. He described himself as a chocolate soldier and he showed me in his pocket tag that he was not a regular army officer but was a civil employee of the army. And he had five stars on the pocket of his uniform that I never would have noticed had he not called them to my attention. And he was an MA from Cambridge University in England. And I asked him why British graduate he had been sent to the Philippines. And he said it was the policy of his government to send graduates of English schools to American territories. And the Japanese in Hong Kong were graduates of American universities because that way they felt that there would not be subtle connections between Japanese and their previous experiences might tend to compromise their devotion to duty. For a week it was almost silence he would say that I shouldn't worry about the American community.

He respected my position as being a senior in the American community and told me about, oh everybody's getting along fine, they have enough food, nobody starving. And we will do the best we can by them. There was a case where some of them tried to escape. And it was very nasty. Three of them were beat to death. They were just beaten with barbed wire. Could you say Americans, you said three of them? Oh, so just go back. There was a case where three Americans tried to escape. They were captured. They were beaten to death. And we were warned that nobody should try this again. And that if others tried to escape the punishment would be needed out to the committee that the Americans had put in charge of their own encampment. And see he reported these things to me to let me know that this was something that had to be done against Americans and to warn them that further attempts to escape should not be made.

He never said anything to me about the Philippine community. The reports were coming in of Filipinos being mistreated, stripped for a thieving and lashed telephone poles and water poured in their backs and exposed and whatnot. And he never made any mention to stories like this at all. But after a week we had guards all the time. And these guards never spoke to us. They were strictly military. And so far as we were concerned I assume that we were things. And it was only this occasional person who I'm sure was charged with civil affairs would come around and have a conversation with me in our place of internment. And then one day a whole bunch of people came in. I would say there were nine of them.

And that was very clearly a military contingent. And there was one person in the back that was in semi civilian clothes that was clearly in charge of the group. And I discovered later he was the one that was hanged for a lot of atrocities in Manila later, but he came in. And there was a junior officer with a sword drawn came into our place of internment went through all our suitcases. We didn't have very much. We were sleeping on the floor and everything. And he took his sword and slash things right and left. And among other things I only had one frame picture of my wife and children. And he took his sword and hit this thing and broke it into pieces. And I think he felt kind of sheepish for doing it. And he said military necessity. I don't know if he thought I had something hidden behind the picture was his order to destroy or whatnot. But anyway, when they left they took me along with them. And they took me over to the Lunetta hotel, which is one of the main parts of Manila.

And it was their interrogation headquarters. And they kept me there. I think it was for seven, nine days something like that and asked me all kinds of questions. And they said that I was guilty of impeding his majesty's forces. And I told him, yes, I was. That was my job. And they accused me of all kinds of things. Having knowledge of military manufacture of poison gas and knew that there were plans to torture people. And assume that these things were part of my knowledge. And they wanted me to tell him exactly what had happened. And I answered the questions as best I could. And I told him that I didn't have any knowledge of what the military was doing. And I said, you people, never tell your civilian officials what you're doing. And so it can't be surprising that I don't know what was going on.

And then all the money that was removed from Manila was removed under a letter over my signature. We had been ordered by the Treasury Department to take all negotiables to Corregador. And don't bother about counting. Just just put them in a little truck and take them down to the PT boat and take them to Corregador. And they would make whatever counting with necessary there. And we thought that all those letters were destroyed, but they weren't. And my signature was on them. And so I was told to account for them. And they wanted the most minute accounting of all the rice that there was. And we had people that had rice and warehouses and knew about the detail that I didn't know. And whenever I'd say I don't know, they'd say you're lying. And then I had as many as 14 interrogators I counted them at a given time and they'd fire questions one right after another. There was no way I could answer all the questions they asked. And each day I would go from very early in the morning until sometimes to the next morning.

