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]
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]
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]
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]