Frances frowned. “Don’t you like it?”
“Oh! It’s wonderful! Too wonderful. I’ll save the rest for Bobby and Carol. They will be in heaven.”
“How old are they?”
“Bobby’s almost three and Carol just turned five.”
“Such sweet ages. I remember when my boys were that age,” Frances said, her smile turning wistful.
“I’d love to meet them.”
“And I would give anything in this world to see them right now,” Frances said softly. “Anthony and Samuel are in Australia.”
“How very hard for you!”
Dorothy put out her hand to console the young woman, and in a few quiet words, the Lloyd family’s story spilled out. Frances, her husband and two boys had made their home in Hong Kong, and when war threatened, her husband Samuel insisted she and the children evacuate to Australia, which they did. Her husband stayed at his job with Asiatic Petroleum in Hong Kong.
When it seemed calm enough, Frances and her husband Samuel met halfway for a brief visit in Manila—on December 8, 1941, the day of the first attack. Stranded in Manila with their boys still in Australia, they were among the first to be interned one month later on January 8, 1942.
As the final words of the wrenching story penetrated Dorothy’s heart, the young woman was called to assist a nearby patient. They stood, each reacting with a caregiver’s instant response. But before they moved, Frances and Dorothy shared an embrace, a hug that went beyond the moment to encompass the heartache one mother sensed in another.
The entire fourteen months that Dorothy’s family had been confined together in Calinog, Frances had been here. Listening to the bamboo telegraph report news of Japanese forces advancing on Australia. Not knowing if her boys were alright. Never hearing their voices. Never touching their faces.
So she came here to the children’s ward every day, offering aid to some other mother’s child because her heart was breaking for her own.
A familiar tingling set Dorothy’s fingers typing against her thigh.
Dearest Mother,
I’m so bound up in surviving this ordeal that I fail to remember how this war is affecting other mothers...how it must be affecting you. I forget about that ache that must live in the pit of your stomach, wondering every day if we’re all right. Worried about little Bobby, a child you’ve never met but who lives with all his rambunctious glory in your heart.
Forgive me, Mother, for forgetting that this is your war, too.
. . . .
A minute of peaceful seclusion was all she asked. Just one minute. One minute to feel a snippet of breeze that might cool the sweat from her brow. One minute to soak her feet in a luxurious bath of Epsom salts.
Just one minute.
But at Santo Tomás, that was an impossibility. Today the muted, lethargic thrum of activity in the yard assailed Dorothy as she headed for the laundry tub. If it was a good day, waiting in line for the tub would take about a half hour. If not—well, it wasn’t unusual to lose a good two hours just waiting your turn in one line or another.
So the inevitable conversation trickled out. Johnny was teething again. Sarah had a crush on the Baker boy. Why wouldn’t the camp committee talk to Commandant Konishi again about the dwindling food supply. Had Charlie Winters successfully hidden the food bundle that had come over the wall to him the night before. The usual.
Dorothy turned away from her grousing neighbor and scouted for a bit of shade where she could wait her turn. Fred knew several men who had spent endless hours warning Charlie to slow down his deliveries. But selling the contraband was keeping his family alive. So Charlie persisted.
Hundreds of internees seemed to have an unlimited supply of money. Consequently, there were always buyers for anything Charlie could bring in. In some cases, company VIP’s had lines of credit that were guaranteed to be paid in full the minute the internees were released. In other cases, internees provided needed services that garnered them an income.
“I understand your Fred has joined the Thespians for this week’s comedy,” a cheerful low voice said in her ear.
The intern who introduced herself as Josie came around to stand beside Dorothy near the line, a bundle of laundry hitched high on her right hip.
Dorothy grinned. “Ah, yes, it’s true, although I do believe Thespian is a rather grand label for the kind of acting he’ll be doing in their little skit.”
“Well, it is a comedy, after all. One wouldn’t expect anything too Shakespearian,” Josie laughed.
