1942: A young Filipino woman walked alone through the streets of Manila with a veil over her head and face. Japanese soldiers who occupied the city during wartime stopped the lone woman to be frisked.
The woman lifted her veil to show them her face. She bore the telltale skin lesions associated with leprosy. The woman rang a bell that she had been forced to wear around her neck, and she announced herself as “unclean.”
The soldiers backed away. None of them wanted to touch her for fear they, too, might acquire the malady.
She marched on to her secret destination, and none of the occupiers suspected the leper was a spy.
Josefina Guerrero had been born in the Philippines and married into a prosperous medical family. She bore her husband a child, and they lived in relative comfort.
Until she developed Hansen’s disease, better known as leprosy. Then everything changed.
Joey, as she was commonly called, acquired the disease in 1941. She was told she could live with leprosy but never be cured.
Little had been known about the disorder. Lepers were ostracized from society and considered unclean.
As a result, Joey became estranged from her husband and her daughter.
January, 1942: Less than a month after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they occupied Manila and took control of its harbor.
The Philippines had been under Spanish rule from the 1500s until 1898 when the United States colonized it after the Spanish-American war. So, in essence, Japan occupied American-led territory when it stormed Manila.
A Filipino resistance group formed to thwart the Japanese.
Joey Guerrero needed special medical procedures to stave off the spread of her leprosy, but those treatments were only available in the city of Manila. The occupation cut her off. That threatened her life.
Having been raised in a convent in her childhood, and having idolized Joan of Arc, Joey decided she wanted to have purpose. With her child taken away and her husband gone, she had nothing left to lose. So she joined the resistance.
She became an invaluable asset. Joey memorized and brought all sorts of reconnaissance information including the movement of Japanese soldiers, camp locations, and machine gun nests.
Since no Japanese soldiers would ever search a leper, Joey hid vital written information - and sometimes even weapons - under her clothing and delivered them to the resistance fighters.
When the Americans arrived to reclaim the Philippines in late 1944, they met heavy fighting from the Japanese forces.
Joey Guerrero walked 25 miles through multiple military checkpoints in the midst of the battles to smuggle a map of land mine placements to the Americans. Because she was a leper, the Japanese never strip-searched her to find the map taped to her back.
But she still had to travel further past battle sites and down rivers to reach the American military location. Then she learned the troops had moved. So Joey doubled back and, completely exhausted from traveling on foot, eventually delivered the crucial information to the Americans.
She performed multiple missions of the same kind and was never detected. Her detailed map of mines in Manila Harbor helped the Americans retake the city.
During that firefight in Manila, Joey helped save children and the injured while risking her own life.
After the war, Joey Guerrero was sent to a special facility for lepers outside Manila. She raised awareness about the hospital’s horrendous conditions and instigated improvements.
1948: With the war over, Joey discovered new medical advances to treat her disease. But they only took place in America.
When her wartime spy efforts became public, Joey Guerrero became a cause celebre. As a result, she became the first foreign-born person with leprosy permitted into the United States. Treatment began but would take years to complete.
Meanwhile, President Harry Truman awarded her the Medal of Freedom.
By 1957, Josefina Guerrero was cured.
She spent the rest of her life raising awareness of leprosy and remained a permanent US citizen.
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