Miss U by Margaret Utinsky
p 66
Naomi was to go to Cabanatuan and work there as a vendor. The second day she rounded up two Filipino women who wanted to help. They lived near the prison gates. Naomi could stay with them, and they would get about and make contacts with the Americans as they went to and from the camp and vegetable farm. The husband of one of the women, an American Negro, was one of the prisoners there.
It seemed like a good start and I made a promise to myself that I would go on with the work until the Yanks came back or until the Japanese caught me.
Our first contact augured well for the work. Lt. Colonel Mack would be able to help us at Cabanatuan as Colonel Duckworth had done at Camp O'Donnell. What had become of Colonel Duckworth I did not know. Word had reached me that all full colonels and generals had been sent to Japan - but not Colonel Duckworth. He was ill, and the Japanese wanted no tuberculosis, dysentery or any men who were unable to work in the land of the Son of Heaven.
The size of the job appalled me. There had been 1700 prisoners at Camp O'Donnell. At Cabanatuan there were more than 9000 men. It was a mountainous task, and if these prisoners were to be kept alive, my operations would have to be speeded up and handled on a far greater scale than I had ever contemplated at O'Donnell. Well, there was no point in being scared before I even got started. The idea was to make a beginning of some sort.
At Camp O'Donnell we had smuggled our supplies into the prison in empty trucks and ambulances. The situation at Cabanatuan was different. There was no question of our getting anything into the prison here. As Colonel Mack had pointed out, this was a lot more dangerous than our activities at O'Donnell had been. Our job, therefore was to contact the Americans when they came out of the prison and get our supplies to them directly.
Every day about a thousand prisoners went out to work on the farm where they raised vegetables for the Japanese. When they came out, the guards would allow them to spend their pay by buying from the native vendors who circulated among them with blankets on their heads. Then, several times a week, the prisoners came out with bullcarts pulled by carabao to buy what vegetables and fruits the could at the stalls.
Of course, before the men could buy anything at the stalls they had to have money, so Naomi and Evangeline Neibert, dressed as vendors, with baskets on their heads, went about with sacks of roasted peanuts. They sold these sacks to the prisoners for a centavo, and in each package of peanuts we hid money, as much as two or three hundred pesos, which was possible because all the money was paper and could be rolled up.
It worked like this. A prisoner would come up to a vendor, buy a sack of peanuts for a peso, get back a ten-peso note as change and a bag of peanuts containing a lot more pesos.
This was not a drop in the bucket compared with the needs of the camp. We had to find a way of getting quantities of food to the men. We needed a truck to ship the stuff in, and we needed some place at Cabanatuan where we could dispose of it to the prisoners without arousing the suspicion of the Japanese, who guarded them every minute. It seemed like a tall order, but we managed it.
One of the Filipino dealers at Cabanatuan was a man named Maluto who had a number of stalls in the market there. One day Naomi stopped to talk to him. To approach anyone and ask for help with our work was the most dangerous thing we had to do. Not only the safety of the individual but also the safety of the group was at stake every time a contact was made. For if we made a mistake and struck a collaborationist, that would be the end.
The Japanese had killed Maluto's son and he was no collaborationist. He was heart and soul for the Americans. But when he looked at Naomi he was not impressed. She wore ragged clothes, with a dirty shawl tied over her head, a typical vendor, which was what she wanted. Probably Maluto, like many people who think of underground workers and spies as glamorous people, expected something mysterious, a woman who looked like a storybook character.
Seeing his dubious expression, Naomi just laughed. "If you think I look funny," she said, "wait til you see Auntie."
Auntie was the password at the apartment for me at that time. Before long I was so widely known as Miss U that it became my code name.
Maluto was afraid and he didn't pretend otherwise. But he took my address and he came to see "Auntie". He listened to my story and he promised to help. Yes, he would let us use his stalls for smuggled goods for the Americans.
Now the problem was to get the supplies. It is curious that our smuggling took the form of one apparently unsolvable problem after another. Almost as soon as a problem arose we found a way of handling it.
Through Lt. Colonel Mack, our first contact inside the prison, we gradually worked out the same system we had used before; notes to the men, receipts for what they had received. The only difference was that we could no longer smuggle the notes in by ambulance or have Dr. Atienza bring them out. Each exchange had to be made with the prisoners themselves as they came and went at slave labor, closely guarded by the Japanese.
The need for food and drugs and clothing and - above all - for money was more desperate than it had been before. The conditions under which the men lived were horrible, they were starving and many of them were hospital cases. To get anything, there had to be money. As time went on, I discovered that people who were hesitant or even indifferent about providing money for unknown men would be most helpful if they knew the person whom they were aiding. There was something real and immediate about the hunger of a particular John Smith; an unidentified soldier was hunger in the abstract.
So I sent word that the prisoners were to give us the names of anyone whom they might know in Manila. Lt. Colonel Mack talked to them and asked them to send me any names they could. "But don't waste time thinking about casual acquaintances," he warned them. "Mind, only those you can trust."
One by one, after that, names would be forwarded to me. I never hesitated in approaching these people. They were both rich and poor, and not one ever failed to give me as much as he or she could in money or food. And never was I betrayed. In all my recruiting of volunteer help, indeed, I never met a single fifth-columnist through people whose names were sent me by prisoners in the camp.
