Interregnum:
The War

The Japanese Occupation

The Japanese occupied the southern Cordillera with relative ease. On December 24, 1941, the Americans evacuated their military facility at Camp John Hay, and retreated east to the sawmill at Bobok, Bokod municipality. When they found their planned escape route a dead end, the soldiers scuttled much of their war matériel, lest it fall into Japanese hands (see Harkins 1955:22–24). When the Japanese threatened to bomb Baguio City, American officials entered negotiations; within weeks Japanese troops marched in unopposed. A few American civilians sought refuge in nearby villages, but most were eventually captured.

A few American military officials who eluded capture found the Cordillera a perfect stage for covert operations and the Igorots a promising group of guerilla fighters. One of this group's leaders, Captain Don Blackburn, had, along with Lieutenant Colonel R. W. Volckmann, escaped from Bataan and trekked back to the Cordillera (Harkins 1955:38). Once in the highlands, Volckmann and Blackburn organized a guerilla network, concentrating at first on building an organization and gathering intelligence.

The Japanese, meanwhile, had quickly reorganized the southern Cordilleran economy. They terminated all commercial gold mines while expanding the copper excavations at Mankayan (Fry 1983: 191). They also quickly established a new civilian government, staffed largely with locals; the first Igorot governor of the Mountain Province, Hilary Clapp, was appointed by the Japanese authorities (Fry 1983:194).

Buguias was little affected through the war's early months (1942 through early 1943). The indigenous leadership retained power, and life continued as before. Japanese occupation actually created

lucrative opportunities for some. Many Buguias families catered to the expanded works at Mankayan, selling fruit and vegetables to the miners and managers, and a few Buguias men joined a short-lived gold rush in the Baguio mineral zone. Here they extracted high-grade ore from the abandoned American mines until poison gases began to take a heavy toll.

By late 1943, intensified guerilla actions provoked the Japanese to interfere more directly in local affairs. Earlier they had organized villages into "neighborhood associations" on the Japanese model, but these proved ineffective in curtailing partisan operations (Fry 1983:198). Military authorities now billeted soldiers in Buguias, beloved of the Japanese for its hot-spring baths. These men at first established fairly good rapport with local residents, especially with the young boys they hired to help locate edible mushrooms and other wild foods.

Hostilities

The relationship between the Japanese and the Buguias people deteriorated rapidly as guerilla activity escalated in the war's later years. Soldiers had already killed a Buguias man for allegedly hiding the American manager of the Bad-ayan sawmill; now they attacked the local political structure, arresting the baknang Berto Cubangay. Executions of individuals accused of abetting the guerilla forces soon followed. By the middle of 1944, Buguias was at war.

Several dozen Buguias men now joined the fight. Inducted into the 66th (guerilla) Infantry, they were led by Bado Dangwa (the Benguet transportation entrepreneur), and Denis Molintas, who in turn were under the command of Blackburn and Volckmann (see Volckmann 1954:145). From their headquarters in Kapangan (Dangwa's home), the 66th Infantry patrolled most of the province, gathering information and laying the groundwork for the approaching battle. Civilians eagerly provisioned the troops—although as the war intensified this would not remain true everywhere.

With the American landing in Luzon (December 1944), the commanding Japanese general, Yamashita, ordered his entire occupying force, military and civilian, into the Cordillera. There he planned a prolonged last stand, designed to cost the Americans time, money, and lives, while allowing the Japanese breathing space to organize

their defenses for the inevitable invasion of the home islands. Baguio now became the capital of the Japanese-controlled Philippine government, and the full force of military activity in the archipelago was concentrated in the mountains (see R. Smith 1963; Fry 1983:204).

The combined American and Filipino forces soon began their assault on Yamashita's forces, ascending the slopes from the lowlands toward Baguio City. The 66th, meanwhile, attacked the very center of Japanese power with a degree of success that some Americans could scarcely believe (see Volckmann 1954:197). Now Yamashita's position was so jeopardized that he ordered a retreat to the Magat Valley, from which he retained sway over most of the Cordillera north of Baguio. The American-Filipino army now had to take two strategic passes (Balete and Bessang), but it was clear that they would eventually fall. Yamashita thus designated a final bastion, centered in Tucucan but including Buguias and environs as well (see Hartendorp 1967).

In August, the attack on this final Japanese stronghold began. From the east, American and Filipino forces marched through Kiangan; from the west, they advanced in two salients, one across the Lo-o Valley and the other right through the center of Buguias. The ground combat was fierce, and American bombers and strafers brought extensive destruction. Yamashita surrendered in Kiangan in mid-August, just as the Allied forces were ascending, under heavy fire, the main Cordilleran ridge east of Buguias (R. Smith 1963).

Social Consequences

It is difficult to convey the havoc wreaked on the people of Buguias and neighboring communities by the war. Quite apart from the combat, hundreds of thousands of retreating Japanese, ill-fed and desperate, presented a massive threat to the area's resources. By late 1944 and early 1945, the Buguias people had no option but to leave their homes and seek refuge in more remote places.

At first many hid in the higher country immediately east of the village. From here they could return each night surreptitiously to cultivate their fields. But this strategy proved not only dangerous but futile, since the soldiers consumed most of the crops. At this

point the Buguias people sought haven with relatives living in the eastern cloud forest. But as Yamashita's perimeter tightened, even the most inaccessible refuges here became untenable; this was precisely the area of the ultimate Japanese redoubt. As hostilities approached, many refugees had to cross the lines of fire to seek new sanctuaries west of the Agno River.

The food resources of the Cordillera could not support the swollen population. Ogawa (1972) graphically describes the progress of Japanese desperation; first they had traded clothes and other items for food, but within a few months they arrogated whatever edibles they encountered. Toward the end, some subsisted on tree-fern pith. In Buguias they so thoroughly raided the dry fields that several local varieties of sweet potatoes—those that could easily be uprooted—were exterminated. Some were also allegedly reduced to cannibalism. The Buguias people also went hungry. Though few seem to have starved, many lived on banana stalks and other semi-edible foods, and some reportedly bloated to death. After Yamashita's surrender, American planes dropped fliers informing the populace that food and supplies could be obtained along the Mountain Trail, but several elders, too weak to make the climb, perished just as peace descended.

Survivors returned to a devastated landscape. The fixed capital of the prewar agricultural system, the very foundation of livelihood, was demolished. Dry fields, stripped clean of crops, had overgrown with weeds; even seeds and sweet-potato cuttings were now hard to find. Rice terraces and irrigation canals were damaged, if not destroyed, and the elaborate network of fences largely demolished. All animals had been devoured. Many individuals had attempted to conceal herds in distant places, but few were successful; what the Japanese missed the guerillas took. And although the Igorot soldiers offered receipts for the animals they appropriated, these were never honored by the United States government (a source of continuing bitterness for some). Only Paran managed to keep a small cattle herd, hidden in a cloud-forest village to the south of Yamashita's perimeter, but these animals were immediately butchered to service his own funeral; Paran had refused his grand-son's entreaties to hide a second time, and thus died when American planes strafed Buguias during the final battle.

The Americans promised relief, but delivered relatively little,

considering the magnitude of the damage and the depth of sacrifice made in the Allies' cause. The veterans of the 66th Infantry received small cash payments, and those disabled in combat were provided continued support. Such payments, however, could not reconstruct the prewar economy. But, as it turned out, the Buguias people did not need to rebuild their old forms of livelihood. Suddenly they had a new opportunity servicing the exploding national market for temperate vegetables.