And they would always go away with the statement that we shall be back in the morning. And then they would say we do not know what to do. And then they said, will you send orders or they didn't say will you? They said you send orders to Mr. Sayer and to General MacArthur on Corregador to return the gold and the things to them and no one. I said I can't send orders to them. I said I work for them. They don't work for me. And then they said, will you know that you thought that you were helping the people of vanilla by distributing rice and destroying warehouse and so forth. But really you've harmed them. And unless we get some of these things back, there's no way that we can solve the situation. And so I hope I put it as carefully as I could. But I think I said that if we American officers were in charge of the situation and it was a matter of distributing food to people that needed it, the money wouldn't get in the road. That somehow rather the material things that have to be done are things which our people would find some way of solving.

And there was some way that they put it that I don't just exactly remember that we don't know what your punishment will be, but we will come back in the morning and tell you. And so when they came back in the morning, it was interesting what I had to eat for these nine days was a bottle of ketchup and a can of asparagus each day. They had captured those things in our commissary and so to share our commissary each morning they come in with a tray. And there was a can of asparagus and a bottle of ketchup on the thing. But at any rate they came back and said they were going to let me go back with my own people. And I went back with my own people and I was with them until June and then they took me to Tokyo. And why? I don't know. They gave me correspondence and they told me I could meet with Mr. Groo who was being shipped home in the first exchange ship. And with Jerry Spiker had been in charge of our embassy in Peking and they gave me list of names of people, things that they needed and told me that I could communicate with them on the way home.

And they took me to Shanghai. They took me in a very interesting way. I went with British evacuees, one American with me, Chick Parsons whom a good many people know. And we went into Taiwan and then from Taiwan over to Shanghai where I met with Stanton and Spiker and others of our Americans in China were going back home. And then when they went back home they took me on to Tokyo and I got into Tokyo and then I was in turn there and kept there until the second exchange ship on the Gripsome at the end of 1943. Okay, what you did, because I think we put a stop that doesn't want to carry the ship here. Yeah. And some of those, what it was like to be in front of Steve?

Yeah. Okay, good. When I... When I... When we start, and Stanley's talking just wait a second until he stops talking. Thank you. I left the Philippines for a Japan and had a short experience with the Philippines in the United States. The lands were being made for rehabilitation. And also, Kazan was alive still and very ill. And I wanted to go see him and I did and I had several contacts with him in the United States after I got back. And his illness was certainly terminal. And it was very poignant talking with him and seeing his great desire to return to the Philippines. But I had the feeling that I had less of a contribution to make to the Philippines and I had to war effort other places in Asia.

And I stayed in the High Commissioner's office until March of 1944. And I left the Philippines High Commissioner's staff formally to join the Office of War Information. And I was particularly interested in whatever propaganda efforts we might have for return to the Philippines from March 1944 to our landings in Lady. There were all kinds of messages being dropped. And then from our office in San Francisco, we kept the short wave coming to the Philippines. What would be the best way to contribute to positive psychology and the part of the Filipinos until such time as MacArthur should return? And then after the return to the Philippines, General MacArthur and the OWI administration agreed that it might be useful if I would return and go on with our troops to Japan.

And so I was sent back to the Philippines in I guess early in February of 1945 to prepare for the return for the advance on into Japan. And a couple of the things that happened were a very germane to the Philippines story. When I returned, I came with a man who was well known in Philippine history, Fred Markquard, Fritz Weall, called him, who with his father had been part of the American history in the Philippines for many, many years. And he had come up through the South Pacific with General MacArthur.

And he felt that his mission had been accomplished when he got into the Philippines, the Philippines were returned so to speak. And then Fritz left the OWI assignment to General MacArthur and I was to pick it up from there. And I came out and the first thing that I was asked to do was to help prepare for whatever role the Americans could perform in the return to Japan. And probably my most vivid memories of General MacArthur were in the days that I spent in the Philippines when he was planning for return to Japan. And he would call me in on occasions where he wanted to talk about what the civilian control of news media and so forth should be on the way up. And he specifically assigned me to go to Germany, to study in Germany, how we had worked in the conquest of Germany, how we civilians attached to military troops,

had been able to keep civilians out of way of military operations, specifically what we could do with the Japanese press, what we could do with the Japanese radio and so forth, what messages to give to the Japanese people that would keep them out of the way of American operations. Well, we're getting a little ahead of the story here. Could you describe what you came back after the landing in L.A. And you went with MacArthur in Timonilla? No, no. I met him in L.A. And you came down to Manila with... No, I didn't come down to Manila with him in L.A. Military operations had already been completed.

