This paper was presented at the Leyte Normal University Regional Workshop-Conference on Social Research last October 17, 2007 by the author, Emil B. Justimbaste. This is just a prelude to a book he is presently writing on the same subject.
Introduction
The Tragedy of Dulag
Northern Leyte Guerillas
Southern Leyte Guerillas
Miranda
Enter Kandleon
MacArthur Connection
Miranda vs. Kangleon
References
The Tragedy of Dulag
On October 18, 63 years ago, the town of Dulag, Leyte was privileged to be the first to be liberated from the Japanese occupation force. But unlike other liberation scenarios in Europe where the liberators marched in the streets to the cheers of flag-waving crowds, Dulag's liberation seemed more like a funeral dirge that saw thousands of dead, dying or wounded. These from the terrible firepower of the guns and artillery of American gun ships and war planes.1
That day, Dulag became history, its houses razed to the ground or burned down and its people battered, maimed or buried alive after American bulldozers leveled the town to the ground. Its surviving residents were shocked, terrified out of their wits or shaken up, many of them deeply traumatized. What they did not expect to happen just happened.
Today, the ghosts of its dead residents still haunt the living with the question: Why? In the recent years, some Dulagnons have raised the issue of MacArthur's landing, arguing that MacArthur waded in its shore first before Palo. That is no longer the issue now. MacArthur did step down in Dulag to see the situation for himself, but after seeing the utter devastation, he left in disgust for his command ship, preferring to dramatize the landing somewhere else.2
News of Dulag's devastation never reached the official channels. In fact, there was a news blackout on the issue. It was too shameless and ghastly an event. That was not MacArthur's idea of victory. There was no glory in seeing innocent civilians killed in a systematic carpet bombing. But looking for the culprits did not seem a good idea then because that would have exposed the issue. So one does not find an account of Dulag's devastation in the US Army official history book. One reads of civilians being treated for wounds and a few being killed and that's all there is to it.3
However, fresh evidences and testimonies of eye witnesses provoke questions that need answers. For instance, was Dulag informed of the impending bombing? We are told that MacArthuir sent a trusted aide Lt. Col. Frank Rawolle, G-2 from the US 6th Army, and Lt. Cmdr. Charles Parsons of the 7th Fleet who had unceremoniously replaced Maj. Jesus Villamor as MacArthur's super spy in the months before the American invasion. They directed Col. Ruperto Kangleon, head of the Filipino guerillas in Leyte, to evacuate the coastal areas of civilians just a week before the bombing. Kangleon promised that he would do as ordered but by the looks of it, he failed to deliver.4
Whether the failure was deliberate or not is again another question. A Dulagueño guerilla leader, Bonifacio Kempis, was not on good terms with Kangleon because the former was with Capt. Glicerio Erfe, a USAFFE officer who had a strong dislike for the latter. Kempis and Erfe had been earlier detained at Kangleon's internment camp reserved for "erring guerillas." This could have been the hitch in the flow of information. Apparently, the Japanese forces were better informed. They knew the Americans were coming and they even told the civilians of the impending bombing, urging them to build bomb shelters.
The Japanese were able to retreat inland before the Americans came, leaving but a skeletal force to serve as decoys. Now did they have infiltrators in the ranks of Leyte's guerillas? Note that the Japanese had an efficient intelligence unit in the Kempei Tai whose infiltration of Leyte antedated their actual occupation of the island by several years.
But going back to the fatal bombing, US military leaders starting with MacArthur should have been alarmed by the serious flaw in the information relay. Probably there was a Japanese mole in their ranks. If he knew about it, he certainly kept it to himself - and that almost cost him his life.5
Infiltration was just one of the flaws in Leyte's guerilla movement. Even from the start, its ranks was racked by disunity and a misguided sense of patriotism. It was a composite of opposites: idealists who preferred to live in their seclusion to tinker with ideas of running a war and the practical ones who gloated in ambushing Japanese patrols; decent men who exercised restraint and respect for civilians and the hooligans who taxed and looted civilian homes and burned them down if they refused to give; men with courage who faced death without fear and those who hid in the confines of their stately homes or mountain hideouts; leaders with the purest of intentions and those with deep secrets and sinister agenda. Doubtless, these opposite tendencies certainly contributed to their disunity.
At the start, guerilla operations were spontaneous and seemed to be guided only by the personal agenda of their leaders. In the words of American historian Elmer Lear, "it expressed no single outlook and possessed no unified program. It represented a form of adjustment on the part of sections of the population to a situation not of their own devising, wherein they saw no possibility of cooperating with the enemy and took to the opposition as the only alternative. No systematic plan for carrying on this resistance, no social philosophy to clarify the meaning of this resistance, no program of reconstruction after the expulsion of the invader provided a dynamic."6
They were uncertain of the scope of their activities. In some cases , they did not really understand the reason for their being. Some soldiers, left to fend for themselves by their higher officials, refused to lay down their arms; fearing the atrocities of the Japanese, and resistance appeared to be the only means of self-preservation.
In some rare cases, a few were fired by nationalism. For them, prudential considerations were secondary. All they knew was that their nation's honor was defiled and upon them weighed the noble task of redeeming that honor.7
"At the start, a few Filipino roustabouts saw the advantage of making up small gangs and preying on the public. They'd call themselves guerillas but they plundered and pillaged both the Japs and the Filipinos. If they had a grudge against anyone, the word was passed on and the man was killed. It grew on Leyte and Samar and elsewhere on open terrorism."
"With no overall organization, the best comparison is that of a gangland mob on each island, with their territories marked off by gentleman's agreements between the mob leaders. All this was done in the name of the guerilla movement. If the civilians in the barrios or towns refused to send food or information or even their daughters into the hills, they were marked as fifth columnists or pro-Japanese."8