Risk & Resolve
The Risk & Resolve Podcast is your go-to resource for insightful conversations at the intersection of leadership, business ownership, and the insurance industry. Hosted by Ben Conner and Todd Hufford, this podcast dives deep into the challenges and opportunities that leaders face in an ever-changing world.
Each episode features candid discussions with business owners, industry experts, and thought leaders, exploring topics like innovation, risk management, and the strategies that drive success. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, executive, or insurance professional, you’ll gain actionable insights and inspiration to navigate today’s complex business landscape.
Tune in to Risk & Resolve—where leadership meets resilience.
Risk & Resolve
Henry Clay Conner's WWII Journey (Part 4 of 7): Surviving the Jungle & Meeting Other Americans
In Part 4 of the conversation with WWII guerrilla fighter Clay Conner, we dive deep into his final months in the Philippine jungle before meeting American forces. Clay recounts life-or-death battles, rescuing downed pilots, and the ingenious traps that kept Japanese troops from advancing. From resourcefulness in survival to the emotional moment of seeing U.S. planes overhead after years in hiding, this is a raw and unforgettable look at courage, strategy, and resilience in war.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
• Clay’s unique relationship with local leaders and the trust they built.
• The daily challenges and dangers of jungle life.
• Ingenious defenses like “pig traps” to halt Japanese advances.
• The rescue of downed American pilots and the secrecy surrounding it.
• Life-or-death battles fought with minimal supplies and firepower.
• Clay’s emotional first sighting of American planes in December 1944.
• Coordinating with local forces to prepare for the American landing.
• The intense final battle before marching to meet U.S. troops.
• Why Clay’s wartime experience never fit into post-war veteran groups.
• Reflections on recognition, memory, and telling untold stories.
You're listening to Risk and Resolve. And now for your hosts, ben Conner and Todd Hufford.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of Risk and Resolve. We're going into episode four of Clay Conner's war story. But before we go into episode four I wanted to recap episode three, where he went to respite in Morong. Turns out it wasn't. It was not respite, there was a lot of Japanese soldiers there, so he had to make an adjustment there.
Speaker 1:It may have been like in Getty, as I mentioned in a previous episode, but Saul was on the pursuit, and that's also where he met some of these early interactions with the Negritos, and his quote was he was totally fascinated, just intrigued, and wanted to know everything about them, yet they were distant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he was highly fascinated with, uh, the Negritos, and and we'll circle back to them Actually that's, the Negritos are woven into this episode and obviously we're on a pathway of of getting more involved with them but, they had to go by boat.
Speaker 2:He got super seasick Um, so uh, he got, he got out of there. And then I found it fascinating. They started talking about um. His name was fred, I don't know if you caught the last name, but he talked about this guy named fred who was a prisoner of war um and was released by the japanese really to go kind of be their bird dog, if you will. That's right. So that was really interesting to hear him really double click into that, because the people interviewing him, as anyone else would be like man, like that dude was. That dude was a traitor, he was, he was doing, he was turning you guys in. And what did you take away from Clyde's response?
Speaker 1:He said he's from Newark, had a bad feeling about him and I think that's something your grandfather just had great intuition. He had it with the Hucks, he had it with, eventually, the Negritos. He had it with this guy and they were talking to this Fred guy from Newark about what he'd been doing and they said all his answers were wrong. And his quote was it's a big Island, but you know what's going on. He says or by this time you better. So you know there was no newspaper he was reading, but man, he knew the news, he knew what was going on. Yeah, His other comment was that I don't have any hostile feelings. He's doing his things, keeping alive too. And then he goes into this little dissertation about anytime. You make judgment after the fact, and if you weren't there, you're just on ground. You shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:Yeah he talked about. You know he was in a circumstance and I was in a circumstance and you know we're trying to do, we're trying to, we're all trying to figure it out and it's easy to make judgment when he goes, when you're having steak and potatoes, but when you're, when you're surviving, that situation is totally different, which that's interesting. Knowing that someone was potentially trying to turn you in and have you killed, that you would be that diplomatic about it.
Speaker 1:He's also had 40 years to get over it.
Speaker 2:That's true, that was fascinating, but you're right, he was. Not only are we learning about his survivalist nature, but this episode really showed the strategist in making decisions, and with intuition and with information. He kept talking about how, you know, I studied this, or I made sure that you know he was doing certain things, um, but anyway. So this Fred guy came from, uh, cabana Tawan, uh, which was a primary American prison camp, you know, and he was saying that there are about 20 or 30 Americans working for the Japanese and that the Japanese all ended up killing them anyway, which is just really sad to think about. What I found myself doing in this episode. Todd was, I'm listening to it. I'm starting to pull up Google Maps a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well, he and the interviewer are looking at a map, so I figure we should look at a map too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's pretty fascinating to watch how, all over the place he is. He's in the mountains, he's coming down to specific towns and cities and he's moving around to accomplish different things.
Speaker 1:And as the war goes on, I would think before the Japanese really came down they could probably move by Jeeps and other powered machinery they have, but now they got to move on foot because they got to be so stinking quiet and they got to move at night. And then he talks about going through some of these thickets. That just doesn't even sound like you can even get through it. It just sounds terrible, honestly.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I thought there was like three really critical moments that he touched on in episode three.
Speaker 2:One was right at the beginning, when they were leaving marang and kind of getting out of there, how, as they left, like there was japanese all over the place, um, in fact, uh, they were surrounded on three sides three sides by the japanese forces, and they escaped in the luckily, to the area where they weren't um, and he ended up being by himself again, but he didn't know where the other guys were.
