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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2012 5:19:47 GMT 8
Yes, Dorothy Janson, wife of Helge Janson, the Swedish consul. They managed to provide some assistance to the military prisoners for a while.
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Post by Bob Hudson on Aug 19, 2012 8:23:38 GMT 8
You are not without resources yourself. I read "Highpockets" by Edna Binkowski about Claire Phillips. Edna has a very low opinion of Margaret Utinsky. How she came about that, I am not sure but since she is my future sister in law, I have to keep my mouth shut. She is the "Ate" of her family and no one disagrees with her least of all me. One of the cultural rules I have learned since I moved here to the Philippines in February. I go to Manila frequently and Manila has some resources not available to you such as the American Heritage Center of the Ateneo De Manila University. If the completion of your book is some distance off, I would be glad to scrounge around the Ateneo Library as well as the small but interesting collection of books at the American Chamber of Commerce offices in Makati. I have an appointment with the Chamber of Commerce and the head of FAME (Filipino American Memorial Endowment on September 5th at the Elks Lodge which is located above the COC offices. I will check the COC library and if time allows the Atneo and let you know if I was able to discover anything. Claire Phillips entrusted her daughters safety with Margaret Utinski during the war. It seems to me their relationship was a close one but I'm sure your knowledge of the two surpasses my own. Good luck.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2012 23:01:11 GMT 8
I've had contact on and off with Edna over the years, and she has done a great job pulling together information on Claire Phillips. I'm just not sure that I agree with all of her conclusions, but I certainly respect her efforts. Some of the sources she used in her book gave me ideas for other sources.
My book is taking a different path. I am looking at Claire and Margaret, along with people like Gladys Savary, Dorothy Janson, Nancy Belle Norton, and even Yay Panlilio, as different parts of a larger whole (anti-Japanese activity). So I am focusing on topics like medical care as well as guerrilla and intelligence activity.
I'm off to the National Archives in a few weeks to do research there, but if you run across any information on your end, I would certainly appreciate hearing about it. I am trying to get most of this wrapped up this fall.
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Post by pdh54 on Aug 25, 2012 11:45:48 GMT 8
Miss U by Margaret Utinsky
Page 35 A few days later I was working at the clinic when I saw three American soldiers. I ran out to meet them. As I expected, they were the three men sent by Colonel Duckworth: Captain Jack Le Mire, Neil Burr, and Charles Osborne. They had brought me the lists of the dead and the prisoners. Jack's name wasn't there. But I had made another start – that of collecting such lists. The day was to come when I had the most complete lists of anyone in existence, and they helped the War Department to trace men who had simply dropped into oblivion.
“We are being sent to Camp O'Donnell,” the men told me.
Somewhere they had been given some boiled duck eggs and some warm beer. I rounded out the feast with crackers and jam and we sat there eating and drinking and laughing as though we hadn't a worry in the world, though if a Japanese had come along just then there would have been a mass beheading. We knew it and still we laughed.
This time I really loaded them up with drugs, food, twenty-five pound boxes of prunes, and so forth.
“Where in the name of God did you get this?” they exclaimed.
While we were talking, Captain Le Mire pointed. “See those hills?” he asked. “There are a lot of guerrillas fighting over there.”
“Let's go.” I said.
“Well, it would be a shame to leave these groceries.”
Of course, the reason the Japanese permitted these men to leave the prison on foraging trips was because they figured that they would have no chance to escape. And the Americans did not make the effort because they believed it was a pointless risk. MacArthur had said he would be back, and they expected him to arrive at any time. That was one reason, I suppose, we endured all we did. We didn't see ahead. At first we lived from week to week, awaiting the return of MacArthur. After that, when the whole game got more dangerous, we lived from day to day; and those last months, just minute to minute.
When the Americans left I called after them, “Goodbye, I'll see you at Camp O'Donnell.”
And that night I came down with dysentery. There was a tropical deluge, I remember, and nineteen times I pulled on a coat and staggered out in the rain to the primitive toilet.
Next morning Dr. Atienza looked at me in horror. I was so weak I had to hold on to the cots while I looked after the patients.
“It's this night life,” I snapped at the doctor; but my condition frightened him.
“You white people can't take it,” he declared.
“The hell we can't,” I retorted. “Look at the rest of them,” and I indicated the beds, “At least, I'm still on my feet.”
But I wasn't for long. I lay in that tent, covered with swarms of flies, getting sicker and sicker. The natives heard about it. There was a woman whose little boy I had nursed with pneumonia and she sent a two-wheeled bamboo cart, hauled by a carabao and nursed me for four days. I lay there wracked by nausea, falling into a doze, coming out of it to more sickness. The Filipina woman picked tender leaves from a guava tree and gave them to me to chew as a help against the disease, but I was too weak to chew them.
One day I heard the sound of marching feet and drew my head up so that I could see out. It was my men, marhing out of Bataan to Camp O'Donnell. I lay there, crying weakly.
Now my work in Bataan was done and I was as determined to get out as I had been to get in. But Dr. Canuto, who had tried to have me removed, now refused to take me out. The nurses went to him and said that I would die if I were not taken to Manila for care. Dr. Canuto was not interested. “There is no way to get her there,” he said.
He came to see me and I pointed out, “You have a truck. You could drive me back.”
