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By Leah B. Del Castillo, Deskperson
First of two parts
Fifty years ago today, a routine Philippine
Airlines flight from Laoag, Ilocos Norte, turned into an episode of
bravery and heroism in the face of danger.
Capt. Pedro Perlas, co-pilot Lt. Felix Gaston
and flight steward Eduardo Diago donned their uniforms that Tuesday
morning in 1952, reported for work, and went about their tasks as
crew of Flight C-38, a Douglas DC-3. They had no inkling they would
be the victims of one of the world’s first air hijackings.
Flight C-38’s route was to take it from Manila
to Tuguegarao then to Aparri and then make a turn-around west to
Laoag and then back to Manila.
Except for running into a bit of bad weather,
the flight to Laoag was uneventful, Gaston who is now in his late
70s, recalled in a recent interview with The Manila Times.
Perlas had control of the plane, which could
carry up to 34 passengers, going up north to Aparri. Gaston, who as
an Air Force officer was qualified to fly the DC-3, was to take over
on the return flight to Manila.
In Laoag, Gaston, who expected the weather to
deteriorate going back to Manila, took it upon himself to add fuel
to the plane. Those extra liters were to play a crucial role in the
drama that lay ahead.
The flight had seven passengers: Filipinos
Carlos S. Baranda, a Manila insurance adjuster; and Araceli Barrera,
a high school teacher from Vintar, Ilocos Sur; Chinese Ho Teh, a
Quezon City businessman, his son Francis Ho, and Ang Chio Kio; and
Americans Marie Ireton and Marshall Nunn, both working in the
library department of the US Information Service.
Minutes into the flight to Manila, Ang Chio Kio
forced his way into the cockpit and, waving a .45-caliber pistol in
his hand at the pilots, announced that he was taking over the plane.
Ang demanded that the plane be brought to Amoy,
in mainland China. As reported by Time magazine in its Jan. 12, 1953
edition, Ang handed Gaston a typewritten note which read: “Do not
be alarmed. I am a desperate man. This is a stickup. Do not talk to
each other.”
Perlas secretly signaled to Gaston to shift
control of the plane to him. Perlas then took the plane into a deep
dive in the hope Ang would lose his balance long enough for the crew
to jump him. But the maneuver failed to work, and Ang shot Perlas
twice, killing him instantly. Gaston took over the wheel, all the
while Ang kept shouting in unintelligible Chinese.
Puzzled by the plane’s sudden lurch, steward
Diago made his way to the cockpit. As he knocked, Ang shot him twice
through the cockpit door, killing him.
Now left to his own devices, Gaston recalled
having only one thing in mind. “I must survive for the sake of my
passengers and for the sake of my unborn child.”
Gaston had just married, and his wife, Dolores
Rastrollo-Gaston, was several months pregnant. Rastrollo-Gaston was
herself a former PAL flight attendant.
Authorities would later learn that Ang, who was
running away from the law in the Philippines for having shot a girl
he was infatuated with twice through the chest, wanted to bring the
plane to China.
At that time, the Philippines did not recognize
China’s communist regime, set up just five years earlier by
Chairman Mao Zedong.
Mao’s forces had driven the Nationalists
headed by Chiang Kai-shek to Formosa (present-day Taiwan), where in
1950 he proclaimed the Republic of China.
In 1952 China and Taiwan were still technically
at war — the Chinese Civil War having started in 1930 — and an
incursion into the mainland by an aircraft from a country friendly
to Taiwan could be taken as an act of aggression.
That could mean imprisonment for Gaston, who was
then still a Philippine military officer. The Air Force had sent him
to work with PAL on temporary tour of duty in order to gain
experience.
Gaston tried to talk with Ang into going back to
Manila, promising to do everything in his power to protect Ang, if
only he allowed the plane to turn around. Ang, a “desperate man”
by his own reckoning, would not be swayed. With much trepidation,
Gaston — who by now had been stripped by Ang of his headphones —
veered the plane into the general direction of Hong Kong, which he
knew was to his left, in order to reach Amoy.
This time, Gaston made Ang promise in turn that
he would protect him and his passengers when they reached mainland
China. Gaston asked him to swear to this promise on the grave of his
ancestors, but Ang instead promised with the only weapon he had —
his gun.
Guided only by his general sense of direction
and a pocket-sized illustration of Asia taken from a geography
textbook shoved to him by Ang, Gaston flew on.
Hours later, Gaston noticed he had company. Two
planes with Chinese Nationalist markings were shadowing him.
With two dead men, a hijacker and six terrified
passengers aboard, Gaston was unsure if those markings meant
salvation or doom. Conclusion
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