from a refugee's view

An excerpt from Blood Brothers: A Medic's Sketchbook by Colonel Eugene C. Jacobs

As we drove into headquarters area, we were greeted by Major Everett Warner, the C.O., and Major Guillermo Nakar, the Executive Officer and the C.O. of Headquarters Battalion. They both seemed pleased to have an American medical officer in the regiment. I also met Captain Warren Minton, C.O. of the 3rd Battalion, which included one squadron of cavalry, and Captain Robert Arnold, in charge of communications. He had brought a two-way radio from the northwest corner of Luzon, where he was with the Air Warning Service. I was introduced to several other American and Filipino officers, and then taken to the officers' mess and fed. The regiment now numbered nearly 1500.

For quarters, I was assigned a small tobacco warehouse, where Major Nakar would be my roommate. He slept in a full-sized brass bed; I slept on bales of tobacco, Tobaccolera, the worlds finest. I didn't smoke, but knew that many soldiers on Bataan were dying for a smoke.

Major Nakar was a short, "smiling roly-poly Filipino officer, who looked about thirty-five, with a big black mustache, curved up at the ends, a twinkle in his black eyes-set deep in a small chubby face. He liked to lay, propped up in bed, and read books about great military leaders such as Napoleon, and the Filipino patriot and idol, Jose Rizal." With a chuckle, he liked to quote Confucius: "Make enemy think
you are far away when you are near! Make enemy think you are near when you are far away!"

About Nakar, Capt. Arnold remarked, "He means to get ahead!" After knowing him for a few days, I began to get the feeling that he would someday be President of the Philippines...

Tuguegarao Air Field Raid: Captain Minton selected some of his outstanding Scouts for his patrol. Under cover of darkness, Minton and his men surrounded the Japanese barracks at the Tuguegarao Air Field, killed some one-hundred Japanese soldiers as they emerged, and destroyed two planes on the ground.

MacArthur was delighted! He promptly decorated the patrol and promoted Majors Warner and Nakar to Lt. Cols. and Minton to Major.

The following communiqué was quickly announced from Corregidor: "One of General MacArthur's guerrilla bands, operating in the Cagayan Valley in northern Luzon, scored a brilliant local success in a surprise raid on a hostile airdrome at Tuguegarao. The Japanese were taken completely by surprise and fled in confusion leaving 110 dead on the field. Approximately three hundred others were put to flight. Our losses were very light."

MacArthur said, "If Bataan should fall, I'd consider joining the guerrillas myself."

On Sundays, when things became quiet, Guillermo Nakar and I liked to ride our horses to a Spanish hacienda across the Cagayan River to spend several hours "away" from the war. We crossed the river in long bancas (dugout canoes) and swam our horses behind us, at times fending off rather large crocodiles.

Since Spain was a neutral country, the Japanese did not bother the Spaniards very much, except indirectly. The Spaniards grew fine fruits, vegetables and tobacco. They ate and lived well; Guillermo and I enjoyed sharing a good meal with them.

About the 4th of July, Col. Nakar succeeded in contacting Australia. I quote from Gen. MacArthur's book, Reminiscences: "After the fall of Corregidor and the Southern Islands, organized resistance to the Japanese in the Philippines had supposedly come to an end. In reality, it never ended. Unfortunately for some time, I could learn nothing of these activities. A deep pall of silence settled over the whole archipelago.

"Two months after the fall of Manila Bay Defenses, a brief and pathetic message from a weak sending station on Luzon was brought to me. Short as it was, it lifted the curtain of silence and uncertainty, and disclosed the start of a human drama with few parallels in military history. The words of that message warmed my heart: 'YOUR RETURN IS THE NIGHTLY SUBJECT OF PRAYER IN EVERY FILIPINO HOME! - NAKAR.'

"I had acquired a force behind the Japanese lines that would have far-reaching effect on the war in the days to come.

"Unhappily, the sender of that first message, Lt. Col. Guillermo Nakar, a former battalion commander of the 14th Infantry of the Philippine Forces, was caught by the Japanese, tortured and beheaded. The word passed from island to island, and from barrio to barrio. From Aparri in the north to Zamboango in the south the fire of resistance to the invader spread. Whole divisions of Japanese troops that the Emperor badly needed elsewhere, deployed against phantom units."

Before Nakar's untimely capture, he had received the following message: "THE COURAGEOUS AND SPLENDID RESISTANCE MAINTAINED BY YOU AND YOUR COMMAND FILLS ME WITH PRIDE AND SATISFACTION - Stop. IT WILL BE MY PRIVILEGE TO SEE THAT YOU AND YOUR OFFICERS AND MEN ARE PROPERLY REWARDED AT THE APPROPRIATE TIME - Stop. MY AFFECTIONS AND BEST WISHES. MACARTHUR."

Within a few weeks we learned that an unfaithful Filipino had betrayed Col. Nakar. The Nipponese had captured him and the regimental radio in a mountain cave near Jones, and had taken him to the old Spanish Fort Santiago in Manila where they threw him in a dungeon to face starvation, thirst, water rats, the ingenious system of Japanese questioning and torture by the Kempie Tai Qapanese Secret Police), and finally beheading.

Col. Nakar's short war was far from fruitless. His tender years did not prevent him from becoming a "champion of liberty!" His message to MacArthur actually signaled the end of Allied defeats and withdrawals, and the beginning of an unbroken series of crushing defeats for the Japanese Empire. It kept "Freedom's Flame" burning brightly throughout the Philippines and gave the Filipinos the necessary strength and courage to resist-and finally to defeat the invaders. Col. Nakar's "Brief and pathetic message from the Cagayan Valley" gave MacArthur the reassurance he needed:
To plan his aggressive warfare; To fulfill his pledge to the Filipino people: "I shall return!" and To know he had a friendly base from which to attack Japan.