Yay Panlilio, a journalist turned resistance fighter during World War II, knew when to keep pretending to be a Japanese propagandist and when to take off the mask and make an anxiety-provoking exit.
Valeria “Yay” Panlilio was a fearless writer for The Philippines Herald and a radio broadcaster for Radio Manila. She wrote about politics and how the Philippines’ colonial past shaped it.
Born in 1913, Panlilio had an American heritage. She was born in Denver to a Filipina immigrant mother and an Irish-American father who was absent in her life. Growing up, she and her mother lived with her step-father and a half-brother.
Panlilio and her husband Eduardo moved to the Philippines years before the war broke out in Europe. As a journalist, Panlilio wrote about the growing number of Japanese immigrants in Davao City. This was in 1939, three years before the Japanese would occupy the Philippines. One of the photos she took while reporting—a Japanese flag in public—caused an argument against the then High Commissioner to the Philippines and the Japanese Consulate.
After the Japanese attacked the United States in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Panlilio wanted to leave her job as a journalist and offer her services to the United States Army Forces in the Far East (Usaffe). On Dec. 8, the Japanese were already bombing Baguio and especially targeting the facilities of Camp John Hay.
General Douglas MacArthur’s press relations aide, however, did not allow Panlilio to join the Usaffe.
By this time, Panlilio and her husband have already separated. While she’s in mainland Luzon, her husband was in Palawan. She first thought of sending her three children to Eduardo, but instead left them to the care of an elderly American couple.
In Manila, Panlilio was reconnected with a Japanese businessman who she had last scene in 1939 when she was reporting about the rise of immigrants there. The businessman, Victor Takizawa, became in charge of the radio station PIAM, formerly Radio Manila (KZRH). The radio became a propaganda machine of the Japanese Imperial Army.
Evading Japanese sensors by using obscure messaging, Panlilio was able to send intelligence to the Usaffe while broadcasting in PIAM. She was doing all of these while also forming bonds with the Japanese military men. She gained their trust and fed them misinformation, giving Filipino guerillas time to move guns and ammunition, and other resources in and around Manila. What she was doing was explicitly listed by the Japanese as an offense punishable by death. She did it anyway.
Fifteen minutes after her final radio program, the Japanese issued an arrest warrant to her for directly sending a message to Carlos Romulo, her boss in The Philippines Herald. Her slow walk from the radio booth could be the climax in a war or anti-war film. After all those days trying not assimilate, she finally knew that her day as a spy was over. She now has to hide. Panlilio was already out when the warrant was issued. The Japanese then looked for her children so they can take them as hostages and offered the Filipino people a reward for her head.
In Rizal province, Panlilio joined a guerilla army called Marking, which was named after the its founder Marcos Villa Agustin’s nickname. She would later marry Marking after the war. (Allegedly, the Marking guerillas were behind the attempted assassination of Jose P. Laurel, a war collaborator according to them.)
The guerillas then started calling her “Colonel Yay” or “Mammy Yay” when they started looking at her as the mother figure of the force.
When the war was over, Panlilio and her children returned to the US. Marking followed them and they married in Mexico. In 1950, she received the highest military award given to a civilian, the US Medal of Freedom. The couple were involved in a program in the Philippines that recognized those who fought as guerillas during World War II.
She then went back to the US to divorce Marking. Panlilio died in 1978 in New York state.
SOURCES:
1. “Angels of the Underground: The American Women Who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II” by Theresa Kaminski
2. The Philippines: The End of a Puppet
3. “Valeria ‘Yay’ Panlilio: The Mother and the Brains of the Marking’s Guerilla” by the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office
4. Theresa Kaminski in WW2TV, talking about her book “Angels of the Underground”
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