Story of a Communist

William Joseph Pomeroy was less than a year old when the Russian Revolution shook the world. A scholarly, intense boy, he carried the flag at graduation exercises at Rochester's (N.Y.) P.S. 32. At West High School he won honors in English, but after leaving school the best job he could get was that of buffer hand in a factory. He decided that society, not himself, was to blame. Early in 1938 he joined the Young Communist League, later that year became a full Communist Party member.

Struggle. The U.S. Army drafted him in 1942. He was sent to the U.S. Fifth Bomber Command in Brisbane, Australia as an aviation mechanic, but his flair for writing got him a transfer to the U.S. Air Force 10th Historical Unit. In uniform in Australia, and again as a sergeant in the Philippines, he sought out the Communist Party. "What impressed me most was the armed struggle and that the Party here was at a more advanced stage of revolution," he wrote to a friend. After his Army discharge, he took up Party propaganda work in New York, wrote a few editorials for the Communist Daily Worker, and pestered Party leaders until he got himself sent back to the Philippines. He wrote: "The thought that bothered me at first was whether or not my place was in my own country fighting imperialism there. I decided, however, that it did not really matter where a Communist fights, as long as he fights."

Not one to spurn a dollar from the government he hoped to overthrow, he enrolled under the G.I. Bill of Rights at the University of the Philippines. In 1948 he married Celia Mariano, a Filipino girl who attracted Pomeroy for special reasons: "I deliberately chose for a wife an active comrade in the movement so that there will be no antagonisms or divided loyalties." Known as "Bob" and "Rene," the Pomeroys became regular instructors at a "Stalin University" attended by Huk guerrillas in the Sierra Madre mountains. In the records of the Philippine police they were listed as Nos. 12 and 13 in the Central Committee line-up of the Philippine Communist Party. The police put a $30,000 price on Pomeroy's head.

Surrender. In January 1951, a Philippine Army patrol in a brush with a Huk band found a blood-stained musette bag containing Pomeroy's passport and some papers in his handwriting. Last week, in rugged mountains near the border of Bulacan and Quezon Provinces, the Philippine 12th Battalion Combat team surprised a camp of 20 Huk guerrillas. Three of the Huks were killed, several of the guerrillas surrendered. Among the captured was William J. Pomeroy.

Defense Secretary Ramon Magsaysay, vigorous leader of the government's war on the Huks, went up in the hills to meet his prize captive, who, wearing a new but soiled khaki suit and tennis shoes, listened quietly as Magsaysay told him of the government's new policy towards the Huks: friendship or force. Said Pomeroy: "So far I've seen only the force." Replied Magsaysay: "Now I'll show you the friendship." He handed a bottle of Coke to Pomeroy, who laughed. "Bill, I'll treat you fairly," promised Magsaysay. Fairly meant a fair trial. Magsaysay intends to charge 35-year-old Pomeroy with multiple murder, arson and other crimes, for which the penalty may be death. The U.S. Embassy in Manila said it would not intervene: Pomeroy by his own choice had become a man without a country.

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