Learning Your Origins -- or not

Jane

When adoptee Wendy Johnson researched her origins, she learned her biological grandmother was either a heroic World War II spy or an unknown Filipino woman. Johnson, now 53, of Albany, Oregon, was told she was adopted when, at the age of eight, she asked her father why she had yellowish brown skin when everyone else in the family had white skin.

Johnson, who was born in Portland, was able to access her original birth certificate thanks to Ballot Measure 58, passed by Oregon voters in 1998. She learned her birth mother’s name was Diane Phillips. Searching this name led her to the celebrated spy, Claire Phillips. According to reports, Diane was Claire Phillips’ adopted daughter. Further research, however, convinced Johnson that Diane was actually Claire’s biological daughter.

Claire Phillips grew up in Portland and went to the Philippines, touring with a musical stock company. She married and divorced a Filipino man and came back to Portland with a young girl, Diane, whom she said she had adopted. Phillips returned to the Philippines in 1941, and married an American soldier, John, who gave her the last name of Phillips. Three months later the Japanese invaded the Philippines; John Phillips was captured and killed.

Claire Phillips changed her name to Dorothy Clara Fuentes and claimed to be a Filipino-born Italian dancer. She and a friend, Fely Coruera, established a “gentleman’s club,” Club Tsubaki, which quickly became popular with Japanese officers. Using her considerable wiles, Phillips learned military secrets which she passed along via intermediaries to Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Because she slipped tips into her bra, Phillips was nick-named “High Pockets.” She also smuggled food to captive American and Filipino soldiers. Eventually the Japanese caught on to Phillips and imprisoned and tortured her. American troops freed her in February, 1945. President Truman awarded her the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Her memoir, I was an American Spy, became a hit movie. (“Manila Mata Hari,” Portland Monthly, 2/11; Wikipedia).

Johnson, her probable granddaughter, told the Portland Oregonian (4/7/11) that “Phillips, her family and the U.S. military masked Diane’s identity to guard both mother and child against the stigma interracial relationships carried.” Phillips died in 1960, long before DNA testing became available.

Phillips was not the first woman to pass off her biological child as adopted to avoid society’s disapproval. Loretta Young, a well-known actress of the Forties and Fifties, gave birth to a daughter, Judy, in 1935 fathered by actor Clark Gable who frankly did not give a damn. Young went to England during her pregnancy, claiming that her absence was due to a condition she had had since childhood. She returned to California and gave birth at her mother’s home. Several months later she placed the baby in an orphanage. When Judy was 19 months old, Young retrieved her, announcing to Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons that she had adopted Judith. Adoption in the 1930’s was as popular in Hollywood as it is today. Judith eventually learned the truth about her parentage and wrote a memoir, Uncommon Knowledge.  

Passing a biological child off as an adopted child was the theme of a 1946 tear jerker To Each His Own.  Olivia De Havilland plays a single woman who leaves town to give birth in secret.  She arranges for a friend to leave the baby on the door step of her next door neighbor who already has many children. De Havilland offers to adopt him, expecting the neighbor will turn him over to her. Unfortunately another neighbor steps in and takes the baby.  De Havilland watches him longingly as he grows up, suffering in silence (as only de Havilland could do) never letting anyone know she is his birth mother.

While it would be unusual today for a mother to hide her shame in plain sight, adoptees in all but six states still do not have the absolute right to their original birth certificate. Many children conceived with “donated” eggs or sperm or both and children adopted from Nepal, India, Guatemala, Ethiopia, and China, have little chance of knowing whose DNA they carry. These children are destined to scan news articles and films, wondering if they owe their being to an adventurous spy or a dashing movie star.

“’Not knowing where you come from just consumes people who are adopted. People who are adopted deserve knowing who their forefathers are,  just like everyone else’” Johnson told the Albany Democrat Herald (9/2/09).  We couldn’t agree more.