Unsung Heroes of a Secret Mission
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“Dauntless” by Marie Vallejo SIlva
Book Review: Dauntless: The 1st & 2nd Filipino Infantry Regiments, United States Army by Marie Silva Vallejo. Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2023. 762 pp. US$39.00
MArie Silva Vallejo
It all began when Vallejo finished her first book, The Battle of Ising (Eres Printing Corporation, 2009), which recounts our father’s heroic stand to keep a Japanese force at bay when it was trying to pass the road leading to Davao in southern Mindanao in May 1945. Dad, Lt. Col. Saturnino (Tony) Silva, was reticent to talk about the war. It was the 1960s, almost two decades after independence, and at that time the memories were painful for veterans and not appreciated by us children.
Vallejo had also completed her study of the extensive documentation of the various Filipino forces fighting with the Americans; these are held both in the Philippines and in major American institutions such as the U.S. National Archives, the MacArthur Library, and numerous military libraries throughout the country. Along with many interviews of soldiers and guerrillas who were never given a chance to tell their side of the story, and were now quite old, Vallejo had the resources to write this 762-page book.
Our dad’s early years and Vallejo’s personal reminisces of him are at the front and end of the book, respectively, while his Australian spy training and the Mindanao mission are interspersed throughout. There are statements and reminiscences by many hundreds of former soldiers and veterans that give much depth to this book, but because the reader is introduced to Lt. Colonel Silva as Vallejo’s father and war hero, his name stands out among the many mentioned in the book.
In fact, Vallejo makes a very emphatic point to include all the names of the men on mission, their local guerrilla counterparts and, in the appendix, photographs of the regiments that participated in the war. It is Vallejo’s way of being inclusive; they were forgotten in the first wave of books on the Philippines in World War II, but they will not be overlooked again.
Dauntless focuses on the effort by both American forces and Filipino guerrillas to sustain the morale and resources to engage the Japanese Army, to gather information on enemy movements, and to relay that intelligence by radio to the Brisbane headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur. In turn the Americans were kept abreast of the guerilla fighting, which helped them immensely to ascertain where their forces should return in regaining the Philippines, and how many men and ships were needed to accomplish their landings.
Guerrillas in the Philippines carrying the American and Philippines flags. WWII 1943-1945
In a span of two years, over 800 Filipinos were recruited for this secret mission, of whom 200 were selected after jungle training and aptitude tests. Some came from the Philippines, but most were from a cross-section of Filipinos already in the United States, including farmworkers, domestic servants, college graduates, professionals, and others who could not return to the Philippines because of the Japanese occupation. The men were sent to southeast Queensland in Australia to live in Camp X (formerly Tabragalba). Fitness was imperative so there were 12-hour daily marches in the nearby hills of Canungra. As guerrillas, they learned hand-to-hand combat, with and without weapons, and the techniques of jungle survival. Later there would be eight weeks training at Fraser Commando School, also in southeast Queensland, with instruction on small boat navigation, using armaments, identifying enemy aircraft and ships and, most importantly, cryptography.
Daily radio reporting to Australia was essential to the mission. The men had to learn how to set up radio transmission and repair, and learn the coding and decoding of cryptographic messages. I recall my father demonstrating one night how Morse Code worked, with his forefinger and thumb flicking back and forth on an imaginary telegraph key, saying “dits” and “dahs” until a message formed.
Despite the training drudgery, the Filipinos did not forget to make the most of their free time. On weekends, some of the men would visit the locals nearby, make friends, and share their meals with them. Starting during training at various forts in California, and to celebrate special days in Australia, feasts with lechon and roast turkey complete with all the trimmings made an appearance. The American command knew too that the Filipinos were good in playing music, so bands were formed with both morale-boosting military songs and hits from the 1940s equally requested.
In a span of two years, over 800 Filipinos were recruited for this secret mission, of whom 200 were selected after jungle training and aptitude tests.
When ready, batches of the men were sent on submarines for the 12-day trip, first to Mindanao and, later, to other points on the islands. When they boarded their submarines, the duration of their voyage would be listed as “indefinite,” with no return guaranteed. MacArthur understood astutely that the Filipinos’ affinity to their homeland, missing it and their loved ones, and wanting retribution on the Japanese, made them the ideal proponents for going to the Philippines to face whatever the consequences might be. “Bahala Na” (Come What May) was sown onto their uniforms for keeps.
The voyages had frightening moments. Sighted by Japanese destroyers, loudly exploding depth charges rocked the submarines, which quickly descended with everyone sweating in the airless tube and keeping perfectly still and quiet.
Vallejo’s ten years of research and numerous interviews bring up nuances in the retelling of the mission, adding complexity albeit understandably so. There were age differences between the men. Those in their thirties and even forties had come to the United States in 1910 to work in the fields of Hawaii and California, in the canneries in Alaska, as Navy stewards and cooks, and as house servants and busboys on the East Coast. Another wave of younger Filipinos came in the 1920s and 1930s. Despite the initial notion that the older Filipinos would not cope with the rigorous marching, it turned out that many of them, used to backbreaking work in the fields, managed to pull their weight and were accepted in the mission.
Upon the troops landing on an island, envy would be exhibited by the locals who had been wearing rags and were at times unshod and malnourished compared with the well-fed men in spanking new uniforms and boots. There were men born in Hawaii and California who spoke no Filipino and were not initially accepted by the local guerrillas. There were competing Filipino guerrilla organizations on the islands, unfortunately making a united front for victory difficult.
The logistics, especially cargo for distribution, were enormous. A single submarine delivery amounted to over 70 tons of guns, ammunition, explosives, radio equipment, food, camping equipment and clothing. The supply of clothes may have increased given the raggedy sight when encountering their guerrilla counterparts. The deliveries were divided into ten-ton lots and sent to other parts of the islands.
The turnaround of the war and the return of the American forces to the Philippines have now been given additional treatment and depth in the book. The Filipinos did not sit around and wait for the Americans to return. Instead, as Vallejo writes, brave Filipino men and women spied and reported enemy strength throughout the occupation. Uprisings and attacks on enemy strongholds occurred, weakening the Japanese presence. American prisoners of war escaped, aided by the local populace upon pain of death. Later, the guerrillas helped in opening the prison camps. The submarines may have brought much-needed supplies to sustain morale, but it was Filipinos for the most part that carried on the fight to weaken the enemy’s strength.
Guerrillas are pointing out Japanese locations on a map to the men of the 1st Filipino Regiment on Leyte 1945.
At the tail end of the war an interesting but forgotten organization was formed called the Philippine Civil Affairs Unit (PCAU). Staffed mostly by Filipinos and imbedded in the various regiments, they were to be the transition group between the return of the American forces and the setting up of a promised republic. This may have provided much solace to a population sensitive to the much-awaited independence, as news arrived that other colonial powers were returning after the war to their former Southeast Asian colonies with little notice they were intending to leave. Dauntless exposes the lengthy blanks in WWII Philippine historiography; the absence of the invaluable presence of Filipino guerrillas AND of a citizenry that aided, supported, and fought for the American forces and for their nation. Vallejo, in filling her voluminous book with the names of the numerous Filipino fighters, has ensured that the information previously missing has been restored and the blanks in this heroic narrative completed.
First published in the Murillo Bulletin #17 (May 2024) of PHIMCOS Publications: PHIMCOS publication https://phimcos.org/publications/
The book DAUNTLESS can be bought from Eastwind Books Berkeley https://www.asiabookcenter.com/
John L. Silva is executive director of the Ortigas Library, a research library in Manila.
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