Fire in the Jungle: A Study of One of America's Most Successful Unconventional Warfare Campaigns

Introduction

Above all, the most characteristic feature of insurgency in general will be constantly repeated in miniature: the element of resistance will exist everywhere and nowhere. — Clausewitz

After reading thousands of pages of literature on the Philippine resistance and the exploits of the Filipino guerrillas, a simple observation finally hits the reader: the faces of the prominent characters of the resistance remain a mystery because there are virtually no photographs of the guerrillas. Almost none of' the personal accounts have pictures of any kind, and few of the secondary sources do. This is symptomatic of the general phenomenon, which is, the Philippine resistance did not have its chroniclers moving with the guerrillas to detail its adventures and accomplishments. It is understandable why there were no cameras or photographers. But this one small observation underscores the reason why so little is known of the resistance of the Filipinos to the Japanese.

Several authors have alluded to the fact that the definitive book on the Philippine resistance movement has yet to be published. Whereas historians have been provided with multitudinous accounts and analyses of the European resistance movements and the general public satisfied with novels and movies showing the daring of these resistance fighters, few in the West are even aware of the Filipino's struggle against the Japanese.

That is not to say that accounts of the Philippine resistance do not exist - they do, and in large numbers in the Philippines. The void lies in English language accounts available in the West. There are some English language accounts available, but judicious use must be made of them in order to create an accurate picture of the events in the Philippines during the resistance.

Accounts of the Philippine resistance generally focus either on the Japanese treatment of prisoners in the internment camps or upon the collaboration issue. Personal accounts written by or about members of the various guerrilla organizations for the most part do not deal adequately with the problems of guerrilla organization, logistics, relationship to the civil government, tactics or the politics of the guerrilla resistance. The various accounts - including the guerrilla unit histories tend to be self-serving, short on facts, and exercises in ax-grinding. But this problem is surmountable, given enough sources from which to glean information and make comparisons.

Many diaries were kept by guerrillas, and some very good personal accounts have been written from them. Official documents can sometimes serve as the catalyst to extract the truth from this information. Nevertheless, there is no one book which is a scholarly, in-depth account of the Philippine resistance movement as a whole, and there is no exhaustive record published on the guerrilla organization on Mindanao.

Research for this book relied heavily upon personal accounts and upon United States Government documents. Because little was known of their activities during the war, government documents provide information on the guerrillas sparingly. The personal accounts are subject to the criticisms already given. One untapped source for information on the Philippine guerrillas which was used for research in this book is the Philippine Archives in the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Filipino-American resistance to the Japanese on the Island of Mindanao remains one of the most successful unconventional warfare (UW) campaigns in US History. In order to demonstrate this, we must first define our terms and lightly trace out the contours of what is known as insurgency theory.

As current US doctrine holds, there are specific physical and environmental conditions that allow for a successful resistance or insurgency. The three main conditions are: (1) a weakened or unconsolidated government or occupying power; (2) a segmented population, and (3) favorable terrain from which an element can organize and wage subversion and armed resistance.¹ As this study will show, the Mindanao resistance capitalized on these conditions.

The bedrock of these conditions stem from several weighty, time-honored minds. First, the analysis of Carl von Clausewitz, in his treatment of what he called the people’s war, offers the following five conditions to creating an effective uprising:

1. The war must be fought in the interior of the country.

2. It must not be decided by a single stroke.

3. The theatre of operations must be fairly large.

4. The national character must be suited to that type of war.

5. The country must be rough and inaccessible, because of mountains, or forests, marshes, or the local methods of cultivation.²

In the last analysis, for Clausewitz, the most characteristic feature of an insurgency is ubiquity; to be nebulous and elusive; to exist everywhere and nowhere.³ As will be seen, Fertig’s Mindanao resistance followed, albeit most likely unconsciously, each jot and tittle of Clausewitz’s prescription.

A century later, in his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence evoked his six principles of guerrilla warfare:

1. A successful guerrilla movement must have an unassailable base.

2. The guerrilla must have a technologically sophisticated enemy.

3. The enemy army of occupation must be sufficiently weak in numbers so as to be unable to occupy the disputed territory in depth with a system of interlocking fortified posts.

4. The guerrilla must have at least the passive support of the populace, if not its full involvement.

5. The irregular force must have the fundamental qualities of speed, endurance, presence and logistical independence.

6. The guerrilla must be sufficiently advanced in weaponry to strike at the enemy’s logistics and signals vulnerabilities.⁴

Again, as it will be seen, the success of the US-led resistance on Mindanao was mainly because it met Lawrence’s conditions.

