(Editor's Note: This is the thirteenth in a series of articles on Morey Skaret, who served as a captain in the Coast Guard during World War II and the Korean War. As World War II was winding down, Morey befriended a mysterious Philippine national, with surprising consequences.)

Morey Skaret's Coast Guard ship was docked in Mindanao, one of the Philippines' southern islands, when he received an urgent plea: "I'm on the Philippine Cabinet," claimed a desperate man. "I'm head of Forestry for the Government. I've gotta get back to Manila.' "'Well, I can't do that,'" Morey told him. "'I can't take you up there. I'm not allowed to take passengers. This is a military ship. We got rules against it.'

"Oh, he just pleaded with me," Morey recalls, his voice assuming a tender tone. "I was dubious as to whether he was the head of the department. He was just a raggedy-lookin' guy who just got out of Japanese prison and wanted to get back to Manila."

But one of Morey's junior officers chimed in: 'I think it would be a good thing to do, Captain. If he's on the Cabinet, we should get him back to his government seat.'

"So I thought about it some more," Morey remembers. "'Course, I had to make the decision. You can't call anybody. You can't call Manila, where headquarters of the Coast Guard was. You have to do it yourself. So I said, 'Tell him to come up and see me again.'

"So he came up again, and he was so polite. I could see that he was a refined gentleman: just the way that he carried himself and the way he talked. I knew he wasn't a bum.

"So I told him, 'If you wear a coverall and an army cap, and work chipping decks-it's about a five-day trip back to Manila-and don't make any trouble or frequent yourself with the crew-I'll take you to Manila.' We left.

"When I got to Manila, I asked to go to dry dock. I'd been over there two years, and everybody kind of snapped-to when I asked for something, 'cause I'd been there longer than anybody.

"So they said, 'Yessir, Cap'n. We'll get 'er in dry dock.' One day I was sitting up on the wing of the bridge again. Sittin' there-I smoked a pipe, that's right, I smoked a pipe. And I'd already let this guy out. I'll tell you his name pretty soon, when it comes to me. He left right away, and disappeared.

"He thanked me, of course. He said, 'Gracias, gracias,' bowing-I could see then, by gosh, I bet this guy is the head of the department. About the fourth day we were in dry dock, by golly I saw a Studebaker car painted white, all white, pull in. And I thought: where in the hell do they get a car like that? That car's a prewar car, Studebaker. Prewar.

"Guy got out: white shoes, white trousers. They wear a lot of white over there. Especially if they're wealthy or notable people. And he had a big white hat on, with that brim all the way around. And he walked over to the guard at the gangway, and he told him, 'I want to see Captain Skaret.'

"He had found out all about me. He went to the Coast Guard, the Philippine Government. They realized who he was. He was big-time. He was the head of the Department of Forestry. Or Agriculture, I guess it was.

"Anyway, he comes aboard. He put his arm around me and hugged me. 'You made it work for me,' he says. 'So important that I got back.' He spoke broken English. 'We got so much to do. We got to rebuild all these buildings.' Manila, especially, was in ruins.

"So he says, 'El Capitan, you come to my compound. Stay with me one night.' I said, 'Oh, I don't think so. I better stay with the ship.' My executive officer drank all the time. I couldn't really depend on him. Of course, I told him he couldn't do it. But he sneaked it.

"I went out to Francisco Morato-got it, it come back: that's his name-Fran-cis-co Mo-ra-to-went to his compound. In the Philippines they have what they call compounds. They build an eight-foot, concrete wall all around, like half a block. The family lives inside. There's maybe four or five houses in there.

"So I stayed there that night. Kind of comical: I had a good bunk aboard my ship, you know-comfortable, nice big pillow. And I had a steward that always took care of me with clean sheets and everything.

"So Francisco said, 'This is your room, El Capitan. Go to bed when you feel like it.' And I said, 'Well I'm very tired. I'm goin' to bed early.' So then he said, 'That's your bed there.' Heh-heh. It was made out of reeds. Reeds. It had framework, and the reeds were in between. Kind of a webbing. And it was kind of comfortable.

"'Here, El Capitan, is your pillow,' he says so nice to me. "The pillow is a little thing built up like this. Very hard stuff. And then he gave me my cover, a beautiful thing made out of reeds. Lot of designs on it.

"But it was very uncomfortable. I had the damn reed thing that I'd never slept under before. I always had a light blanket and sheet over me. So I stayed the night. Treated me great. Then I says, 'Where did you get that Studebaker?' Nineteen thirty-nine Studebaker. One of those big ones they put out.

"He says, 'When I hear the Japanese are coming, I went out to a farm and dug a deep hole. I covered that car very good and buried it. And it laid there all through the war.'

"He dug it out. Of course he had money, and he had mechanics work it all over. And he cleaned it all up and fixed it all up and painted it snow white. Francisco Morato, God bless you. . ..

"When I came back to Seattle," Morey continues, "the mills were only making plywood out of fir. But they knew that you could make plywood out of Philippine mahogany. They heard that I had been in the Philippines, and that I had the Salay Oriental Misamis tract," which he had acquired through his friendship with Francisco Morato.

"I didn't really own the land," he explains. "They give it to you as a lease. And you have to take so much timber off, because the Philippines were covered with forest, and they wanted agricultural land. That's one of the reasons why we got it."

"The Salay River ran right down the middle of it, and the tract went up on each side-perfect for logging. You just cut a log and bull-nose one end, and a caribou pulls it to the river, where they roll it down the bank. Guys down there take the logs out in the bay and make booms out of them. Then the big ships come from Seattle and get the logs."

Young Morey, however, was about to get schooled in the ways of the business world. His presumed customers made their own deals for obtaining Philippine mahogany, leaving him "holding the bag. Eventually, I lost it all," he says, adding: "but maybe it was a good thing. Things turned out good for me after that.

"I'm glad to forget it because it was a sour spot in my growing up," he reveals. "I thought I had it made. And I did have it made. I would have been . . . more than wealthy. Anyway, that's the story of the Salay Oriental Misamis tract and Francisco Morato, God bless him. . . ."

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