Courage in a White Coat

by Mary Schwaner

  But one particularly challenging day, when the gates were not open to trading as they had come to expect, the internees were startled to find that camp supplies were not adequate to provide dinner. How they let it happen, no one could explain. The prospect of no food virtually silenced the camp. They moved around stunned, completely demoralized that they could find themselves going to bed on an empty stomach.

  The next morning was not so quiet.

  When no breakfast could be had either, people rummaged in their private stashes for a crumb of any kind. Coming up empty made them frustrated and angry. And anger made them noisy.

  The camp committee refused to meet. They had suffered no food for twenty-four hours the same as the rest, and they weren’t about to become the “whipping boy” for such a disaster.

  Just as the noisiest internees were working themselves into a frenzy, providence stepped in to avert a wholesale riot.

  Fred’s memoir

  ...a man came to the gate and spoke to myself and one of the cooks. A quarter of meat was brought in and hung up in the kitchen for all to see. Everyone looked forward to the beef-feast the next day. After the meat was consumed with relish and appreciation, apparently by all, our small daughter was heard to remark, “My daddy said it was horsemeat”.

  And so it was.

  A calesa (small two-wheeled buggy) pony had been killed in an accident. The animal was butchered and a hind quarter brought to the Camp by a Filipino who guaranteed it had been prepared under sanitary conditions and that the pony was healthy.

  No one recanted his words of praise for the meat and, so far as is known, no one regurgitated.

  It was often that way. The good hearts of the Filipinos filled many needs, seen and unseen, in the most compassionate outpouring of love for the Americans they counted as their neighbors, their friends.

  . . . .

  Dehydration was a constant problem in the camp. Despite Dorothy’s many cautionary words, people consumed less and less water. It was so far across the compound to the San Augustin College and its drinking-water source, and the containers of water were so very heavy to carry back, they said.

  And she certainly understood their complaints.

  “But good lord, Fred. It’s so simple. They should just buck up and do it. And why hasn’t someone rigged a wheelbarrow, for pity’s sake?”

  At least she didn’t have to worry about her children. Fred never failed to keep them supplied so that every day she could boil two gallons of water in her pickle jars, just for her family’s drinking and cooking and cleaning. And at the end of every day, the jars would be bone dry.

  Dorothy was managing to keep herself and her family from experiencing dehydration, but getting enough rest was quite another matter. As was her habit, Dorothy made herself available day or night to treat any health problems, and people seemed not to care that they were waking her from a sound sleep to tend to their minor ailments. But because she never made them feel they should have waited until morning, they continued the practice.

  The most worrisome problem among internees was caused by bluebottle flies. Mosquito netting kept insects at bay through the night. But in the daytime, as they moved about the camp, everyone did constant battle with the flies.

  Any small scratch was an open invitation to the bluebottles. And with the horrid sanitary conditions that existed in Iloilo City, it was an open invitation to disease.

  The simple solution was to use plenty of soap.

  But often there was no soap.

  And a small scratch visited by even one fly quickly became a tropical ulcer. They occurred most often in the lower legs and feet, and in no time at all the flesh would begin to deteriorate and refuse to heal.

  Dorothy knew that once the ulcer got to the deep tissue and muscle, amputation was a high probability for the patient. So when Fred came sheepishly to her and showed her a well-established tropical ulcer, she was more than a little miffed.

  “Fred! How did you let this happen?” Dorothy’s face screwed up in the worried expression with which he was most familiar. He’d really screwed up this time. But they’d been on work detail under Japanese guard, carrying the camp’s refuse to the dump site two miles away when he stepped on a piece of shrapnel. It flipped up and caught him just above the ankle.

  He’d cleaned it when he got home, but the beastly flies had already done their damage.

  Dorothy’s supply of sulfanilimide was put to the task, and eventually his ulcer did heal. But she was going to have to find a way to get more if they stayed in this disease-ridden place much longer.

  She didn’t even care that she’d put the fear of God into her children. If they got a scratch, they were to use Carol’s bottle of soapy-soap immediately, then come to see her. No matter what.

  Fred’s memoir

  Life seemed to move at a healthy pace in general. Soap was a prize item but seemed to be available when needed. However, everyone in Camp suffered from tropical ulcers due to flies from unsanitary conditions in Iloilo City and lack of soap to keep sores clean. The writer still bears scars of the ulcers. Fortunately Mrs. Chambers had some sulfanilimide which hastened cures.

  While a major concern was for the health of the body, the mind was not neglected. Daily, we made a trip, under guard, to the San Augustin College, next door, for drinking water. Our guard, a local merchant before the War and very cordial toward internees, followed well behind to give time for our American Augustinian priests to pick up the news from their Spanish colleagues and to be given books. Father Monte, Italian (Augustinian Priest) from Philadelphia, taught Spanish to those who desired it. A teacher internee taught some of the children, with the result that our daughter was a year ahead in her reading when she returned to school after the War.

  . . . .

  “This is a stupid book!” Carol threw the book down in disgust.

