Nakar Successful: About the 4th of July, Col. Nakar succeeded in contacting Australia. I quote from Gen. MacArthur's book, Reminiscences: "After the fall of Corregidor and the Southern Islands, organized resistance to the Japanese in the Philippines had supposedly come to an end. In reality, it never ended. Unfortunately for some time, I could learn nothing of these activities. A deep pall of silence settled over the whole archipelago.
"Two months after the fall of Manila Bay Defenses, a brief and pathetic message from a weak sending station on Luzon was brought to me. Short as it was, it lifted the curtain of silence and uncertainty, and disclosed the start of a human drama with few parallels in military history. The words of that message warmed my heart: 'YOUR RETURN IS THE NIGHTLY SUBJECT OF PRAYER IN EVERY FILIPINO HOME! - NAKAR.'
"I had acquired a force behind the Japanese lines that would
have far-reaching effect on the war in the days to come.
"Unhappily, the sender of that first message, Lt. Col. Guillermo
Nakar, a former battalion commander of the 14th Infantry of the
Philippine Forces, was caught by the Japanese, tortured and beheaded.
The word passed from island to island, and from barrio to barrio. From
Aparri in the north to Zamboango in the south the fire of resistance
to the invader spread. Whole divisions of Japanese troops that the
Emperor badly needed elsewhere, deployed against phantom units."
Before Nakar's untimely capture, he had received the following
message: "THE COURAGEOUS AND SPLENDID RESISTANCE MAINTAINED BY YOU AND
YOUR COMMAND FILLS ME WITH PRIDE AND SATISFACTION - Stop. IT WILL BE
MY PRIVILEGE TO SEE THAT YOU AND YOUR OFFICERS AND MEN ARE PROPERLY
REWARDED AT THE APPROPRIATE TIME - Stop. MY AFFECTIONS AND BEST
WISHES. MACARTHUR."
Within a few weeks we learned that an unfaithful Filipino had betrayed Col. Nakar. The Nipponese had captured him and the regimental radio in a mountain cave near Jones, and had taken him to the old Spanish Fort Santiago in Manila where they threw him in a dungeon to face starvation, thirst, water rats, the ingenious system of Japanese questioning and torture by the Kempie Tai Qapanese Secret Police), and finally beheading.
Col. Nakar's short war was far from fruitless. His tender years did not prevent him from becoming a "champion of liberty!" His message to MacArthur actually signaled the end of Allied defeats and withdrawals, and the beginning of an unbroken series of crushing defeats for the Japanese Empire. It kept "Freedom's Flame" burning brightly throughout the Philippines and gave the Filipinos the necessary strength and courage to resist-and finally to defeat the invaders. Col. Nakar's "Brief and pathetic message from the Cagayan Valley" gave MacArthur the reassurance he needed:
To plan his aggressive warfare;
To fulfill his pledge to the Filipino people: "I shall return!"
and