BALIANGAO DURING THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION
By: Lagrimas B. Fuentes

The treacherous bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii by the Japanese Forces on December 8, 1941 was a shocking news received throughout the world. On the same day, the bombing by the Japanese planes of several military installations in the Philippines such as Clark Field, Subic Bay, Corregidor and Nichols Airbase signaled the eventual occupation of the country by the Japanese. This came through with the landing of a great number of Japanese soldiers on several planes in Luzon, notably Lingayen and Quezon less than a week after the bombing, December 12, 1941.

Delayed by the Bataan and Corregidor campaigns against their planned immediate and complete occupation of the country, it took more than one and a half years, June 26, 1943 before actually landed on the shores of Misamis Occidental. It was also on this date that Ozamiz City fell into the hands (now Ozamiz City) suffered shalling by the Japanese naval boats (March 1, 1942) and bombings by the Japanese Air Force planes (December 27, 1942) to the greatest consternation of the people of the place and the surrounding areas.

Baliangao Prior to the Japanese Arrival

It was immediately after the shallings that the mass evacuation by the residents of the towns along the coast of Misamis Occidental started in earnest. In Baliangao, however, possibly because of its being isolated, except for a few majority of the residents of the poblacion stayed in their homes and continued with their usual day-to-day activities. Volunteer guards from among the civilian population were organized to help maintain peace and order. In the evenings people gathered in the municipio either to exchange news reports about the war of just mill around for purposes of socialization.

It was through these sources of information that the residents began to learn about the atrocities of the Japanese soldiers inflicted to the innocent civilians in areas of the countries occupied by them. This scared them no end and  caused the increasing number of evacuees from the poblacion to the mountain areas.

Guerilla Preparation in Baliangao

After the fall of Bataan and Corregidor the Filipino and American military forces in Mindanao were disbanded and ordered to surrender to the Japanese Imperial Army in Davao and Malaybalay, Bukidnon, where these forces were concentrated. Despite this order of surrender, however, thousands of Filipinos refused to yield and escaped, majority with their arms, returned to their hometowns passing through dangerous routes, across thick forests and Japanese held territories. Many of these returnees arrived in their homes sick either malaria or just plain physically  exhausted due to travel.

In Misamis Occidental a good number of these non-surrenderers regrouped and joined the guerilla movement. It must be mentioned that during this time several guerilla outfits were organized in different parts of the country.

One late morning shortly after the fall of Bataan and Corregidor the Baliangao residents, restless with the fear of possible arrival any moment of the dreaded Japanese soldiers in their town, where terribly shaken when a truck full of armed men suddenly arrived and stopped in front of the Baliangao municipal building. Their arms consisted of assorted weapons and ammunitions – short funs riffles of the Philippine Constabulary vintage, and a few automatic riffles.

It turned out that these men were some of those early organized guerilla band under Captain Luis Morgan, a former Philippine Constabulary officer, who refused to surrender to the Japanese forces. This guerilla group was organized in Western Lanao after the fall of Bataan. Morgan, together with Captain William Tate and other officers and men organized an expeditionary force and made contacts with former soldiers and military officers in different towns in Misamis Occidental and later, in parts of Mindanao.

It may be recalled that as early as January 3, 1942, before the Philippine Executive Commission, the puppet civil government was set up, the Japanese High Command established the Japanese Military Administration to take care of the civil government of the country. Among the military rules issued by the Japanese conquerors were the order for all government officials and employees to return to their posts and the confiscation of all arms, gasoline supply, etc.

In Baliangao both of these orders were followed. Almost all of the government personnel continued in their services and the Chief of Police was able to gather a sizeable number of firearms and ammunitions, depositing them at the municipal building.

In dire need of firearms for his pioneer guerilla group, the stock of confiscated firearms in the municipal building was Godsend to Morgan.

During a meeting, Morgan explained their mission to the people of Baliangao. He then ordered the arrest of municipal resident Sixto Velez for alleged collaboration with the Japanese and sent him to their military prison camp in Lanao del Norte. In his stead Morgan appointed (ex-Municipal President Jose Bueno as military Mayor).