  “What book?” Dorothy was startled and dropped the skein of yarn she’d been rolling. Bobby had outgrown his cotton sweater and the first step in making a new one was to unravel the old one into orderly skeins.

  Carol dodged to her left and scooped up the ball of yarn before it rolled out the door and restored it to her mother’s lap.

  “What book?” Dorothy asked again.

  “This one,” Carol said, kicking the book further under the bed.

  “Carol Joy, that is no way to treat a book,” Dorothy scolded. “Books are precious! The things we can learn, the places we can visit without even getting out of our chair are wonderful.” She cocked her head toward the book and cocked an eyebrow toward Carol who immediately got the message. She begrudgingly retrieved the book and dusted it off before plopping it down on the crate next to her mother.

  “Oh my! Little Black Sambo! Carol, do you know where this story takes place?”

  “Under a tree,” she sulked.

  “But where is the tree?”

  Carol thought for a minute. “In little black Sambo’s town.”

  “Well, maybe, but the tree is in India! Where you were born!”

  “In India? Really?”

  “Yes, sweetie-kins. In India. And it’s sort of like a fable. You know, like Aesop’s fables.”

  “I don’t care,” Carol pouted, “it’s still a stupid book.”

  Dorothy was about to launch into an explanation of the moral of the story, that the tigers each wanted to be the most grand tiger in the jungle, and how that was their downfall. But something stopped her. Carol wouldn’t have minded that. It was the kind of thing she was likely to preach to Bobby once she’d read it in a book. And she definitely knew the difference between truth and fiction. The story itself wouldn’t have upset her.

  Dorothy put down the yarn and pulled Carol into her lap. She was getting taller now, her legs a bit gangly and her curls a bit less unruly, but she was not too old to sit on her mother’s knee.

  “Tell me what made you angry, sweetie.”

  Carol’s lip trembled and she
played with the collar of her mother’s dress while she worked up the courage to speak.

  When the reason for her upset finally came out, Dorothy nearly cried. Little Black Sambo’s mother made him a beautiful red coat. Then got him a pair of beautiful blue trousers and a pair of lovely purple shoes. The remarkably colorful illustrations showed Sambo in all his fine new clothes, beaming and strutting through the jungle.

  Her fingers caressed the pictures as her sadness tumbled out.

  “He looks so pretty,” Carol said quietly. “And Mommy, he has purple shoes!”

  Ah. Purple shoes. A red jacket, blue trousers and purple shoes.

  He was full of color. Full of life. And her little daughter had not had colorful new clothing for longer than she could remember. Everything was drab off-white or washed out colors faded by the merciless sun. And shoes that were really too small, so the toes had been cut to make them into sandals.

  Of course the child would want colorful clothes. Of course the illustrations made her sick with envy.

  Dorothy fingered the yarn she was retrieving from Bobby’s little sweater and knew what she had to do. Somehow she had to find purple dye. Maybe eggplant? She’d dye the yarn and make it into a sleeveless bolero vest for Carol. The bolero would add color to whatever she was wearing.

  The shoes, however, were a different matter.

  For several days Dorothy stewed about the shoes. She did her daily chores and tended to the medical needs of the camp, but always, in the back of her mind, was the problem of shoes for Carol Joy. Preferably purple.

  At night, after Carol was asleep, she worked on knitting the bolero. It was coming along beautifully. The pattern she decided to knit into the bottom border created just the kind of puzzle she needed to absorb her interest until the night cooled off enough to sleep. The pattern made the going much slower, but that was the joy of it.

  She had a list of things she wanted to ask Loreto Tupaz about when she visited the camp that week, and front and center on her mind was shoes for Carol. But when the opportunity arose, Loreto merely scrunched up her face at the request. Little Filipina girls went barefoot or sandal-footed. Western shoes were hard to come by. For children, at any rate. And impossible with a war going on.

  “And buttons,” Dorothy added. “Any bright, big, colorful buttons. Can you find any?”

  Loreto patted her hand. “If they here, I get. You see. Not to worry.”

  “And eggplant. Don’t forget eggplant!”

  She sounded so needy, so uncharacteristically demanding even to her own ear. But somehow it had become the most important thing in the world to Dorothy, to bring some color into her dear daughter’s life.

  The days seemed to dawdle on as she waited for Loreto’s return visit. When “market day” came and the little ninety-pound battalion sadly shook her head, Dorothy began to despair of getting a pair of shoes for Carol.

  Still, Loreto did find two big, luscious-looking eggplant, which cheered Dorothy no end. She quickly set about preserving the “meat” and when she had the beautiful purple rinds ready, she found an out-of-the way place to let them dry in the sun. Then she watched them like a hawk for three days, fearful that some wayward bird would swoop in and steal her purple treasure.

  But they remained safe. And they dried beautifully.

  A piece of screen laid over a tin can worked perfectly to shave her eggplant rinds into powder. A little water would turn it into a regal dye. She had saved back a half jar of banana-peel vinegar to set the dye. Everything was ready. If only she had a pair of shoes.

