THESE ELDERLY men and women are surviving members of the Igorot infantry, who helped liberate Baguio City from the Japanese Imperial Army. They belonged to the 66th Infantry Regiment, which spied on and attacked Japanese soldiers who occupied the Philippines during World War II. EV ESPIRITU
MANY FILIPINOS today were witnesses to Baguio City’s rebirth after the July 1990 Luzon earthquake devastated the summer capital. But that was not the first time this mountain city had to rebuild from the ground up.
On April 27, 1945, Baguio was liberated by the Americans but the campaign in the last few months of World War II destroyed the city.
Refusing to heed intelligence reports supplied by Filipino guerrillas, the American military sent warplanes to bomb Baguio, which served as the headquarters of the invading Imperial Japanese Army, said Dr. Ricardo Jose, a University of the Philippines history professor who has written about World War II.
Jose highlighted this historical tidbit on Monday when the city government commemorated the 70th anniversary of Baguio’s liberation from the Japanese.
The ceremony was attended by surviving veterans who fought to free Baguio, including nine Cordilleran guerrillas of the 66th Infantry Regiment: Capolo Olon, Kawano Leano, Ognayon Tindongan, Reymondo Gadgad, Esteban Esco, Santos Fianza, Salvador Salatic, Marciano Miles and Gabriel Igme.
The regiment conducted intelligence operations and ambushed Japanese soldiers.
Jose said Baguio is where war for the Philippines started on Dec. 8, 1941, when Japanese planes from Taiwan attacked Camp John Hay. The city is also where the war ended on Sept. 3, 1945, when Japanese Imperial Army Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita signed Japan’s surrender documents also at Camp John Hay.
He said Baguio was already a cosmopolitan community by the time the war began. It hosted various foreigners, including Japanese families, who settled in the city after helping build Kennon Road for the American colonial government.
But the city “had military significance,” which drew Japanese attacks at the start of the war. Baguio was home to Camp John Hay, the Philippine Military Academy (then housed at Teachers’ Camp), Camp Henry T. Allen and the headquarters of the first military district where soldiers were trained, mobilized and became part of the 11th Division, Jose said.
“There were two presidents in Baguio during the war [Commonwealth President Manuel Quezon, who escaped the Japanese Occupation, and the Second Republic President Jose P. Laurel, who was relocated here in 1944]. There was a future president [post-war President Manuel Roxas who was saved by guerrillas in 1945] who was also here, so [Baguio] became an important political center [for the Japanese],” he said.
A Japanese attack was not a surprise as commonly believed, he said.
“It was apparent that war was going to start and Baguio had to make its preparations for the forthcoming war … As early as September 1941, Baguio residents took part in civil defense exercises [like] air raid and blackout drills,” he said.
When the war started, Quezon was in Baguio, living in a house overlooking Burnham Park, he said.
Quezon received news that Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was attacked, igniting war with the United States, so he ordered the country to prepare for an invasion.
But when Quezon saw airplanes flying towards the mountain city, he assumed these were American fighters sent to protect the Philippines. “He was surprised when bombs started dropping,” Jose said.
Jose said the “Igorot infantry” was widely hailed even in the Battle of Bataan, where tanks that fought the Japanese were navigated by “soldiers in g-strings,” who rode on top of the war machines to provide directions.
These warriors soon returned to the outskirts of Baguio to serve as spies and to stage attacks and ambuscades to show the Japanese “they were nowhere yet everywhere,” the slogan of the regiment.
By December 1944, Yamashita had moved most of his troops to northern Luzon, with headquarters in Baguio. Many Japanese stayed in tunnels built for them by Filipino laborers inside Camp John Hay or at Dominican Hill. The Laurel government was also moved to Baguio, “although publicly it was not acknowledged in Manila,” Jose said.
By early 1945, however, most of the Japanese had moved out of Baguio yet the Americans did not heed the guerrilla reports that Yamashita had fled to Bambang, Nueva Vizcaya.
“The tragedy is that toward the end of the war, from January [to April 1945], the city was being ravaged and destroyed by Americans,” Jose said.