Morgan’s group joined the bigger and better-organized outfit under Col. Wendell Fertig which covered the whole of Mindanao and whose headquarters was first establish in Misamis and later transferred to another part of the island. Fertig’s Guerilla outfit was known as the 10^th Military District and included several divisions with their corresponding lower military units. Under this set-up Misamis Occidental and part of Zamboanga fell under the jurisdiction of the 105^th Infantry Division, the biggest unit to the “A” corps and place under the Command of Lt. Col. Ciriaco Mortera.

The Mindanao guerilla movement underwent reorganizations with more and more men joining  it and later became stronger with better arms and ammunitions arriving from Australia.

Sometime before September, 1943 “I” Company with 1^st Lieutenant Abelardo Nerida as Commanding Officer, was assigned in Baliangao and established its headquarters at the Baliangao Central School. This unit was under the 3^rd Separate Batallion of the 10^th Military District which was also just recently organized and with 3^rd Lieutenant Patricio Atay as Commanding Officer. The other units under this command were the “K”  Company under 3^rd Lieutenant Amojelar with headquarters at Plaridel, Misamis Occidental. “L” Company with Lieutenant Atay also as the Commanding Officer, and the Headquarter Battalion with 1^st Lieutenant Salvador Estillore with headquarters at Calamba. The unit under Lieutenant Atay was responsible for the successful ambush of a Japanese troop at Macalibre, a mountain barrio of Lopez Jaena. Misamis Occidental on the early evening of September 7, 1943. The Japanese force travelling only at nighttime was on its way to Oroquieta or Misamis from Dipolog, Zamboanga. It was trailed by Atay’s men for four days the Japanese, caught completely unaware suffered tremendous casualty in this ambush.

Marcos in Baliangao

Earlier, on May 7, 1943, Captain Ferdinand together with Captain Manzano, Captain San Agustin, Captain Montalban and Captain Raval reach Baliangao from the island of Panay. Their mission was to establish contact with Gen. Douglas McArthur of the Southwest Pacific Command in Australia, a mission they failed in Panay as Gen. Macario Peralta, Panay’s top guerilla leader, did not give them the opportunity to transmit their message. Mr. Amadeo Barica, a prominent citizen of Baliangao accomodated the group and hide them at the hideout in Sitio Simulay, now a part of the municipality of Sapang Dalaga, Capt. Marcos and his companions traveled banka to Capt. Tate’s headquarters at Lala, Lanao, where Mr. Amador Barica, son of Amadeo, Sr., was a prison officer. From there they proceeded to Bonifacio, Misamis Occidental where the guerilla radio station was located, enabling them to establish direct contact with General McArthur in Australia.

The Evacuation of Residents

After it was known that the Japanese occupied the towns of Misamis and Oroquieta, in Misamis Occidental and Dipolog, Zamboanga, the military (guerilla) units ordered all the civilian residents of the poblacion to leave the town and stay  away from the Japanese forces. Massive evacuation then took place with men women and children taking along with them whatever belongings they could carry either by foot or by all kinds of available transportation.

It was also during this time that the guerilla units started to commandeer motor vehicles from the civilians causing further difficulties in the evacuation. Majority of the evacuees took the boats and crossed the Murcielagus Bay. Except a few who stayed put, practically all the houses were empty and place suddenly became a ghost town.

The destination of the evacuees were either in the mountain area or along the seacoast of the opposite side of the bay. In most cases, the evacuees stayed in temporary dwelling hastily constructed out of the branches of trees with sides and roof made of woven  coconut palm leaves. These usually located at a distance from roads or trails to avoid being easily seen. The luckier ones took over the houses of some barrio residents and those occupied by earlier evacuees who moved further in land to be safe. In many instances several families stayed together in a single house. Most cooked enough food for the whole day at dawn to avoid the use of fire during the day and nighttime fear of detection by Japanese patrols. In many cases especially during the first few weeks of the evacuation, the men folks slept outside the house and to serve as guards for the women and children during nighttime.

Some constructed underground shelters near their evacuation houses as preparation for the air raids and Japanese patrols. Some of these underground shelters were quite big to accommodate sizeable families using it even for sleeping quarters at extremely critical times. These shelters were usually covered or camouflaged with ricks or soil and dry leaves to avoid detection by the patrolling Japanese soldiers.

With reports atrocities, looting, rape of women, and children not being spared from death by bayonet, the fear of civilian population was easily understandable.

