"Former army nurse Molly Martin has never forgotten her experience in the internment camp at Santo Tomas University during World War II. The horrors she witnessed in her younger days are burned in her brain, along with the memories of the people who walked with her through hell and the enemies who put them all through it. When she sees a picture in the paper of the doctor that committed some of the worst war crimes and got away, she knows it is time to tell her story. It is the last chance for justice"--Back cover.
A gripping memoir documenting one couple’s experience being imprisoned by the Japanese on a Philippine college campus during World War II. This is a gripping eyewitness account of internment during World War II in the Philippines. Van Sickle and her husband, Charles, were among a group of foreigners who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Trapped in Manila after its surrender to the Japanese in 1942, they were incarcerated in the vast forty-eight-acre campus of Santo Tomás University, the only place in the city large enough to accommodate all the prisoners. The university grounds were enclosed on three sides by high concrete walls and iron bars; Santo Tomás turned out to be “a made-to-order concentration camp.” Every day spent on this seventeenth-century campus was a struggle for survival. Van Sickle offers a fascinating, detailed, and insightful account of life at Santo Tomás. The prisoners—5,000 at the outset—were thrown on their own resources for food and the simplest types of comfort. The internment camp became a kind of school of human relations: additional curricula forced upon the prisoners, the author says good-humoredly, were Entomology, the science of bed bugs; Structural Engineering, the art of sleeping on a cot; Chemistry, or washing clothes; Philosophy, or waiting in line; Industrial Engineering, opening a can; Physical Education, or the missing drink. As they suffered together, the internees managed to form a community of sorts that sustained them until their liberation in February, 1945. Van Sickle’s story is unique and personal narrative, and her retelling of the camp’s liberation is dramatic and powerful. Praise for The Iron Gates of Santo Tomas “Involving memoir of a woman caught with her husband behind enemy lines after the fall of Manila in WW II. . . . A valuable addition to the history of WW II.” —Kirkus Reviews “The story is unique and fascinating to read. . . . A well-written memoir.” —Library Journal
Hours after attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese bombers stormed across the Philippine city of Baguio, where seven-year-old Curt Tong, the son of American missionaries, hid with his classmates in the woods near his school. Three weeks later, Curt, his mother, and two sisters were among the nearly five hundred Americans who surrendered to the Japanese army in Baguio. Child of War is Tong’s touching story of the next three years of his childhood as he endured fear, starvation, sickness, and separation from his father while interned in three different Japanese prison camps on the island of Luzon. Written by the adult Tong looking back on his wartime ordeal, it offers a rich trove of memories about internment life and camp experiences. Relegated first to the men’s barracks at Camp John Hay, Curt is taken under the wing of a close family friend who is also the camp’s civilian leader. From this vantage point, he is able to observe the running of the camp firsthand as the war continues and increasing numbers of Americans are imprisoned. Curt’s days are occupied with work detail, baseball, and childhood adventures. Along with his mother and sisters, he experiences daily life under a series of camp commandants, some ruling with intimidation and cruelty but one, memorably, with compassion. In the last months of the war the entire family is finally reunited, and their ordeal ends when they are liberated from Manila’s Bilibid Prison by American troops. Child of War is an engaging and thoughtful memoir that presents an unusual view of life as a World War II internee—that of a young boy. It is a valuable addition to existing wartime autobiographies and diaries and contributes significantly to a greater understanding of the Pacific War and its impact on American civilians in Asia.
Manette Trogani Snow always wondered why her father, Martin “Pop” Trogani punished his children by forcing them to kneel on raw rice, arms outstretched, with a stack of books piled high on their hands. In a quest to understand why Pop treated Manette and her eleven siblings so horribly, she unearthed not only her own family’s hidden histories, but also a previously unknown chapter in US history about racism, immigration, and war. In a fascinating memoir created from a twenty-five-year mission to excavate information from archives, articles, books, and interviews, Manette chronicles her journey through a childhood darkened by fear, brutality, secrets, and lies while detailing the story of her father’s family’s experiences as the only known survivors—despite being starved and tortured during the Japanese occupation of World War II—of an orchestrated campaign to expel them from the United States under the Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935. Included throughout are a treasure trove of personal and historic images, as well as additional insights obtained after the completion of Manette’s extensive research. American Aswang intertwines the true story of a Filipino-American girl’s challenging coming-of-age journey with the often horrific experiences of her father’s family as they were repatriated to the Philippines.
It has been more than a century since the American conquest and subsequent annexation of the Philippines. Although the nation was given its independence in 1946, American cultural authority remains. In order to locate and lend significance to the relics of American empire, Joseph McCallus retraces the route Gen. Douglas MacArthur took during his liberation of the country from the Japanese in 1944 and 1945. While following MacArthur's footsteps, he provides a historical and geographical account of this iconic soldier's military career, accompanied by a description of the contemporary Philippine landscape. McCallus uses the past and the present to explore how America influenced the country's political and educational systems and language, as well as the ramifications of the continued U.S. military presence and the effects of globalization on traditional Filipino society. He examines the American influence on its architecture and introduces to the reader the American expatriate business community—people who have lived in the Philippines for decades and continue to help shape the nation. The MacArthur Highway and Other Relics of American Empire in the Philippines is an absorbing look at how American military intervention and colonial rule have indelibly shaped a nation decades after the fact.