Speaker 2:So he went back in to try to find them and that's where he had to make a critical decision of really, in this bamboo, grassy, thicket area, riverbed ish situation, he ended up like really covering himself in mud and breathing through a reed and buried himself and Japanese soldiers were within six or seven feet of him as they're burning up this field. And 12 hours later he emerges and goes out and finds, finds frank, who thought he was dead, and sees these other guys he went in looking for and the humor in his voice around, and then I saw those clowns I went in to look for yeah and you know, then, then they move on, but a total brush with death, even mentioned, is a miracle.
Speaker 2:I don't know how I got through that, um, but that, but that was. That was one of the stories. Um, you know, that came, that came out of that, um, you know, uh, and then he mentioned there was five Americans against 300 Japanese.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you sit there and kind of wonder like how true is that? Like who am I to question it? But even if it's 50, it's a ridiculously small number. The whole episode. He bounces around so many different situations I think they're chronological, but he kind of goes back on a couple of them. So it's a little hard to follow at times. But I couldn't help but think you've made some good decisions, but you've had some real divine providential protection. Divine providential protection. Making this turn, getting away from um fred as quickly as they did the third, you know, getting away from on the fourth side of being trapped on three sides. It's like I don't think I would have gotten lucky that many times yeah, definitely providential.
Speaker 2:um then he talks about got back in with the hucks Got back in with the Hucks, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how. A gentleman named Palad P-A-L-L-A-D is just someone that he really sat down and had a lot of conversations with. That was part of the Hucks. He really talked about Palad and how ultimately unfortunately, he ended up getting. Pallad ended up getting killed by his own people because he didn't follow the communist line. But clearly that individual made a huge mark on his education about what was going on, the politics, the circumstances around the island and the situation. That was important.
Speaker 1:It was like his professor and he even mentioned that back then when he was teaching him. He knew he was different, that this Palad guy was against the Japanese and believed some of the things, but he wasn't so into the communist movement. So it's interesting that at times the Hucks are his friends, because when you're running or chasing behind you and you run into a wall of Hucks, well you jump in and get behind them because they're also against the Japanese. So in that situation it was very beneficial. But just to your point, you can't get too close to the fire because if you don't totally tow the party line you're done.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So then he talks about getting you know, getting around Clark Air Force Base or Clark Airfield, and how there's really only one way to cross over to where they needed to get to, and it was right through the main thoroughfare and there was 20,000 Japanese forces that were between him and where he needed to go, and 15 of them at midnight just strolled right through the place.
Speaker 2:Sounds like it was kind of one at a time and they made it through, walked right through enemy territory of 20,000 people. We just walked through confidently and they got to the other side.
Speaker 1:Shortly after they figured it out somehow, because shortly after where they landed got raided, early the next morning they hightailed it out of there Again, missing a near death.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he said this verbatimim. When I think back about that, that's ridiculous. And he also said every breath was an eternity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, so, just uh I wonder how far it was. Was it a mile? Was it too? You know how long was the stretch where they felt like they were highly exposed?
Speaker 2:he didn't really say well, then they get to the other side. Um to bonnaba is where they were going, but he said it ended up being the headquarters for the rest of the war and that's where they really paired up with the negritos. That's real. I think this is where this guerrilla situation really started and he talked about it and you mentioned he bounced back and forth and he did because he even mentioned halfway through the episode of how clark airfield is describing it and that was where people landed as they're going to the vietnam war. Yes, and the forces that clay trained through the negritos. That program still existed and they helped train american soldiers as they were going into vietnam about guerrilla warfare Fascinating, which is totally fascinating.
Speaker 1:What did he say? He didn't know that until he went back in 1968 or 69. Do you know how many times he actually went back to the Philippines? Was it just the once?
Speaker 2:I don't, something to find out. So the last thing is the third thing. So you had the Japanese soldiers on three sides and burying yourself, you had walking through the middle of enemy territory of 20,000 soldiers. And the third was his interaction with the Negritos and meeting Kajero, and again he talked about, just fascinated with who they were, and about the adventure he said that word again the adventure of learning about them, um, and how he showed up and spoke in a dialect that they understood when he first approached them, um, and he said he was the first intruder that came into their tribe and tried to communicate in their language. And that is such a fascinating thing when you think of just what he learned there and probably what that carried through. In business, when you're trying to work with somebody, you need to communicate in the language that they understand. And I kept thinking about that as he said it. I was like that is just a timeless lesson.
Speaker 2:And obviously he learned it in a life and death situation and we're applying it to a business situation. But he showed up and talked about how the Americans were coming to liberate the island and he just started laughing at himself about how silly that is. And he just started laughing at himself about how silly that is. They are going to a people that have they can see what's going on because they can see airplanes, but they have no idea what they're talking about because they're living free on their own, how they want to live. And he goes I'm talking about liberating the people who are already liberated. And he just got more or less tickled with that, but with speaking their language. He said they adopted me right in with that, but was speaking their language. He said they adopted me right in. He said I was their man. Um, and you know, kajero, he goes you're either a brother or you're dead. And he said but it was a payadelka. He said payadelka, we're brothers and that's the word for brothers.
Speaker 2:So, and he started organizing them of how to use their resources and he knew materials that they wanted, which was salt. So again back to that strategy of like helping them with trade and really being a guinea pig for them with. I'll help you get what you want, what you want with the, with the materials that you have. So just just fascinating. There's just so much in this episode. He talked about Ed Widcombe, who ended up being the governor of Indiana, and how he served alongside Ed Widcombe while he was over there, and how one of the Negritos, democrito Lumanlon, who came over after the war and worked in the police force here in Indianapolis, and how the governor helped get that going. Democrito was Filipino. I believe Democrito was Filipino. I believe, oh, he was Filipino, excuse me. So he came over and started moving to the United States, brought his family, brought his family.
