Nieves Fernandez, a school teacher-turned-Huk commander from Leyte, showing an American soldier how to kill Japanese soldiers with a bolo (Photo by Stanley Troutman courtesy of reddit.com)
Nieves Fernandez is one of the lesser known Filipina guerrilla leaders. She is recorded by her peers and the local communities of Tacloban on the island of Leyte, as a simple Filipina school teacher who defended her homelands from the imperialist Japanese forces the moment her students were threatened to be taken away by Japanese soldiers. She was a skilled marksman and bolo fighter. Fernandez would gain the respect of native locals, lead men into battle, and was so successful in taking out Japanese patrols that the Japanese military stationed in the city, Tacloban, placed a 10,000 peso bounty on her head. Fernandez like many other guerrillas throughout the Philippines relied on makeshift weapons such as the “paltik” (a homemade shotgun made of gas pipes), bolos, homemade grenades (casings filled with old nails) and whatever items her 110 manned guerrilla unit could pilfer from the Japanese. Fernandez would live to be in her early nineties residing in Tacloban and would be survived by her sons and grandchildren. The only evidence of her heroics that survive remain in one photo (as displayed previously) and through a small 1944 American newspaper article depicting her guerrilla contributions prior to the arrival of MacArthur at Leyte.
My favorite Filipino badass.
Nieves Fernandez
Nieves Fernandez, a school teacher-turned-Huk commander from Leyte, showing an American soldier how to kill Japanese soldiers with a bolo (Photo by Stanley Troutman courtesy of reddit.com) Nieves Fernandez is one of the lesser known Filipina guerrilla leaders. She is recorded by her peers and the local communities of Tacloban on the island of Leyte, as a simple Filipina school teacher who defended her homelands from the imperialist Japanese forces the moment her students were threatened to be taken away by Japanese soldiers. She was a skilled marksman and bolo fighter. Fernandez would gain the respect of native locals, lead men into battle, and was so successful in taking out Japanese patrols that the Japanese military stationed in the city, Tacloban, placed a 10,000 peso bounty on her head. Fernandez like many other guerrillas throughout the Philippines relied on makeshift weapons such as the “paltik” (a homemade shotgun made of gas pipes), bolos, homemade grenades (casings filled with old nails) and whatever items her 110 manned guerrilla unit could pilfer from the Japanese. Fernandez would live to be in her early nineties residing in Tacloban and would be survived by her sons and grandchildren. The only evidence of her heroics that survive remain in one photo (as displayed previously) and through a small 1944 American newspaper article depicting her guerrilla contributions prior to the arrival of MacArthur at Leyte.