And it was after the sack of Manila's, everybody referred to it, that he began these plans and brought us back. But you do, you were in Manila then, you didn't get to Manila? Oh, yes, sure. Could you just give us a description of what Manila looked like because you've been there before? Yeah. Just the war broke out, here you are back, some kind of description of what the city looked like. Yes. Well, when I met MacArthur on the way back, the first thing he did was to explain the way he had seen his return to Manila. And the way he saw the conquest of the Philippines, the return of the Philippines, is part of the advance into Japan. The first thing he did was to explain, just on a personal way, we weren't in headquarters and this was in no way reviewing official plans at all, but just as a conversation between him and me, he said, if I recall, or try to recall his exact words, you'll have to excuse me if I don't get them exactly right.

But when he spoke, it was so graphic that anyone speaking with him would remember at least some of the phrases. I don't want to do him any misquote at all, but it was so graphic that I'll try to tell you exactly, is it happened? And he said, well, I suppose that you want to hear about return to Manila and what happened to my MacArthur's beloved city. He said, when I came down, is the picture clear? We're sitting in a room and General MacArthur is talking just to maybe an aide in there and just to Fred Markquard and I who were sitting there, just the two of us. And we had all been part of his life in Manila before and it was a kind of a conversation. And he said, I suppose that you want to hear of my return to the city I love.

And he said, when I came back, I had two challenges. The one was to rescue Manila if I could without damage. And the other was to rescue the Americans who were in Santa Tomas. And I wanted to do both things, but I had to make a choice. Am I going to save the city of Manila first? Or am I going to rescue the Americans in Santa Tomas first? And he said, I didn't hesitate for one minute. I got to the outskirts of Manila and instead of heading for the center of the city to face to the Japanese in the city, I right away turned to the Americans who were in Santa Tomas and we accomplished the liberation of Santa Tomas. And he says, history will never forget what happened there. And the poignant reunion of him and his friends in Santa Tomas is certainly a matter of history.

Then he said, his phrase, hog that I was, I wanted to accomplish both tasks in the same day and rescue Manila without destruction in the same day if it was at all possible. Back from Santa Tomas toward the center of the city. And he said, but it was too much for human beings to take. He said, my men were too tired to go on to enter into combat against the Japanese after accomplishing the freeing of Santa Tomas. So we had to dig in. Yes. When I returned first to Manila, it was a war zone. It wasn't the place that we had lived before. Everywhere it was buildings that were destroyed. I went to the home, my old home and the apartment house was almost completely wrecked. I found the main street and if you were driving a Jeep, you had to be dog on careful that something didn't run over you because a lot of these big machines were coming in, moving tropes in.

And it was a field of military operation. And the idea that this was a city that you had once lived in and played golf and enjoyed as a center of your life, that wouldn't occur to you. You go up the Possek River and all those warehouses along the river which had been commercial hub. One building, a huge building, was like a leaning tower of pizza. The whole building was over a 45 degree angle and you wondered how the world had ever stood up. And then intramurus where those churches had been, where all the buildings, it was simply gutted and the place was a combination of great big cavities and destroyed buildings and heaps of stone and still remnants of fire. And it was the damage that was done not by bombs dropped from airplanes. We hadn't those real, real powerful bombs but it was just simply artillery shells and the whole city was just simply, it looked like one wreck.

