Word: vigan
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...nearly all its planes shot down or destroyed on the ground. Buzz and a few others carried on, strafing airfields as soon as the Japs landed planes on them, tossing bombs and hand grenades out of their cockpits, even sinking small transports with .50-caliber bullets. One day over Vigan, Buzz and Russ Church saw 30 newly arrived Jap bombers lined up on the field. Two Zeros intercepted. Lieut. Church got one, Lieut. Wagner the other. Church was on fire, but he kept going and laid his bombs in the middle of the field before crashing. "I think...
...second week. Close to his air bases, he had poured inferior aircraft south to Luzon, and by numbers taken a toll of better U.S. planes. He had also established three Luzon beachheads, apparently with airdromes: at Legaspi, Aparri, Vigan. Then he opened the battle's second phase...
Down from Vigan pushed another Jap column. Armored cars met it on the roads, whirled through a dizzying skirmish, shellacked the Jap. Some of them took to the trees, were shot down by U.S. soldiers. From the fringe of the gulf black columns of smoke rose. The U.S. Army had burned its gasoline dumps. It fell back in orderly fashion through villages where the Filipino civilians cheered and showed the "V" with their fingers. The Jap threw an armored spearhead east toward the islands' summer capital at Baguio. U.S. forces withdrew to save damage to the Philippines' most...
...Vigan, 200 miles north of Manila, a lamb-meek little Nipponese shopkeeper named Hara blossomed out in his wolf's clothing when the Japanese took the city. He was soon walking crisply about town in the uniform of a Japanese Army major and calling himself "Military Governor of the Province of Ilocos Sur." In central Luzon U.S. anti-aircraft gunners found their camouflaged positions revealed to Japanese pilots by mirrors placed in treetops. In all the Japanese beachhead thrusts they showed complete and accurate familiarity with obstacles and terrain...
More highly specialized than either of these layers was Army Intelligence. It operated through a shoal of spies disguised as petty merchants (like Major Hara of Vigan), cafe proprietors, medicine-store operators. It was financed by the Japanese Tourist Bureau...