He yawned. “I'm too tired,” he said.
“You'll get me to Manila or I'll write to the Governor of Bataan. He's a friend of mine. If I die, he will see that my letter goes to the Red Cross in the United State and people will know what goes on here.”
He took me back. At every bridge, of course, we crossed Japanese lines, but I was too sick to care this time. When he left me at St. Luke's Hospital in Manila he said, “You understand, the Red Cross is not responsible for any expenses Miss Utinsky may incur.” That night Miss Wiser, Superintendent of St. Luke's Hospital, Nurse Ross and Dr Forres worked over me, and the next morning Dr. L Z. Fletcher, who was interned in Santo Tomas but was permitted to call at the hospital each day, came to me.
Those weeks in the hospital were literally a nightmare. After the first shock of seeing the line of the March of Death I had thought that I was accustomed to its horrors. But now, in my delirium, I dreamed constantly of it. And always in my dream, those tragic dead were stirring, were trying to come back to life. I could not bear it. I would scream to them not to get up and have it happen to them all over again. They were dead; they must not try to fight again.
There was only one bright spot when a rumor reached me that Jack was in Bilibid Prison. It was the first time I had heard anything of his whereabouts. But the next day Captain L.B. Sartin, a naval officer, got word to me that while it was true Jack had been there for one night, he had been moved and no one knew where he had been taken. But they did know that he had been captured on Corregidor, in the tunnel which he had helped to build.
At last I was strong enough so that I could stand up if I had something to hold onto and I left the hospital......................
…...................When I finally got home I was so exhausted it was all I could do to get into bed.......
I had to get back my strength quickly for I was to take a private case the next day, a job which Mrs. Kummer had got for me. It was an American named Van Vorries, a vice-president of General Motors, who had kept out of internment camp because he was very ill.
Every morning Lee came for me with a carromata. He would push from behind and the cochero would pull and between them they got me into the cart and out the same way. I could barely stand and how I looked after Mr. Van Vorries I don't know. Between my looking after him and his looking after me, we both got well.........................
…............Then a letter came from Dr. Atienza. “Our people need you,” it said. I knew what it meant. He had found a way of establishing contact with the American prisoners at Camp O'Donnell. The next day I was on a train going to Capas.
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Post by okla on Aug 25, 2012 22:56:09 GMT 8
Hey Patty.....The passages you have quoted pertaining to the Japanese allowing the American Officers to move about without supervision/guards,etc reminded me of an incident that I read about sometime in the past. It seems that this small group of POWs (3 0r 4 men), were sent, with only one NCO guard, into Manila to procure some supplies for use back at Cabanatuan. It boggled my mind to read that they spent part of the day eating ice cream in some establishment in Manila with their Japanese overseer picking up the tab. You wouldn't think there would be any Ice Cream Parlors open for business in those days. The behavior of Japanese guards towards their charges has always been a paradox. Vicious brutality toward one group of POWs on the Death March (no water stops,etc on penalty of death,etc) and the next group being allowed to drink their fill and even allowed a quick dunk in one of the little streams that they crossed heading north. I guess it depended on who the guards were, whether they were "keeping up", on schedule,etc. A Death March survivor, who I served with in Korea, once remarked that the Korean and Formosan guards were often the meanest. The American/Filipino POWs figured that these guys were trying to curry favor with the Japanese Officers. Who knows??? As I say, the behavior of these folks, during wartime, will always be an enigma. I can never help but wonder, deep down, if anything has changed, even to this day. Cheers.
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Post by sherwino on Aug 28, 2012 8:07:45 GMT 8
I want to ask you a question, guys. Were all Americans(even civilians) were imprisoned during that time?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2012 9:31:45 GMT 8
Civilians--men, women, and children--were interned. The campus of Santo Tomas held most of them. Frances Cogan's book Captured is very good. Mine, Prisoners in Paradise, focuses on the women.
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Post by pdh54 on Aug 28, 2012 11:34:47 GMT 8
Hi Sherwino
Almost all civilians whose nationalities were not allied to Japan were interned. There are a few I have come across while reading "Miss U" who were not. They are mostly women married to men like the German Mr. Kummer. There were also some people, probably not many, who were allowed to stay out of the prisons due to their health.. See the reference to Mr. Van Vorries mentioned above.
It seems the Japanese were a little 'easier' on civilians than military personnel, although they were quite inhumane to them also at times.
I found it startling that the Japs seemed to allow our POWs out of the camps for various reasons like foraging, farming, etc; sometimes with little or no guards.
Patty
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Post by sherwino on Aug 28, 2012 12:40:31 GMT 8
Thanks, Misstk and Patty. That's why my grandfather's family had to hide in Mount Makiling. They have a grandfather then who's a supervisor in the Mariveles Quarry, the name is John Monroe. They were evacuated from Bataan via a motor launch. I had thought before that they were hiding to avoid the hostilities, but now it makes more sense that it was to avoid the japs.
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Post by Bob Hudson on Aug 28, 2012 14:23:54 GMT 8
Try going to this website > www.bacepow.net/ It is a website maintained by the "Bay Area Civilian EX Prisoners of War" I the San Francisco Bay area. They have conventions as well. They are all on the whole, a little younger than military POW's because so many of them were children or teenagers during captivity.
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