By Janine Nunez-Sanciangco and Joel Rufino A. Nunez
On December 8, 1941, Japanese forces invaded the Philippines. Following the attacks, the United States and Philippine Army forces as well as the Reserved Officer Training Corps [ROTC] were immediately called into action. Among the ROTC cadets who responded was our father, Jose P. Nunez, who was then an eighteen-year-old dentistry student in Manila.
Daddy can still recall when he reported to the Philippine Army. On that day, ROTC cadets from different areas arrived at the Philippine Army headquarters and were classified into different platoons. Some platoons were assigned to report to different towns outside Manila, and some were assigned to stay in the city. Daddy was one of the cadets who stayed in Manila. While in the headquarters, Daddy and other ROTC cadets were ordered to destroy and burn all documents they could find before the Japanese could get to them. After this assignment, the cadets were instructed to leave the city and go back to their hometowns, but only after burning their uniforms, so they would not be identified as ROTC cadets in case they would encounter Japanese soldiers on their way home. “We went back to our boarding house wearing only our shirt and boxers,” Daddy recalls. At his boarding house, Daddy patiently waited until he and his younger sister, herself a college student at the University of the Philippines, were able to sail for their hometown, Jimenez, in Mindanao.
(After the fall of the Philippines,) there were a great number of prisoners of war, there were also some Filipinos and Americans who had refused to surrender, and some had managed to escape. Most of them joined the guerrilla resistance or formed their own resistance movement, which grew by most accounts to perhaps 180,000 guerrillas throughout the Philippines.
Our father observed this rapid growth when he arrived in Jimenez, a small town in what is now known as Misamis Occidental. He decided to join the guerrillas.
Although he had wanted to serve in Jimenez, Daddy was ordered to go with another group of guerrillas who had camped east of Jimenez. He was then commissioned as a 3rd Lieutenant of the 120th Infantry Regiment. As they were patrolling the area, they used abandoned schools as their headquarters. Some classrooms were used as sleeping quarters, some as offices, and some as eating areas. To get them through the cold nights and keep insects away, they fashioned makeshift sleeping bags out of weaved abaca. Compared to other guerrilla areas, the food in our father’s regiment was not as scarce, since the Japanese had not yet occupied their territory. The farmers who supplied their food were still able to grow vegetables and corn.
Despite the war being against the Japanese, some guerrilla groups ended up being at war with each other. Daddy’s commanding officer was one such chieftain. Colonel Wendell Fertig sided with another officer in a dispute with our father’s commanding officer, who consequently became wanted by other guerrilla groups.
On a weekend pass, Daddy went home to visit his family in Jimenez, without knowing that his commanding officer was already a wanted man. Upon his arrival, Daddy was identified with the wanted commanding officer’s regiment, and he was therefore arrested along with two of his companions. Thankfully, they were later released on the condition that they not return to their camp and to report to the local regiment instead. Daddy therefore remained in Jimenez.
As months passed, the guerrilla resistance in Mindanao had grown under Colonel Fertig’s leadership to 38,000 troops and had managed to establish a civil government with its own post office, courts, currency, factories, and hospitals. During the war, the Japanese issued its own currency which was rejected by Filipinos as “Mickey Mouse” or play money. On the other hand, each province throughout the Philippines through its respective guerrilla leaders printed – albeit crudely because of their limited resources – their own money for expenses, salaries and purchases. Daddy recounted that Jimenez was one of the towns that made the money. A fine arts student was commissioned to design and carve the woodblocks to print the money with, using the seasoned wood of a guava tree. The money printed in Jimenez enjoyed the reputation of being the “best-looking” legal tender during that time, and it was used and circulated all the way up to Northern Mindanao. Inevitably, the Japanese got wind of this and an order was sent out to look for and seize the Jimenez printing press.
Daddy recalls that around late 1942 or early 1943, he was summoned by his commanding officer and was given a mission, which he considered as the most critical mission in his service. He was ordered to lead the evacuation of the printing press and the staff that operated it, and to transport the equipment and staff to Colonel Fertig ’s headquarters in Liangan, Lanao del Norte, east of Jimenez across Panguil Bay. Daddy clearly remembers that his officer’s orders were to “commandeer everything and make sure that the printing press reaches Colonel Fertig at all costs.”
Since the printing press was in an abandoned rice mill, Daddy, along with two men assigned with him, enlisted the help of another officer and some farmers around the area. They were able to get a carabao-drawn cart to carry the printing press and supplies consisting of inks (made of soot and natural dyes) and heavy craft paper cut into small squares. To lessen the cargo, they burned the partially printed money that had no serial numbers. At the local port, they were again able to solicit the help of fishermen for the use of a big banka to carry the printing press and supplies, and a small banka to carry Daddy, his men and the three operators of the printing press. Daddy hand-carried the most important component of their mission: the woodblocks.
As they were about to set sail, Daddy and his men almost got into a fight with a mestizo Americano officer who claimed that the boats were his and that he was to be the courier of the printing press. Daddy stood his ground, and made ready to draw his revolver when the officer ordered his men to tie our father up. Somehow, Daddy prevailed and he and his group were able to sail across the bay.
When they finally made it to Liangan, an officer welcomed them. Upon finding out about their mission, the officer served my father’s group food and suggested that they rest in his camp. The officer then volunteered to take the printers, printing press and supplies to Colonel Fertig, assuring Daddy that everything and everyone would reach Colonel Fertig safely. The officer did as he promised, but without our father’s knowledge, he took credit for the entire mission. Daddy later found out that Colonel Fertig promoted the officer on the spot, from major to lieutenant colonel. By the time Daddy found out about the credit-grabbing, he was already back in Jimenez and he thought that it was too late to discredit the officer’s claim. So he just moved on and continued to fight with other guerrillas until liberation came in 1944.