  By Saturday she had finished knitting the bolero. She’d changed her mind about dying it purple. She would save the dye for shoes, mostly because she had visions of the tropical climate turning the upper half of her daughter’s torso purple—despite the banana-peel vinegar—to say nothing of staining whatever dress she had on underneath it.

  A strip of red cloth, though, solved her challenge of making the little vest full of color. She pieced it together from an old bandana, then gathered it to make a perfect bright ruffle around the bottom of the short vest just below the carefully worked border. Marching up the front were three giant red buttons Loreto had managed to find. A small bow at the neckline made from a pair of denim overalls Bobby had outgrown completed the truly sassy look.

  She’d been on a mission to bring color into her daughter’s world, and the colorful bolero did just that.

  “Mommy,” Carol gasped when Dorothy presented it to her just before bedtime. “Mommy!”

  She hugged the bolero to her heart, then held it out, then hugged it again. She could scarcely let go of it long enough to put it on.

  There was no question that it would fit perfectly.

  And unlike any other event in Dorothy’s memory, it rendered Carol Joy speechless.

  It was the range of emotion that startled Dorothy. Carol wasn’t a child to covet things. It was clearly her grief over the absence of color in her life that had initiated her anger over the innocent book. But is that truly what she mourned? Or was it a greater loss that haunted her?

  That night Dorothy watched her little daughter sleep, the new bolero laid out just above her pillow. Still within reach. In that moment it was impossible to “keep the salt on the inside”, and the tears flowed freely. Not from sadness, but from the knowledge that she’d been able to bring some joy back into her sweet daughter’s face.

  It was the kind of thing her own mother would have done for her. A lifetime ago. Just thinking of her mother caused her heart to pinch, and made her fingers twitch for the typewriter keys. There had been no typewriter, no spare paper or ink to write with for eight months now. And in truth, she dared not write even if she had the wherewithal to do it. The Japanese guards tolerated many things, but not the keeping of a journal or the writing of a letter that might be spirited out of the camp and into the hands of the enemy. So she had not even endeavored to write.

  But tonight, with the poignance of her daughter’s joy still wrapped around her, Dorothy wrote. In her heart. The words she would write to her mother, if only she could.

  Dearest Mother,

  Dorothy found her fingers moving on her knees, typing out the words. As they came faster and faster, her fingers took on more speed, writing into thin air the words that she willed to take wing and find her mother.

  This war, this senseless, crazed mania that has swept the whole of civilization into something nobody can even recognize, has for a moment taken a back seat to a small child’s delight.

  . . . .

  The Sunday morning before Christmas there was no question what Carol would wear, and she literally danced all the way to chapel, so happy was she to have some color restored.

  Christmas in captivity. It didn’t feel like something to dance about, but to keep the smile on her daughter’s face, Dorothy danced alongside her. Carol’s giggle was balm to her heart, and for a few more precious steps Dorothy kept up with Carol. But all too soon the effort was too much, and Dorothy slowed to a walk, resigned to merely watching her dancing daughter.

  When they reached the chapel space, Carol instinctively slowed and they walked together to the front of the outdoor chapel, to the bench that was “theirs”.

  Dorothy walked on to the makeshift altar and placed an arrangement of poinsettias she’d gathered from the ones that grew like weeds along the fence. It was satisfying in its simplicity, comforting in its rich color.

  And it spoke of Christmas.

  She took Bobby from his daddy’s arms and turned, expecting to see Carol already sitting in her favored spot.

  But she wasn’t.

  Carol stood to the side, her hands clasped over her mouth, trying hard not to shriek in this place she knew was to be honored with a quiet voice.

  She stood because the place Carol sat every Sunday morning was occupied. By a slightly used pair of dirty white canvas boaters.

  Just Carol’s size.

  Just waiting t
o be transformed by Dorothy’s eggplant dye.

  Dorothy looked at the people filing in. They were all looking at one another with sly smiles and winks. But no one, not one single person, would own up to having gifted Carol with her soon-to-be purple shoes.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  LEAVING ILOILO

  June 16, 1943

  “We can’t take it all, Dorothy. There’s no room.”

  Fred and Dorothy stood at the sandbox bed and took inventory of the things that had not yet been packed. For six months they’d planned this, ever since the January day when the commandant strode in, stomped his booted feet to get their attention, and said to prioritize everything they owned, and left.

  They’d all figured that meant they were going to move. But they’d been here fourteen months now, and until today, they’d had no word at all as to when it was going to happen.

  Twice they’d had false alarms, seeing indications from their Japanese guards that they would be moving. But both times rumor had it that American submarines had been seen in the harbor and when rumor evaporated, the threat of moving went with it.

  When the word finally came, it became very real in a hurry. The announcement cast a troubling pall over the group of one hundred mismatched souls who somehow had managed to maintain a civilized community under completely dire conditions. But there was no time to complain. Or insist on an explanation. Or ask where they were going.

  An intimidating cluster of Japanese officers and civilians armed with pistols and military rifles strode into the camp on the morning of June 16, 1943. In as few words as possible, the commandant announced the entire camp must be ready to leave by eleven. And take only what they could carry.