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
Miranda
Among the local guerilla groups, it was the Western Leyte Guerilla Warfare Forces, organized by Lt. Blas Miranda that had the semblance of an army organization. At its peak it had some 15,000 members stationed in six regiments. Its scope of operations included the towns of Palompon, Kananga, Albuera, Baybay and Ormoc City, this after having absorbed smaller guerilla groups previously operating on their own.
The WLGWF would later figure out in a deadly contest for power and territory with the resuscitated Kangleon who would not tolerate recalcitrance from lower-ranked soldiers in his bid to oversee the guerilla operations in Leyte.
At the center of the organization was Miranda himself, described by the American historian Lear as either a "mountebank or a genius" for having set up a well-oiled machinery to fight the Japanese menace. "Small of stature and with a boyish visage, he did not immediately impress one as a commander of a guerilla division, much less the alleged executioner of many. To engage Miranda in conversation for any length of time was to come under the spell of a very magnetic personality. A fertile mind and an articulate tongue held their audience captive…" 24
Miranda succeeded where others of higher rank did not. The WLWGF was a mixture of unsurrendered soldiers, former members of the Philippine Constabulary and civilians. Excluded were former Japanese prisoners. Miranda eyed with deep suspicion soldiers who surrendered to the Japanese and treated them as traitors, the main reason why he could not submit himself to Kangleon, a surrenderee in Davao, even if the latter was much higher in rank than him. Not even the latter's link to Gen. Douglas MacArthur could convince Miranda.
With him were Lt. Conrado Sabelino, a native or Ormoc and former aide of Gen. Sharp in Mindanao, as his first chief of staff, Major Marcos Soliman, another unsurrendered officer who came all the way from Mindanao, and Capt. Aristoteles Olaybar. Both were Miranda's superior officers but they subordinated themselves to his command apparently in respect for his pioneering initiatives.25
According to Soliman, WLGWF's organizational structure was patterned after that of the regular divisions with modifications to suit guerilla purposes. It had six regiments operating more or less independently, but its general headquarters had a strong mobile combat team that could be moved from one locality to another in case a regiment was hard pressed.
It had a complete general staff composed mostly of ex-reserve officers who had seen action in other fronts, but it had very few regular officers. By June 1943, it already had 417 officers and some 12,000 men scattered in its six regiments. By then, Miranda was already known as by his nom de guerre as "Col. Briguez." It had the most complete setup. It had a munitions ordnance which manufactured ammunitions, grenades and land mines which was under the direct supervision of Miranda himself who was an engineer by vocation and an inventor by avocation. The tools of the trade were dismantled piece by piece and transported from Barrio Ipil's Ormoc Sugar Central Company (OSCO), a sugar mill then partly owned by the Aboitiz family, to the headquarters in the mountain fastness of Barrio Mahilaum, now known as "Kampo Langit".
The group also had a hospital headed by the former chief of hospital of Southern Islands Hospital in Cebu, Dr. Domingo Veloso, and staffed with several other medical practitioners - all on a voluntary basis. It also had some engineers and lawyers, a judge advocate general's office headed by Atty. Ramon Teleron, the AGS, the OMS Corps, signal men, chaplains, a general service school for officers and a signal school for signal enlisted men.26