And I shall never forget General Willoughby saying it's the worst thing that's happened since Warsaw. He said the only place in Europe that he had felt was any worse was the bombing of Warsaw. But the city was just a massive destruction and you wonder how on earth it was ever going to be rebuilt. I came to my old office which is now the embassy and then the high commissioners building. The foundation was intact but that's about all you could recognize. The thing was just simply shattered and heaps of rubble all over the place. Did you meet? Did you meet any Filipinos? Almost immediately. Almost immediately. One encountered old friends. After all we did have propaganda bulletin that we put out free Philippines and there was an announcement in there that I had come back and some other folks had arrived.

And it wasn't very long at all until many of your old friends came back to Micho. But in the Philippines the quarrels between the collaborators and the guerrillas was a very poignant thing. But for instance the person whom I had dealt with most, Mr. Vargas, there he had been associated with the occupation. And I know that until the moment of surrender to the Japanese in Manila there couldn't have been a person who strove harder for American Philippine cooperation than he did. When the clock in the morning before the Japanese came in he called me Vargas his name. And he said is there anything that we can do that will help to get the best out of the situation that we possibly can.

And I was convinced that he had exhausted himself physically every other way. And when the Japanese came in after that period of quiet the fires were put out the city restored to order then the Japanese organized this council of state. And Vargas was one of those who said it's better to cooperate with the Japanese than it is to oppose them. The facts of life are that the Japanese are in power. The Filipinos live here and if I don't perform acts under the Japanese any Japanese that tries to do it will do it with less consideration for my people than I will do myself. Well, naturally when I came back I couldn't find a person like Vargas. I couldn't find General Rojas whom I had known before. Recto, Laurel, any of those that had been associated with the Philippines they were either under arrest or they were some of them still in Japan some of them were still in Baguio wherever they were I don't know. But only those who had lived and who had somehow other escaped the attention of the American authorities they were the people that we met when we come back and among them were old friends and then it was just a matter of beginning life as best you can.

And their poverty was just like the poverty that one would have found and deserted parts of China when China had been evacuated Chinese cities had been evacuated and so forth. Was could you describe any kind of one scene some emotional scene of rediscovering and finding a Filipino friend? The most emotional scene I suppose that I had was reuniting with my old friend Teddy Loxon who is the publisher of the Philippine Free Press. Which set that again? The most... One of the most poignant reunions that I had was with my long time friend at Teodoro Loxon who was the editor of the Free Press and all through 1941 had struggled with me to try to analyze exactly what was going on.

And when we were in turn by the Japanese this skinny kid as he was then going past our place of internment and throwing a few panda cell panda cell as a little kind of a biscuit or bun the Japanese the Filipinos enjoy for breakfast and he just had a little bag of panda cell and threw them over the fence which was his goodwill offering or his help. And he had gone through all kinds of difficulties through the war and to come back and to find him still alive and smiling and welcoming the genuine feeling of a friend, a very dear friend returning. It was absolutely... it was terrible. It was wonderful. The most awful feeling was the absence of my roommate. My roommate was Bob Huffcut and when the Americans left Bob said I'm not going U.S. to get drafted because all will do is draft me and train me and send me back the Philippines.

And I'm here and I'm as well going service here and he was captured in Corregador and I thought that maybe there would be a reunion. And when I met my friend Loxon he told me that Huffcut had been prisoned at Cabana-Tawan and he had a very poetic being about him. And he in his imprisonment he was a prisoner of war. He was commissioned as a first lieutenant when he went to Corregador. He somehow rather got a hold of a being, just an ordinary vegetable being. And he planted this being and it grew. And the being as the vine came up he had a little note in his diary what a thrill it was to see a sign of life.

And his thrill was to watch this vine growing. And one day even after I guess it was after the war had officially ended but the prisoners hadn't yet been liberated, the Japanese guard gave orders to all the soldiers who were imprisoned at Cabana-Tawan that none of them should get closer than 15 feet to the fence. But he gave this order in Japanese and my roommate didn't understand the Japanese and he had gone out each morning and scratched a little ground around this being vine or whatever. And at any rate the guard told him to get back from the 15 feet zone and not understanding him. The very natural thing was to throw up your arms and I don't know what you're saying kind of gesture in his guard shot him in cold blood. And the companion of his that buried him told me the story after that was something.

