Claire Phillips, the tough-living heroine of MacArthur’s Spies, did everything in her lifetime to cover up who she really was and how she kept alive in Japanese-occupied Manila during World War II.

Even before the war was over, Claire had created an image of what she thought the world would accept — that she was the devoted wife of a man she had lost in the war. By the time a film was made about her life in 1951 — “I Was An American Spy” — the deception was complete.

Claire was now an innocent widow drawn into battle and seeking revenge. She died at age fifty-two in 1960, a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but almost forgotten.

Only seventy-five years later, I have uncovered a story closer to the truth. Claire had created a character she was not. With the social mores of post-war America, a tale about a woman who had multiple marriages and sexual liaisons would not do. As a result, Claire Phillips’s story was airbrushed and hidden from plain sight. For more on Claire:

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MacArthur's Spies: The Soldier, the Singer, and the Spymaster Who Defied the Japanese in World War II