“Oh, forsooth, you misapprehend me, fair maid. Shakespeare he can do! It’s contemporary man that he finds a bit of a challenge.”
Josie hooted. “They should have cast you in the play, Dr. Kinney. You’re a natural!”
The two women shared a laugh that almost lit their eyes before they parted and stepped up to the newly available tub. It was early in the day, and the water wasn’t too brackish yet. Still, doing laundry in someone else’s dirty water was an abhorrence Dorothy was quite ready to be done with.
Sweat trickled down her back, sending up the sour scent that reminded her this dress needed laundering as desperately as the ones in her bundle. If only there was a tree to offer some shade.
She doubted they had to stand in line—in the sun, no less—in Hopevale. Dorothy closed her eyes and pictured the mythical canopy of palm trees she’d conjured up in her imagination, the canopy of trees that kept the little paradise of Hopevale in a perpetual state of coolness. It was jungle, wasn’t it? Vast, overgrown jungle. There had to be plenty of shade.
Were her friends who had fled to the hills cavorting happily in their little inland paradise today? She shoved a damp lock off her forehead, trying to shove the envious thoughts away, as well. They most likely had to beat their clothes against a rock in a mountain stream rather than experience the luxury of an actual tub.
But to Dorothy’s imagination, it seemed that nobody must ever go hungry in Hopevale, with fresh mangoes on every branch and plenty of good jungle vegetation to go around.
Nobody ever got weary in Hopevale, with the spirited little cadre of missionaries to keep God’s Word on the tip of every tongue.
Nobody ever snapped at their neighbor or coveted someone else’s dinner plate.
Blessed are the poor in heart, for they shall find Hopevale.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit all the mangoes.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be home by Christmas.
Blessed—
“Dr. Kinney?”
Dorothy looked up, startled by Josie’s hand on her arm.
“I hope you have lots of dresses, ma’am,” she said, “because if you keep scrubbing like that, there’s going to be nothing left of this one!”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
SAY SOMETHING
Dorothy’s dress was sticking to her shoulders. She shifted, wishing the stifling humidity would lift. It was like breathing through a cloud as she paid a housecall on a very sick woman.
“I believe your mother has acute enteritis,” she told the son.
Dorothy turned to the boy who had led her to his mother’s bedside. He was so distraught that she put a comforting hand on the teenager’s shoulder. He’d come to her begging that she persuade his mother to get medical help.
“Not dysentery?” the boy asked. His bony hands twisted at his frayed walking shorts that had long ago given up any resemblance to their original fine quality. Clearly, they had been an expensive purchase at some point in time. But from the looks of his mother’s spartan area, they were no longer people of means.
The woman was thin. Too thin to sustain much of an illness. Dysentery might have taken her through death’s door. But Dorothy felt this bout of enteritis would not—if they could get it quickly under control.
The boy bunked with other teenage boys and some of the men on the balcony of the gymnasium. It was Fred who had seen the boy’s worry and found o
ut that he hadn’t been allowed into his mother’s room in the Annex. All he knew was that she was sick but wouldn’t go to the hospital.
At Fred’s urging, Corbett Conklin had waited around the children’s hospital until Dorothy was finished with her outpatient clinic. When she heard his plea she had not hesitated to escort him past the protesting room monitors who guarded the door of his mother’s quarters. She found the woman weak and dehydrated on her bed.
“No, not dysentery. It has similar symptoms, but enteritis is more like a food poisoning that sets in and sticks around to cause trouble.” Dorothy was pleased to see the boy relax slightly. “Because she’s dehydrated, I’m going to ask Dr. Waters to admit her to the hospital. They’ll get her fixed up just fine. And then...”
Once again Dorothy battled with the severe shortage of drugs the camp was currently experiencing. Nurse Noell was absolutely brilliant at getting her hands on the most commonly needed drugs. But there was never anywhere near enough to treat every condition. Not in a camp where half the population suffered some tropical malady and all the camp suffered some nutritional deficit. It would be a miracle if the hospital had any of the drugs that might give Mrs. Conklin speedy relief.
