The Blood and Mud in the Philippines: Anti-Guerrilla Warfare on Panay Island
CHAPTER 4–TORTURE
4.1 Guerrilla Organization
Prior to the Joint Punitive Expedition in Panay, Captain Watanabe’s information section distributed confidential papers on the guerrilla organization and situation of the Philippine Army and resisting civilian government to all officers concerned. The outline of the information was as follows: Tomas Confesor, the great political leader, established civil government in Iloilo province on May 8, 1942. He had divided Panay into administrative districts as follows under deputy governors. Iloilo (Cesario C. Golez, Fernando Parcon) Capiz (Cornelio Villareal Sr.) and Antique (Tomas Sartaguda).
On the other hand, the guerrilla headquarters of Colonel Peralta’s 6th Military District army was situated in Sara, 100 kilometers northeast of Iloilo City. Moreover, along the border between Capiz and Antique province – at Mt. Nacron, near Alfonso Doce – the guerrillas were communicating with General MacArthur’s headquarters in Australia through a RM5 radio facility. US submarines were also landing supplies on the beaches between Pandan and Culasi on the northern coast of Antique Province.
The headquarters of the 61st Division was in the mountains west of Barotac Viejo, Iloilo. Each regiment was assigned their respective areas: for the 63rd Regiment: the western part of central Iloilo province; the 64th Regiment based in Sara, the eastern part of the same province; the 65th Regiment, the south-central part of Antique province; the 66th Regiment, the central-eastern part of Capiz province; and for the Coast Patrol Guard (CPG), the northern part of Antique and the western part of Capiz.
Among them, Colonel Peralta had secretly established the Coast Patrol Guards in December of 1942 for wireless communication with MacArthur’s headquarters. The commander was Lieutenant Colonel Cirilo B. Garcia, and the first wireless engineer was Major Claude Fertig, the District Engineer of the 6th Military District of the Philippine Army.
Although we did not grasp the precise number of the personnel and equipment of the guerrilla forces, we presumed them to have numbered around 15,000. This was according to the intelligence we received from various sources.
Among those who joined the guerrilla movement were intelligent and highly patriotic men from universities or high schools. There were, however, thieves, robbers or gangsters who had joined the guerrilla forces because they wanted to eat. In the confusion of battles, the latter group broke into civilian houses, robbed the people of money and articles, or committed violent acts on women. When the parents or brothers of the victims protested against them, guerrillas often labeled them as Japanese collaborators and publicly lynched them. Some town leaders surrendered to the Japanese Army because they opposed these criminal actions of the guerrillas.
As the lawlessness of some guerrilla soldiers increased, local people protested to Governor Confesor through the leaders of their villages and towns. Confesor referred these matters to Colonel Peralta, who, in turn, strengthened the organization of the local Military Police (MP) to subdue these wrongdoers. However, chaos prevailed as soon as the punitive expedition of the Japanese started. Since despicable guerrilla members were able to do what they wished, the confrontations between the Confesor and the Peralta groups became more severe.
In May 1944, a Filipino spy told me that local residents desired to be able to drive off the Japanese Army. However, they were more fed up with lawless guerrillas and their crimes and, thus, hoped that the US Army would arrive as soon as possible so that peace and order could be restored.
It was easy for some of these guerrilla atrocities to be blamed upon Japanese soldiers. At the post-war War Crimes Tribunal, some wrongful letters of complaints and witnesses against Japanese soldiers submitted by the Philippine Army were rejected by the court.
4.2 Start of the Joint Punitive Expeditions in Panay (July 7 to December 31, 1943)
In June 1943, a new staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel Hidemi Watanabe, was assigned to the Visayas garrison headquarters at Cebu. On his way from Tokyo, he passed by Manila headquarters for general instructions on the subjugation of the Visayas area. The garrison headquarters staff was rigorously instructed to crush the Panay guerrillas completely. This was due to the latter’s attack on and the resulting humiliation of General Tanaka.
