The military career of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos during World War II has been the subject of debate and controversy, both in the Philippines and in international military circles.[1][2] Marcos, who had received ROTC training in the University of the Philippines, was activated for service in the US Armed Forces in the Philippines after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He served as a 3rd lieutenant during the mobilization in the summer and fall of 1941, continuing until April 1942, after which he was taken prisoner.[3] According to Marcos' account, he was released from prison by the Japanese on August 4, 1942,[4] and US military records show that he rejoined USAFIP forces in December 1944.[4] Marcos' military service then formally ended with his discharge as a major in the 14th Infantry, US Armed Forces in the Philippines Northern Luzon, in May 1945.[5]
Controversies regarding Marcos' military service revolve around: the reason for his release from the Japanese POW camp;[4] his actions between release from prison in August 1942 and return to the USAFIP in December 1944;[4] his supposed rank upon discharge from USAFIP;[5] and his claims to being the recipient of numerous military decorations, most of which were proven to be fraudulent.[1][2]
Documents uncovered by the Washington Post in 1986 suggested that Marcos' release in August 1942 happened because his father, former congressman and provincial governor Mariano Marcos, "cooperated with the Japanese military authorities" as publicist.[4]
After his release, Marcos claims that he spent much of the period between his August 1942 release and his December 1944 return to USAFIP[4] as the leader of a guerilla organization called Ang Manga Mahárlika (Tagalog, "The Freeman") in Northern Luzon.[6] According to Marcos' claim, this force had a strength of 9,000 men.[6] His account of events was later cast into doubt after a United States military investigation exposed many of his claims as either false or inaccurate.[7]
Another controversy arose in 1947, when Marcos began signing communications with the rank of lieutenant colonel, instead of major.[5] This prompted US officials to note that Marcos was only "recognized as a major in the roster of the 14th Infantry USAFIP, NL as of 12 December 1944 to his date of discharge."[5]
The biggest controversy arising from Marcos' service during World War II, however, would concern his claims during the 1962 Senatorial Campaign of being "most decorated war hero of the Philippines"[1] He claimed to have been the recipient of 33 war medals and decorations, including the Distinguished Service Cross and the Medal of Honor, but researchers later found that stories about the wartime exploits of Marcos were mostly propaganda, being inaccurate or untrue.[8] Only two of the supposed 33 awards - the Gold Cross and the Distinguished Service Star - were given during the war, and both had been contested by Marcos' superiors.[8]
Training and mobilization
Before World War II, Marcos was already a Reserve Officers' Training Corps graduate during his time studying law.[3] Hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941, the Japanese simultaneously bombed many places in the Philippines, including Clark Field. The 14th Army began its invasion with a landing on Batan Island (not to be confused with Bataan Peninsula), 120 miles (190km) off the north coast of Luzon on the same day, by selected naval infantry units. Landings on Camiguin Island and at Vigan, Aparri, and Gonzaga in northern Luzon followed two days later.[9]
Marcos was one of those who were called into the army as a 3rd lieutenant during the mobilization in the summer and fall of 1941. The U.S. Army has confirmed that Ferdinand Marcos fought on the U.S. side after the December 1941 Japanese invasion of the Philippines until April 1942, after which he was taken prisoner.[3]
Battle of Bataan
Records show that Ferdinand Marcos was assigned to the G-2 (Intelligence) of Gen. Mateo Capinpin's 21st Infantry Division in Bataan. Being assigned to the HQ Company, the claim for his accounts in single-handedly stopping the advance of the Japanese on April 2 is under question. Records and reports made during the battle on April 2 have no mention of 3Lt. Marcos holding back the Japanese assault. No record also exist of 3Lt. Marcos being given command of a front line units, and this was also corroborated by officers of the 21st Division.[10][11]
Marcos' direct commanding officer in G-2 of the 21st Division, Maj. Romulo Manriquez, denied any knowledge of Marcos' exploits. Controversially, in 1982, Marcos would gift Manriquez gold-plated his and hers Cartier watch.[12]
While Marcos appears at the end of the war wearing a DSC and two Silver Stars, his name does not appear in the two lists of 120 American and Filipinos who were awarded the DSCs as radioed by Gen. Jonathan Wainwright to Washington before his surrender. Marcos also does not appear in "List of Recipients of Awards and Decorations Issued Between Dec. 7, 1941 through June 30, 1945" as compiled by the staff of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Tokyo.[12]
