User:Hermionefc/Naomi Flores

Naomi Flores was a courier in the Resistance to Japanese Occupation of the Philippines during WWII, delivering supplies and messages to prisoners-of-war near Manila.

Early Life
Flores was born in Baguio, Philippines, in 1921, a member of the Igorot people of Luzon Island. She was adopted by a retired American military officer, Col. William E. Dosser who acted as the governor of Mountain Province on Luzon Island, Philippines.

Wartime Activities
Flores met [|Peggy Utinsky] in May of 1942 at the Charles Beauty Shop where she was employed as a hairdresser. She had been gathering clothes for prisoners at the O'Donnell prison camp, where survivors of the Bataan Death March were being held. Since Peggy had been doing similar work, they agreed to work together and Flores moved into Utinsky's apartment.

In the summer of 1942, Flores convinced Utinsky to hide two American escapees from the Bataan Death March in the beauty shop where she used to work, which was shuttered because its American owner was interned in Santo Tomas detention camp. However, a neighbor saw and reported the men.

After raiding the place, the Japanese Kempeitai began looking for Flores, the last person who worked there. Peggy convinced Naomi to go to Fort Santiago (Kempeitai Headquarters) and tell them that the men were mestizos guarding the place. She was interrogated, but convinced the Kempeitai enough that was let go.

After American prisoners at O'Donnell were transferred to the Cabanatuan prison camp, Flores undertook to connect with them in the new prison. In December 1942, she posed as a vendor selling fruit and peanuts outside the camp. One day she connected with a POW (Lt. Col. Edward Mack) who was outside the camp on farm detail. The guards allowed the prisoners to approach her stall to buy food, and she began passing messages and returning money to the prisoners.

By early spring 1943, Flores moved to Cabanatuan just outside the prison camp, sharing a house with two other Filipinas.

She had a communication system with Fred Threatt, prisoner in charge of the farming detail -- she would go outside in the morning and pretend to stretch when there was a delivery for the prisoners. She would run her fingers through her hair the same number of times that there were packages for Threatt to collect when watering the oxen that pulled his cart. .