Post by EXO on Apr 29, 2021 12:46:23 GMT 8
THE STATE OF THE PHILIPPINES AS OF AUGUST 1942
When the Japanese took Manila, 'Chick' Parsons burned everything which indicated he was a serving U.S. Navy officer, and well involved in gathering intelligence against them. The last PT Boat to Corregidor had left without him a week earlier - he was busy burning Navy oil supplies lest they fall into Japanese hands, and was too late to the departure point.
Since that time he had started speaking only in Spanish and hoping that his title of Honorary Consul to Panama (part of his function as manager of the Luzon Stevedoring Co.) would earn him some benefits of treatment and even expatriation. Each day, he and the family would raise the flag of Panama, and salute it. It was a fine show.
He ended up getting treated badly, but expatriation, miraculously, was granted, largely due to the efforts of Swedish Consul, Helge Janson.
During his voyage home, he wrote a report of the state of the Philippines under the Japanese. As Chick was the first American 'in the know' to make it out of Manila, how would his report be taken?
When Chick arrived in New York on the Swedish exchange ship, Gripsholm, he was sequestered by the FBI and questioned regarding his being freed by the Japanese. They felt he had no diplomatic privileges or rights, and he had been president of a Japanese company. In short, they suspected him of being a Japanese spy. Friends in Naval Intelligence and in the State Department came to his rescue. But before he went ashore to freedom, he remarked to his interrogators that they were nearly as bad as the Kempeitai!
When MacArthur saw the report, he demanded that Parsons come to Brisbane by the first available means. Chick became the person to establish and maintain contact with the resistance movement in the Philippines, and his observations were critical.
We now have the entirety of his report.
Consider, as you read it, that it is the first intelligence report on what had transpired since the collapse of American resistance in the Philippines.