Speaker 1:You missed one person, Mrs Hardeen.
Speaker 2:Mrs Hardeen.
Speaker 1:She was married to a World War I serviceman, had multiple children. He died it did sound like natural causes and she remarried another Filipino. So she's Filipino, so they've got mixed kids. And so when she sees these American soldiers again some 25 years later, I think she sees her own kids, she sees her husband, she sees herself in them and it sounds like she's willing to risk just everything to help support them. And then he talks about how his mom, once Clay got back home, would send her stuff and I don't know if it was food or clothing or money, but I can only imagine I'd be sending everything I have to that woman, knowing that she protected my child woman, knowing that she protected my child absolutely.
Speaker 2:Um so anyway, fascinating episode, episode three. Um so now we're pleased to release episode four of clay connor's war story. So enjoy.
Speaker 3:The king was the. He was the heritage for the successor pop, arie key a r hi. But he was tough successor, ari A-R-I. But he was tough public. I never made it with Ari. I was tolerated by Ari but I was never really taken in. He would have taken me in, all right, but it wouldn't be for the same reasons. But Coggero liked me. I was his brother. How do you spell Coggero's name? K-o-d-a-r-i-o, k-o-d-a-r-i-o, k-o-d-a-i-r-o? Okay, for the transcript, y'all, there's pictures on the phone. Okay, that's all right, I can make the connection now. Yeah, coggero, as they pronounced him, was on the phone like met.
Speaker 3:He was thirsty for education. He was thirsty for knowledge. He was thirsty for information, straightened him in. He wanted to get more than what the average Peking and Greenland people had. They didn't know everything about what countries were, what people did. He had to visualize it all because all they ever saw was from the top of the mountain. He shot a China sin, but he never. That was the other side of the bone, but he shot all the way in. But he never had any outside contact with the outside world except through my eyes, from my descriptions, and I told him about a lot of things he knew nothing about. How do you visualize a shed where he it's just like the story in the Marpo Polo, when he goes to meet. What was it Genghis Khan telling about the West? He just had this great thirst. He left him alone, you know, because Marco would tell him all these extraordinary things about what was going on on the other side of the world, a place he'd never seen before. He didn't know what it was like. So that was a similar situation that you could describe that for him.
Speaker 3:So then you had real good relationships, but did you really have to train them or were they just pretty? Well, it sounds like they were ready for that. Well, you couldn't really convert the negrito. They really trained me, because you don't train a person in the jungle to live like an American. You convert an American in the jungle to live like a pig-eating ebrieto. The biggest problem I had going through the jungle was the height of the trails, the overgrowth. The trails were through the trailers, the overgrowth, the trails were through the jungle. They were only cut about five and five and two or five. Three high five foot two inches or three inches, and I'm five or five nine. That was. My biggest problem was traveling at the rate of speed through the undergrowth when we reached areas of big clearing through the forest. That was a different story, but I learned to really run with them.
Speaker 3:Did your two friends also then join up then with you? Frank was six foot tall. He had a lot of trouble in the beginning. He started cutting his own trees. He was rugged. He was a former West Virginia coal miner. Of course he was actually in Frank Gavay Gavay. Okay, there's a rugged individual. He was Hungarian by extraction. Yeah, he was tough. But a tough man, oh, tough, yeah, as far as me is. So it used to be you three Americans in these pigments. Well, this Bob Dale, you stayed. He went on back down to the lowlands and tied in with the uh, filipinos in the world. He would stay with us. So just basically, you and Frank Cabay. Right, we had a couple of others, a distant in another area, but they were split up because of Chuchicua. You had a limited amount of and then I organized these negritos in this whole area.
Speaker 3:And when Filipinos began to retreat to the old lands, when the Japs put the heat on them and as the throws did on them, they had to find a retreat. So we took them in, but into the perimeter areas not really. Far back, not, we took them in, not that, but into the perimeter areas not really far back, not that far back in.
Speaker 3:Then we put them in caves and different places and find retreats for them, because the Japanese are going to kill them. So we had quite a contention before it was over. Wow, it's amazing. Did you then launch raids against the Japanese to get the salt and the? Other supplies from the lowland areas.
Speaker 1:We tried.
Speaker 3:Our raids were primarily in areas outside of areas where we could hit, because if we didn't the limits of where they were living, they'd throw houses and everything. So we had our little stations. By this you mean you couldn't launch attacks very far away from your own base of operations, so you had to stick pretty close to the barriers in that area, or did you? I guess I missed the point. We had to hit them in the open fields, oh, between barriers, or outside.
Speaker 1:Oh, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 3:So it wouldn't be, linked up with any.
Speaker 2:Berrios.
Speaker 3:It would tie us in with any one area of the continent. But did you have casualties on the Japanese or your allies, or did you just manage to get in there by stealth and really get these supplies? We did a few, but mostly we didn't attack them. We would go after what we wanted, like I told you earlier, and whatever casualties be inflicted, we did it on a retreat basis to keep with the captures, no more more. We didn't have to win. That was ridiculous. It was to prevent any of them from getting us. It was an escape, trying to get out, or a killer attack in order to go and hide. That sounds logical.