Louis Morton who authored the official Army Records "Fall of the Philippines" also relied on the publication of "A Brief History of the 21st Division," which forms the account of Gen. Mateo M. Capinpin's command. Marcos was mentioned in the dispatches, and tells of one incident where Marcos was instructed to bring a wounded officer to the rear. The 21st Infantry Division's historical account also list officers and enlisted men who received awards, but there was no mention of Marcos receiving the DSC and Silver Stars. It was also noted that the 21st Infantry Division, despite their critical role in the Guagua-Porac Line and in Bataan did not receive sufficient recognition for their deeds.[12]
Bataan Death March and release from Japanese prison
Ferdinand Marcos during WW2
Marcos was allegedly one of the 78,000 Filipino and American troops who surrendered at Bataan on April 9, 1942, four months after the Japanese initiated their invasion of the Philippines. He survived the Bataan Death March that followed the surrender.[13]
According to Marcos' account, he was freed from the Japanese POW camp on August 4, 1942.[4]
This later became controversial when the Japanese government confirmed that Philippine prisoners released at the time were either those who had "severe health problems", or those "whose families have cooperated with the Japanese military authorities."[4] Lists of ailing prisoners released by the Manila press in the summer of 1942 did not include Ferdinand Marcos' name, and journalists later discovered documents stating that Ferdinand's father Mariano Marcos had been a propagandist working for the Japanese during the war, and had been "executed by anti-Japanese guerrillas" in 1945.[4]
John Sharkey of The Washington Post found records that Marcos was in the list of those that were released due to either "having severe health problems and those whose families have cooperated with the Japanese military authorities."[14] Since Marcos's name did not appear in the 1942 Manila Tribune list of ailing prisoners that were released by the Japanese, Sharkey believed that Marcos may have been freed due to his connections with his father.
Claims of guerrilla force leadership
After the fall of Bataan, Marcos claimed to have led a guerrilla force called Ang Mahárlika (Tagalog, "The Freeman") in northern Luzon during World War II.[6] According to Marcos' claim, this force had a strength of 9,000 men.[6]
His account of events was later cast into doubt after a United States military investigation exposed many of his claims as either false or inaccurate.[7] Meanwhile, Marcos claimed that he was able to get the United States Adjutant General to recognize 3,500 individual claims of soldiers then under his command.[15] Initial investigations by the US Army, and subsequent ones in 1948 after Marcos requested for reparations and backpay has been concluded by investigators as fraudulent and a malicious criminal act. These records have been declassified by the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office and the US National Archives and Records Administration.[16]
According to Marcos publicist-turned critic Primitivo Mijares in his book The Conjugal Dictatorship, Marcos also filed a fake multimillion-dollar war reparations claim that he had supplied starving American and Filipino soldiers with several thousand head of cattle.[17]
Further research have uncovered from US military records that Marcos and his family have collaborated with the Japanese authorities. The younger Marcos then was recorded by a Japanese official as one of their propagandist.[18] The father, Mariano Marcos, was later executed by Filipino guerillas in their own province through quartering by tying him to four water buffalos who ran towards opposite direction. What was left of him was hung on the tree. American guerilla Robert Lapham accounted that Mariano Marcos "was unquestionably a collaborator with the Japanese, for which bad judgment he paid a ghastly price." The guerillas who carried out the execution of Mariano Marcos were friends and relatives of the Julio Nalundasan, the former's political enemy who was murdered by Ferdinand Marcos in 1935 after losing twice against the latter during the local elections.[19][20]
Return to USAFIP and discharge from service
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According to US Military records, Marcos rejoined USAFIP forces in December 1944.[4] Marcos' Military service then formally ended with his discharge as a Major in the 14th Infantry, US Armed Forces in the Philippines Northern Luzon, in May 1945.[5]
In communications starting around the end of 1947, Marcos began signing communications with the rank of Lt. Col., instead of Major.[5] This prompted US officials to note that Marcos "is recognized as a major in the roster of the 14th Infantry USAFIP, NL as of 12 December 1944 to his date of discharge."[5]
In 1962, Marcos would claim to be the "most decorated war hero of the Philippines" by garnering almost every medal and decoration that the Filipino and American governments could give to a soldier.[13] Among his supposed 27 war medals and decorations were the Distinguished Service Cross (allegedly pinned by General Douglas MacArthur) and the Medal of Honor (allegedly pinned by General Jonathan M. Wainwright).[1]
