My mom's prison camp story
Feb. 25th, 2008 01:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twirlgrrlOK, you guys, this is another super long post. I wanted to share the essay that my mom wrote about her time in prison camp in the Philippines in World War II. Long story short: Her dad was a missionary, they were assigned to the Philippines after they had to leave Japan, they were captured by the Japanese and held for nearly 4 years. She was 4 years old when they were captured and 8 years old when they were liberated. They weren't POWs or anything, so they weren't tortured or jailed, just basically held captive, but it's still kindof an interesting story. Also, please note that this is something my mom read during a church service, so it's cleaned up and gets pretty churchy at the end. Some of the most sensational things she's told me did not make it into this story. I'll put those at the very end.
February 23, 1945 was exciting, thrilling, joyful, stupendous, momentous, redeeming and completely unforgettable to those in the Los Banos Concentration Camp near Manila, Philippine Islands! At 7 in the morning, just as the whole camp of about 2200 American, British, Canadian and other "enemy aliens" was lining up for daily roll call, 9 American planes flew "low and slow" right over the field in front of us...
But to go back to the beginning of this 3 1/2 year story...
When my father, mother, brother and I left California in 1940 on a ship for the Orient, my Grandma Guthrie gave me a beautiful doll, Betty Jane. Originally Daddy was to be a missionary in Japan but the government asked foreigners to leave so we relocated in Manila where Daddy was manager of the Manila Sanitarium and Hospital and Mother taught the mission children on the compound where our group of families lived. The Philippine Islands were tropical, very hot and humid with beautiful flowers, lots of bananas, mangoes, camotes and other good things to eat. Water buffalo, goats, dogs and were abundant as well as lots and lots of chickens. Because of the heat my long blond Shirley Temple style curls were quickly cut off to prevent "prickly heat" and Richard and the men started wearing shorts. Also because of the debilitating heat and because Filipino men and Filipina girls needed jobs, each mission family hired gardeners, houseboys and maids (the ones who did the washing were called lavenderias) help get the necessary work done.
Many Sabbath afternoons our family and others watched the beautiful tropical sunsets over Manila bay. We worked, attended school, shopped at local markets, and as witnessed in my mother's detailed diaries entertained lots of other missionaries passing through. Quite a number from China also came to the Philippines as the Japanese army conquered more and more of China. War was definitely in the air, but the feeling was that the American presence in the Philippines under General MacArthur, General Wainwright and others was strong enough that it was a safe haven.
It was only a few hours after Japanese airplanes bombed Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands, destroying most of the American Naval Fleet in the Pacific, that Japanese airplanes also bombed Manila. Even though we had been practicing "blackouts" for months in anticipation of such an event, it still came as a huge surprise. Quickly preparations were made and the women and children in our compound and I think those from the Philippine Union College were driven up the winding, narrow, mountainous road to Baguio. As a four year old, I remember it being very dark and hiding under a blanket in the back seat of Elder Frost's car. Our Daddy stayed in Manila to continue to run the hospital. Except for Camp John Hay which was a rest and recreation facility for the army there was no military target up in Baguio, so it seemed a safe place to go until the Americans repelled the enemy attack on Manila.
Though at first we hoped the airplanes flying over Baguio were American, the bombs which they dropped convinced us to hide in ditches, basements, behind cement walls or even large trees whenever the air raid sirens sounded or when we saw the planes with the rising sun painted on their wings. Grandma Lyie, an invalid saint of a lady, quoted scripture verses while many children and ladies squeezed under her bed for safety. Grandma Blake had been hanging up freshly washed clothes when the alarm sent her under the bed, but unable to get clear under she simply plopped the now-empty bucket over her exposed back side.
December 27 was the first day of our "incarceration" when all the "foreigners" were ordered to report. The first few days were ominous as there was no water except a scant cup or so per day, very little food, no beds, no nothing, but with typical American ingenuity it wasn't long until committees were formed and organization came out of chaos. Our room was 36' by 36' with 47 women and 24 children. Each person had a little floor space for a mattress or sleeping pad, suitcases made partitions, all in all it was very, very crowded. Housed in separate rooms, husbands and wives were not allowed to communicate except after a few weeks they could walk around the tennis court together for 1 hour each evening. There were about 500 in this camp who stayed together for more than three years. There were miners, teachers and other civilians and many missionaries from several denominations. After a few months they were moved to Camp Holmes. Their story is fascinating and well-documented in several books by internees including Mary Ogle, one of the Seventh-day Adventist China Division secretaries who was sent to Manila for safe-keeping.
