15. Josefina Guerrero: The Maid of Manila

This episode explores the life of Josefina Guerrero, who became a significant spy for the U.S. during World War II in Manila while suffering from a serious disease.

1. Josefina Guerrero used her medical condition as a cover, allowing her to gather and relay vital information undetected.
2. She demonstrated extraordinary courage and dedication by continuing her espionage activities despite severe health deterioration.
3. Guerrero's efforts were instrumental in the U.S. forces' ability to navigate Japanese defenses during the liberation of the Philippines.
4. Her story is a profound testament to the impact one individual can have on the course of a conflict.
5. Guerrero faced lifelong stigma and challenges post-war due to her disease, highlighting the societal barriers faced by individuals with Hansen's disease.

1. Early Life and Diagnosis

Josefina Guerrero's transformation from an ordinary citizen to a spy began after being diagnosed with leprosy, leading to her social isolation. Helena Bonham Carter: "Her disease, although a personal tragedy, became her cover during her spy work."

2. Beginning of Espionage

Guerrero started her espionage by infiltrating Japanese gatherings, using her inconspicuous appearance to gather intelligence. Ben Montgomery: "She used her unassuming presence to collect critical military information from the Japanese."

3. Expanding Her Role

As her reputation within the resistance grew, Guerrero undertook increasingly risky missions, often disguising her activities under the guise of everyday tasks. Josefina Guerrero: "Every mission was a step towards reclaiming our freedom."

1. Utilize Unconventional Advantages: Like Guerrero used her illness, identify and turn personal challenges into strengths.
2. Embrace Courage in Adversity: Draw inspiration from Guerrero’s bravery to tackle difficult situations fearlessly.
3. Maintain Hope and Persistence: Persistence can lead to significant impacts, as demonstrated by Guerrero's efforts during the war.
4. Support Those with Chronic Illnesses: Advocate for understanding and support for individuals with diseases like Hansen's.
5. Learn from History: Guerrero's story teaches the power of individual action and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds.

After contracting Hansen’s Disease, then known as leprosy, Josefina Guerrero makes a remarkable decision. She becomes a spy for the resistance in Manila.

People

Josefina Guerrero, Ben Montgomery, Helena Bonham Carter

Content Warnings:

None

BBC
This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK.

Ryan Reynolds
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BBC sounds Music Radio podcasts June 1982, the Kennedy Center, Washington, DC. Ballet dancer Bian Echt came off stage, applause ringing in his ears. For the first time, he'd performed a leading role. As he walked to his dressing room, elated, he felt a sharp tug on his sleeve. And I turn around and it's this tiny little woman, very intense eyes behind thick glasses, staring up at me.

The woman in her sixties was a theater usher. She tilted her head and asked him, are your parents still alive? Very strange from a total stranger, you. Know, Hecht told her his parents were very much alive and well, and she. Said, oh, but, you know, if they weren't, I want to adopt you.

The usher's name was Joey Lomax. From that moment on, she became Hechts firm friend. She had these eyes that were very much alive, and they wanted to know everything. But as he got to know her, Hecht noticed something else about her appearance. I wont say that I noticed immediately, but there was something about her nose that wasnt quite right.

Joey never liked to talk about her background, though. She said she came from San Francisco. She had a very romantic story about a big house, and she would sit up on the second floor with the french doors open and flowing curtains in the wind, you know. Their close friendship continued for the next 14 years. After Joey died in 1996, Hecht went to her apartment to help arrange her affairs among her flat back furniture, her books and vinyl records.

He realized something was missing. There's no family photos. It's only photos of performers. The strange thing is, everything is new. He flicked through an address book, looking for any relatives he could contact hundreds of names in.

Bian Echt
But they were all from seventies, eighties. Again, that was kind of eerie. Finally, in a drawer, hext found her official documents. Again, they were all recent and everyone showed a different date of birth. Like this is strange.

Why does this passport say that? And this id says this? It didn't make sense. Mystified, Hecht placed an advert in a newspaper, trying to find someone from Joey's past. For a while there was no reply.

And then, out of the blue, a phone call describing someone who sounded like a completely different woman. They told us about Josefina, who had been married, had a daughter and had come to us later in life. Hecht couldn't believe what he was hearing. His friend wasn't who she had always said she was, but what he was told next totally threw him. Josefina had been a spy for the US during the second World War in Manila.

