Through Fire and Through Water.

CHAPTER V
IMPATIENTLY WAITING

We had not been interned for very long before several men had escaped over the walls. Three of were recaptured by the Japanese, and on February 15, 1942, they were all executed after they were forced to dig their own graves. All three were British. One man who escaped over the wall was an old hand in the islands, speaking the language well, and we never did hear of his being recaptured.

Through 1942 we became more and more discouraged by reports. First Singapore fell, then Bataan, and finally Corregidor surrendered also. Bone of us ever gave up hope, but we began to see there was a long wait ahead of us. Schools were started in camp; grade school, high school, and college courses as well as many other subjects were taught. Jackie and Sally started to school and they all took an active part in sports. I helped them with their studies, and we also read daily a chapter together from the Chinese Bible.

Among the language classes that were started was one in Chinese, which was taught by a Mr.George Green from Shanghai of the National City Bank of New York. I assisted him some in the beginners conversation and wrote out all the Chinese characters for the mimeographed lessons This gave me some good practice in. writing of Chinese.

That spring I was in the hospital a couple of times, the worst attack being from dengue fever. It is a very painful disease, but they assured me that it was not dangerous. Then I was assigned to a job on the sanitation crew in the kitchen, a very hot job of mopping floors and cleaning the giant rice pots, which made me perspire a great deal. This was good for me, and thereafter I was never seriously ill again.

After a short time the missionaries outside the camp in Manila found that there were many restrictions on their work. All church work was brought under the control of the Japanese army department of religion, and they placed Philippinos in charge everywhere. They then called for a meeting of the heads of the various missions and gave them a paper to sign. Among the articles on this paper was one stating that the signer would give aid to the Japanese military whenever called upon to do so. Of the dozen or so leaders of missions at that meeting four refused to sign this paper. These were Mr. Eonger of the American Bible Society, Dr. Brush of the Methodists, Dr. Holter, head of the Union Theological Seminary, and Eld. E. C. Bomm of the Baptist Association for World Evangelism. A few days later these four men were suddenly picked up by the Japanese, taken from their wives and families and returned to the confines of Santo Tounas Internment Camp. In spite of appeals the families of these men were not allowed to come into the camp with them. It was near the end of internment before they were together again, and then only after two of these wives, Mrs. Brush and Mrs. Bomm, had suffered a terrible imprisonment and inquisition in the dungeons of Fort Santiago, the ancient Spanish prison within the walled city.

About the end of our first year of internment we received our first "comfort kits," one small package for each two persons and several cans of corned beef for each one. They had been sent by the South African Red Cross, and they were greatly appreciated. Later we received a package each from the Canadian and New Zealand Red Cross organizations. This was quite a let down for us Americans, for many had been boasting that our nation would take care of us and send us plenty of food, but not all things are possible, even to the great U. S. A. However at the end of two years we at last received large presents from the American Red Cross. They arrived just before Christmas in 1943, over forty pounds of supplies each in large comfort kits for the internees besides a great deal of other supplies such as clothing and shoes. Though nothing else ever reached us from the U. S. except one shipment of parcel post in which most all had a part, these supplies probably did an enormous amount of good in preventing even a greater number of deaths during the last year of internment.

Many times the Japanese talked of moving our camp to some other place, and we lived in uncertainty of where we would go next. All the places they mentioned seemed quite impossible f or the great population of Santo Tomas, which had now increased to around five thousand. We owed a lot to an active executive committee and camp leaders who did their best to see that food and sanitation were the best possible. Moreover our commandant, at that time a Japanese civilian, was to a degree sympathetic. But often we were moved about in camp, and as we slept on our narrow cots in the about four by seven feet of space that we for the time being could call our own we longed for a little security and permanence.

In May, 1943, the Japanese suddenly announced that they were moving our camp to the campus of the Agriculture College at Los Banos, about thirty miles southeast of Manila. Eight hundred men were to be chosen immediately and would leave that week to do the work of establishing a camp there. I was one of the men chosen to go with this group. After we had talked it over, Jimmy, now sixteen and grown to quite a young man, agreed to take my place, while I would come on later with Jackie and Sally. The morning of May 11th, early before daybreak, we all assembled to tell them goodbye, expecting to be together again soon, but we had to wait longer than we thought.

Among the war prisoners that the Japanese had taken in the Philippines were twelve Navy nurses and sixty--eight Army nurses. The Navy nurses arrived in Santo Tomas first, being captured at Cavite near Manila, and they were well dressed and equipped with their belongings, but the army nurses were captured only after the fall of Corregidor, where they had endured a nerve wracking time, living in caves while the Japanese bombs blasted to bits everything on the surface of the island. When these nurses arrived they were a tired and rough looking lot, but nothing seemed to daunt their good spirits. They were all like angels to us the way they worked in the hospital and dispensary, and I can never forget the wonderful care I received when I was sick in the hospital, and how I lay awake at night with headache and fever while an Army girl still dressed in her only outfit of course Army clothes and wearing big, heavy Army boots vainly tried to tiptoe quietly among the beds of the sleeping patients.

There were other nurses to whom we all owed much, some who were only practical nurses, yet labored as hard as any. Some were missionary nurses. One was a Miss Earl, missionary to India, who won much praise for her untiring work. She was among those favored to be repatriated in the fall of 1943, traveling on an exchange ship to Goa, a Portuguese enclave on the coast of India. It seemed that all of those repatriated at that time were people in transit and were chosen by the U. S. government.

When the eight hundred men were moved to Los Banos the Navy nurses went along to staff the hospital set up there. At that time the Japanese were constructing a large group of barracks at that place, but those who first went lived in college houses and the gymnasium. We were able to send weekly notes or presents to one another, and though the food at Santo Tomas was not too bad yet, that at Los Banos was reported to be better still.

With the departure of this large body of men and Hr. George Green among them, the Chinese classes were left in my hands. There was a new class for beginners that I was teaching besides a class for advanced students. Because we had no text books for the latter and I had a number of Chinese Bibles and New Testaments we started reading the Gospel of Luke. It was an interesting class. The Chinese Bible is much easier to understand than the English is, for the Chinese words are in general more descriptive, and the Chinese Bible is also in the common language of today, while our English Bible is full of old sad even obsolete words and expressions. In Our class there were missionaries, a Christian Scientist, Eurasians and one Indo-Chinese who was Mohammedan, but we all studied the life of Christ together.