MARCOS'S WARTIME ROLE DISCREDITED IN U.S. FILES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000200810019-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: January 23, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

% Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200810019-4
NEW YORK TIMES
23 January 1986
Marcos's.Wartirne Role
Discredited in U.S. Files
J)
The following article is based on re-
porting by Jeff Girth and Joel Brinkley
and was written by Mr. Garth.
Spew Is Tr Nw York Thou
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 - The Army
concluded after World War II that offi-
cial claims by Ferdinand E. Marcos
that he headed a guerrilla resistance
unit during the Japanese occupation of
his country. were "fraudulent" and
"absurd.'.
Throughout his political career, Mr.
Marcos, now President of the Philip.
pines, has portrayed himself as a
heroic guerrilla leader, and_tbee lamp
has been central to his political appeal.
In almost every speech throughout
his current rsdectlon campaign, in-
cluding at least one this week, Mr.
Marcos has referred to his war record
and guerrilla experiences in part to
show that he is better able than his op-
ponent, Corazon C. Aquino, to handle
the present communist Insurgency.
But documents that had rested out of
public view in United States Govern-
ment archives for 35 years show that
repeated Army investigations found no
foundation for Mr. Marcos's official
claims to the United States that he led a
guerrilla force called Ang Mga Mahar-
like in military operations against
Japanese forces from 1942 to 1944.
Questions Go Unanswered
Mr. Marcos declined today to re-
spond to a list of six written questions
about the United States Government
records, which came to light only re-
cently. The questions were submitted
to Mr. Marcos's office this morning in
Manila.
After repeated telephone calls to the
Presidential Palace this afternoon, an
aide explained that Mi. Marios was
busy with meetings and a'wnpRign ap?
pearance and "didn't have jot oppor-
tunity to look into the question." The
aide said the President might have a
response later.
In the Army records themselves, Mr.
Marcos wrote that he strongly pro.
tested the Army's findings, adding that
"a grave injustice has been committed
Ferdinand E. Marcos as shown In
an official biography. Caption
said, "File photo of Marcos as a
Philippine Army, found in 1950 that
some people who had claimed mem-
bership in Mr. Marcos's unit had actu-
ally been committing "atrocities"
against Filipino civilians rather than
fighting the Japanese and had engaged
in what the V.A. called "nefarious ac-
tivity," including selling contraband to
the enemy. The records include no di-
rect evidence linking Mr. Marcos to
those activities.
Access Denied Filipino
The records, many of which were
classified secret until 1958, were on file
at the Army records center in St. Louis
until they were donated to the National
Archives in Washington in November
1984. In 1983, when a Filipino opposition
figure asked for access to them a few
weeks after the assassination in Manila
that August of the opposition leader
Benigno S. Aquino Jr., the Army
refused to let him see them.
Alfred W. McCoy, a historian, dis-
covered the documents among hun-
dreds of thousands of others several
months ago while at the National Ar-
chives researching a book on World
War II in the Philippines. Dr. McCoy
was granted the access normally ac-
corded to scholars, and when he came
upon the the Maharlika files he was al-
lowed to review and copy them along
with others. Archives officials did not
learn what the documents contained
'against many officers and men" of the
unit.
Since Mr. Marcos became President,
the Government-owned broadcasting
network, the main north-south highway
on the island of Luzon and a hall in the
Presidential Palace all have been
named Maharlika - the name is vari-
ously translated as The Free Men or
Noblemen - in honor of the unit. In
1978, the Philippine National Assembly
considered renaming the nation Ma-
harlika.
Between 1945 and 1948 various Army
officers rejected Mr. Marcos's two re-
quests for official recognition of the
unit, calling his claims distorted, exag-
gerated, fraudulent, contradictory and
absurd. Army investigators finally
concluded that Maharlika was a ficti-
tious creation and that "no such unit
ever existed" as a guerrilla organiza-
tion during the war.
In addition, the United States Vet-
erans' Administration, helped by the
young officer...
Richard J. Kessler, a scholar on the
Philippines at the Carnegie Endow-
ment in Washington, said, "Marcos's
military record was one of the central
factors in his developing a political
power base."
4uestioning Mr. Marcos's war record,
vernment authorities shut the paper
down.
A War Hero at Home
In the Philippines, Mr. Marcos is
widely known as the nation's most
decorated war hero. The Philippine
Government says he won 32 medals for
heroism during World War II, includ-
ing several from the United States
Army. Two of the medals were for his
activities as a guerrilla leader, but the
rest were for exploits before the United
States surrender in 1942 or after the re-
turn of United States forces to Luzon,
the main Philippine island, in 1945.
The validity of those medals has been
challenged by Philippine and Amer-
ican journalists as well as others. In re-
sponse, the Phillipine Government has'
vigorously contended that they were
properly earned and said the records
validating them were destroyed in a
tire. When the Philippine newspaper
We Forum published an article in 1982
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 Declassified and Approved For
The issue of Mr. Marcos's medals is
not addressed in the Army records.
