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<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-12/mv-karagatan-sm.webp" alt="MV Karagatan" loading="lazy" />
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(Defense Minister Enrile inspecting the crates of Chinese-made M14s captured from the communists' MV Karagatan)
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The Karagatan succeeded. However, it was thwarted. Her cargo of war materials was landed, but they were mostly captured by the government. The Andrea failed. Andrea sunk in the waters of the West Philippine Sea and her cargo was lost.


The debacle angered the CPP-NPA-NDF. It derailed their quest for political power. It pushed President Marcos to declare martial law and saved the country from communism. This is why the NDF-CPP-NPA cannot forget and forgive President Marcos. He stopped their plan to subjugate the country and to establish a communist rule for the Filipino people.


In effect, the Karagatan incident is a significant prelude to martial law. Its story must be told, so that the public will know what it really was and why it pushed President Marcos to declare martial law.

Late in the afternoon of July 4, 1972, Antonio Gomez, while flying his plane over the Pacific along the eastern coast of the Sierra Madre in Isabela, noticed a ship moored near a beach. Gomez saw men unloading cargoes on small bancas and piles of wooden crates on the beach. Gomez reported what he saw to the Philippine Constabulary in Isabela.


The Isabela PC provincial commander, Lt. Col. Benjamin Dizon, immediately formed an eight-man team of PC soldiers led by Lt. Edgar Aglipay to check the report of Gomez. In the early morning of the next day, the Aglipay team took off on board a Huey helicopter and landed on an airstrip in Palanan.


From there, the team walked for hours to a logging camp of Valeriano Bueno. There, Lt. Aglipay borrowed a tugboat to locate the mysterious ship. The team found it late in the afternoon. It was moored in Digoyo Bay. The ship was deserted. The team found a large quantity of military weapons and supplies inside the ship. Also found were foodstuffs, empty rice sacks, powerful radio sets, maps, books written in Chinese characters, poems in Tagalog of Ka Amado Hernandez, and many empty wooden crates.


The team decided to tow the ship away. However, when the team started to pull the ship from its mooring, bursts of gunfire suddenly erupted from behind the thickets on the shoreline toward the Karagatan and the tugboat. The sudden firing startled the team. The tugboat chief mate suffered gunshot wounds on his buttocks. Men on the Karagatan were also wounded.


The tugboat cut loose its towing line and left the Karagatan with the Aglipay team on board. Lt. Aglipay contacted the PC headquarters in Isabela for help. But none came. The weather was ugly. A strong typhoon was over the area. This made the position of the team precarious. With the bad weather, troops could not be moved either by air or by sea. Even the jet fighter planes that I authorized to give air cover for the Aglipay team could not take off.


The Aglipay team was thus marooned inside the Karagatan. Through the nights and days of the foul weather, the marooned men were harassed by the big swells that battered the ship and the intermittent burst of firing from the shoreline.


The marooned men had no food to eat nor fresh water to drink. They were tired, sleepless, hungry and thirsty. They could not eat the foodstuff on the ship, and they could not find fresh water to drink


Days later, when the typhoon weakened, a Philippine Army contingent from Task Force Saranay under Lt. Arsenio "Bobby" Santos finally reached and rescued the Aglipay team.


Bobby Santos with 32 army soldiers flew by military helicopters to Palanan in spite of the inclement weather. They landed on the Valeriano Bueno logging camp. From there, they walked to Digoyo Bay under heavy rain. When they reached the place, they immediately engaged the rebels. Arrayed against them were an estimated rebel force of 300 men. They were outnumbered 10 to 1. They were outnumbered, but never outfought.


Bobby Santos and his men stood their ground. They engaged the rebels for several days under severe weather conditions. I asked General <a href="https://kahimyang.com/articles/3240/today-in-filipino-history-december-20-1914-romeo-c-espino-was-born-in-samal-bataan" class="news_link">Romeo Espino</a> to support them with jet fighter planes. When the typhoon abated, Army rangers and elements from the Presidential Guard Battalion joined the Santos team.


Not long after, the rebels suddenly silenced their guns. They stopped firing. The entire place became deathly quiet. The rebels abandoned their bunkers. Government troops captured their camp deep in the jungles of the Sierra Madre. The government troops scoured the surrounding heavily forested area. They found initially a cache of 100 M14 rifles, 15,000 rounds of ammunition and 40 sacks of rice.


The talk of the town at the time was that Lt. Col. Victor Corpus, who defected earlier to the CPP-NPA, led the rebels in that encounter in Digoyo. But that story was not confirmed.


The government troops continued their search of the nearby jungles around Digoyo Bay. And they found another cache of 491 M14 rifles, one rocket launcher, one Browning automatic rifle, five Garand rifles, 150,900 rounds of M14 ammunitions, 900 magazines for M14 rifles, six sacks of magazine pouches, and 564 rounds of 40-millimeter rocket projectiles. All told, the Palanan military campaign earned for the government more than 1,000 M14 rifles from the NPA rebels.


The Karagatan incident greatly alarmed President Marcos. He referred to it as "a conspiracy of greater proportion than we expected." Perhaps his remark was prompted by the fact that in those days, the total armed force of the government was less than 50,000 men and women.


The people also were alarmed. They were shocked to learn that the CPP-NPA-NDF imported foreign war materials and supplies for themselves. The public saw on television and print media the quantity and quality of the military weapons and supplies brought in by the CPP-NPA-NDF. Many called for stronger government action against the rebels. A great number even demanded the imposition of martial law in the land.


President Marcos assuaged the agitated public. He said:

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 "The situation is no cause for hysteria. There is no reason to panic. The government is on top of things. There is no need for martial law to deal with the problem."

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The Liberal Party (LP) belittled the Karagatan incident. Senator Ramon Mitra of LP called it a "palabas." Ernesto Granada of the Manila Chronicle, a newspaper owned by the Lopez clan, called it a "hoax," a "dangerous joke."


In reaction to the Liberals and critics, President Marcos said:

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 "All I can say is that I wish they would go into the area and do some fighting instead of talking. And I wish they would help the country instead of trying to protect the communists. And they should be glad that there are some of us who are still ready to fight the communists instead of their adopting a stance of indifference to the security of our people and the integrity of the government. They do not seem to appreciate the services of our soldiers. All I can say is that I hope they will never need the services of the soldiers."

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President Marcos convened the military leaders in a command conference in Malacañang. Apart from the President and I, those who attended were General Romeo Espino, Chief of Staff; Maj. Gen. <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/770/today-in-philippine-history-november-23-1986-president-corazon-c-aquino-appointed-gen-rafael-ileto-as-the-17th-defense-secretary-replacing-juan-ponce-enrile" class="news_link">Rafael Ileto</a>, Vice Chief of Staff; Brig. Gen. <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/1022/today-in-philippine-history-on-march-18-1928-fidel-ramos-was-born-in-lingayen-pangasinan" class="news_link">Fidel Ramos</a>, head of the Philippine Constabulary; Brig. Gen. Rafael Zagala, commander of the Philippine Army; Brig. Gen. Jose Rancudo, commander of the Philippine Air Force; and Commodore Hilario Ruiz, flag officer of the Philippine Navy.


In that conference, President Marcos looked grave. He said, "The Karagatan presents a new and serious dimension to the insurgency problem of the country. It means the rebels have succeeded in opening a supply line to support their rebellious efforts. The Karagatan is a part of a long-range preparation for their rebellion."

The MV Karagatan incident: Why it pushed President Marcos to declare Martial Law