Summary of Chapters 6 Through the Epilogue
Chapter 6:
- After the fall of Corregidor the Japanese had more time for the STIC people. Under the badgering of Earl Carroll and the Central Committee, they grudgingly consented to provide a per capita daily allowance of P.70, but steadfastly refused to recognize the Geneva Convention. They ordered Earl Carroll to head the Finance and Supplies Committee, to which they would turn over the cash for the purchase of food and other necessities. To do justice to his new duties, Carroll resigned as Chairman of the Central committee and persuaded the new Japanese commandant to allow the STIC people to elect a new committee. This was done and, as chairman, the commandant chose a 20 year veteran of the Orient, Carroll Grinnell. He had to cope with the influx of new prisoners from other islands, as well as the civilians and nurses captured on Bataan and Corregidor. In the scramble for accomodations, the camp interpreter, Ernest Stanley, took up residence in the commandant’s office. My father, like many others, built a shack on the campus in which to find a semblance of privacy during the day. Our neighbor in Shanty Town was Jack Percival, an Australian newsman, who was part of the group that met daily to listen to the short wave radio secreted in camp. The first good news he reported, the U.S. victory at Midway, was disputed by the STIC people, who found Japanese claims of victory more credible.
Chapter 7:
- By June 1942 the STIC people deemed any kind of release, including virtual house arrest, preferable to being locked up with 3500 other people on 54 acres. A release committee succeeded in having many of the old, the young, and the sick taken care of outside. Two repatriation ships returned a couple of hundred internees to Shanghai. My best friend left on the second one, leaving me the only child in Room 46. The gate became the lifeline of the STIC people through which their Filipino friends could supply them. The continued loyalty of the Filipinos was a thorn in the Japanese side. When they closed the gate, Grinnell had to accept harsh conditions to have it reopened: inspection of all packages, censorship of all notes, and total absence of contact between the bearer and STIC people. To achieve the last condition, the Japanese forced the internees to build a sawali wall inside the iron railing fronting the campus. The STIC people were so angered by the sawali fence that they overwhelmingly defeated Grinnell at the next election of the Central Committee, and voted for Earl Carroll. The commandant overrode the internee vote and appointed the committee himself, retaining Grinnell as chairman. This accentuated the rift between Grinnell and Carrol, who differed about the role the STIC people should play in the war. Grinnell opted to support the guerrillas by smuggling money to them; Carroll felt this endangered the camp and refused to participate. By October it was clear that U.S. troops, rumored to be fighting in the Solomons, had no hope of freeing us for Christmas. A committee was formed to plan and execute holiday preparations, complete with a visit from Santa Claus.
Chapter 8:
- In the first half of 1943 prisoners were constantly being brought to Santo Tomas from other islands. Crowding reacher intolerable proportions when the camp population approached 5000. The Japanese had always wanted to move the camp out of Manila, where it was a constant reminder to the Filipinos of America. Several sites had been rejected and finally the Japanese insisted that the camp be moved to the Philippine Agricultural College at Lost Banoos, sixty miles from Manila on the shores of Laguna de Bay. It was smaller than Santo Tomas, there were no buildings capable of housing prisoners, and the water supply was inadequate. The Japanese ordered 800 able bodied men to go there and build barracks for 7000, so that all civilian enemy alines could be concentrated in one place. The exodus of the 800 left Santo Tomas with a shortage of men for hard labor. In September 1943, 151 STIC people and one infant were exchanged via Goa for 150 Japanese caught in the U.S. Involuntary departures from camp occurred sporadically as the Japanese eliminated anyone who had worked for military organizations or carted off to Fort Santiago people suspected of helping the guerrillas or of having strategic information. Camp informants were suspected of tipping the Japanese off to such people, and gradually the collaborators became known, and they were shunned. The few who returned from Santiago went directly to the camp hospital and would not break the promise of silence extracted by the Japanese.
Chapter 9:
- in the second half of 1943 Grinnell stepped up his aid to the guerrillas. Stanley strengthened his bonds with the Japanese and became particularly friendly with Tojo, a Japanese interpreter. Carroll established contact with Luis Alcuaz, secretary to the Dominican rector, who agreed to help Carroll get supplies for the camp. Deficiency conditions, childhood diseases, including polio, and an epidemic of dysentary broke out. I was hospitalized with dengue fever. The nurses of Bataan and Corregidor serve the camp well. Japanese doctors tried out an experimental plague vaccine on all the STIC people. Recipe mania swept the hungry camp. A group of prisoners arrived from Davao, including my father’s friend Umpsted, with news of that prison camp. In early November 1943 a force 8 typhoon devastated the shanty areas and flooded the city, causing much hardship.
Chapter 10:
- In November 1943 Red Cross relief supplies arrived in Manila. STIC labor details were sent out to help men from Manila’s military prison unload the ship. We learned of the removal of most military prisoners, including Jack Littig and Harry Morton from the islands to slave labor camps in Japan and elsewhere. We also learned that the Japanese were taking what they wanted of the relief supplies for their own use. When our share of the supplies arrived in camp, it did not match the manifests which the labor detail had stolen. A near riot ensued when the Japanese began inspecting the individual comfort kits, opening perishables and ripping the labels off canned goods to see if there were messages hidden on the back. They took all cigarettes out of the comfort kits and generally ravaged them. Grinnell had his hands full negotiating a settlement. My father helped to solve the problem of distributing supplies of which there were not enough to go around. 207 STIC people are transferred to Los Banos. The children who had been released to the care of the Holy Ghost nuns were reinterned at Christmas time.