Just before this group was moved to Camp Holmes, Mother, Richard and I and several other mothers and children were released and transported to Manila to be with our Daddies. Elder Karl Bahr, his wife and son, were German so they were not interned. Elder Bahr contacted the religious affairs officer of the Japanese army in Manila and persuaded him to let our families be united. The men and some other missionaries had been interned in Santo Tomas only a few days when Manila was first occupied, but then released with renewable exemption "permits" to continue their "work" such as my father's hospital work, college teachers, nurses and administrators. So it was that for about 2 years about 55 of us lived in 5 houses in a compound on Daitoa Avenue. Compounds were common for groups of foreigners to share as they had high cement walls embedded with broken glass in the top to keep thieves out. Ours had two iron gates on the street side and a Filipino caretaker's shack in one corner beyond the gardens.
Speaking of gardens, it has been said that to maintain your equilibrium in the face of crisis, keep your trust in God and your hands in the dirt! That is just what happened ... never was there a thought that God's love would depart from our group, and with each move, hands were again in the dirt planting for food!
Because of frequent tropical torrents and floods, the houses were two stories with kitchen, dining room, living room, two bedrooms and bathrooms and a screened porch on the top floor. Our family had one bedroom for our very own, the Morrisons had the other, and the Leiands and little Shirley Mae had an apartment on the ground floor along with the laundry and garage. We had no cars, of course as they had been confiscated the first few days of the war, but the space was handy for church in one home, school in another, and play area in another. Each of the 5 houses had similar numbers of people, some of them single nurses. Paul and Retha Eldridge, their children Norma and Lawrence (my age...we recently "found" each other again) were in the house next to us sharing it with several others, also. There was another group of Adventists out at the college and evidently visiting back and forth, either by bicycle or by caratella (horse drawn carts) was common. Red arm bands were issued with characters on them designating our exemption status so there would be no trouble with soldiers when we were outside the gate.
No longer were Filipino pesos the currency. Mickey Mouse Money was the name given to the occupation money! But where to get any money so food could be purchased? From pre-war experience, Chinese merchants and Filipino friends knew they could trust Seventh-day Adventists and they also had faith that the American government would ultimately return. Hadn't General MacArthur promised "I will return?" So those good people loaned our division leaders the money as needed.
On the compound musicians got out their instruments, an orchestra was formed, and those who hadn't played before learned so they could play, too. In our family my father had played a cornet since he was at Cedar Lake Academy, my Mother learned clarinet, Richard learned bass clarinet, I learned to play the flute, and most everyone took piano lessons. The sounds of instruments of all kinds practicing could be heard most any hour of the day...though I'm sure there was a halt for siesta. We had programs and recitals, duets and sextets. We also had Dorcas, Friday night vespers, Sabbath morning Sabbath School and Church, prayer meeting and lots of showers, birthday parties and whatever else we could do to keep spirits up. We also had school, of course. Mother set up her classroom and no child or teenager was exempt! Wendell, Stanley and Richard were the big boys, as I remember, with the rest of us little kids there, too. Again the amahs and lavenderias and cooks came back to work.
Since I was only 5 and 6 years old I confess to remembering mostly good things about those years. Parents must have suffered terribly, however, worrying about the diseases that plagued us, about where to get enough food, about even going to downtown Manila, about obeying the "rules" (bowing to the soldiers, no radios, no communication with American forces), about the blackouts necessary at night, about their families at "home" back in the States (few or no letters ever came through), about the long term effect all this trauma might have....
So many stories could be told of incidents during this time.....
At the same time we were enjoying relative freedom, between 4500 and 5000 prisoners were held in Santo Tomas in Manila under horrible conditions, crowded, unsanitary, with dysentery and starvation slowly taking their toll. Partly because of the crowding, a new camp was built on the campus of the agricultural college near Los Banos, a small village across Laguna de Bay. Elder and Mrs. James Lee and their 2 boys, Elder and Mrs. Riffel and their 3 teenagers who had been captured on one of the southern Philippine islands were among those who volunteered or were chosen to move out to Los Banos. There they could be together as families and they would have room for gardens and hopefully a better existence.
