James M. Cushing

Who was James M. Cushing?

Lt. Col. James M. Cushing was a US Army mining engineer who commanded the guerrilla movement on Cebu Island in the Philippines during World War II. His 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. Cushing traded Japanese admiral Shigeru Fukudome and other survivors of a plane crash 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. Cushing survived the war and continued living in the Philippines until his death in 1963.