Speaker 3:The reason I ask the question is because some people can visualize your force. Even though it may have been, a large number of people didn't have the firepower. Certainly the japanese didn't have any place to go, and if they really wanted to turn the notice, which they did a few times. You see, lake fire brings over, rob, bones and stray of our area. But I so in what way should? You wouldn't believe this. I forgot this one anyway.
Speaker 3:The nereidos, for one of our raids, got a machine gun, 30 caliber machine gun. I couldn't believe it. Anyway, this fellow fiend, scout Vato knew all about 30 caliber machine guns, and so he set those three up and copped them out. So here comes. They weren't ever expected them to come in and raid and strangle them. They got upset with us and the propaganda that we were kind of the glory boys out there. We were defending the Philippines, two Americans and two Americans over here. We didn't have enough ammunition to find our way out of anything. We had some, but not like you see in these movies or TV shows where these guys sit there and roll out. It sounds like they're rolling out about 15 clips and they've only put in one.
Speaker 2:I don't know where they get all that at.
Speaker 3:I mean, they're shooting and firing, shooting and firing. They never change clips. I don't know where they do Well, how they ever do that, I don't know. They must have some kind of a noisemaker attached to that, dude. You know, I never had a gun like that, must have never done it. Anyway, we used it sparingly for defense, but in any event the Bato had this 30-caliber machine gun sitting up there outside of him I'm most in top.
Speaker 3:Here comes the Japs. Davy didn't shoot it down, shot down a zero. He hit it. They came in and he happened to hit that thing and the zero goes right into the side of the mountain. And the Japs bailed out right within time. And the Greek was descendant of him. He had at least 150 arrows in him before he hit the ground. So you know, they would only shoot six feet high, or even 10 feet, 12 feet, but by the time he hit the ground he must have had 150 arrows. So he came out on a parachute. To him he was a bailout, yes, but Sergeant Bonnet now this Bonnet shot the plane down.
Speaker 3:He shot the plane down. He's the one that carried the flag on him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Wado shoots the plane down.
Speaker 3:He shot the plane down. He's a big hero now. He shot the plane down so they dismantle his plane. I've actually I've got the clock out of that plane upstairs. Amazing, get it Call. Sure, he shot the plane down, they shot it.
Speaker 3:They killed us. And when they took the jacket off, this guy had about 16 or 17, probably 25 arrow holes through it and gave it to me as a present. Oh yeah, the king decided that we'd been there a couple of years, he could live 10 years. He's trained before him outside of night. So the king cut all his timber and he managed to timber a log cabin, put a nipper roof on roof on it and then put it in the. What's a nipper roof? Nipper grass, oh, the nipper grass. Okay. And he built it up on the side of the mountain with these large giant shallow bean, lagoon-y forest type clod it's these giant ferns and beautiful orange. And they put in a cornfield and planted a bunch of beans grow inside the trees, and so, anyway, I was planting some commodities, just like a potato, and the ladder was about 200 feet, probably 200 yards up the mountain, a real cool stream. And so what he did? He took a banana tree and cut the banana tree down and stripped halves of the banana kind of like the bark, it's not very pliable and he put it into certain wise as prompts and staged it in a drop all the way from the stream to our house and we had this pretty dropping about an 80-inch stream of water, cold water, where we had fresh mountain water dropping constantly within about three feet of our room and man, that's fantastic. We built a Revin and a Sterl Sounds almost like Robinson Crusoe.
Speaker 3:By this point you really got jungle acclimated. Oh, frank could build anything. He's unbelievable. He's a trilogy carpenter, he's a cook, he's a butcher. We got a Python.
Speaker 3:Laurel stayed in there as her friend and they were on our way down the wall as afraid to get some rice 100 pound bag of rice carry. Well, we have buried five miles or something there through a jungle and three thousand feet up anyway. And we're in this tree. Moral sounds, python. It was about 20 feet long and they had this woodbob. They shot it through the head and it slowed back down to its retines with arrows and they started yelling the horse all through the jungle. The worm got out it must have been 50 to greet us Came in there and cut that python up the skin the first one that cut the skin and then they started.
Speaker 3:This python was like cutting pork chops, right down through the back and the meat is just like fish and it's has its throne and it's very tender and it's very juicy and it's really wonderful. And we cooked a whole thing when it's fat. And remember they had it all cooked up in three hours and divided it up and everybody got their share. And guys came through and he cooked it up. Yeah, well, they all did. They showed him how you do it, see, whether they'd get it or not, whether they'd share it, you know, it didn't matter.
Speaker 3:I think probably when I realized how primitive society I was. I didn't, I was not. I was too busy with all of my organizations to be involved with all this cooking and butchering. But they caught this wild carabao. Now, that's tough, tough stuff to catch Wild carabao.
Speaker 3:It's a carabao, yeah, they're wild, and the wild carabaos are very vicious. They've got these great big longhorns that have a water vessel, oh, I see, and they're tough, they're hard gear on hand. One of the ways these Negritas rope this thing with a gun or a carabiner, the way they kill it. They don't shoot it to the head and carry it and then butcher it. They're folding it along both sides, see, and they've got to start cutting the back legs off with a bull and a ball of steel. They haven't even killed it and they start cutting the back legs off. Oh boy yeah. Then another guy jumps in and cuts the front leg off. Hmm, why, kurt? Imagine that the animal really doesn't like you too well. They could have made it a lot easier for themselves if they'd got a clean shot. I don't think there's anything ahead. See, that hits you really dredged so to keep your morale up and everything.