Friday, July 7, 1944, proclamation was made that we and the folks from the college must go back to camp. No amount of supplication could persuade a Sabbath day's reprieve, so after hours of soldiers searching the houses, everyone sorted and packed and repacked what they could take in a couple of suitcases. Filipino friends later came and took what was left for safe keeping from looters. Trucks came at 9 in the morning, loaded everyone and all the stuff in, tied down the canvas so we couldn't see out and the Filipinos couldn't see in, and off we went. I still remember the smell of canvas and the heat. At Santo Tomas the baggage was all searched again. Then we all tried to sleep in the gym on swali mat on the cement floor. I remember waking often to see my parents taking turns fanning the mosquitos from us.
Early morning ... 3 a.m., we were taken by train (mother wrote in her diary that we were "treated kindly and with all respect"), arriving at Los Banos at 7:30 a.m. Our family of four had two rooms about 9 x 13 in a long barracks made of bamboo matting (swali). In no time we kids had scrounged nails and boards, and Daddy had built shelves, a door between the two rooms, had walled in the outside doors for the bedroom, he had built a little cook shack outside the "living" room and it wasn't very many days before green sweet potato tops were showing in our little garden. The greens were nutritious, but I don't know that anyone let the actual camotes mature!
The new section of camp where about 300 or more newly arrived missionaries including a number of priests and nuns were settled was soon dubbed "The Holy City." We were kept separate from the rest of camp for about three months. About the time the camps were united in October, loud rumblings were heard, especially at night. Hope was renewed! It could only mean the American Forces were approaching! "When are they coming to get us?" was the question on everyone's mind. Three years is a long time to wait! With no radios allowed, rumors were the only "news" available. There really was a hidden radio, and dear Elder Lee was trusted by his fellow internees (who were very distrustful of most missionaries) to be part of the slim group who knew about it and carefully passed on news of the Allies advance. Of course that was very secret knowledge until much later.
Rice and "soup" were cooked in general camp kitchens and distributed twice a day to each barracks. At first the rice was kind of like you have at home, but gradually to extend it, it was cooked with so much water it became thinner and thinner. The kitchen detail did their best to sort out the weevils and other critters, but gradually that became a losing battle, so finally we each sorted our own plate of cooked lugao, much like lumpy white paste, carefully lining up the unwanteds on the rim of the plate. A real treat was to be allowed to have some of the scrapings from the big caldrons in which rice was cooked. It was burned and crisp and delicious! Food became a real obsession... men and women both sat under the one light bulb burning in the hall way of each barracks, each reciting and copying recipes they would try when they got "home."
A man across the hall from us ate the snails and grubs we kids could find for him. There were no rats, pet cats or other animals anymore. A spoonful of peanut butter could last, when licked delicately, for several hours. Banana skins, from our own or other folks' bananas, were delicious just lightly fried. The center of banana plants was also eaten long before any new bananas had a chance to mature. When my father ladled out our meals, he divided it in four equal portions! No wonder he lost nearly half his own weight! My brother grew several inches during those early teen years and lost several pounds.
The Filipinos from nearby villages brought food to sell or trade as long as they were allowed, but finally that, too, had been stopped and only what had been saved or traded was left to supplement the camp ration. But Thanksgiving Mother noted Brother C.W. Lee brought his own plate from the chow line and we supplemented it with camote tops, peanuts, kidney beans, slippery talinum weed salad and pumpkin pie. "For once we felt full and satisfied" she wrote. Since there were no pumpkins in the Philippines, I'm sure it was made from the same camote (sweet potatoes) that most everything else was made from.
By December there were a few ears of corn in the garden! Maybe that is why corn is still my favorite garden crop!
Christmas 1944 came to camp just as it does wherever hope is alive. Daddy and Richard smoothed a stick for a new mop handle, Mother embroidered a calendar using a shirt tail for material, and we even had a little weed decorated with red yarn for a "tree." For my birthday Mother sewed this little Panda using material from the tails of shirts and stuffed it with kapok she pulled from her mattress.
The big question remained, "When are they coming to get us?"
December and January brought much more activity in the sky. My favorites were the P-38 "lightnings" fighters with their identifying twin-boom square shape. There was loud bombing all around the area. The closer the Americans came, the less food was given to the camp, and finally on February 21 bags of rice were issued with the notice it was the very last. It wasn't even hulled, just palay. Daddy figured how to pound off the husks and after ours was finished, he worked on others, too. Many people were much too weak to do that for themselves. Beri beri was common, coffins were buried daily.