What she contemplated now was a simple non-medicinal aid for minimizing the symptoms of acute enteritis—a homeopathic recipe that would have been swift and inexpensive if her patient were anywhere but here in Santo Tomás.
“Then what?” Corbett began to fidget, upset by Dorothy’s hesitation.
“Well, then she’ll be strong enough to leave her room so you can spend time together. And whenever you can get hold of an egg, make a sort of eggnog for her. That will do wonders to keep the enteritis from setting back in.”
She smiled, regretting how easily her words could either plant fear or relief in the boy. But perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising. Fred had told her that Corbett’s father had not survived the death march on Bataan. He was a much-loved traveling magistrate and word had been carried along the bamboo telegraph to inform Mrs. Conklin that he had been killed. He had joined the guerilla forces and had fallen in the first days of the march. By getting word swiftly to Mrs. Conklin, the guerillas honored the man they regarded so highly.
Corbett’s mother was all he had left in the world. His anxiety would understandably rest on tenterhooks.
“For now, take this note to Dr. Waters in the main hospital. I’ll wait here and look after your mother until—”
“I’ll be right back!” he said as he snatched the note and disappeared..
Dorothy settled on the edge of the bed to wait for Henry Waters to arrive. If he was in surgery, it could be awhile. But she knew he would admit Mrs. Conklin to the main hospital once he saw her deteriorating state.
The woman on the bed beside her was too weak for conversation at the moment, so Dorothy simply rested her hand lightly on the woman’s shoulder, mostly to remind her someone was here, that she wasn’t alone.
“You have a lovely son, Mrs. Conklin.”
The woman’s eyes fluttered and she opened her dry lips to speak. Dorothy had to lean close to hear the woman’s words...words that broke Dorothy’s heart.
“He’s not my son,” she whispered.
“But his name—”
“I gave him the name Corbett. And my last name. He doesn’t...he doesn’t remember his own name.”
The surprise Dorothy couldn’t keep from her face must have led the woman to continue her story.
“A year ago, while his family was still hiding in the city, he saw his mother shot, and his father...” Mrs. Conklin paused. Not so much because it was hard for her to speak, but because it appeared difficult to say the words. “Beheaded,” she whispered.
Dorothy pressed her fingers into the woman’s shoulder, finding no words to express her horror at the woman’s revelation. Moments passed before either of them could speak.
“It was just after I received word of my dear Patrick’s death. I found the boy standing in the road. His mother was...horribly damaged. But I know that she saw me before she...before she died. But his—” A tear slipped from her eye and traced a line down her temple and onto the pillow. “His father’s head was...was...gruesomely displayed.” She choked. “Corbett was staring at it. He...he wouldn’t speak to me. He wasn’t crying, he was just...looking like he expected it to...to say something.”
Dorothy’s own tears flowed freely now. The woman gripped her hand just as Dr. Waters stepped into the room.
“No one...no one knows. He doesn’t remember a thing about it now. He thinks he’s my son. Don’t...”
“Hush now. I won’t say a word. Mrs. Conklin, you can be sure his story is safe with me. And my husband will look after him. They bunk near each other, you know. Let’s just get you better now,” she urged.
But Dorothy knew already that somehow, without breaking her promise, she’d find a way to enlist Fred’s help with Corbett. If he’d suppressed his memory so significantly, it could be cruelly catastrophic for him if the images came flooding back too swiftly.
This boy might very well be a ticking time bomb.
. . . .
An astonishing ten months disappeared in a haze of humid days and airless nights, tended wounds and minor surgeries, weary lines and endless roll calls. They were marked by mounting alarm over the progress of the war, an incredible shortage of materials of any kind, and failing health in most of the four thousand internees. Ever so quietly, a group of special squads were organized, made up of one hundred and three hand-picked men. They would spring into action if the camp fell under a state of emergency and lives were threatened on a large scale.
