Claire Phillips (1908-1960)

DOSSIER:
Claire Anette Phillips was born on 2 Dec 1908. She married first to Manuel Fuentes and second, on Christmas Eve 1941, to John Phillips. She died on 22 May 1960 in Portland, OR. 

CODE NAMES:
Dorothy Clara Fuentes
High Pockets

After her marriage to Manuel Fuentes failed, Claire traveled with her adopted daughter, Dian, to Manila in the Philippines in hopes of joining a dance revue. While there, she met and married John Phillips, an American soldier who was stationed there.

During the invasion of the Philippines by Japanese forces in 1941 and early 1942 her husband was captured and died in prison camp, though she did not know this until some time later. After the surrender of the American forces in the Philippines on 9 Apr 1942, she was convinced by John Boone, an American soldier, to organize an espionage ring in Manila to help the resistance.

Working with a young Filipino dancer named Fely Corcuera, Phillips arranged forged papers and created a new identity for herself as a Philippine-born Italian dancer named Dorothy Clara Fuentes. Together the two women established the Tsubaki cabaret club, a gentleman's club that would quickly become popular with Japanese officers in Manila. 

Using the cabaret as a cover, she began an extensive spy ring which harvested information from the Japanese officers who patronized the club. While initially the spy ring was intended to support the Philippine resistance, some of the information she collected was transmitted to American forces in the Pacific and used to predict and counter Japanese force movements.

In addition to her spy activities, she worked extensively with the guerrilla movement to smuggle desperately needed food, medicines, supplies and information to the prisoners of the Cabanatuan prisoner of war camp. To the them she became known as "High Pockets". The name was said to be a description of her method of smuggling messages by hiding them in her brassiere.

In May 1944, Phillips was apprehended by Japanese authorities (the Kempeitai) after one of the messengers she used to contact the POWs at Cabanatuan was captured, interrogated and killed. She was taken to Bilibid Prison, the infamous Japanese prison in Manila (two miles from the American Prison Camp) where she was tortured for information. Despite the torture, Phillips refused to talk. She was held in solitary confinement for six months and was to be executed for espionage. This sentence was later commuted to twelve years confinement at hard labor. In January 1945, when she was liberated from the prison by American forces she was close to starving to death.

After the war, Claire and Dian returned to the United States where Claire wrote Manila Espionage, a book about her experiences. Her story was made into the Hollywood movie I Was An American Spy, starring Ann Dvorak as Claire Phillips.