Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2015, History (Arts and Sciences)

The Philippines lay in the middle of Japanese shipping lanes to the Dutch East Indies, a region that provided them with the oil necessary to keep their navy at sea. Japanese possession of the Philippines ensured them not only access to such shipping lanes, but also unrestricted communication with Tokyo. Allied command GHQ SWPA began maneuvering to sever this linkage. As this thesis will argue, there was already an effective local guerilla intelligence network in existence before the war, having been maintained by the guerrilla groups that emerged.The effectiveness of these existing channels and the guerrillas as operatives was illustrated by the speed with which information began to flow back to Australia once these networks were aligned under the Philippine Regional Section. The volume of material produced, of their own volition, while the guerillas unable to maintain reliable contact with GHQ in early 1942, as well as their maintenance of the networks through the war is evidence that the intelligence shared between Filipino guerrilla districts and GHQ was a mutually beneficial endeavor. The PRS provided the communications apparatus to link these movements, but they themselves did not control or muster the forces necessary to operate it with the islands. It was the intelligence provided by the guerillas and the Coastwatch stations they supported that provided information crucial to an American reinvasion of the Philippine Archipelago. Without the intelligence gathered by the resistance, American forces would have been operating without a precise understanding of enemy positions during battles like Leyte, making any attempt to retake the islands difficult, if not far too risky to be sold to the high command. Despite General MacArthur's selective use of guerilla reports, often favoring the discoveries of signals intelligence, at each crucial stage of operations, Filipino guerrilla reports alerted Allied forces outside the Philippines to minute changes in enemy positi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ingo Trauschweizer Dr (Advisor); John Brobst Dr (Committee Member); Alec Holcombe Dr (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Military History; South Asian Studies