Once the package lines were permanently closed and food and goods no longer came regularly into camp, the chow lines nearly doubled, making short rations even shorter. The commandant confiscated all unused building materials, making future shanty repair an impossibility. All privately owned electrical and gas appliances were ordered to be surrendered to the Japanese authorities.
Santo Tomás Internment Camp
Limited Private Edition - Frederic H. Stevens
© 1946 - page 445
July 17—Japanese sergeant with small camera begins photographing all internees in groups of five, each with number displayed across chest.
Occasionally Dorothy had the opportunity to visit the nipa huts, though due to weather her outdoor ventures were often severely limited to dashing from the Annex to the children’s hospital and back. For three days in November, torrential rains and hurricane-force winds battered the campus. When it finally calmed, shanties were in shambles, some blown completely down. Portions of the boardwalk lay scattered about the garden area, and walking through the camp was made treacherous due to debris that littered the grounds.
Twenty-seven inches had fallen in three days, water-logging possessions, destroying perishables, and contaminating the camp’s water supply.
Satisfied that her outpatients were all safe and doing well, Dorothy headed to Glamorville to collect Carol Joy from Jeanne’s shanty. The family called it the Travay Chalet. She looked forward to these times, always pleased when Jeanne invited her in to sit for awhile and chat.
It was the nicest nipa hut she’d seen, with rattan rugs on the floor and cleverly woven shades with open spaces to let the light in. They lent a feeling of privacy even though the open squares were large enough and placed strategically enough that the Japanese guards could get an adequate look inside whenever they felt the need.
The Travays always seemed to have funds, and had hired others so that their ‘chalet’ was one of the first shanties to be restored after the monsoon.
“Have you talked to Mr. Chambers this afternoon?” Jeanne handed Dorothy a china teacup with some sort of cool, fruity tea. Impeccable manners shown through her every movement, yet in such a natural way that it was like chatting with a school chum. Now she was sharing with Dorothy the wonderful cool tea she’d made for herself on this blistering after
noon.
The fact that it was cool was as surprising as the fruity taste, and the two sensations fostered an immensely satisfied smile.
‘Cool’ could be achieved by carefully covering an earthenware jug or pitcher, then partially burying it in the shade beneath the stilted shanty. It was an extra step requiring a tiring bit of work, which made it all the more touching that Jeanne had shared this hard-won cool tea with her.
She took a sip, marveling at the brilliant explosion of taste in her mouth. She held it there, savoring the way it seemed to refresh and revive her. It was gloriously, maddeningly sweet.
She often enjoyed what she thought of as delicacies here at the chalet. Sitting in the very civilized space she could almost forget where she was.
Jeanne’s father was—or rather, had been—a prominent businessman in Manila. In fact, he owned one of the Philippine’s larger businesses before the war. He had resources beyond those that most here enjoyed, though there were many ways in which his family suffered as hers did. Especially now that the gates had been closed to Filipino tradesmen.
Somehow, though, probably via the camp’s black market, Mr. Travay was still able to get small quantities of supplemental food. She knew Jeanne shared bits of food with Bobby and Carol. From the looks of it, they were probably from her own rations, as Jeanne was as lean as most of the young women her age in the camp. There was no end to the blessings the girl had brought to the Chambers family. And the cool tea seemed heaven sent.
Now it was Jeanne’s lovely voice that brought Dorothy back from her brief reverie.
“No, I actually haven’t seen Fred yet today. Is something—”
“Oh no! Nothing’s wrong. If anything, something’s very, very right.”
She was beaming, clearly enjoying being the one to share a titillating piece of news.
“Well then, out with it,” Dorothy smiled. “You look like the cat that ate the canary!”
Jeanne laughed. “I’ll be eating more than that by this time tomorrow!” She grinned. “The Red Cross Comfort Kits have arrived!”
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