And then February 23, 1945!
2200 people lining up to be counted. 2200 tired and hungry people anticipating the day they would be taken from the horror of starvation and imprisonment. And there right in front of the barracks large slow planes flew across and something began to fall from them! Pamphlets! No, boxes of food! No, they had arms and legs! Parachutes were opening! They were men! On one plane were large letters RESCUE! We were being rescued!
Immediately bullets began to fly and we headed for our own quarters. Daddy started cooking the last bit of food we had. Mother, hiding behind her mattress, heard me scream in obvious pain but was relieved to find only a little hot coal had fallen out of the cooking fire onto my leg as I lay on the ground watching the tracer bullets whiz past. Filipino guerillas came out of the hills behind camp as the paratroopers moved up toward the front from the field so we kept close to the ground under the crossfire.
7 a.m. had been carefully chosen for the start of the operation as intelligence had revealed that most of the guards were on the tennis court performing their daily calisthenics at that hour. Their rifles were all stacked together in one comer temporarily useless.
With a faithful short brown Filipino close behind, a tall blond American paratrooper ran through the barracks shouting, "Take your important papers and go to the ball diamond in 5 minutes!" I picked up Betty Jane, a writing tablet (my important paper) and pencil was ready. We had no trouble following directions! We were being rescued! They were finally here! But some people were reluctant to leave their meager possessions so their barracks were set fire and they had no choice except to go. Down at the ball diamond we were loaded into tanks and joyfully lumbered off through the jungle toward the lake. Such jubilation! Down the jungle road snipers shot at us, the boys riding on top of the tank quickly tumbled down onto the rest of us. We were safe inside the heavy metal sides of the tank! Suddenly the ride became smooth...the "Tanks" were amphibious and we floated across Laguna de Bay to the other side behind the American lines.
After unloading, the amtracks went back to pick up waiting internees. We were trucked to New Bilibid prison which was being used for a field hospital. After registering, we were served a bowl of soup, two crackers and a small candy bar. We were hungry! Why not more? Later we learned that when Camp Santo Tomas had been liberated and fed heartily, many became very sick from too much food. We were also told that orders had been found to annihilate our camp on or about the day we were liberated. There was precedence for such an annihilation so General MacArthur had ordered the immediate liberation of Los Banos even though it was well behind enemy lines.
Freedom! How wonderful it was! Messages were delivered from relatives in the United States. Soon we had as much food as we could eat.
After a few weeks of recuperation, our family crossed the Pacific in the SS Eberle, a huge troop ship, zig zagging all the way to confuse any enemy submarines lurking about, until we finally came to San Pedro where we were met by family and friends. What a reunion that was! How they had worried about us and how glad we were to be home with them.
50 years later, February 23, 1995, my brother and I attended the reunion of the 11th airborne where we met several of the paratroopers who had rescued us. What a thrill! We had breakfast with the "boy" (now an old gentleman) who had crawled through jungle and rice paddies to set the smoke bomb at just the right time and place to mark the target for the planes and paratroopers. We met the old General who as a young lieutenant had been in charge of intelligence for the operation. We, the rescued, were presented with gold medallions, each with our name engraved on it. Did we deserve such a reward? Oh, no, the rescuers deserved the reward.
Someday, you and I will look up and realize that we are being rescued as JESUS promised! He said He will return, and I believe Him. He will put a crown on your head and will you deserve it? Oh, no, He only deserves the reward, but He is gracious to the uttermost. We will praise Him through all eternity!
====================================
OK, so we actually still have some of the stuff she mentions in the story, including the shirt-tail calendar, the panda bear, and her doll Betty Jane. The shirt-tail calendar is especially poignant to me. I could cry just looking at it. I think my uncle has it now.
They really were starving at the end, because the Japanese were losing the war and running out of food.
My mom was this darling little blond child with Shirley Temple curls. Early on, she would hold her hand out through the fence and ask the Japanese soldiers for candy. She can still say "Candy please?" in Japanese. She says that sometimes they gave her strawberries too.
In January before they were rescued, the Japanese left the camp for an entire week, but not one of the missionaries left the camp. They probably didn't think they had anywhere to go.
She remembers seeing dead Japanese soldiers by the side of the road as she rode a tank out of the camp after the American and Filipino soldiers liberated them.
At least one person went out to try to find food for the camp, and when he came back with food the soldiers shot him. He was between two fences, and the Japanese wouldn’t let anyone help him. He moaned and begged for a long time. Finally they went and shot him dead. I think that was the most traumatic thing she remembers.