Each time I asked for little in the beginning. "Wait for a receipt," I said, "and then you can be sure that your friend actually received what you sent him." When they got the receipts they began to contribute regularly. Each prisoner so provided for meant that there were fewer to draw on the main kitty. And yet there were still so terribly many!
The garage of the Malate Convent was a convenient storehouse. No suspicion was aroused by loads of supplies leaving there, for the Irish priest had a whole countryside, naked and starving, for which they felt responsible.
After a while I began getting so many supplies that it was no longer possible to carry them piecemeal by train. And again, when the need arose, we found the means to meet it. A wealthy polo player, Juan Elizalde, owner of a distillery, gave me the use of a truck and alcohol to replace gasoline as motor fuel.
Elizalde, whom we called Ezy when we began to use code names, was a cultured, thoughtful intellectual, who was well aware of the barbaric implications of Japanese rule and glad to be of use to the organization. He not only contributed the truck but he also gave us everything he could scrape together. Nothing was too much for him to do. Like so many of those who gave us their wholehearted support, he was picked up by the Japanese, and died at Bilibid Prison in the days just before the Americans came back.
Again, as Camp O'Donnell, the almost childish simplicity of our arrangements was their guarantee of success. Several times a week, our truck went back and forth from the convent to Maluto's stalls at Cabanatuan, and the same system of code messages employed at O'Donnell was used.
With the truck I could send quite large shipments to the camp area. There were no difficulties. Our Filipino drivers were within the law. There was little restriction on their moving about. And doctors and nurses were privileged under Red Cross to give relief. So we were able to keep moving without arousing too much comment. The truck was loaded with sweet potatoes, canned food, mongo beans- the latter a superlative preventative and treatment for beriberi.
The day our shipment was made, one of our workers at Cabanatuan would get word to the prisoners that it was coming and describe what we were sending. That day the Americans would present the Japanese commandant with a list of items they wanted to buy in the market. The list always tallied with what we had for them. If I sent in clothes, they said that was what they needed. Obviously this list could not cover more items than might be purchased with the money they obtained from their "Geneva Convention wages." After seeing that the list and the money tallied the commandant would sign the statement and the Yanks drove their carts off to market.
Or course, they never went to Maluto's stalls first. But after inspecting the vegetables on sale at the other stalls they would come to my friend. There would be a great haggling over price, under the watchful eye of their Japanese guards, then a deal would be made. All of the items on the list would be loaded into the carts. But in addition there would be all the food and medicine that I had sent to Maluto's stalls. Back to camp would go the carts. The first man in the procession would present the list with the commandant's signature. The sentry would examine it. Within half an hour my food and medicine would be doing their jobs.
What happened, of course, was that everything they 'purchased' at Maluto's stalls they really got for free. Then they had their money to buy extra food and perishables that I could not ship them at other stalls. And always, among the sacks they acquired at Maluto's stalls, there would be one that was marked with red lettering, which was taken to our head contact man in the prison. This sack was filled with pesos and a note indicating which men were to receive the money, and how much was intended for each one. The money would then be distributed inside the prison.
As was inevitable with our activities on so big a scale, the little town of Cabanatuan was aware of the work that was being done. Pretty soon almost everyone in town was either working for me or wanting to work for me. There were a few, of course, who collaborated with the Japanese. That was true everywhere. But we soon learned who they were and so we could be on our guard against them. The other people in town would look after them for us.
Narrow escapes were the order of the day at Cabanatuan. Looter and some of her companions were coming back from the slave labor field where they had ostensibly been selling bananas and peanuts when a truck drew up alongside them. The Japanese driver leaned out and asked Looter to ride with him. She was frightened but she dared not show her fear. After all, as a Filipino, she was one of the 'liberated' people. She climbed into the truck and chatted in what she hoped passed for a friendly fashion.
" 'Mericans very funny," the driver said abruptly. "Don't get much money, all time get little bit, but use it like this," and he made a gesture as though stretching rubber.
Naomi tried to laugh but she was alarmed, wondering whether the Japanese had spotted here activities. The driver let her off in town and she reported to me. The whole thing might merely be a chance encounter and and idle comment, but she took care to avoid trucks after that. If the Americans were to be kept alive - if any of them were to be kept alive under the starvation regime on which the Japanese were keeping them - risks had to be taken.
Sometimes the gratitude of the prisoners took odd forms. One lad went to Chaplain Tiffany, who was one of our chief contacts inside the fence. The chaplain gave him money to buy fruit or peanuts from the vendors when he was out working, but the boy said that was not what he wanted. With his face stiff with embarrassment he said he wanted to write a letter but he didn't write good or spell or such. Would the chaplain help him?
They finally evolved this note, which Captain Tiffany smuggled out to me just as the boy had put it down:
"Dear Miss U, I don't need much money but if some of them Miss U group would write me a letter it would build up my morale."
Another one sent me a poem, the last verse of which went like this:
We're the forgotten men of Bataan,
Maybe some can prove our worth,
And some will tell some strange tale
Of this horrible Hell on earth.