Speaker 3:It probably wasn't too difficult because you're busy. You're busy the whole time. I kept busy. What was a typical day like? I mean, there were probably no such thing as a typical day. But what did you do during a day just to keep your sanity, and I mean this alien environment?
Speaker 3:Well, every day you were on the move, even though you had that house there. You didn't just sit there. You just shouldn't come up. You moved around, you were around. You were visiting this tribe or that tribe. Where was that tribe of words? For one thing and the tribe of words were usually a little bit of a race who were up for what girl was showing to what guy? And there could be more over this. I mean, would you act as like a peacemaker or an intermediary? Well, they wouldn't get'd shot the middle of it.
Speaker 3:But I learned very early that Cogero was an influential character and he was feared and Uri was even more feared. As long as I was in the area of the two Edens who were related somehow. I never did figure out how, but the other tribes did not try to kill me, except one night A Jew came in there and I got shot on the chin and there was a problem about the moon was up, it was a very bright element of Titanhurst in the middle of the night and he came in there and woke us up. And we got up and man, this tribe from the west side of Zambalans came with their nerve of them and they had turned in Barker or McGuire and McGuire had been taken into I can't think of any name of the town over there on the west side and they had strung him up. You don't call McGuire's first name, do you, mr Conner? No, they strung him up.
Speaker 3:Batalon Point and Purok. No, we're in none of those places. It's right in here. Diba, diba, let's see if I can find that. It's right along the coast. Yeah, we're going to chat up there. Sure, he was around with me. Oh, guys, I see it's right at the edge of this map, this copy of the map Right here. Yeah, yes, I think I see it right there at this point IBA.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh, yeah, they had a American air strip. Iba Took them in there and strained them up by the heels and swung them around in the tree limb in the middle of town, said that they could chop them up with a bayonet. All of you Sold them out, and for cigarettes and stuff like that. They were upset. Anyway, I was creating problems for them. I didn't know I was creating and they were like the Japanese raiding the mountains and looking and all this, and said they're going to eliminateved of what Cogero got to wear. And he came in there and grabbed us out just as they were. I mean, they had us for a first, probably about 30 of them. So you probably would have been killed if it hadn't been for Cogero's Italian warning. Oh yeah, we were looking for that, especially from the left side, right.
Speaker 1:You had a couple of Japanese.
Speaker 3:They were coming in from the west. Oh, I see, okay, in fact they were supposedly the most rugged tribe in the Philippines. On the west side there was a horse herdery right here which was on the Hunters. On the West Side there was a plumber on the 100-foot tariff county. This was all the tariff that they were getting. Some. All the lot of root percussion got through here.
Speaker 3:Japanese clear out this area and they were running these rivers. Japanese were running these rivers and it cost them a lot of trouble. And so they figured there was a Colonel Merrill was right behind San Marcelino. I see, san Marcelino, okay, colonel Merrill was about five miles back in the mountains behind Colonel Merrill and we are all around. We are all around, colonel Merrill. So me R-R-R-A-L out, r-r-r-a-l. Colonel Merrill. So Merrill was causing trouble and I was causing trouble, and so there were literally both of us and in the middle of all this, mcguire got caught and Merrill didn't and I didn't. But Coggero was the reason I didn't and somebody other than the Greer group was the reason Merrill didn't. Whether I didn't, but Cogero was the reason I didn't and somebody other than the Greer group was the reason Merrill didn't.
Speaker 3:I remember this raid took place. You probably don't have any idea. What are the dates on that? Well, let's see. Let's say, uh, ed Hall, meninger, fumes, mons, desue, ruggiero Perry, I'd say about middle of 44. Middle of 44? Yeah, when all those took place, jerry, something like that.
Speaker 3:Hmm, hmm, did you lose track of time while you were in there? No, did you lose track of the jumbles? No, I had a diary. I kept a diary. Oh, has that survived? No, threw it on it overboard on the way out. Why'd you do that? Just didn't want to remember it anymore. I thought that it was. I would probably bring too much personal data, which was really personal data about a lot of men which probably would be better off forgotten as a result of all the things that happened, and would be better forgotten and might be incriminating in a way. The fact is I never.
Speaker 3:In fact, fred Almedrash I really shouldn't have committed his name to that say he did what he did. Sure, good, the United States government called me down to the Pentagon. They interrogated me and everything. Oh, they did. They knew they had the list of names. Yeah, it's public record. Oh, it was public record. Yeah, all right. Well, I told them. I said you have to draw your own conclusions. I didn't see him with the Japanese no, no. I didn't see him with the Japanese no, no. I didn't see him in Japanese prison yet I didn't see him released by the Japanese. I didn't see him go back to the Japanese. All I know is what the Philippine was telling me, and I know that I was hit within about an hour after he left.
Speaker 3:That's the only time that you read and expressed that to yourself about that American service man turning into a See now what his family put in for $10,000, gi insurance and they wanted to investigate and they had heard through their investigation of the Philippines for Filipinos about Fredo Ligas. Amazing how they found out all this stuff, incredible. So that even comes up because I'm pretty well known in the guerrilla forces. It's funny being about it. Following the war, I was pretty well known in the guerrilla forces and pretty well known down at Pentagon as a result of some of these things.
Speaker 3:But as the war has gone through the years, the POWs organized POWs. I'm not a POW. The POWs established themselves as the post-war people and I'm not a POW. So where is my reunion? Well, I go to the Bataan survivors, the Bataan and Corridor survivors, which is called the American Defenders, and Bataan and Corridor See man, those people were in ADBC. Adbc, yeah, they hold these meetings and they got the Kentucky in a chapter and I go. But what are they up against? They're up against all POWs, no guerrillas.