There is also a great story about the last Christmas in the camp, written by my grandmother, who used to tell the story in churches and on the radio and stuff. I'll dig that one up and post it too.
February 23, 1945 was exciting, thrilling, joyful, stupendous, momentous, redeeming and completely unforgettable to those in the Los Banos Concentration Camp near Manila, Philippine Islands! At 7 in the morning, just as the whole camp of about 2200 American, British, Canadian and other "enemy aliens" was lining up for daily roll call, 9 American planes flew "low and slow" right over the field in front of us...
But to go back to the beginning of this 3 1/2 year story...
When my father, mother, brother and I left California in 1940 on a ship for the Orient, my Grandma Guthrie gave me a beautiful doll, Betty Jane. Originally Daddy was to be a missionary in Japan but the government asked foreigners to leave so we relocated in Manila where Daddy was manager of the Manila Sanitarium and Hospital and Mother taught the mission children on the compound where our group of families lived. The Philippine Islands were tropical, very hot and humid with beautiful flowers, lots of bananas, mangoes, camotes and other good things to eat. Water buffalo, goats, dogs and were abundant as well as lots and lots of chickens. Because of the heat my long blond Shirley Temple style curls were quickly cut off to prevent "prickly heat" and Richard and the men started wearing shorts. Also because of the debilitating heat and because Filipino men and Filipina girls needed jobs, each mission family hired gardeners, houseboys and maids (the ones who did the washing were called lavenderias) help get the necessary work done.
Many Sabbath afternoons our family and others watched the beautiful tropical sunsets over Manila bay. We worked, attended school, shopped at local markets, and as witnessed in my mother's detailed diaries entertained lots of other missionaries passing through. Quite a number from China also came to the Philippines as the Japanese army conquered more and more of China. War was definitely in the air, but the feeling was that the American presence in the Philippines under General MacArthur, General Wainwright and others was strong enough that it was a safe haven.
It was only a few hours after Japanese airplanes bombed Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands, destroying most of the American Naval Fleet in the Pacific, that Japanese airplanes also bombed Manila. Even though we had been practicing "blackouts" for months in anticipation of such an event, it still came as a huge surprise. Quickly preparations were made and the women and children in our compound and I think those from the Philippine Union College were driven up the winding, narrow, mountainous road to Baguio. As a four year old, I remember it being very dark and hiding under a blanket in the back seat of Elder Frost's car. Our Daddy stayed in Manila to continue to run the hospital. Except for Camp John Hay which was a rest and recreation facility for the army there was no military target up in Baguio, so it seemed a safe place to go until the Americans repelled the enemy attack on Manila.
Though at first we hoped the airplanes flying over Baguio were American, the bombs which they dropped convinced us to hide in ditches, basements, behind cement walls or even large trees whenever the air raid sirens sounded or when we saw the planes with the rising sun painted on their wings. Grandma Lyie, an invalid saint of a lady, quoted scripture verses while many children and ladies squeezed under her bed for safety. Grandma Blake had been hanging up freshly washed clothes when the alarm sent her under the bed, but unable to get clear under she simply plopped the now-empty bucket over her exposed back side.
December 27 was the first day of our "incarceration" when all the "foreigners" were ordered to report. The first few days were ominous as there was no water except a scant cup or so per day, very little food, no beds, no nothing, but with typical American ingenuity it wasn't long until committees were formed and organization came out of chaos. Our room was 36' by 36' with 47 women and 24 children. Each person had a little floor space for a mattress or sleeping pad, suitcases made partitions, all in all it was very, very crowded. Housed in separate rooms, husbands and wives were not allowed to communicate except after a few weeks they could walk around the tennis court together for 1 hour each evening. There were about 500 in this camp who stayed together for more than three years. There were miners, teachers and other civilians and many missionaries from several denominations. After a few months they were moved to Camp Holmes. Their story is fascinating and well-documented in several books by internees including Mary Ogle, one of the Seventh-day Adventist China Division secretaries who was sent to Manila for safe-keeping.