Marcos was listed in General Douglas MacArthur's "List of Recipients of Awards and Decorations" issued from December 7, 1941, to June 30, 1945, that was compiled in Tokyo, and General Jonathan Wainwright's list of 120 Americans and Filipinos who were awarded during the Bataan campaign by the War Department shortly before his surrender.[21][14]
Colonel Manriquez and Adjutant Captain Rivera who were the commanders of the 14th Infantry, whom Marcos claimed to have served under, attested that Marcos was not a soldier, but was a non-combatant and a Civil Affairs officer. Marcos only received campaign ribbons given to all combatant and non-combatant participants "in the defense of Bataan and in the resistance."[22]
Marcos' claim of having received the Order of the Purple Heart has also been shown to have been false. His name does not appear on the official roster of recipients.[23][24]
Researchers later found that stories about the wartime exploits of Marcos were mostly propaganda, being inaccurate or untrue.[25][26][27][28][29][30]
In 1986, research by historian Alfred W. McCoy into United States Army records showed most of Marcos's medals to be fraudulent.[2][31] According to Dr. Ricardo T. Jose, former chairman of the Department of History of the University of the Philippines, Marcos's claims in his self-commissioned autobiography Marcos of the Philippines that Gen. Douglas MacArthur pinned on him the Distinguished Service Cross medal for delaying Japanese at Bataan for 3 months was highly improbable.[32]
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr. was a Filipino politician, lawyer, dictator, and kleptocrat who served as the tenth president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He ruled under martial law from 1972 until 1981 and kept most of his martial law powers until he was deposed in 1986, branding his rule as "constitutional authoritarianism" under his Kilusang Bagong Lipunan. One of the most controversial leaders of the 20th century, Marcos' rule was infamous for its corruption, extravagance, and brutality.
The Philippine Scouts (Filipino: Maghahanap ng Pilipinas/Hukbong Maghahanap ng Pilipinas) was a military organization of the United States Army from 1901 until after the end of World War II. These troops were generally Filipinos and Filipino-Americans assigned to the United States Army Philippine Department, under the command of American commissioned officers (though a handful of Filipino Americans received commissions from the United States Military Academy). Philippine Scout units were given the suffix "(PS)", to distinguish them from other U.S. Army units.
Philippine Division, or from 1944–1947 the 12th Infantry Division, was the core U.S. infantry division of the United States Army's Philippine Department during World War II.
The Philippines campaign, also known as the Battle of the Philippines or the Fall of the Philippines, was the invasion of the American territory of the Philippines by the Empire of Japan and the defense of the islands by United States and the Philippine Armies during World War II.
The Battle of Bataan was fought by the United States and the Philippine Commonwealth against Japan during World War II. The battle represented the most intense phase of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during World War II. In January 1942, forces of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy invaded Luzon along with several islands in the Philippine Archipelago after the bombing of the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.
Robert Lapham was a reserve lieutenant in the US Army in World War II. He served in the Philippines attached to the 45th Infantry, evaded capture in the spring of 1942, and organized and led one of the largest and most successful guerrilla armies on the central plains of the northern island of Luzon. He was promoted to major by war's end, age 28, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by General Douglas MacArthur. Lapham was the third person, after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and MacArthur, to receive the Philippine Legion of Honor. Historian Norling says that Laphams's Luzon Guerrilla Army Force (LGAF) was probably the most efficient of the many guerrilla armies on Luzon. The U.S. Guerrilla Affairs Division commended Lapham for having the best-disciplined guerrilla organization.
Martial law in the Philippines refers to the various historical instances in which the Philippine head of state placed all or part of the country under military control—most prominently during the administration of Ferdinand Marcos, but also during the Philippines' colonial period, during the second world war, and more recently on the island of Mindanao during the administrations of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Rodrigo Duterte. The alternative term "martial law era" as applied to the Philippines is typically used to describe the Marcos martial law period specifically.
