Angels of the Underground: The American Women who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II

Angels of the Underground: The American Women who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II

by Theresa Kaminski
Angels of the Underground: The American Women who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II

Angels of the Underground: The American Women who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II

by Theresa Kaminski

Hardcover

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Overview

When the Japanese began their brutal occupation of the Philippines in January 1942, 76,000 ill and starving Filipino and American troops tried to hold out on Bataan and Corregidor. That spring, after having been forced to surrender, most of those men were thrown into Japanese POW camps while dozens of others slipped away to organize guerrilla forces. During the three violent years of occupation that followed, Allied sympathizers in Manila smuggled supplies and information to the guerrillas and the prisoners.

Theresa Kaminski's Angels of the Underground tells the story of four American women who were part of this little-known resistance movement: Gladys Savary, Claire Phillips, Yay Panlilio, and Peggy Utinsky - all incredibly adept at skirting occupation authorities to support the Allied war effort. The nature of their clandestine work meant that the truth behind their dangerous activities had to be obscured as long as the Japanese occupied the Philippines. If caught, they would be imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Throughout the Pacific War, these four women remained hidden behind a veil of deceit and subterfuge.

An impressive work of scholarship grounded in archival research, FBI documents, and memoirs, Angels of the Underground illuminates the complex political dimensions of the occupied Philippines and its importance to the war effort in the Pacific. Kaminski's narrative sheds light on the Japanese-occupied city of Manila; the Bataan Death March and subsequent incarceration of American military prisoners in camps O'Donnell and Cabanatuan; and the formation of guerrilla units in the mountains of Luzon.

Angels of the Underground offers the compelling tale of four ordinary American women propelled by extraordinary circumstances into acts of heroism, and makes a significant contribution to the work on women's wartime experiences. Through the lives of Gladys, Yay, Claire, and Peggy, who never wavered in their belief that it was their duty as patriotic American women to aid the Allied cause, Kaminski highlights how women have always been active participants in war, whether or not they wear a military uniform.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780199928248
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 12/14/2015
Pages: 512
Sales rank: 685,637
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Theresa Kaminski is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She is the author of Citizen of Empire: Ethel Thomas Herold, An American in the Philippines and Prisoners in Paradise: American Women in the Wartime South Pacific.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: The Colonial Philippines
Chapter Two: The Four Women
Chapter Three: Manila on the Edge
Chapter Four: The Japanese Attack
Chapter Five: The Japanese Occupation of Manila
Chapter Six: Bataan
Chapter Seven: "Is the War Over?"
Chapter Eight: Organizing Relief and Resistance in Manila
Chapter Nine: Cabanatuan
Chapter Ten: Guerrillas in the Midst of the Occupation
Chapter Eleven: The Manila Underground
Chapter Twelve: Betrayal
Chapter Thirteen: The Unraveling [or "The fat is in the fire"]
Chapter Fourteen: The War Returns
Chapter Fifteen: Bloodletting and Liberation
Chapter Sixteen: Freedom
Chapter Seventeen: Resolution
Bibliography
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