Soon after his arrival in Cebu, Colonel Watanabe came to Panay for inspection. Colonel Watanabe chose Captain Kengo Watanabe, a highly regarded officer among the staff, as his right-hand man. Immediately, the colonel asked the captain to plan the great punitive expedition in Panay. Garrison commander General Kano left everything about the plan to staff officer Colonel Hidemi Watanabe. In like manner, unit commander Colonel Tozuka put everything in the hands of Captain Watanabe who was the battalion’s Operations and Intelligence chief. Henceforth, the two Watanabes decided on the plans for and carried out the operations of the punitive expedition.
The rainy season had started when, on July 7, the Japanese forces in Panay jointly pursued a six-month punitive expedition. The forces consisted of seven companies chosen from various units, accompanied by kempeis: the Tozuka unit in Iloilo, the Kinoshita unit in Capiz, and the Taga unit in Antique. In addition, the navy gunboat Karatsu, a radio location section, and a landing craft unit from Army Headquarters in Manila were dispatched. The goals of the expedition were the capture of guerrilla leaders, their 15 wireless radios, and the destruction of their bases.
To directly command the operations, Major General Kano and staff officer Colonel Watanabe moved the expedition headquarters from Cebu City to Iloilo City. Colonel Watanabe was inclined to adopt the strategy of competitive operations and usually assigned favorable areas to Captain Watanabe. Hence, there was an apparent competition in the punitive operations between our unit, the Tozuka unit in Iloilo province in the east, and the Taga unit in Antique province in the west.
However, soon after the start of the expedition, we received a distressing warning order from Iloilo Headquarters. About 50 soldiers of the Kinoshita unit were blown up in two trucks at Dumarao, Capiz province.
Our first target was the assault of Governor Tomas Confesor’s base to capture him and destroy his position. Our punitive forces under Captain Watanabe first attacked the guerrilla base in the jungle northwest off Alimodian, around 22 kilometers northwest of Iloilo City. Nonetheless, the three companies of guerrillas who were there had already evacuated. All the houses were vacant and there was scarcely any inhabitant.
Chasing after the guerrillas, the force arrived at Cagay on their quick advance into Bocari where the civil government of Governor Confesor had its main base. A captured local resident guided us into Bocari. It was an astonishing sight to see. There were mountains surrounding Mt. Inaman (1,350 meters high), the inside basin of which was four kilometers east to west and two or three kilometers from north to south, with a roaring river flowing through the center. On the slopes were rice fields and under the trees were hundreds of houses of the villagers. We checked on the houses but they were all empty. Every day, we interrogated a dozen local residents as well as guerrillas to get information about Confesor, but there was no information forthcoming at all. Nor was there any official of the civil government to be found.
In the mountains, we found and chased down a Filipino family of three. The man killed himself with his pistol; his wife also died of exhaustion and the shock of her husband’s death. We also came across a boy of seven or eight years, from whose story we learned that his father was an important staff member of the Confesor government. Warrant Officer (WO) Fusataro Shin of the Kempeitai sympathized and took the boy with him all throughout the expedition while other soldiers took care of him as well.
During the expedition, we pushed on day and night, covered with mud and sweat. In the end, we had to give up the Bocari operation. We only learned that Confesor had developed some disease of neuralgia or some sort and that he had been carried away in the direction of Antique? We had no news about the printer of their banknotes, Press One. (Later on, we learned that the guerrillas had destroyed the printer of the civil government because of conflicts over financial matters.)
This mission did not produce much direct results. However, the inspections of the heavenly natural fort of Bocari – with its fields of rice, corn, sweet potatoes and other food sources surrounded by mountains – gave us information that would later on be useful for the retreat of the Japanese Army when the US forces on landed Panay towards the end of the war.
