ENEMY PROPERTY COMMISSION

FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 1947

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, in room 1334, New House Office Building, Hon. Charles A. Wolverton (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

We will resume hearings on H. R. 873 introduced by Mr. Beckworth and H. R. 1823 introduced by Mr. Hinshaw. The first witness will be Mr. Don Bell.

Is Mr. Bell present?

(There was no response.)

Mr. MCGOWAN. He is not here, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bennett.

STATEMENT OF ROY C. BENNETT, EDITOR AND GENERAL MANAGER OF THE MANILA DAILY BULLETIN, MANILA, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bennett, will you give your name and address? Mr. BENNETT. My name is Roy C. Bennett. My present address is 11041 Weddington Street, North Hollywood, Calif.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that the congressional district represented by our colleague, Mr. Hinshaw?

Mr. BENNETT. It is.

The CHAIRMAN. You have a good representative. You may proceed, Mr. Bennett.

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, I am sure that we all agree with that statement, and perhaps he knows better than we, out there, how they feel about Mr. Hinshaw.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, true worth always shines out wherever it is and the work of Mr. Hinshaw has been exhibited so often in this committee that I would assume that even though we have a more limited acquaintanceship with him, you are to detect that he is entitled to the compliments we seek to pay him.

Mr. HARRIS. Very well said.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bennett.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I spent more than a quarter of a century on the far eastern news front. I went to the Far East first in 1918 as a newspaperman and I was in that part of the world, with the short exception of about 2 years,

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until I was repatriated to the United States in 1945 after the liberation of the Americans in Santo Tomas.

During the war I spent 16 months, the first 16 months of the war, as a political prisoner. I was the first political prisoner arrested in the Philippine Islands. I was arrested not for any offense that I had committed, but because I was an American newspaperman, and the Japanese arrested me to suppress that which I represented in the Philippine Islands. I was 13 months in a cell of torture. You have heard from a Catholic sister, Sister Mary Trinita, about the horrors of Fort Santiaga Prison. I know those horrors first hand. I spent 389 days in that prison; but I am not here particularly to report a personal experience story. I am here essentially to report on the buildup to the situation that was climaxed by the Japanese against the Americans at Pearl Harbor and then later their conquest throughout the Pacific, and in that connection I speak in behalf of the American community-the American community who contributed to building an American institution, a democratic institution, in the Philippine Islands.

I consider that the Americans who stayed in the Philippines to be trapped by the Japanese in occupation paid the price-their own personal price for American unpreparedness. They were war casualties just as certainly as were those of the armed forces wounded or killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the enemy drive through the vast areas which the forces of democracy were unprepared and unable to defend.

We of the ill-fated group of civilian Americans caught and tortured by a successful enemy force of aggression in the Philippines now find that in effect we were expendables. We do not presume to say that there was any cold and calculated plan so describing us officially, but the job that fell to us resolved itself into just that. Whatever might be our fate in the ultimate course of the war, for all practical purposes in the early phases, in the period of enemy successes, we simply had to be written off in order that the long-range program for the eventual defeat of the then victorious enemy could be carried out.

We were too much in the dark on points of broad strategy to comprehend fully our own fate. We often developed false hope, based upon propaganda designed to deceive and confuse the enemy; we heard and treasured the reports that help and rescue were on the way. We bolstered our spirits with the hope that the turn in our favor might come soon-far sooner than it ever did come.

But with all of the confusion and chaos of the occasion, the realities of the situation were accepted in a manner creditable to the American spirit and the determination to carry through at whatever price.

Apparently, some persons in the United States, who have only a vague conception of what the Americans in the Philippine Islands took and why they took it and why they continued to take it, are under the impression that those caught by the enemy were responsible for their own fate in that they stayed on when they were offered the means of escape in advance. The practical fact is that they had neither official advice nor transportation facilities to escape while the road home was vet open.

Although it is true that some individuals could have, and if duly warned would have, withdrawn and sought safety in the homeland, it

is a positive fact that the American community in the Philippines could not have been liquidated without a complete reversal of the whole American policy in the Philippines and a defeat of the program under which the aggression build-up of the enemy was met with a solid front. The whole official attitude in the Philippine Islands-as revealed in Army, Navy, and civil government offices-was that public morale must be maintained and that the Americans, collectively and individually must set an example to the Filipinos, an example to give no encouragement to the enemy through admission of weakness or unwillingness or unreadiness to meet any emergency which possibly might

arise.

If I may supplement this part of the report, I should like to inform your committee that on numerous occasions I personally, and members of my staff, as editor of the Manila Daily Bulletin, contacted the American High Commissioner, Mr. Sayre; the high commands in the Army and the Navy; and asked for suggestions as to how we might best support the American cause; how we might inform the public, both American and Filipino; what our duties were; what our responsibilities were; what our course of action should be. Only a short time before the war I personally called on Mr. Sayre. I informed him, "I am not here to ask an interview. I am not here to get anything for publication. I am here to get guidance, if I may. I should like to know what we should do in informing the public as to the situation as it is now developing and is expected to develop. I should like to know whether the course that we are pursuing now is the correct one; whether it is the course that our Government wants and expects us to pursue." I was informed that the course that we were pursuing was correct and that we-I personally-and the newspaper-were performing a valuable patriotic service in the support of the American flag and the cause of democracy. I asked him specifically if at any time there should be a tip, that this line or that line was to be taken, we should be glad to have his suggestions.

I told him that as an American newspaper publisher I considered it our duty to print the news, to be honest, but that we wanted to know what the official American attitude was, what the public attitude should be, so that we might be guided by that.