More than that, Joey Lomax, whom Hecht had known as a kindly theatre usher, had once been Josefina Guerrero, one of the most consequential spies of World War Two in the Philippines, during one of the most brutal conflicts of the war, she had saved thousands of lives and she did it all while she herself suffered with a serious disease. I'm Helena Bonham Carter and for BBC radio four, this is history's secret heroes, true stories of deception, axa, resistance and courage from World War Two.

Josefina Guerrero, the maid of Manila. In the 1930s, four decades of american occupation in the Philippines appeared to be coming to an end. Independence was in the air in the capital city, Manila. There was an extra buzz, you know. It was a big, thriving metropolis.

BBC
Manila was. Ben Montgomery is an author and journalist who has written about Guerrero's life. People were shopping. There was a fast pace to the commerce. There were big, broad boulevards lined by stores and restaurants.

There were notorious dance clubs. You know, this was a place where there was kind of this constant, ongoing party. The United States had acquired the Philippines from Spain in 1898. For the Americans, as for the Spanish, Manila was the trading center of the Pacific, a foothold for commercial opportunities and for military opportunities. Too.

Many american business interests relocated to the philippine islands, and the US immediately started using the Philippines as military center of operations. Many Filipinos fought hard against american occupation. A bitter war raged until 1902, in which 20,000 Filipinos lost their lives. By the time Joshefina Guerrero was born in 1917, though, the resistance to american occupation was largely democratic. In Ermita, the district where Joshefena lived, gilded mansions were built alongside genteel leisure clubs.

She'd been orphaned as a child, but. Age 16, she married into a very wealthy family. She married Renato Guerrero, who was a young doctor and the scion of his family. Two and a half years later, the couple had a daughter, Cynthia. Both parents were besotted by this little girl with her big brown eyes and chestnut hair.

But when Cynthia was still young, Josefina. Guerrero fell ill. Joey had begun to have some symptoms. She was coming down with incredible headaches, fatigue that would knock her off her feet for days on end. A blemish appeared on her face.

Guerrero's husband took her to see one of his colleagues, an expert in infections. When the diagnosis came, it was devastating. She finally was tested and diagnosed with leprosy. We now call it Hansen's disease was. A hopeless situation because by the time the treatment available for Hunsson's disease was not so effective, could help very little.

Patricia Duarte Debs is a dermatologist based in Brazil. She studied Guerrero's case and the history of Hansen's disease. Hansen's disease is an infectious disease, but have these inflammatory events and these affect the skin and peripheral nerves in hands and feet and eyes. But I think stigma and discrimination is even worse than the disease itself. The old name for Hansens disease, leprosy, carried tremendous historical baggage.

It is mentioned frequently in the Bible and was seen as an incurable curse. In a catholic country like the Philippines, Hansons was still widely considered a divine punishment for sin. You know, you only got leprosy if you were out of God's favor. Guerrero knew that if her condition was widely known, she would be shunned. In Manila, people with the disease were forced out of their jobs and sent to leper colonies outside the city.

They had to ring a bell or carry a sign indicating they were contagious, calling out unclean. So like thousands of others with Hansen's disease, Guerrero kept it a secret. But because Hansen's can be transmitted through close contact, she had to make a heart breaking decision. Guerrero would now live alone, away from her husband and daughter. It was 1941.

Guerrero was still just 24 years old. Her affluent life, her husband, and most painfully, her beloved baby daughter were all now lost to her.

The 8 December 1941, just 10 hours after its devastating attack on Pearl harbor in Hawaii, Japan brought war to the Philippines. Manila was a key target both for its strategic position and for its status as an american stronghold, as it had at Pearl harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on Manila. From the air, planes were still on the ground. The troop number was lower than anybody would have liked. They were unprepared for it.

BBC
The people of Manila were unprepared for it. Half the american fighters and bombers were destroyed in the first assault. Soon, Manila and its surroundings were ablaze. With airfields, piers, and docks burning, the japanese ground offensive began. Caught on the back foot, american troops tried to withdraw slowly.

The idea was to delay the Japanese for as long as possible. But Japan had been planning an attack for years. A network of spies had supplied them with information on all the defensive positions. They knew where to land. As 43,000 japanese soldiers advanced, the Americans were rapidly pushed back.

They blew up bridges and retreated to the mouth of Manila Bay.