Just before this group was moved to Camp Holmes, Mother, Richard and I and several other mothers and children were released and transported to Manila to be with our Daddies. Elder Karl Bahr, his wife and son, were German so they were not interned. Elder Bahr contacted the religious affairs officer of the Japanese army in Manila and persuaded him to let our families be united. The men and some other missionaries had been interned in Santo Tomas only a few days when Manila was first occupied, but then released with renewable exemption "permits" to continue their "work" such as my father's hospital work, college teachers, nurses and administrators. So it was that for about 2 years about 55 of us lived in 5 houses in a compound on Daitoa Avenue. Compounds were common for groups of foreigners to share as they had high cement walls embedded with broken glass in the top to keep thieves out. Ours had two iron gates on the street side and a Filipino caretaker's shack in one corner beyond the gardens.
Speaking of gardens, it has been said that to maintain your equilibrium in the face of crisis, keep your trust in God and your hands in the dirt! That is just what happened ... never was there a thought that God's love would depart from our group, and with each move, hands were again in the dirt planting for food!
Because of frequent tropical torrents and floods, the houses were two stories with kitchen, dining room, living room, two bedrooms and bathrooms and a screened porch on the top floor. Our family had one bedroom for our very own, the Morrisons had the other, and the Leiands and little Shirley Mae had an apartment on the ground floor along with the laundry and garage. We had no cars, of course as they had been confiscated the first few days of the war, but the space was handy for church in one home, school in another, and play area in another. Each of the 5 houses had similar numbers of people, some of them single nurses. Paul and Retha Eldridge, their children Norma and Lawrence (my age...we recently "found" each other again) were in the house next to us sharing it with several others, also. There was another group of Adventists out at the college and evidently visiting back and forth, either by bicycle or by caratella (horse drawn carts) was common. Red arm bands were issued with characters on them designating our exemption status so there would be no trouble with soldiers when we were outside the gate.
No longer were Filipino pesos the currency. Mickey Mouse Money was the name given to the occupation money! But where to get any money so food could be purchased? From pre-war experience, Chinese merchants and Filipino friends knew they could trust Seventh-day Adventists and they also had faith that the American government would ultimately return. Hadn't General MacArthur promised "I will return?" So those good people loaned our division leaders the money as needed.
On the compound musicians got out their instruments, an orchestra was formed, and those who hadn't played before learned so they could play, too. In our family my father had played a cornet since he was at Cedar Lake Academy, my Mother learned clarinet, Richard learned bass clarinet, I learned to play the flute, and most everyone took piano lessons. The sounds of instruments of all kinds practicing could be heard most any hour of the day...though I'm sure there was a halt for siesta. We had programs and recitals, duets and sextets. We also had Dorcas, Friday night vespers, Sabbath morning Sabbath School and Church, prayer meeting and lots of showers, birthday parties and whatever else we could do to keep spirits up. We also had school, of course. Mother set up her classroom and no child or teenager was exempt! Wendell, Stanley and Richard were the big boys, as I remember, with the rest of us little kids there, too. Again the amahs and lavenderias and cooks came back to work.
Since I was only 5 and 6 years old I confess to remembering mostly good things about those years. Parents must have suffered terribly, however, worrying about the diseases that plagued us, about where to get enough food, about even going to downtown Manila, about obeying the "rules" (bowing to the soldiers, no radios, no communication with American forces), about the blackouts necessary at night, about their families at "home" back in the States (few or no letters ever came through), about the long term effect all this trauma might have....
So many stories could be told of incidents during this time.....
At the same time we were enjoying relative freedom, between 4500 and 5000 prisoners were held in Santo Tomas in Manila under horrible conditions, crowded, unsanitary, with dysentery and starvation slowly taking their toll. Partly because of the crowding, a new camp was built on the campus of the agricultural college near Los Banos, a small village across Laguna de Bay. Elder and Mrs. James Lee and their 2 boys, Elder and Mrs. Riffel and their 3 teenagers who had been captured on one of the southern Philippine islands were among those who volunteered or were chosen to move out to Los Banos. There they could be together as families and they would have room for gardens and hopefully a better existence.
Friday, July 7, 1944, proclamation was made that we and the folks from the college must go back to camp. No amount of supplication could persuade a Sabbath day's reprieve, so after hours of soldiers searching the houses, everyone sorted and packed and repacked what they could take in a couple of suitcases. Filipino friends later came and took what was left for safe keeping from looters. Trucks came at 9 in the morning, loaded everyone and all the stuff in, tied down the canvas so we couldn't see out and the Filipinos couldn't see in, and off we went. I still remember the smell of canvas and the heat. At Santo Tomas the baggage was all searched again. Then we all tried to sleep in the gym on swali mat on the cement floor. I remember waking often to see my parents taking turns fanning the mosquitos from us.
