Agent High Pockets

Agent High Pockets

â€œTo me Claire Phillips is four people:

First she is a fellow soldierâ€™s widow.

Second, she is â€œHigh-Pockets,â€ the outstanding and resourceful spy operating in Jap-held Manila for over 2 years.

Third, she is a guerrilla officer; determined and able leader and organizer of the Manila underground.

Last, she is â€˜Comadre,â€™ the intensely patriotic, and spiritually strong godmother of ragged, desperate men.â€ Major John Peyton Boone

Agent High Pockets is the remarkable story of a fascinating woman who under the pressures of war found any resourceful means to aid her friends against their common enemy, the Japanese, through the tumultuous years of World War Two.

This memoir, written by Claire Phillips, shortly after World War Two provides brilliant detail into her life as she spied, smuggled information, and funneled aid to American guerilla fighters who were hidden in the jungles surrounding Manila.

Shortly after arriving in the Philippines she fell in love with Sgt. John V. Phillips and became engaged to marry him. But before the ceremony could take place the Japanese Imperial Army invaded, forcing Phillips and her fiancÃ© to retreat to the Bataan peninsula and conduct a quick ceremony in the jungle.

Claireâ€™s resourcefulness allowed her survive through these turbulent years and she opened a nightclub, Club Tsubaki, on the Manila waterfront. The Japanese officers who frequented it had little knowledge that they were paying for the contraband that Claire and her friends were smuggling to POW camps and their loud, drunken conversations were being quickly relayed to American guerillas in the surrounding jungles.

She could not evade Japanese authorities forever, however, and in May 1944 she was arrested. While at the notorious Bilibid Prison she endured numerous forms of torture but refused to give any information away.

This remarkable account should be essential reading for anyone interested in the war in the Pacific and how civilians who had been caught up in the conflict fought to survive and support their country.

Claire was later given the Medal of Freedom for her activities through the course of the war. Her citation reads: â€œBy direction of the President, under the provisions of Army Regulations 600-45, the Medal of Honor is awarded to you by the Commander-in-Chief, Far East, for the meritorious service which has aided the United States in the prosecution of the war against Japan in the Southwest Pacific Areas, from June 1942 to June 1944.â€

After she returned to the United States she wrote her account of this time which was published as Manila Espionage in 1947. Her book was the basis of a Hollywood feature film, I Was an American Spy, released in 1951 and starring Anne Dvorak as Phillips. She died of meningitis in 1960.

Country	USA
Author	Claire Phillips
Binding	Kindle Edition
Format	Kindle eBook
IsAdultProduct	0
Label	Elevation Printing
Manufacturer	Elevation Printing
NumberOfPages	227
PublicationDate	2018-03-19
Publisher	Elevation Printing
ReleaseDate	2018-03-19
Studio	Elevation Printing

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