Following Lawrence, the next insurgent theorist who plays a primary role is Mao Tse-Tung. For Mao, the underlying cause or ideology in an insurgency is of the utmost concern. In other words, a cause is an insurgency. Among Mao’s contributions is his three-phase approach to how insurgencies mature. As outlined in his book On Guerrilla Warfare, Mao’s three-phase construct is a useful template for planning and developing an insurgency. These three phases are: latent or incipient, guerrilla warfare, and war of movement.⁵

As to cause and developmental phases, the US-led resistance on Mindanao once again is quite prototypic. And it may be conjectured, with a high degree of certainty, that Fertig was neither familiar with the history or philosophy of guerrilla warfare. Moreover, he probably had not read Lenin and certainly not Mao Tse-tung. However, using common sense, he was aware that the first essential element to a resistance movement was a cause.⁶ And as will be seen, a cause is the most powerful when it can combine multiple facets.⁷

As this study will show, the Mindanao resistance is prototypical to the ideal resistance movement. In this vein, the purpose of this study is threefold: First, to demonstrate how the US-led resistance was successful against the Japanese occupation force, which was primarily for seven reasons:⁸

1. The ability of Fertig and his subordinate leaders to unify disparate groups under one unified command (leadership).

2. The ability of Fertig and his subordinate leaders to organize the resistance and give it vision and direction (ideology).

3. The UW tactics employed (objectives).

4. The terrain on the Island of Mindanao was favorable to UW (environment and geography).

5. The ability of MacArthur’s command (HQ, SWPA) to legitimize and resource the resistance (external support).

6. The popular support and resources of the Filipino people and President Quezon; auxiliary and underground (internal support).

7. The ability of Fertig and subordinate leaders to adapt their tactics in support of the US invasion (phasing and timing). See diagram below.

Seven Dynamics of a Successful Resistance Movement

Second, to analyze how the Japanese failed in their counterinsurgency efforts against the Mindanao resistance. And third, to demonstrate the overall effectiveness of General MacArthur’s UW campaign.

The intent is to validate Fertig’s approach as a model resistance movement, within the context of MacArthur’s prodigious UW campaign on the one hand, and Japan’s bungled counterinsurgency campaign on the other. The goal will be to trace out these three strands of thought and balance them like an object suspended between three magnets.

Analyzing this, the chapters of this study alternate between the above stated three strands of thought as follows: Chapter one canvasses the influence of the Japanese on the Philippines before the war, as well as the background of the resistance. Chapter two will discuss the Japanese invasion, along with the initial contact and infiltration of unsurrendered warfighters.

From a counterinsurgency (COIN) perspective, chapter three focuses on Japan’s intent to force compliance on the Filipinos. Chapters four to twelve highlight the organization and build-up of Fertig’s resistance movement on Mindanao, followed by its operational employment in preparation and support during MacArthur’s invasion in chapters thirteen to fifteen. Finally, chapter sixteen draws conclusions from the discussion presented in the book.

Not long after the Japanese invasion, Filipinos who opposed the Japanese occupation began an underground organized resistance. Ultimately, this guerrilla activity encompassed the whole archipelago until more than 260,000 Filipinos were active in guerrilla operations to resist the Japanese. The major center of this resistance was on the Island of Luzon. Gradually other guerrilla units were formed on other outlying islands. In time, these disparate guerrilla bands would be consolidated under McArthur's United States Armed Forces Far East command. This book is primarily the story of the guerrilla resistance on the Island of Mindanao under the command of Army Lieutenant Colonel Wendell Fertig.

¹ TC 18-01, Unconventional Warfare (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2011), 1-3.

² Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Everyman's Library (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), VI.26, 578.

³ Ibid., VI.26, 581.

⁴ Thomas E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (New York: Anchor, 1991), 196.

⁵ TC 18-01, Unconventional Warfare, 2-6.

⁶ Robert B. Osprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History, Vol 1 (New York: Double Day, 1975), 522.

⁷ David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), 15.

⁸ These seven reasons correspond to the seven dynamics of a successful resistance movement.

Chapter One

The Commonwealth of the Philippines

The prospects and progress of a guerrilla movement depend on the attitude of the people. – B.H. Liddell Hart

The Filipino people have a long history of uniting against foreign incursions. In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan led a Spanish expedition to the Islands but was killed in a battle with native warriors several weeks later and his fleet departed. In 1542, the Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the islands of Leyte and Samar Felipinas in honor of the Prince Philip of Asturias who would later become the King Philip II of Spain. In time, the whole archipelago would be known as Las Islas Filipinas. The first permanent Spanish settlement was made in 1565 by General Miguel Lopez de Legazpi. The Spaniards divided the Archipelago among themselves and employed the Filipinos as tenant farmers and servants. Spanish priests also converted most of the Filipinos to Roman Catholicism. Centuries of Spanish rule brought with it the Spanish language and