Speaker 3:Who do I talk to? What do they have to say to me? Nothing. How do I fit in? Nothing. 99% of them are enlisted men and I was a lousy officer and didn't know what I was doing and got them involved in this thing and I was totally responsible and stinking war to begin with because I was an officer. That was incredible as that may sound. I'm not trying to be obnoxious, but that's the way it is. That's the way it was. So I just dropped out of all that baking mess and hadn't had any promises, one thing or another. Now we got all these books coming out about Moutain. You'll never see my name in any of that Because not good. Now the reason is because I've not been involved in any of the post-war, because I went to a few. I didn't fit in. Would you go? No, you wouldn't. After a while, it's just like all those.
Speaker 1:Well, nobody talked to you.
Speaker 3:They're not discourteous. You had a totally different experience than any of them. I had nobody to talk to. Frank and Van are the only two guys that talk to each other. He comes down and sees me and I go up and see him, and Ralph Edwards thought I had a pretty good story. He had it on. This Is your Life and my orders are all in good shape. Did you get any medals? Merrill said that I was worth a bronze star. You were worth a bronze star.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as a result of my messenger service.
Speaker 3:Bronze star. I think you deserve maybe a medal of honor. Well, that's what Ralph Edwards tried to get accomplished, but it was too long after the war, too long after the war to be accomplished. I think it's fortunate that I lived through it. Certainly we always have a boost on that.
Speaker 3:So were you able to keep up your morale? I had an excellent attitude for real. Well, what I did? I got a hold of some maps South Pacific maps and I got a hold of Japanese vanilla tribute and they would only show an island, just an island. They would not give the island reference, to say the New Hebrides or New Zealand or New Guinea or Australia or anything like that, or Carolinas, only the island. Well, with my maps, I'd take that island and I would see how far they went from that island. They're fighting on this island. Well, with my maps, I'd take that island and I would see how far they went from that island. They're fighting on this island. The Japanese were always winning. But fortunately I could place the retreat.
Speaker 3:I had about a year of that when I started plotting this and I saw that the MacArthur was apparently either going to island hop or bypass. And I saw that MacArthur was apparently either going to island hop or bypass, and I didn't know which, but he had a heck of a time getting through the Guadalcanal and that New Zealand, new Britain and all that New Guinea coming up through that. So then when I saw this, I plotted it and my time factors and I predicted they'd be back in early 45. Isn't that amazing? Yeah Well, frank will confirm that. And always, if you got in touch with these external forces like Bush and Boone, but these guys, you couldn't get these guys together if they were not aware of the congressional middle, I mean, you just can't get them together, they're not going to get together. So that's one of the reasons I'm here to talk to you about this.
Speaker 3:If we don't get this thing and you've got to write this book with collaboration of these survivors that somehow get this down on paper it's so incredible that a lot of people probably wouldn't believe it happened. In fact, the survivors of the death march would probably say there wasn't anybody out there doing anything. It was a helpless situation. But there you have it. They do know that. They do know that. But there were some. And not only that, they knew it, and not only that, we had some escape routes set up for them. We had several escape routes set up for several of them. However, there was a law that if one escaped, they killed ten.
Speaker 3:However we had a full detachment ready to spring, but you can't blame them for not springing them. We had it set. Botto had the thing wired at Clark with a root detachment at the bottom I imagine 25. And we had it absolutely set up. We had contact with them and he had to. We had an absolute setup. We had contact whether they were running straight up and the time came they were running good. And you can't believe it. It was an unknown quantity. They didn't know if we were there or not. They hadn't seen us.
Speaker 1:It's just a word, of one word.
Speaker 3:They knew there was something and they knew they heard it about us. They knew that there would be other sources. They knew that for sure. But they didn't know how they would have lived or where they would have lived or what they did, and they had not been to that environment. And you really can't believe the traumatic world of the Alps. We had a couple of times where we had it ready but they wouldn't go.
Speaker 3:Well, there were a few who did escape with war detachments and we didn't. We took in, for example, the American ship that was sunk off shore here that they were taking I don't know, I guess a little of them had been here in the middle of Brown. This is the prisoners. Right, they talked about the sinking Right, and this warship was sunk. They talked about the sinking Right and this work ship was sunk by the Americans right here. Right, they talked about that. Three or four of them came ashore and swam ashore, got ashore and then took them in All. Their throats and nose were burnt to ash. Incredible, they were brought through the mountains to you folks. Were we loose? Oh, yes, thank you, that's an incredible. But not to get any kind of recognition or anything After this it's kind of mind-boggling. Who are we? Well, after the war, you know, somebody wouldn't write you up for it, you and Frank and all the rest of these people and boom Wouldn't get any kind of recognition whatsoever after this, I mean.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of war going on out there there's a lot of war, and I guess you would consider pretty small potatoes if you didn't get written up in the hometown paper every other week. Oh, you did get written up, though. Oh, I can't.
Speaker 1:How did you?
Speaker 3:get news about your exports out of the Philippines, did Sergeant Botto? No, no, you mean when the American troops returned.
Speaker 3:Oh, the media picked it up. Lowell Thomas said that I carried the flag, didn't ever touch the ground. There were the Newark Evening News. A guy who won the Pulitzer Prize, luke Pease, drew a cartoon for me. It's down at the office, which is this cartoon on the fly. It never touched the ground. In the New York Evening News it was syndicated. Okay, now this brings us down to about February of 45.
