James M. Cushing

James McCloud Cushing was born at Guadalajara, Mexico, about 1910 to Canadian born U.S. citizen George Cushing (1856-1925) and Mexican citizen Simona (De Navares) Cushing (1895-1981). George was a managing director of the Canada Mexico Trading Company. In 1920 the family was living in El Paso, Texas, and ten-year-old "Jimmie's" native tongue was listed as Spanish.

Lt. Col. James M. Cushing was a US Army mining engineer who commanded the Philippine resistance movement against Japan 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 (but not the captured Z Plan) 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. On Aug. 26, 1963, he and his wife Wilfreda (Tabando) Cushing were on an interisland transport en route to Mindoro Island from where they lived at TayTay, Palawan Island, when he succumbed to a heart attack. He was 53 years old. Colonel Cushing was interred in Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes' Cemetery) in Manila.

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