January 1942. The occupation of Manila was complete. Guerrero woke up to a city transformed. The Japanese rounded up Europeans and Americans first and put them in prison camps. For everyone else, a harsh new regime began.

BBC
Life was controlled by curfew. It was controlled by japanese soldiers patrolling the streets. You couldn't leave your house without permission. You couldn't conduct business without permission of the Japanese. Japanese soldiers customarily slapped open hand slapped anyone who didn't show them respect.

That meant bowing to the japanese soldiers in the street. Anyone who disobeyed was threatened with a death penalty. Already isolated, Guerrero was left without medication. The occupation meant supplies weren't coming into the city. Rapidly, her health deteriorated.

The physical side of it was nearly unbearable at times. The symptoms, lesions on the skin, you know, blisters and boils on the skin. And this was because she was untreated. In pain and alone. Guerrero sought solace in her faith.

She'd been three years old in 1920, when the catholic church had canonized Joan of Arc, the french heroine of the Middle Ages. As a child, Guerrero had been entranced by stories of this young peasant woman who had visions and led an army against english invaders. She and her little brother used to play games where her brother was the voice of God, telling Joey, who was playing the part of Joan of Arc, what to do. And so I think maybe she saw herself sort of as a little bit of a, you know, a different version of a Joan of Arc. Now, again, Guerrero took the maid of Orleans as her inspiration.

By risking her own life for her country, she hoped to work for a higher cause. She felt she had nothing left to lose.

A few weeks later, at the university campus in Manila, three young women approached the engineering building. They were dressed for a party. As they neared the building, japanese soldiers waved them over and invited them in. They mingled with the occupying forces. One of the three was particularly attentive.

Josefina Guerrero was undercover. She pretended to be just a regular old filipino girl. She wandered among the japanese soldiers, listening. She was eavesdropping. She was listening to the men talk about, you know, their military exploits and what the next move was going to be.

Guerrero was a great listener. Almost without realizing, the soldiers found themselves opening up to her, explaining they had been fortifying the whole campus. They even showed her around. The whole time she was stealing secrets. This was Guerrero's first mission for the resistance.

It had not been easy for her to persuade them to recruit her. Ultimately, they ran her through a battery of tests to see what her courage was like and to see if she was committed to the cause of resistance. The resistance movement had emerged at the time of the japanese invasion. Its leaders were catholic teenagers who'd been army cadets at school. They began to organize themselves and to try to resist the Japanese at every turn.

BBC
You know, simple pranks of, like, sabotage, pouring sugar in the gas tanks of japanese vehicles when no one was looking, slashing tires. When Guerrero returned from the university with extensive information, the resistance commanders were impressed. One asked her if she would take on a more dangerous task. The resistance in Manila could not operate a radio service or printing press. The only way to organize recruits or share information was by handwritten note.

They would often, you know, ride on onion skins, for instance, so that if the japanese soldiers were to intercept the courier, well, the courier could just pop that into his or her mouth and swallow it. As a courier, Guerrero developed her own methods. The soldiers manning the checkpoints would see a small, young woman with long, dark, curly hair tied back in a ponytail, carrying her shopping. And often she would tie the messages up in her hair. Sometimes she would hollow out fruit, you know, pineapples and tropical fruit and things of that sort, and she would put the messages inside of the fruit.

Guerrero walked across the city, past soldiers and checkpoints. It was a game with incredibly high stakes. This is a war torn country occupied by brutal japanese soldiers who, if they suspected you were a spy, would call in the Kempetai, this elite police squad that often tortured people for their information. The japanese soldiers were on the lookout for men, especially those who might have been in military service. Guerrero did not fit the bill.

On one of her missions, Guerrero was stopped. She was held at gunpoint while everything she carried was searched. Her hair was checked, and then the japanese soldiers told her to undress. She was essentially strip searched. Guerrero removed her clothes one item at a time.

She knew that she could easily be shot in the next few minutes because she was wearing two pairs of socks. And hidden between them was a message she was carrying for the resistance. And when she went to peel off the socks, instead of just taking off one pair at a time, she peeled off the socks as if they were one pair, but they were two pairs, hiding the message in between the socks. It worked. Guerrero survived to continue her resistance, while her wits were as quick as ever.