Like thousands of other Filipinos, im-
mediately after the war Mr. Marcos
asked the Army to recognize his unit so
that he and others could receive back
pay and benefits. In his petitions, Mr.
Marcos certified that his unit had en-
gaged in numerous armed clashes with
the Japanese. sea
genes ga e g t a vast re-
gion o Luzon, the ma ppine is-
la, anted been the pre-eminent
guerrilla force on Luzon.
In his submissions to the Army, he of-
fered widely varying accounts of Ma-
harlika's membership, from 300 men at
one point to 8,300 at another. In the
years since the war, Mr. Marcos has
claimed that Maharlika was a force of
8,200 men.
Some Claims Recognized
Shortly after the war, the Army did
recognize the claims of 111 men who
were listed on the Maharlika roster
submitted by Mr. Marcos, but their
recognition was only for their services
with American forces after the inva-
sion of Luzon in January 1945. One
document says the service that Mr.
Marcos and 23 other men who were
listed as Maharlika members gave to
the First Cavalry Division in the spring
of 1945 was "of limited military value."
The Army records Include conflict-
ing statements on whether the United
States intended to recognize the 111
men as individuals or as a Maharlika
unit attached to American forces after
the invasion. It is clear throughout the
records that at no time did the Army
recognize that any unit designating it-
self as Maharlika ever existed as a
guerrilla force in the years of the Japa-
nese occupation, 1942 to 1945.
The records are a small part of a vo-
luminous file containing more than one
million documents on military activi-
ties in the Philippines during ana atterl
World War II. Approximately 400
pages deal with matters relating to the
Government's Investigations of Mr.
Marcos and his claims.
Dr. McCoy, an American professor
of history at the University of New
South Wales in Sydney, Australia, said
he was "stunned" when he found the
records last summer. He said he
worked with the records by himself
until this month. He brought them to
the attention of The New York Times
last week.
The records were reviewed at the Ar-
chives, where Archives officials con-
firmed their authenticity to The Times.
In addition, several former Ameri
can
military officers who played important
roles in the sequence of events de-
scribed- in the records were inter-
viewed.
These officers served in the Philip.
pines during the war, supervising Fili-
pino guerrillas in the areas where Mr.
Marcos said his unit had operated.
Even though most of them say they are
strong supporters of Mr. Marcos today
- one, Robert B. Lapham of Sun City,
Ariz., said he spent 90 minutes with Mr.
Marcos while in Manila last week -
the officers also confirmed the basic
findings in the records and said they
had not been aware of Maharlika's ac.
tivities during the war. They also said
they had trot known of Mr. Marcos as a
guerrilla leader until they read his
claims later.
`This Is Not True'
Ray C. Hunt Jr., a B6-year-old former
Army captain who directed guerrilla
activites in Pangasinan Province north
of Manila during the war, said: "Mar-
cos was never the leader of a large
guerrilla organization, no way. Noth-
ing like that could have happened with-
out my knowledge."
Mr. Hunt, interviewed at his home in
Orlando, Fla., said he took no position
in the current Phillipine election cam-
paign, although he believed Mr. Mar-,
cos "may be the lesser of two evils."
Still, as he read through the records
for the first time, Including Mr. Mar-
cos's own description of Maharlika's
wartime activites, he said: 'This is not
true, no. Holy cow. All of this is a com-
plete fabrication. It's a cock-and-bull
story."
The documents, the latest of which
are dated in the early 1950's, include no
indication that Mr. Marcos appealed
the Army's final ruling against him in
1948. The last entry in the Maharlika
file was an affirmation of the rejection.
Today Assistant Secretary of De-
fense Richard L. Armitage, the senior
Pentagon official in charge of military
relations with the Philippines, said his
aides had been unable to find any
record that the original Army decision
denying benefits to Maharlika had been
challenged or investigated after the
1948 ruling.
"Subsequent to '48 I am unaware of
any further appeals," he said.
Donna St. John, a spokesman for the
Veterans' Administration, said,
"We're not paying any benefits to Fer-
dinand Marcos."
As commanding officer of the unit,
Mr. Marcos applied for United States
Government recognition of his guer-
rilla force in the summer of 1945. To
support the application, he included a
29-page typed document titled "Mg
Mga Maharlikp - Its History in
Brief."
It says that the unit was "spawned
from the dragging pain and ignominy"
of the Bataan death march and in Its
members "grew such a hatred of the
enemy as could be quenched with his
blood alone."
Exploits Are Described
Most of the document is written in
the third person and describes a vari-
ety of exploits by Mahariika and Mr.
Marcos. "It seemed as it the Japanese
were after him alone and not after any-
one else," it says at one point, referring
to Mr. Marcos. The author is never
identified, but in two places he lapses
into the first person in discussing Mr.
Marcos's exploits, indicating the
writer was Mr. Marcos.