Early morning ... 3 a.m., we were taken by train (mother wrote in her diary that we were "treated kindly and with all respect"), arriving at Los Banos at 7:30 a.m. Our family of four had two rooms about 9 x 13 in a long barracks made of bamboo matting (swali). In no time we kids had scrounged nails and boards, and Daddy had built shelves, a door between the two rooms, had walled in the outside doors for the bedroom, he had built a little cook shack outside the "living" room and it wasn't very many days before green sweet potato tops were showing in our little garden. The greens were nutritious, but I don't know that anyone let the actual camotes mature!
The new section of camp where about 300 or more newly arrived missionaries including a number of priests and nuns were settled was soon dubbed "The Holy City." We were kept separate from the rest of camp for about three months. About the time the camps were united in October, loud rumblings were heard, especially at night. Hope was renewed! It could only mean the American Forces were approaching! "When are they coming to get us?" was the question on everyone's mind. Three years is a long time to wait! With no radios allowed, rumors were the only "news" available. There really was a hidden radio, and dear Elder Lee was trusted by his fellow internees (who were very distrustful of most missionaries) to be part of the slim group who knew about it and carefully passed on news of the Allies advance. Of course that was very secret knowledge until much later.
Rice and "soup" were cooked in general camp kitchens and distributed twice a day to each barracks. At first the rice was kind of like you have at home, but gradually to extend it, it was cooked with so much water it became thinner and thinner. The kitchen detail did their best to sort out the weevils and other critters, but gradually that became a losing battle, so finally we each sorted our own plate of cooked lugao, much like lumpy white paste, carefully lining up the unwanteds on the rim of the plate. A real treat was to be allowed to have some of the scrapings from the big caldrons in which rice was cooked. It was burned and crisp and delicious! Food became a real obsession... men and women both sat under the one light bulb burning in the hall way of each barracks, each reciting and copying recipes they would try when they got "home."
A man across the hall from us ate the snails and grubs we kids could find for him. There were no rats, pet cats or other animals anymore. A spoonful of peanut butter could last, when licked delicately, for several hours. Banana skins, from our own or other folks' bananas, were delicious just lightly fried. The center of banana plants was also eaten long before any new bananas had a chance to mature. When my father ladled out our meals, he divided it in four equal portions! No wonder he lost nearly half his own weight! My brother grew several inches during those early teen years and lost several pounds.
The Filipinos from nearby villages brought food to sell or trade as long as they were allowed, but finally that, too, had been stopped and only what had been saved or traded was left to supplement the camp ration. But Thanksgiving Mother noted Brother C.W. Lee brought his own plate from the chow line and we supplemented it with camote tops, peanuts, kidney beans, slippery talinum weed salad and pumpkin pie. "For once we felt full and satisfied" she wrote. Since there were no pumpkins in the Philippines, I'm sure it was made from the same camote (sweet potatoes) that most everything else was made from.
By December there were a few ears of corn in the garden! Maybe that is why corn is still my favorite garden crop!
Christmas 1944 came to camp just as it does wherever hope is alive. Daddy and Richard smoothed a stick for a new mop handle, Mother embroidered a calendar using a shirt tail for material, and we even had a little weed decorated with red yarn for a "tree." For my birthday Mother sewed this little Panda using material from the tails of shirts and stuffed it with kapok she pulled from her mattress.
The big question remained, "When are they coming to get us?"
December and January brought much more activity in the sky. My favorites were the P-38 "lightnings" fighters with their identifying twin-boom square shape. There was loud bombing all around the area. The closer the Americans came, the less food was given to the camp, and finally on February 21 bags of rice were issued with the notice it was the very last. It wasn't even hulled, just palay. Daddy figured how to pound off the husks and after ours was finished, he worked on others, too. Many people were much too weak to do that for themselves. Beri beri was common, coffins were buried daily.
And then February 23, 1945!
2200 people lining up to be counted. 2200 tired and hungry people anticipating the day they would be taken from the horror of starvation and imprisonment. And there right in front of the barracks large slow planes flew across and something began to fall from them! Pamphlets! No, boxes of food! No, they had arms and legs! Parachutes were opening! They were men! On one plane were large letters RESCUE! We were being rescued!
