Naomi Flores was active in the Philippine resistance to the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II.
22 Facts About Naomi Flores
1.
2.
Naomi Flores later married an American and moved to the United States.
3.
Naomi Flores was honored by the United States with a Medal of Freedom in 1948.
4.
Naomi Flores was an orphan and was raised in the household of a retired American Army officer, William E Dosser.
5.
Naomi Flores was an Igorot, the Indigenous peoples in the mountains of Luzon Island.
6.
When Japan invaded the Philippines in December 1941, Naomi Flores was a 20-year old hairdresser in a beauty salon in Manila.
7.
In May 1942, Naomi Flores met Margaret "Peggy" Utinsky at the beauty salon.
8.
Utinsky and Naomi Flores hid them at the beauty parlor where Naomi Flores had previously worked.
9.
Naomi Flores was not sorry to leave the apartment she shared with Utinsky.
10.
Naomi Flores rarely visited Manila after her first arrest, but, on a visit in August 1943, she was arrested again by the Japanese and questioned for three hours.
11.
Naomi Flores's forged identification documents were accepted as genuine; the Japanese apparently thought they had detained the wrong woman and released her, but security was tightening and her work was becoming more dangerous.
12.
In 1943 and 1944, now living in Cabanatuan, Naomi Flores dressed as a peasant woman and set up a fruit and vegetable stand near where American POWs worked daily in the rice paddies.
13.
The POWs on occasion were allowed to buy bananas and peanuts in the market and Flores found intermediaries among the POWs to deliver messages to the American camp doctor, Colonel James W Duckworth, the chaplain, Captain Frank L Tiffany, and Colonel Edward Mack.
14.
Naomi Flores set up a supply line with POWs smuggling food, medicine, clothing, and money into the camp and messages out of the camp to Flores.
15.
Naomi Flores persuaded the rice merchants doing business with the Japanese and the POWs to help her.
16.
Naomi Flores cashed personal checks for POWs and arranged loans with a promise that they would pay back the loans at the end of the war.
17.
Naomi Flores lived in "Mrs Bell's" house in sight of the rice fields where POWs worked every day.
18.
On 3 May 1944, in a prearranged signal, Naomi Flores ran a hand through her hair to tell a POW contact, a cart driver named Fred Threatt, that she had a package for him.
19.
Naomi Flores knew that she was in immediate danger of arrest and fled, taking refuge in a friend's house in the city.
20.
Naomi Flores stayed hidden for a month and then made her way into the mountains where she joined Lt.
21.
Hartendorp in his 2-volume history, The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, credits Naomi Flores with being the catalyst for the Miss U Spy Ring.
22.
Naomi Flores married an American, John J Jackson, and moved to San Francisco with him.