War Stories II by Oliver L. North Page B

rice pot—with this fellow Clark. We were working on the Zero Ward. Zero Ward meant that you were there because you were expected to die soon. At that time there were about twelve of these scrawny guys on Zero Ward. It was just getting daylight and the poor fellows were standing there with their beat-up mess kits waiting for rations. Then I said, “Clark, come here.” And I pointed to a rat in the cooking pot, in the lugow for breakfast. “Clark, we can’t eat this stuff. What are we gonna do?”
    Clark said, “I’m gonna go back behind the stove and push down the window. And you just flip it out there and they’ll never see it.”
    I flipped that darn rat out there and there were ten or twelve guys who saw it and soon there wasn’t one scrap of that rat. They ate it, bones and all.

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
    AUGUST 1942
    Within weeks of the fall of Corregidor, Filipino civilians—many with relatives inside the complex of Japanese POW camps—began to get word to the outside world about what had happened on the Death March and about conditions inside the camps. U.S. and Filipino guerrillas, operating in the jungle-covered volcanic mountains, passed information about the camps and the POWs to allied intelligence officers. And while conditions inside the camps remained deplorable, the Philippine underground was eventually able to smuggle small amounts of medicine and some supplies into the camps.

    Claire Phillips was the American bride of Sergeant John Phillips, fighting with the 31st Infantry when Bataan surrendered. He was sent to Cabanatuan, where he died of malaria, dysentery, and malnutrition. Claire, alone and living in Japanese-occupied Manila, was determined to avenge her husband’s death. She made contact with a Philippine resistance organization, which provided her with false Italian identity documents. Since Rome and Tokyo were allies, this would keep the Japanese from becoming suspicious of the attractive young American.
    Claire, now known as “Dorothy Fuentes,” started a nightclub for Japanese officers.
    She called it Club Tsubaki and opened its doors in October 1942. “Tsubaki” meant “camellia” in Japanese and also meant “hard to get.” The beautiful Filipino women who worked with “Dorothy” in Club Tsubaki were amazingly effective in eliciting information and military intelligence from the officers who frequented the club. The Japanese nicknamed Claire “High Pockets,” because she had a habit of hiding her tips in her bra. Unbeknownst to her generous customers, Claire used the money to buy quinine and other medicines that the Philippine resistance organizations smuggled into the POW camps. POW camps.
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    Claire Phillips

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    Robert Taylor

    A key member of Claire’s spy and smuggling web was a highly respected and devout Army chaplain, Major Robert Taylor. Ironically, it was the gift of a signed Bible from “High Pockets” to Chaplain Taylor that almost got them both killed.
    Shortly before the United States liberated the Philippines, a prison guard conducting a routine search of the chaplain’s belongings found the Bible. Within days, Japanese military intelligence arrested Claire. Though they tortured her and the chaplain, neither of them divulged what they knew of the other. Both survived the experience, and after the war, both the U.S. and Philippine governments recognized Claire for her heroism.

    The courage of Claire Phillips, Chaplain Robert Taylor, and hundreds of others—mostly Filipinos—helped to ease the desperate plight faced by tens of thousands of prisoners seized in the most ignominious defeat ever suffered by the U.S. Armed Forces. Unfortunately, the good news of their bravery would remain unknown to all but a few Americans for several more years. And in the months after Pearl Harbor, good news was something the American people desperately needed.

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