Japanese Retaliation Against the Guerillas

The hit-and-run tactics by the guerilla soldiers inflicted great harm to the Japanese forces wherever they went. Actually the Japanese made it widely known through their radio that the province of Misamis Occidental, being the most obstinate area in the entire country, was in for a terrible punishment. Not long after this announcement atrocities were inflicted by the Japanese to the civilian  population in retaliation to the casualties they suffered. In the town of Misamis, the Japanese Kempetai, the most dreaded Japanese army group, massacred innocent civilians on June 30, 1943 at Barrio Bagakay after one of their officers was killed in an ambush by a handful guerilla fighters led by Major Lucas Naranjo. Men and women, young and old, were made to line up in single file and bayoneted one by one.

In Baliangao at Barrio Del Pilar, Japanese soldiers massacred about twenty civilians on February 16, 1944. A few days later they killed some more of the inhabitants. Among those killed by bayonet were barrio leaders, namely: Patoy, Yap, Pedro Tomogsoc, and Irenio Ongayo.

The name is true in Calamba where small children were not spared from their atrocities and where – as dead remained unburied for several days the stench of dead bodies was long remembered.

In barrio Mabini, also of Baliangao, a prominent landowner, Roque Su, who refused to leave his place and promised never to yield to the enemy was killed by the Japanese soldiers but only after he also, one of the Japanese officers with his rifle. Killed with him was his Chinese cook who stayed with him at that time. Before the Japanese left they placed the three dead bodies over an oil of copra in the nearby bodega, and set them on fire until they were turned to ashes. Also burned at the same was Mr. Su’s big residential house.

On their way to the town proper at Sitio Napiot, about a kilometer before the poblacion, a group of men and women engaged in salt-making by evaporation salt water over a fire were caught by the Japanese and brought to the municipal building where they were put in prison. At the poblacion they ransacked big residential houses, rested for a while near the municipal hall and returned to Calamba before nighttime after releasing their prisoners.

Two interesting incidents that death with simple bad men folks took place at this time. Inside one little house along the way, the Japanese saw an old woman alone packing up her things and preparing to evacuate. When asked through an interpreter what she was doing, she answered unconcerned without looking at the group that she was going to evacuate because she said, she was told to do so by her neighbors as the Japanese were coming. When told to that they were Japanese she simply said still unconcerned. Ah, so you are, unpacked her things, stayed, and resumed her chores.

At barrio Misum, about two kilometers before reaching the poblacion, the Japanese saw an old man named Damian, groggy under the influence of tuba. They took him along and held him as a sort of hostage. After discovering that he was of no help to them at poblacion, he was released and told to go home. He refused to budge and told his cap-in an extremely arrogant manner, that from where he was taken there also he should be returned.

Socio-Economic Condition

The people of Baliangao always in constant fear of the Japanese were confined to their temporary residences, going out only for important reasons, principally to secure food for the family. In fact it was during this particular time the principal concern of the people was food. The struggle was mainly for survival. With the family always on the run for their lives there was practically no visible means of livelihood. Copra, the main source of income of majority of the people of this coconut-producing locality was no longer bought by copra dealers and the fallen coconuts were left to grow or rot in coconut plantations.

Towards the beginning of 1944 the Japanese were preoccupied in other areas of the country. With the rescued frequency of their presence in this part of the province, the people started to move around, cultivated available lands and planted them with root crops, vegetables and other short term plants principally for food. The Fertig Trail constructed mostly by volunteer guards at the mountain side of Misamis Occidental greatly facilitated safe travel either by hiking or by horse riding from as far as South as Tukuran and Molave, Zamboanga del Sur to as far as Dipolog or Sindangan, Zamboanga del Norte.

Commerce and Trade

With more freedom to travel at least in the mountain areas, Sundays started to become regular market days for many  barrios in the province. Manufactured goods such as clothing, shoes, coffee, milk, can goods, and other household materials were no longer available. However, ingenuity of the people started to manifest itself through the appearance of local substitutes. Such articles as homemade hair oil, pomade, noodles, perfumes, thread from old socks and stockings, laundry and toilet soaps made from coconut oil, lye from ashes of coconut fronds and lime from ashes of burned sea shell, coconut oil lamps shaped out of empty tin can with parts of old clothes as wicks, started to appear for sale in the weekly tabotabo or barrio market days. In many houses the previously rejected hand looms started to swing again using abacca fibers as materials for clothing. Swan as dresses or shirts or jackets, although somewhat uncomfortable to wear, it nevertheless served the purpose for many quite a long time.

