James M. Cushing

Lieutenant Colonel James M. Cushing (circa 1910 – August 26, 1963) was a mining engineer in US Army who commanded the Philippine resistance against Japan on Cebu Island in the Philippines during World War II.[1]: 608 [2]

Early life

James McCloud Cushing was born at Guadalajara, Mexico, about 1910[3] to Canadian-born U.S. citizen George Cushing (1856-1925) and Mexican citizen Simona (De Navares) Cushing (1895-1981).[4] George was a managing director of the Canada Mexico Trading Company.[5] In 1920, the family was living in El Paso, Texas, and ten year-old "Jimmie's" native tongue was listed as Spanish.[6]

Military

Distinguished Service Cross

Cushing's forces in the Cebu Area Command numbered about 8,500.[2] In early 1944, he was instrumental in the Koga affair in which the Z Plan of the Imperial Japanese Navy was recovered by his guerrillas.[7] Cushing traded Japanese admiral Shigeru Fukudome and other survivors of a plane crash (but not the captured Z Plan) for the assurance that Japanese forces on Cebu would stop murdering civilians; a promise which the Japanese kept.[2] In 1945, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.[8]

Post war

Cushing survived the war and continued living in the Philippines.[9] On August 26, 1963, he and his wife Wilfreda Alao (Sabando) Cushing were on an inter-island transport en route to Mindoro Island from where they lived at TayTay, Palawan Island, when he succumbed to a heart attack.[10] He was 53 years old. Colonel Cushing was interred in Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes' Cemetery) in Manila.[3]

See also

  • List of American guerrillas in the Philippines
  • Battle of the Visayas
  • The Rescue: A True Story of Courage and Survival in World War II, Steven Trent Smith, Hoboken:John Wiley & Sons, (2001) ISBN 0-471-41291-0
  • TABUNAN: The Untold Story of the Famed Cebu Guerillas of World War II, Col. Manuel F. Segura, excerpts hosted by the Cebu Eskrima Society

References

  1. ^ Smith, R.R., 2005, Triumph in the Philippines, Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, ISBN 1-4102-2495-3
  2. ^ a b c CHAPTER 4, Special Operations in the Pacific Archived 2011-09-07 at the Wayback Machine U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II, David W. Hogan, Jr., CMH Publication 70-42 (1992)
  3. ^ a b Report of the Death of an American Citizen; Department of State, Foreign Service of the U.S.A.; Manila, Philippines, Sep. 17, 1963
  4. ^ "George Cushing". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  5. ^ Cushing, James S. (1905). Genealogy of the Cushing Family (2nd ed.). Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Perrault Printing. p. 447.
  6. ^ U.S. Federal Census; El Paso, Texas; precinct 33, district 84, sheet 13
  7. ^ The "Z Plan" Story Japan's 1944 Naval Battle Strategy Drifts into U.S. Hands, Greg Bradsher, Prologue Magazine, Fall 2005, Vol. 37, No. 3
  8. ^ Military Times Hall of Valor accessed 2011-02-24.
  9. ^ Steven Trent Smith, The Rescue: A True Story of Courage and Survival in World War II (2001), p303.
  10. ^ "Death: Col. James Cushing". Stars and Stripes; Pacific Edition. 30 August 1963. p. 4.