The "history" and other submissions
from Mr. Marcos say Mahariika was
officially organized in December 1942
but had been operating for several
months before that. It carried out guaer-
rilla operations throughout Luzon, the
main PhiWpine bland, and even pub-
lished an underground guerrilla news-
paper three times a day, Mr. Marcos
wrote.
Membership rosters submitted with
the filings listed the names of more
than 300 Maharlika members. But Mr.
Marcos included no documents or
copies of the Maharlika newspaper to
support the claim because, he wrote,
all documentary evidence was "lost
due to continuous searches by the Japa-
nese." Elsewhere, Mr. Marcos wrote
that some of the unit's records were
'burned and others were buried.
The official records indicate that the
Army grew suspicious of Mr. Marcos's
claims right away. Mr. Marcos con-
tended that he had been in a northern
,province "in the first days of Decem-,
ber 1944 on an inteIligeition"
and was not ab a to get
lika headquarters at that time because
the American invasion force on Luzon
I cut him off from Manila.
But in the first recorded response to
Mr. Marcos's recognition request, in
September 1915, Maj. Harry McKenzie
of the Army noted that the American
1invasion of Luzon had not actually
begun until a month later and "could
not have influenced his abandoning his
outfit."
As a result, Major McKenzie sug-
gested an "inquiry into the veracity" of
Mr. Marcus's claims. And almost two
years later, the Army wrote Mr.
Mar- co notify him of the official finding
that his application for recognition "is
not favorably considered."
Why the U.S. Said No
The official notice cited these rea-
sons, among others:
qMaharlika had not actually been in
the field fighting the Japanese and had
not "contributed materially to the
eventual defeat of the enemy."
qMaharlika had no "definite organi-
zation" and "adequate records were
not maintained."
qMaharlika was not controlled ad-
equately "because of the desertion of
its commanding officer," Mr. Marcos,
who eventually joined an American
military unit while in northern Luzon
at the time of the American invasion.
qMaharlika could not possibly have
operated over the wide area it claimed
because of problems of terrain, com-
munications and Japanese "antiresist-
ance activities."
q"Many members apparently lived
at home, supporting their families by
means of farming or other civilian pur-
suits and assisted the guerrilla unit on
a part-time basis only."
Although the Army did recognize 111
people listed on Mr. Marcos's Mahar-
lika roster for their service to Amer-
ican forces after January 1945, the na-
Ccr': is
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cure of that service is not fully de-
scribed. But one document, dated May
3i, 1945, says 6 officers and 18 men led
by Mr. Marcos and indentifying them-
selves as Maharlika had "been em-
ployed by this unit," the Army's First
Cavalry Division, "guarding the regi-
mental supply dump and performing
warehousing details." Their work, the
document added, was "of limited mili-
tary value."
In his brief history, Mr. Marcos de-
scribes his service to the First Cavalry
this way: Members of Maharlika "fur-
nished inte nce and were used for
by Win Manila ended. They partici-
pated crossing of the rasig
River."
Mr. Marcos was just one of thou-
sands of Filipinos who asked the United
States Army for recognition as a guer-
rilla. After the Japanese occupation of
the Phillipines in 1942, the United
States had promised that any Filipinos
who continued fighting the Japanese
would get back pay and benefits after
the war as if they had been members of
the American military.
Japan mounted a surprise attack on
the islands in December 1941 and
quickly conquered them. it was not
until 1944 and 1945, that United States
and Filipino forces won them back.
Not long afterward, on July 4, 1946,
the islands gained their final independ.
ence from the United States as the Re-
public of the Philippines.
At the time of the Japanese invasion
in December 1941, Mr. Marcos was a
lieutenant in the Philippine armed
forces and was part of the contingent
driven back into the Bataan Peninsula.
Mr. Marcos has said his fighting de-
layed the surrender at Bataan for sev-
eral weeks.
After the American surrender, Mr.
Marcos was captured and imprisoned
by the Japanese, but he escaped. For
his efforts during the Bataan campaign
of January 1942, Mr. Marcos was
awarded numerous medals, including
two from the United States, but not
until many years later.
It was after the Bataan campaign,
Mr. Marcos wrote, that Maharlika was
formed.
In 1982 and 1983 journalists in the
Philippines and the United States, as
well as Representative Lane Evans,
Democrat of Illinois, tried to determine
the validity of the American awards to
Mr. Marcos, including the two Bataan-
related medals. The Pentagon, in re-
plying in 1984 to Mr. Evans, noted that
no official "citations for these awards"
could be found, but "they were both at-
tested to in affidavits by the Assistant
Chief of Staff" of the Philippine Army.
Whether or not the American medals
are valid, they had nothing to do with
Mr. Marcos's activities during the
Japanese occupation.
After the war, roughly 500,000 Fili-
pinos were recognized and paid as
guerrilla fighters. But uncounted
others were turned down.
Mr. Marcos's claim was investigated
in the same manner as the others. Af-
fidavits were taken fi