Speaker 3:You've been keeping posted that the Americans were getting close because you were getting these newspapers in Japanese language. They never told what the island was, but you had maps that would indicate the geographical area. So you knew, probably by early 1945, and this was right on your timetable that if they're getting close, in any day now, the Americans are going to arrive. But what was the reaction to you and your friends when you first made contact, or what did you say? I mean, did you know that they were in the area? Well, let me tell you about the most exciting day of my whole life. We actually met the Americans about. Tell me where it's, at February 2nd of 1945.
Speaker 3:But let me tell you about December 17th. Must have been February 4th 2012. Yeah, but let me tell you about December 17th Must have been February 4th, why, Okay? On December the 17th. Here comes wave after wave after wave of airplanes. Then we leave our house that Frank and Bill were on the side of the mountain and the water piped in you did and all of a sudden we see waves. We've never seen this many airplanes. They must be Americans, don't you think they're Americans? And we're running like mad to the top of the mountain doodoo, which is about probably a mile from our hideout.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:And we're in the top of the mountain also, but this is the peak. And we run to the top of the mountain also, but this is the peak. And we run to the top of the mountain, overlooking Clarkshire and Stottsonburg, and you're claims diving in and dropping bombs and strafing. It looked like 100 or 200 or 300 air. That wave left and here comes another wave and then another wave and the strafing and the bullets were hitting all around us. Frank says we're going to get killed. I says Americans can't kill us. We're Americans, frank. Oh, it was so exciting I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3:December the 17th we really had all those years saw Americans again. Our plagues it was so wonderful, just excellent. Our plagues it was so wonderful, just absolute. Our first contact with our home were those plagues and the most disastrous thing was to see some of them disintegrated in the air as their results lagged. The tragedy of an ising was a and then about a week, but it was about the week of 10 days later, one of them was shot down. We saw the parachutes open and Clever Hogan and Jack McGrath bailed out and our pigglies were out and got them and brought them to our headquarters. Now, clever Hogan, you mentioned he was a pilot.
Speaker 3:He was a pilot. He's still alive, though. He's still at the border. He's a wonderful fellow and they brought him down to our headquarters after they found him, which was a couple hours later, and brought him all the way down. He had been told that if he got in trouble and got shot, to go up the mountains or a guerrilla's area, and that their focus was in the guerrilla forces, but if they bailed out in Japan, they'd be shot before they got to the ground. So he headed for the mountains and he got a little far back. The breakmans had to go way on back to get him, but he did the right thing. So he comes down the trail and here he is, all nice and neat, just off the ship, and he's well-fed and everything all nice and white.
Speaker 3:You have a beard, yeah, and I'm wearing all this. And he reaches out his hand and he says my name's Clay. I said your name is Clay the first man I had met in three and a half years and his name is Clay. He says, yeah, my name's Clay Hogan. I said my name's Clay Connor, right in the middle of the jungle, you know that's the first one.
Speaker 1:You know what I said to him.
Speaker 3:I think I've lost my mind. I've been here too long. You're not real, are you? I can understand the feeling. Yeah, clay, he's just real are?
Speaker 1:you is that I can understand the feeling.
Speaker 3:Yeah, clay, just you're just like a couldn't be, couldn't be anyway, we, we, we began to talk and unfolded this story going. He knew, he knew he had, he just knew that I was there and, uh, he told us about the briefing. That morning was the first briefing that they would have when they were going to land and where they were going to land. And he gave me the entire briefing and I knew exactly where they were going to land, when they were going to land and the whole thing. So we began to prepare for that and we didn't let that out. I mean, we didn't even tell our tireless confidence. We just began to stage our activities in preparation for it.
Speaker 3:Well, how did you? How did the activities vary then? I mean change based on this new information about the land? Okay, well, we're now behind Clarkfield, stottsonburg, where there's 20,000 Japanese Right. If the Americans are going to come south, they're now behind Clarkfield and Stottsenburg, where there's 20,000 Japanese Right. If the Americans are going to come south, they're going to land and come in, which they're going to land in Lengard.
Speaker 3:Same as the Americans did, same as the Japanese had done three and a half years ahead of time. Okay, now what they're going to do is they're going to hit Clark and Stottsenburg and I repeat the two names. I don't know why I do. We just. We never called it Clark, we called it Stottsonburg in those days. Stottsonburg, they're going to get it from the east and come west. They're going to drive the Japanese the same thing that they did to us. They're going to drive the Japanese back into our areas. They've been there for years and they're going to cause a lot of problems for the Negritos, right, right? So what we did is we organized the Negritos to begin to establish an entire area of about three miles north and south of Belize. Do you know what a Belize is? A pig trap, oh, a pig trap. Okay, just one, right after another, right after another, just intermittent.
Speaker 1:Not in a straight row.
Speaker 3:But a three-mile column about six or seven deep. Took us two or three. It took them let's see if this is over. January. Took them two and a half months January. It took them a month and a half to set up all of the lice, every kind of absolute devastating killing device and trap. You described it briefly. Could you go into some detail now again about what that looked like? This pig trap he called it. It was really a man trap. In other words, in the heavy jungle area you've got trees growing close together. You can spring. You cut one narrow tree down which is maybe four inches or three inches, which has some springing ability. In other words, you can pry it between two other trees. Imagine taking this six-foot-long tree which is three inches or four inches and putting it between two other trees in kind of a leverage and pulling it back. You understand?
Speaker 1:You can visualize that.
