High Pockets

Claire "High Pockets" Phillips

Manila Espionage is Claire's story about her life in Manila during WW2, and, hoo boy, what a life. She changed her name and opened a night club that catered to Japanese officers who were the only ones with the freedom and money to enjoy such things. Kind of like Humphrey Bogart and Rick's Café Américain in Casablanca. 

She's using the money she's making to buy food for POW's and the guerillas. Occasionally she extracts useful information from the Japs, which gets sent to the guerillas, who radio it back to the Americans. Eventually she gets arrested for espionage and spends eight months in prison before being liberated by the Americans. She weighed 145 pounds when the war broke out and 95 when she got out of prison.

Claire Phillips standing in front of her nightclub, Club Tsubaki, during its early-1940s heyday in Japanese-occupied Manila. (Image: Binford & Mort)

Reading it was kind of a slog. Her story was just a sequence of events.