I got from him and then directly and many times indirectly through other sources, only outright praise of the policy that we were pursuing. Only a few days before Pearl Harbor I had occasion to talk to Admiral Hart, the commanding oflicer of the Asiatic Fleet, and the same day to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, then the high commander of American Army forces in the Far East, and in effect I asked that same question, with precisely the same results. In fact General MacArthur asked me there was several in the conference-General MacArthur asked me if I would stay for a little talk after the others had gone. He thanked me for the course that we were following. He said it was basically correct and thoroughly right, and in that course I must explain our basic policy was to maintain morale, to encourage an attitude of readiness on the part of the Americans and the Filipinos to meet the emergency and to set an example, an American example, to the Filipinos in a crises; to inspire in them confidence in that which the American flag stood for.

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When American Navy families, and later Army families, were ordered home, official press releases and comments studiously avoided the impression that this was intended as the start of a general American exodus. Emphasis was placed on the explanation that this action was taken for the convenience of the defense services, that the service wives were removed to make room for increased numbers of servicemen and defense equipment.

At the same time, a quiet campaign of reassurance was carried on based on several readily apparent facts, among them the fact that the family of the American High Commissioner was staying on, likewise the family of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the high commander of American Army forces in the Far East.

If it were not betraying a confidence I should like to report the conversations between representatives of the American community including my own wife, as one American, and representatives of the official American offices, including the High Commissioner's office there.

I can say here only that direct inquiries were made as to whether it was the intent that we should slip out while we were maintaining the attitude of standing by and setting an example. We asked in many ways whether on the quiet we should steal away.

The answers that we got, I think without exception-I know all of the answers that I got-were that "we are staying, are we not?" by "we" meaning the families of the High Commissioner and others. "What would the Filipinos think if we left? What would the Filipinos think if you left? You as Americans?"

The editorial and news offices of the Manila Daily Bulletin were in constant touch with the offices of all responsible authorities of the Army, Navy, and civil government-American and Filipino. Through these contact channels, we never once gained the impression that a general withdrawal of Americans was desired or considered practicable. On the contrary, we had every reason to feel that we were rendering a patriotic service and that our policy had complete sanction when news treatment and editorial comment were along lines calculated to build public morale and maintain normal community life.

Many were the occasions on which it would have been easy to spread panic, which, undoubtedly, would have resulted in immediate efforts of Americans to get home. However, shipping facilities did not exist for a volume of travel materially in excess of normal, and there was never indication of an official intention to provide emergency facilities or to create the demand for such extra facilities.

Elsewhere in the Far East, Americans were ordered home; ships were dispatched for their repatriation. But in the Philippines such was not the case, and such was not indicated as officially desirable. The Philippines as American flag Territory-and I might add that the official designation is "Territory" under the sovereignty of the United States-was in a status entirely different from the surrounding territories under other flags.

Americans in the Philippines, through the years of American building in and for democracy, never considered the undertaking in which they were participating essentially military. The undertaking as a whole was in fact far more civilian than military. Had it been otherwise, progress in the establishment of democratic institutions would have been deplorably less than it was.

The Americans there, thousands who were caught and tortured by the Japanese, were missionaries of democracy. They were school teachers, Government employees, scientists, merchants, lawyers, doctors, miners-persons of varied interests, and degrees of accomplishment. Many of them had been brought there by their own government; as a class they had come with official encouragement. Very few of them were imperialistic exploiters, or undesirable beachcombers.

They were Americans, most of them worthy Americans made to feel a pride in their accomplishment. They had established homes; they considered themselves a part of the country, an essential part. Some had been successful in business; many others had accumulated no substantial reserve of earnings. All in all, they had contributed substantially and up to the time of their falling into the clutches of the invading enemy were continuing to contribute to the upbuilding of the country. It would have been next to impossible for the vast majority of them to pull up and leave. Furthermore, they were not given the impression that such was their duty.

All of the defense preparation the Americans in the Philippine Islands saw or heard about was carried out along the lines of building a defense adequate to any occasion that might be expected. They were made to feel that they had a specific place in that program, that both their duty and their continuing safety lay in the direction of complete support for such a program.

They were not only ignorant of any plans to get them out, if ever any such plans existed, but also they were made to feel that they were definitely needed where they were, that their duty was to perform the task at hand, the task of helping to make democracy and the democratic Territory of the Far East safe and secure.

For myself, I might say that home leave was overdue by almost 2 years when the Pacific war started. I had postponed vacation in the United States simply because I considered it my duty to carry through the critical period, whatever it might be. I had many words of commendation from responsible American Government representatives on my attitude and my effort in this connection.

I should like to explain my own attitude further by saying that, after I had spent 16 months under torturous "special treatment" as a political prisoner and had been transferred to Santo Tomas Internment Camp for hospitalization, I was officially approached with an offer for possible repatriation. I tried in vain, as it turned out to be, to get permission for my wife and two small children to be repatriated without me. I decided it was my duty to stay on in order to be ready to resume my work at the earliest possible date on the return of American forces-whenever that might be.

While the question of my possible repatriation was pending before the Japanese authorities of Santo Tomas Internment Camp word reached the Manila Daily Bulletin Filipino employees in Manila, and from A. H. Escoda, the top Filipino editorial man of the Bulletin, came through the underground-this message to me:

Please do not leave. The Filipino employees of the Bulletin are standing loyal and are enduring much. If you, the top American of the paper now in the country, should leave, they would feel that you and that which you represent, American leadership, were deserting them.