Popular articles also in many of the market places were locally manufactured cigarettes and cigars, homemade sugar, salt from seawater, cookies and cakes from cassava flour and other root crops.

While in some cases barter trading was resorted to by traders, the use as medium of exchange of the locally printed Mindanao Emergency Currency notes, popularly known as the emergency money, was common. The printing of these notes was authorized by both the civil government under then President Manuel Quezon through General Manuel Roxas and the military under Col. Wendell Fertig.

The more enterprising entrepreneurs started building larger bancas for inter-island sailing principally to Cebu, Bohol, and Negros Oriental, taking with them corn and other locally grown or manufactured products and bringing in return such scare commodities in the locality as sugar, saguran (weaved grassstraw) used as sleeping mats or blankets, clay cooking pots, and other sleeping mats or blanket, baskets, clay cooking pots, and others.

Interisland commerce and trade flourish greatly in barrio Casul a coastal barrio located at the other end of Murcielagus Bay, where on Sundays thousands of small boats congregate attracting thousands of traders from practically all towns of the provinces.

Later, the American Forces from Morotai discovered that this area of the province was free from the Japanese. Large sea known as the Catalina started to land near Cadul regularly on Saturdays attracting hundreds of small boats with their gifts of bananas and other fruits expecting in return American cigarettes and candies.

Morotai of the Halmaharas Islands located about 500 miles south of Davao is the home base of the 13^th U.S. Airforce Base under General Kenny, as small soft-spoken man, more like a doctor than a Commander of the military power along the runways. This U.S. Airforce base had the mission of bombing Japanese military installations in the Philippines, Celebes, and Borneo.

Education and Religion

With the people’s primary concern focused solely on life’s survival during this period it is probably most difficult to expect even a slightest concern for education both in their evacuation places and even immediately after the Japanese left the area. Formal education therefore was a complete standstill. All schools closed immediately with the outbreak of the war. Under the Japanese regime, the Department of Education was supposed to be functioning under the puppet civil government’s Philippine Executive Commission, (with Claro Recto as Commissioners). After the fall of the Philippines, education never function in most areas of the country. While there were token Nipponggo classes for a short while in bigger towns as in Misamis and Cagayan de Oro, none took place in Baliangao.

In the Misamis Occidental area, the public school teachers were still required to report to their school stations during the first few months of 1942. This was possibly  in view of the fact that they received advanced salaries for three months as ordered by President Manuel Quezon to all provincial treasurers shortly after the start of World War II.

In anticipation of the inevitable shortage of clothes for the soldiers the teachers were utilized in making improvised shoes made of braided abaca fibers in the schools. These shoes were known during the time as alfragatus. In a way they were eventually made use of but only by a limited number.

After March, 1942, the teachers and other school officials were practically on their own and like the rest of the residents, evacuated to safer places away from the poblacion. The school buildings especially in distant barrios served very handily as evacuation places for many people.

On the other hand, the spiritual needs of the populace were not neglected especially those belonging to the Catholic faith. It is, of course, most likely that the ministers of the Protestant churches held their services and ministered to the spiritual of their people at certain times also at their evacuation places. This however, is not so popularly known possibly because of their widely scattered members.

Father Martin J. Noone, an Irish Columban priest who was assigned as the first half of the following year (1942) and evacuated only to a distant barrio when the order for evacuation came. The Catholic parish of Baliangao, incidentally became a separate an independent parish only six months before the start of the war.

While in his evacuation place he scheduled regular visits to different barrios of his parish to say mass and keep in constant contact with the people all the time. The practice was for him to go from one barrio to another, staying in each a day or two. Having had a taste of Japanese cruelty earlier, he played safe even at his evacuation place by having a small hut constructed in the middle of a nearby mangrove swamp where he could always hide himself in case of Japanese patrols in their area.

In addition to his priestly work Father Noone, who possessed a powerful radio receiving set capable of getting news from the United States and England helped kept the people’s faith for the long-awaited freedom from the Japanese invaders by circulating important news about U.S. victorious campaigns on their way to the Philippines. This radio made use of batteries charged by hundrurned dynamos.

  MUNICIPALITY OF BALIANGAO

DEPARTMENT HEADS 1993