Eulogio Balao was a Filipino soldier and politician.
Russell William Volckmann was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, a U.S. Army infantry officer and a leader of the Philippine Commonwealth military and guerrilla resistance to the Japanese conquest of the Philippines during World War II. After the war, he remained in the U.S. Army and helped create the U.S. Army Special Forces. Volckmann, together with Colonels Aaron Bank and Wendell Fertig are considered the founders of the U.S. Army Special Forces. He eventually retired as a brigadier general.
Commodore Ramon Abacan Alcaraz was a Filipino World War II hero, Naval officer, and businessman best known as a recipient of the Silver Star for heroism and gallantry as part of the Offshore Patrol unit of the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) during the Second World War; and as one of the earliest critics of the Marcos dictatorship within the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
During the Japanese occupation of the islands in World War II, there was an extensive Philippine resistance movement, which opposed the Japanese and their collaborators with active underground and guerrilla activity that increased over the years. Fighting the guerrillas – apart from the Japanese regular forces – were a Japanese-formed Bureau of Constabulary, the Kenpeitai, and the Makapili. Postwar studies estimate that around 260,000 people were organized under guerrilla groups and that members of anti-Japanese underground organizations were more numerous. Such was their effectiveness that by the end of World War II, Japan controlled only twelve of the forty-eight provinces.
The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos is a 1976 memoir written in exile by former press censor and propagandist Primitivo Mijares. It details the inner workings of Philippine martial law under Ferdinand Marcos from the perspective of Mijares.
The United States Army Forces in the Philippines – Northern Luzon or United States Armed Forces in the Philippines – Northern Luzon (USAFIP-NL) was the military and guerrilla organization active in the Philippines after the Japanese occupation. It was made up of United States Army and Philippine Army soldiers, reservists and civilian volunteers.
The 21st Infantry Division was one of the 10 reserve division of the Philippine Army mobilized under the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE). The unit was involved in the delaying action against the Japanese invasion in the plains of Central Luzon, and the Battle of Bataan in 1942.
The 11th Infantry Division was one the reserve division of the Philippine Army that was mobilized in September 1941 under the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE).
Albert Monmouth Jones was an American major general and known for his command of the 51st Philippine Division and subsequently I Philippine Corps during the Japanese invasion in World War II.
Ferdinand Marcos developed a cult of personality as a way of remaining President of the Philippines for 20 years, in a way that political scientists have compared to other authoritarian and totalitarian leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, but also to more contemporary dictators such as Suharto in Indonesia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and the Kim dynasty of North Korea.
Rafael Ledesma Jalandoni was a Philippine Constabulary officer who served as the 3rd Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. He was appointed by President Manuel Roxas in 1946 after gaining independence from United States. He retired in 1948. He served as an aide of President Manuel L. Quezon in pre-war years.
Iginuhit ng Tadhana , also known as Man of Destiny, is a 1965 Filipino biographical film about then-Senate President Ferdinand Marcos. Directed by Mar S. Torres, Jose de Villa and Conrado Conde, the film stars Luis Gonzales as Marcos, Rosa Mia as Marcos' mother Josefa, and Gloria Romero as Marcos' wife Imelda. The film was produced by 777 Film Productions and was first released by Sampaguita Pictures in the Philippine provinces on August 24, 1965, during Marcos' campaign for president in the 1965 presidential election.
Primitivo "Tibo" Medrana Mijares was a Filipino journalist, author, war hero, and former press censor and propagandist. He was a reporter of the Philippines Daily Express, a newspaper in circulation during the regime of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Capt. E.R. Curtis, “Check Sheet, Subject:Ferdinand E. Marcos” sent to Lt. Col. W.M. Hanes, 24 March 1948, in AMM-GURF. As cited inWhy Ferdinand E. Marcos Should Not Be Buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. Manila: National Historical Commission of the Philippines. July 12, 2016.
↑ Asian Journal San Diego which has an article also claiming Marcos's exploits during world war two as untrue: "Marcos Fake Medals Redux (Part III)". Asian Journal. May 13, 2017. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014.
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