Oh, you remember the story told about MacArthur having told you what it was like when you went back to Corregidor and sort of the idea that they don't have Japanese. When you speak of when anyone. Excuse me, I'm sorry. Anyone speaks of poignant things. They're the personal relationships that determine this thing. And General MacArthur told us of his feelings when he came back to Menela and how torn he was by seeing the city he loved in ashes as it was. And then he told about his determination to go on and see to it that justice would be achieved. And he said that he knew that the greatest thing in life would be to restore Menela and to bring about the victory that was needed in the war.

See, Menela had been secured. And after Menela was secured, then he said he wanted to go and secure Corregidor. That was the next step. But all these things were going to be prelude to the road to Tokyo. To him there was only one road to Tokyo, the possible road to Tokyo through China or the possible road to Tokyo across the central Pacific. These were, they just simply had to be by roads on what was the main road to Tokyo, which had to be from Menela. And after Menela, then Corregidor would be the first step on the way to Japan. And he was talking about the challenge of retaking Corregidor. He said you know Corregidor was a place where he was not only defeated, but it was a place where he had been humiliated. And he said that he wanted to avenge what had happened in the earlier days.

He said he didn't know just exactly how he was going to go about retaking Corregidor. And so after Menela was secure, he flew over the island to help him and his planning. And he said they took him so high in the first airplane that he couldn't really get close enough to form any operations plans. And so he had a Piper Cub taking down low over Corregidor. And I saw very clearly that how I was going to go about it. He said he saw that the Japanese had not improved the defenses of Corregidor. And the way to retake it was the way the Japanese should have taken it in the first place. And that is to drop bombs on the mouse, the tunnel, close the tunnels. And that would take away the value of the cannons that aim through the tunnels to attack the ships that would come. And so he said this is exactly what I did.

He said I bombarded it to close the mouth of the tunnels. And then he said I landed the paratroopers. And he said we took the Corregidor with a loss of 101 casualties. And he says most of those casualties were broken ankles that when the paratroopers landed and had some kind of an accident landing. Very proud of the few casualties that had taken place. Then he said then and there I decided I wanted to see what Corregidor looked like and what I was going to have to do to make it easiest to go on Japan. And he said you know I'm talking now about say February in 1945. And he said you know my plan or my challenge is not to keep Japan down. He said we're going to have to win a victory.

He says but then our challenge is going to help Japan up. And in the course of the conversation I asked him when the ideas first formed in his mind that the challenge of the United States was going to be to help Japan up. And he said it all formulated in my mind after I visited Corregidor when that battle was over. He said I told Vern Mudge his artillery commander to take the machinery out and we would see what happened inside Corregidor. And we used our bulldozers and we penetrated into the mouths of those tunnels. And he said it was very eerie and we were just going through this accumulated dirt. And then he said all of a sudden it was like a scene from Dante's Inferno. He said the minute we got through the mouth of the tunnel and the heat that had been generated inside that tunnel met with the oxygen from the outside air. He says the flames just leaped out and it was hours until we could get back.

Then we went back into those tunnels and he said I knew through my boots that it was something had taken place that I had never seen before. He said in 50 years of campaigning you get kind of sensitive even in your boots. And I looked around me in Corregidor and I would see the remains of twisted metal here, twisted gun barrels there. Everywhere I looked there was the remains, the bones, the ashes of dead Japanese. And he said when I saw what had happened the Japanese there he said in one second I felt the ferocious fullness of retribution. And I knew then what our national task was going to be. We've often wondered historians since then just when the ideas came for putting the occupation of Japan in perspective. But so far as I'm concerned he was very clear after the retaking of Manila and putting Manila back on the American side what the next challenge would be.

In what he saw is his duty in this war in the Pacific.