4.3 Searching for Governor Confesor
On the way back from Bocari, we learned that there were guerrillas in a village between San Miguel and Alimodian. We surrounded the area during the night and started interrogating each resident early the next morning. Everyone said that there were no guerrillas in the neighborhood. Because of this, we were more at ease but also continued searching.
Suddenly, we heard an enemy light machine-gun shooting wildly nearby and hurriedly reacted. A soldier of the 3rd Company reported to me that Corporal Shiraboshi was killed. I was enraged when I saw his awful corpse. His body was so riddled with bullet holes that it looked like a honeycomb. A soldier reported that Shiraboshi had knocked on a door of a house but it did not open. As he tried to force it open, the guerrilla waiting inside shot him. As he fell, the guerrilla ran away through a window and disappeared. Shiraboshi was a nice and handsome young man who was the machine gun detachment leader when I was in the 3rd Company. Since I knew him well, I felt bitterly sorry for him.
The soldiers who gathered around Shiraboshi were enraged at the sight of his body and started to yell, ‘We were deceived, there are guerrillas among the villagers who are in league with them. We must avenge Shiraboshi’s death.’ Once again, they started to inspect each house, taking into custody any one regarded as suspicious. We interrogated them closely but all of them kept saying they knew nothing about any guerrillas. The outraged Captain Watanabe shouted, ‘Behead those whom you suspect are guerrillas!’. Thus, young men regarded as guerrillas were beheaded one after another. Their heads and corpses were scattered all around.
In another instance, ‘we had been told that the Matsuno platoon of the 1st Company was surrounding a village. Feeling tense from the last encounter with cornered guerrillas, we checked each of the houses as we tightened the net around them. However, the soldiers of the Matsuno platoon did not appear to be operating as a single net. Upon realizing their disorganization, the rest of us lost our composure. Captain Watanabe was furious and yelled, ‘Matsuno, why are you not besieging the village!’ Taken aback, Second Lieutenant Matsuno shouted back, ‘I have gotten no such order!’ This made Captain Watanabe even more irate, and Second Lieutenant Matsuno was severely humiliated in front of the soldiers. ‘Matsuno can be of no use anymore in this punitive action. You should remain at the garrison!’ Since then, Second Lieutenant Matsuno never joined any other punitive expedition, a fact that was to be in his favor. Those men Captain Watanabe considered ‘useful’ were unfortunate as they were sent to the guerrilla fronts and one by one lost their lives.
The first unfortunate ones were members of the 4th Company or the Yoshioka unit. We learned that the Takahashi Company of the Taga unit held captive a daughter of Patricio Confesor – brother of Governor Confesor – and several nurses at the border between Antique and Iloilo provinces. Captain Watanabe judged that Confesor had fled to Antique, which had originally been the area of operation of the Taga unit. Nevertheless, Captain Watanabe wished to capture Confesor himself, and so dispatched the Yoshioka Company to perform this assignment.
The Yoshioka Company was running out of food during their expedition. Parts of the area they went through were unexplored mountainous regions – more than a thousand meters above sea level – as well as low swamps that bred mountain leeches. Local guides were afraid, but the company pushed through mountain after mountain, slurping gruel and munching corn. At the end of July, they managed to reach the Taga unit at the Sibalom garrison of Antique province, about 40 kilometers away from Bocari. Personnel of the Taga unit first thought they were a group of beggars as they were all so ragged, exhausted, and with no proper footwear. When offered a meal, they greedily devoured it beyond all sense of shame.
After a few days rest, the Yoshioka Company was ordered to join the Taga unit that was tasked to carry out the punitive expedition into northern Antique up to the area of Pandan. Pandan was the base where US submarines landed supplies for the guerrillas. Many men of the Yoshioka Company had upset stomachs from the large and sudden amounts of food they had consumed. All the same, they obeyed the order and ran around the mountains and valleys searching for guerrillas in the rainy season which produced not much result. They ended the expedition of northern Antique on September 8 and came back by boat to Iloilo City. (To be continued)