Immediately bullets began to fly and we headed for our own quarters. Daddy started cooking the last bit of food we had. Mother, hiding behind her mattress, heard me scream in obvious pain but was relieved to find only a little hot coal had fallen out of the cooking fire onto my leg as I lay on the ground watching the tracer bullets whiz past. Filipino guerillas came out of the hills behind camp as the paratroopers moved up toward the front from the field so we kept close to the ground under the crossfire.
7 a.m. had been carefully chosen for the start of the operation as intelligence had revealed that most of the guards were on the tennis court performing their daily calisthenics at that hour. Their rifles were all stacked together in one comer temporarily useless.
With a faithful short brown Filipino close behind, a tall blond American paratrooper ran through the barracks shouting, "Take your important papers and go to the ball diamond in 5 minutes!" I picked up Betty Jane, a writing tablet (my important paper) and pencil was ready. We had no trouble following directions! We were being rescued! They were finally here! But some people were reluctant to leave their meager possessions so their barracks were set fire and they had no choice except to go. Down at the ball diamond we were loaded into tanks and joyfully lumbered off through the jungle toward the lake. Such jubilation! Down the jungle road snipers shot at us, the boys riding on top of the tank quickly tumbled down onto the rest of us. We were safe inside the heavy metal sides of the tank! Suddenly the ride became smooth...the "Tanks" were amphibious and we floated across Laguna de Bay to the other side behind the American lines.
After unloading, the amtracks went back to pick up waiting internees. We were trucked to New Bilibid prison which was being used for a field hospital. After registering, we were served a bowl of soup, two crackers and a small candy bar. We were hungry! Why not more? Later we learned that when Camp Santo Tomas had been liberated and fed heartily, many became very sick from too much food. We were also told that orders had been found to annihilate our camp on or about the day we were liberated. There was precedence for such an annihilation so General MacArthur had ordered the immediate liberation of Los Banos even though it was well behind enemy lines.
Freedom! How wonderful it was! Messages were delivered from relatives in the United States. Soon we had as much food as we could eat.
After a few weeks of recuperation, our family crossed the Pacific in the SS Eberle, a huge troop ship, zig zagging all the way to confuse any enemy submarines lurking about, until we finally came to San Pedro where we were met by family and friends. What a reunion that was! How they had worried about us and how glad we were to be home with them.
50 years later, February 23, 1995, my brother and I attended the reunion of the 11th airborne where we met several of the paratroopers who had rescued us. What a thrill! We had breakfast with the "boy" (now an old gentleman) who had crawled through jungle and rice paddies to set the smoke bomb at just the right time and place to mark the target for the planes and paratroopers. We met the old General who as a young lieutenant had been in charge of intelligence for the operation. We, the rescued, were presented with gold medallions, each with our name engraved on it. Did we deserve such a reward? Oh, no, the rescuers deserved the reward.
Someday, you and I will look up and realize that we are being rescued as JESUS promised! He said He will return, and I believe Him. He will put a crown on your head and will you deserve it? Oh, no, He only deserves the reward, but He is gracious to the uttermost. We will praise Him through all eternity!
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OK, so we actually still have some of the stuff she mentions in the story, including the shirt-tail calendar, the panda bear, and her doll Betty Jane. The shirt-tail calendar is especially poignant to me. I could cry just looking at it. I think my uncle has it now.
They really were starving at the end, because the Japanese were losing the war and running out of food.
My mom was this darling little blond child with Shirley Temple curls. Early on, she would hold her hand out through the fence and ask the Japanese soldiers for candy. She can still say "Candy please?" in Japanese. She says that sometimes they gave her strawberries too.
In January before they were rescued, the Japanese left the camp for an entire week, but not one of the missionaries left the camp. They probably didn't think they had anywhere to go.
She remembers seeing dead Japanese soldiers by the side of the road as she rode a tank out of the camp after the American and Filipino soldiers liberated them.
At least one person went out to try to find food for the camp, and when he came back with food the soldiers shot him. He was between two fences, and the Japanese wouldn’t let anyone help him. He moaned and begged for a long time. Finally they went and shot him dead. I think that was the most traumatic thing she remembers.
There is also a great story about the last Christmas in the camp, written by my grandmother, who used to tell the story in churches and on the radio and stuff. I'll dig that one up and post it too.
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Date: 2009-11-11 05:56 pm (UTC)and of course now reading this, thinking how your mom was banjo and blue's age when this all began.... it certainly puts things in perspective, that's for sure.
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