Though the physical effects of Hanssen's disease were beginning to show on her body. Probably she had very, very remarkable red skin lesions, like a plaque, some ulceration in case of Hansen's disease. Sometimes we don't have eyebrowns, and she could have developed some sort of eye lesion as well. It was no longer easy for Guerrero to pass herself off as an ordinary young woman out shopping. The Japanese were startled by her appearance.

Because ulceration is something very shocking when you see it. And maybe the Japanese, when saw her face, they were scared. Despite the fatigue, the pain, and the changes in her body, Guerrero found a way to use her symptoms to her advantage as a spy. So she often, you know, did things to, like, play up the leprosy, including wearing a veil, dressing in black, you know, she would announce that she was a leper by saying, unclean, unclean. They thought, well, this sick person is not going to be a part of the resistance.

The 12 March 1942. As the Americans continued to fight the Japanese at the mouth of Manila Bay, the commander of United States army forces in the Far East, General Douglas MacArthur, escaped to Australia. For over three months, MacArthur had tried to hold back the Japanese. He had intended to stay in Manila with his garrison. President Franklin D.

Roosevelt, feared that MacArthur, his most experienced general, would be captured by the Japanese and either killed or paraded in a prisoner of war camp. He had ordered MacArthur to leave for Australia. When he arrived, though, MacArthur vowed to return to the Philippines. Meanwhile, in Manila, Guerrero was by now an accomplished spy. She was keen to take on ever more difficult missions.

If the Americans were to oust the Japanese, they needed up to date, highly detailed information. Guerrero knew she could get it. When the Japanese began erecting gun emplacements around Manila Bay, which was seen as a crucial strategy in terms of holding Manila. She could go and watch them, and she often did. Guerrero was no longer trying to conceal her disease.

Instead, she used the fact people avoided her to move past checkpoints sitting alone by the waters of Manila Bay, Guerrero watched and carefully noted down everything she. Saw, and she would draw little maps showing where these gun emplacements were around Manila Bay. All of these maps became crucial pieces of information for the US army and the air force. She carried on sitting and sketching for miles around the vast bay. The work was painstaking.

If she was discovered, it would also be dangerous. So she definitely put herself at risk, not only because she was among the japanese army coming and going, but because she could have developed a very severe nerve damage. Guerrero knew she might not live long enough to see victory, and american commanders knew what they were asking Guerrero to do. Could risk her life, she agreed. But because she was in a sort of despair as well.

January 1945. Guerrero was in church, praying. The secret police had been asking about her. Several of her friends had been rounded up and taken away. For weeks now, she had been lying low.

The previous day, though, she'd been summoned again by the resistance. They wanted her to carry out one final mission. Guerrero picked up her bag and stepped outside the church. In the distance, she could hear the drone of american bombers. General MacArthur's campaign to retake the Philippines had begun.

The bombers had first attacked four months ago, pummeling Manila's harbor defenses. Using the maps she had drawn, the land battle was now underway. But the american forces were walking into a potential disaster. The US had learned that somewhere in the neighborhood of 4500 people who had been prisoners of war, they learned that the commandant of that prison camp intended to slaughter these pows, including many american citizens. And in order to stave that off, the US soldiers had to race to Manila.

What they didn't know was that the Japanese had set traps wherever american troops could approach, they had laid huge minefields. As Guerrero swung her bag onto her back, she felt the crinkle of paper. Taped between her shoulder blades was a map of the minefields, meticulously drawn by the resistance. If she could take this 40 miles away to the american commanders, she might save the lives of their troops and of thousands of prisoners of war. There's so many pitfalls on the way.

BBC
There was tribal warfare outside of Manila. To the north, pirates on the Pampanga river, not to mention being intercepted by the japanese soldiers who would catch her carrying a map of their minefields. With the bells of the church ringing behind her, Guerrero set off. Her headaches and fatigue had not subsided. On the way out of Manila, she was stopped briefly by japanese troops, but they made only a cursory search, and she continued on her way.

She passed guards and snipers over mile after mile of treacherous countryside towards the place she'd been given for a rendezvous. When Guerrero reached the Pampanga river, she hired a boat. There was active combat underway on the land, so the water seemed safer. It was not. She was pursued by six boats full of river pirates, shaking them off.

She made landfall again. She walked through another 8 miles of open countryside and headed for the rendezvous. When she arrived, though, she had missed her american contacts by 3 hours, they had progressed back past her to the spot where she had hired the boat, doubling back at speed. Eventually, she was able to find them. By the time she did, she had been walking day and night for 35 miles.