Speaker 3:Yes. So when you're pulling back it's on the horizontal, the trees are vertical and they're growing close together. So you stick the one in between the two and you pull it back and it has. If you let loose of it, it's going to spring forward, right? So you take this six foot long, or seven foot long or however it is, and tie it onto that razor sharp, razor-sharp, bamboo, arrow-type things. They're just like knives and you may put 15 or 20 of them along there, one next to the other, tied very tightly.
Speaker 3:Now the tripping device may be about a foot and a half out, so that when you hit that foot and a half out, three feet out or whatever the ability of this particular spring was, the guy steps on this dude or trips it and it comes forward at hip height and three or four of those things will just tear him in the middle and hang him there and he just lays there and yells until he's dead, which may be four or five hours, oh awful. And the poison out of that just permeates his body and there's no way to release him from it. I mean, you couldn't take him off of it without tearing the meat out of his hips, because it also had poison on them. No, they're poisonous to begin with. In other words, the innate to the body, it's poisonous. Oh, I see. In other words, the innate to the body, it's poisonous. Oh, I see. In other words, you cut your finger on a piece of paper. There's a certain amount of poison involved. Right, I see what you're saying. You see what I mean. Oh, wicked.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's a terrible way to die, just a terrible, terrible, agonizing way to die because there's no way to rescue the guy. He couldn't get him off of it, no matter, without just tearing all the meat off his bones, see, because it's jagged. Anyway, we had that backed up for half a mile, a long three-mile quarter, and so we kept moving on to the mountains. They never did. They never did get in the mountains. Because of that. They didn't do that, they surrendered. They surrendered rather than going there.
Speaker 3:Remember what surrender means. Remember that Dishonorable to the Japanese. So a lot of them suicides and everything else. So the Americans actually didn't know. You prevented them and a lot of them surrendered and a lot of them probably committed suicide afterwards. Harry Carey, is the method that they used? But your method did keep them out of the mountains and probably kept the world from being prolonged any longer than it was. Well, they were locked in, but the unfortunate part was the death of so many Americans. Taking Clark this is a story that's not too well known 40 and the 40, I think it was the 44th Division, 41st or the 2nd or 3rd.
Speaker 3:Is that the Ohio and the Ohio. My Uncle David told me about some of the guys that went in there.
Speaker 3:Some of the Indiana boys went over there too the Philippines when they retook and he said that just about everybody on that train. He went to Camp Atterbury and he said he was held off and some AWOLs were put on the train ahead of him. And after the war he says everybody on that train was killed as Hoosiers, except for three or four guys on the train. So you were lucky rather for that. You weren't on that train with us. So that's probably the action or one of the actions that he was talking about.
Speaker 3:I don't think I ever told this story for a record. Do you want to tell it for the record or I can take it? Yeah, I suppose I, of course, was an interesting person to the journalists of the service, or only the one in there. We take Clarksfield because Clarksfield is an important target in order for the Americans to begin to fly in all their soldiers and ammunition and keep. But we have to realize that you're talking to a guy that's been in the journal for three years and he probably can't express himself too well.
Speaker 3:I'm sitting here at age 65 and I've given a lot of time and thought to writing and public speaking and so on and can reasonably tell a story by retrospect, which is a lot different, but I attached myself reasonably. Tell a story by retrospect, which is a lot different, but I attached myself. As I said earlier, I was repatriated, I was involved in the retaking, I was involved in the Rangers' operation to release the prisoners at Cabanatua and I was at a distance in that, but I was involved and most people don't know that, and I wasn't supposed to be, but I was there. And then nobody knows about that but I like to be in what was going on and then you, just, you just stepped away and got up there to help them out, or, uh, you said you weren't supposed to be there. They told did we give you a draft order? No, no, no, nobody ever gave me any orders. You got a little early.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. Let's face it, you're just like that. Captain Boone, I'm with the Rangers, man, you wouldn't believe here. I am with the Rangers because we're very active all over the place, you know, but this time we're Well.
Speaker 3:I was going to tell you about this is after I repatriated, sent north and I was supposed to get on a ship or airplane and go down to LAD and back to the States where I left. There I didn't look for them ready, I had to get them at Greaves. But before that, back in February, 2nd, 3rd, 4th HAG and the Rangers came in, I was very active in the defense. Plus, the Japanese were beginning to group very heavily and were able to clear out and got continental ice. And then they flankaked south and started taking a little more. He started south after we got caught in the blights and we had to flank the Japanese and we got in the combat with them and they were really in a posture where they wanted to clear out all of the area in order to defend their positions. And we happened right on it, for we had one fierce battle and that was the last combat we had within three feet full of sheet, hand-to-hand bayonet. Nice, the whole bit.
Speaker 3:You were battling this hand-to-to-hand combat. I mean, they were right on top of us. How many Rangers would you say were in battle? Oh, this is not the Rangers. This is Frank and my Pygmies and my Negritos and my Filipinos, and Frank, hmm, boy. And we had a real mess. Which battle? Oh, for about four hours that night and we lost quite a few men and finally we defeated this contingency and then retreated back into Clark and we ran around and took a position and stayed there through the night. We had it heavily guarded. And then the next morning was when we went out on the main road and we unfurled the flag and marched north and led the American forces and they came down the road with tanks. And, boy, I wish I could see a photograph of that.
Speaker 3:It says something in the movies, yeah, and they jumped out of their tanks and these yellow Americans all were crying when they saw us and they offered us cigarettes and candy, Things you hadn't seen in three and a half years. Yeah, they didn't really know what to say, because, you see, they knew We'd already been in communication by this time, do you think? And that we had been in a distant communication, we'd sent out messages.