Chapter 11:
- In January 1944 the Imperial Japanese Army took over the camp. The Central Committee was abolished and a three man Executive Committee appointed by the Japanese. Again Grinnell was chosen as chairman. Instead o a monetary allowance the army provided food, whose quality and quantity immediately degenerated. The camp labor details had to be restructured to handle the army’s food deliveries. Carroll remianed in charge of supplies and had to activate his smuggling contacts to get food. Grinnell continued to raise money for the guerrillas, be he had to reorganize his conduits, as the army systematically isolated the camp from the outside. The package line was discontinued. When all enemy aliens out on release were re-interned, accommodations had to be reorganized. Shanty owners were allowed to move into their shanties. This meant that I could live with both my parents. Stanley was forced to move out of the commandant’s office but continued to hang around the Japanese and to share any food they offered. He occasionally used his influence with the Japanese to help individual internees who appealed to him. 500 more internees were shipped to Los Banos, most volunteering because there was more food at Los Banos.
Chapter 12:
- As the Army continued to isolate the camp from any possible contact with the outside, they forced the STIC people to build a barbed wire fence twenty feet inside the university wall. Any shacks between the fence and the wall had to be torn down. Instead of garbage being picked up inside the camp by a city truck, it had to be carted to a side gate where the city garbage men loaded it into the truck. One enterprising group of garbage men developed an ingenious smuggling operation out of this near-contact with outsiders. Unfortunately the Japanese soon caught on. Searches for the secret radio intensified. My father refused to join the group which had to resort to taking the radio apart after each use and hiding the parts with different men each night. The Japanese confiscated all cash at this time. Dad buried some in a corned beef can. Some prisoners began bribing Japanese sentries to get extra food. The Japanese counted complaints about the food with orders to do more gardening. In all areas of forced labor, Lieutenant Abiko became the commandant’s enforcer.
Chapter 13:
- American air raids began on September 21, 1944. There was a scramble to build air raid shelters. My dad dug one under our shack at a cost of ten pounds of body weight. Food dwindled to 700 calories a day, even when the Executive Committee decided to begin using the reserves built up over the years, thanks to Carroll’s foresight. I had to quit getting my meals in the children’s kitchen where the best food was served, because the Japanese decreed that children over ten were to be treated like. Adults. Resentment against Stanley, who was now viewed as a collaborator, became widespread, as he continued to get food from the Japanese. The Japanese began storing military supplies on the campus. The Executive Committee protested that this violated the civilian status of the camp. Lieutenant Abiko continues to abuse STIC people who, he felt, were shirking. 150 more people sent to Los Banos, further reducing the labor force at Santo Tomas.
Chapter 14:
- by Christmas 1944 there was neither energy nor matter with which to celebrate. During a search for the camp radio, the Japanese discovered evidence of Grinnell’s smuggling operations to the Guerrillas. He and three of his assistants were arrested and removed from camp bu the military police. Requests for news of them were denied. The commandant ordered Dr. Stevenson to change “starvation” as the cause of death on a death certificate. He refused and was confined in the camp jail. The food situation became critical as reserves ran out. School was discontinued. The secret radio confirmed MacArthur’s landing on Luzon, January 9, 1945. The Japanese began demolishing their military stores in greater Manila. The Japanese in camp began to slaughter their animals. The children gathered at the Japanese kitchen, drawn by the smell of roasting meat, and were forbidden to return. The garrison packed and seemed about to evacuate the camp sevel times. Stanley continued his affiliation with the Japanese, even though it was obvious that they would not be the winners. Thus he saw on the Commandant’s desk the order to vitiate MacArthur’s return to Manila by killing the STIC people en masse.
Chapter 15:
- Stanley got the Japanese interpreter, Tojo, to help him use the radio transmitter in camp to broadcast an appeal to MacArthur to reach Manila before February 6, the date set for our execution. This broadcast was made on January 30. The same day MacArthur ordered three units to race for Manila, promising to decorate the one that liberated Santo Tomas. A First Cavalry Combat Team, with Company C of the 44th Tank Battalion–500 men–raced the seventy miles through occupied Luzon to reach the camp the night of February 3. For forty-eight hours they held the camp against 20,000 Japanese marines barricaded in Intra Muros, the old walled city of Manila. Then reinforcements began to arrive. The Japanese garrison of Santo Tomas took 200 internees hostage in the Education Building, and Japanese marines began shelling the camp from Intra Muros. Abiko was mortally wounded by American fire and badly treated by a group of STIC women. The Japanese set the city afire and began mass atrocities against the Filipino population of Manila.
Chapter 16:
- Stanley was revealed to be a British secret service agent who had worked behind the scenes to help the camp for the whole time of internment. He negotiated the release of the hostages and helped organize the Japanese safe conduct to their lines. Tojo, with his wife and twelve children, surrendered to the Americans in camp and was rewarded for his help. The bodies of Grinnell and his three assistants were found beheaded in an empty lot in the city. Carroll was honored for his service to the camp. More STIC people were killed by Japanese shelling than died during the entire three years. Many also died of irreversible effects of starvation. Los Banos was liberated in a daring raid. The repatriation process began with the flying home of the nurses of Bataan and Corregidor who had served heroically in the camp hospital. The rest of the STIC people were confined to Santo Tomas for a month, while U.S. troops battled the Japanese in house-to-house fighting for control of the city, thus reducing it to the second most destroyed allied city of World War II.
Epilogue:
- My family and I were returned to the United States on the troop ship USS Admiral Eberly in 1945, crossing the Pacific unescorted at the height of the Japanese kamikaze attacks. A three week voyage brought us to Santa Barbara, where we began again to learn to be free.
I hope you didn't mind this little adventure into the past of my friend, and I hope it was illuminating. In just a few days, we're heading back to the Summer Of Sabaton, so things will perk up a bit. See you soon!
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If you didn't read any of the prior chapters, here are some links to those:
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