BBC
You know, they had to verify her identity. Somehow she was able to prove who she was. She took the map off and presented it to a commanding officer. They were incredibly thankful. American officers were in awe of Guerrero's courage.

Her actions had saved the lives of countless soldiers. Still, though her journey wasn't over. Ahead, thousands of prisoners of war were in danger of imminent slaughter. As the american troops headed to the camp, she swung into a jeep. Alongside them, a tank called battle and basic kind of bust through the front gates of this prison camp.

BBC
There were some shots fired. A couple of japanese soldiers died. The rest of them fled, and these 4500 starving, emaciated prisoners of war began to celebrate. On the 3 February 1945, american forces reached the outskirts of Manila, about three. Months of intense, chaotic urban warfare that destroyed about 80% of the city of Manila.

It's just heaps of rubble. Somewhere near 100,000 civilians were killed during that battle. Amid this horrendous violence and destruction, Guerrero was no longer spying. Instead, she had found a new way to fight the war. She would walk through gunfire.

She would assist wounded soldiers, bandaging their wounds, helping to get them to safety. She would administer last rites to dead and dying soldiers. As this crazy, destructive battle raged, soldiers. Described Guerrero as an almost saintly figure, serene regardless of the chaos and bullets flying around her. There was one time when one of her lungs began to hemorrhage.

She's in great medical distress, and she thought this was fine. Finally, her opportunity to see God. But it was not yet time for that. General MacArthur's troops cleared Manila of all japanese soldiers at the beginning of March. Fighting continued on some islands until the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which prompted Japan finally to surrender.

A little less than a year later, on the 4 July 1946, the Philippines finally achieved independence from the United States and became a republic. After the war, Josefina Guerrero lived in a colony north of Manila at Novaliches. Conditions there were squalid, yet she continued to work tirelessly, teaching children, tending to the sick, and campaigning to improve the lives of all those suffering with the same disease she had. On the 29 May 1948, Guerrero received the United States Medal of Freedom with a silver palm. Major General George Moore declared that she had shown more courage than a soldier on the field of battle.

After the ceremony, she became the first foreigner to be accepted as a patient at the Carville National Librarisarium in Louisiana. You see Time magazine write a profile of her in the late 1940s, acknowledging what all she had done, not only during the war, but also for her fellow sufferers that she met in Carville, Louisiana. By the late 1950s, treatment for Hansen's disease had advanced. Guerrero could be cured. It was not a simple matter.

She was treated for nine years before her disease was declared dormant. At last, she was discharged from the leprosarium. Yet the stigma of the disease was even harder to beat than the disease itself. When managers found out that Guerrero had survived Hansen's disease, she lost jobs. When friends heard about it, they tended to drift or rush away.

Josefina's estranged husband, Renato Guerrero, died in 1962. A few years later, in San Francisco, Guerrero was briefly reunited with her daughter, Cynthia. I don't think we will ever know exactly what happened, but I think it is probably the saddest moment for both of them. Guerrero moved to Madrid before settling in Washington, DC. That was where she met Biana Hecht, the ballet dancer.

By then, she had changed her name four times. Her whole choice of becoming an usher at a place like the Kennedy center that had everything, opera plays, ballet and symphony. You know, to her, I definitely think it was escapism, just getting away from what must have been extreme pain, from everything she went through in her life. She toiled in complete humility, against all odds with a disease that was ravaging her body, saving untold numbers of lives and risking her own in the process. That's a hero in my mind.

Next time on history's secret heroes. A young circus performer from a traveling family in France breaks out of an internment camp and dedicates himself to bringing the Nazis down. Raymond had only one thing on his mind, to fight the Nazis.

Escape artist.

Becky Ripley
Forgive us, listeners, for we have sinned. And we want to know why. I'm Becky Ripley. And I'm Sophie Ward. And we're here to tell you about our new podcast series, Seven deadly psychologies, now available on seriously from BBC Radio Force.

So ready? Born ready where we take a cold, hard look at the psychology behind each of the seven deadly sins. We shouldn't discard them. We should ask ourselves what they mean. It's this idea that if you give in to your lusts that you are animal like.

Bian Echt
We have to let our minds have time to freewheel. Finding empathy is probably the best tool to manage anger. To hear the whole series, just search. Seven deadly psychologies on BBC sounds.

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