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.Smith, R.R., 2005, Triumph in the Philippines, Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, CHAPTER 4, Special Operations in the Pacific U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II, David W. Hogan, Jr., CMH Publication 70-42 (1992)
Early life James McCloud Cushing was born at Guadalajara, Mexico, about 1910.Report of the Death of an American Citizen; Department of State, Foreign Service of the U.S.A.; Manila, Philippines, Sep. 17, 1963 In 1920, the family was living in El Paso, Texas, and ten year-old "Jimmie's" native tongue was listed as Spanish.U.S. Federal Census; El Paso, Texas; precinct 33, district 84, sheet 13
Military
Cushing's forces in the Cebu Area Command numbered about 8,500. 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.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 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. In 1945, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.Military Times Hall of Valor accessed 2011-02-24.
Post war Cushing survived the war and continued living in the Philippines.Steven Trent Smith, The Rescue: A True Story of Courage and Survival in World War II (2001), p303. 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. He was 53 years old. Colonel Cushing was interred in Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes' Cemetery) in Manila.
See also List of American guerrillas in the Philippines Battle of the Visayas
References
Further reading The Rescue: A True Story of Courage and Survival in World War II, Steven Trent Smith, Hoboken:John Wiley & Sons, (2001) TABUNAN: The Untold Story of the Famed Cebu Guerillas of World War II, Col. Manuel F. Segura, excerpts hosted by the Cebu Eskrima Society