Courage in a White Coat

by Mary Schwaner

  Few inside could manage anything but a terrified prayer. These tanks would lay waste to their buildings before they could make it to the bottom of the stairs.

  This was it. And then the cry went up.

  “Stars! I see stars!”

  The cry was repeated, hall to hall, doorway to doorway. Cautious heads peeked from windows, and a young man broke free from his young wife’s grip and ran into the courtyard.

  “Stars! They have stars! They’re ours!”

  Dim figures walked ahead of the leading tank, and then shots rang out. The man leading the squad crumpled, and shadows of Japanese soldiers melted into the shadows of Santo Tomás, running from the army of tanks.

  The young husband stood entranced, taking it all in, then whooped and threw his cap into the air as he swung his arms wide and turned his back on the looming tanks still poised outside the closed gate.

  “They’re ours!” he hollered.

  He ran back to grab his wife and together they ran into the embracing arms of the massive guns, into the embracing arms of General MacArthur’s 1st Cavalry, U.S. Army.

  Beautiful, boyish faces appeared out of the tops of the tanks, and armed soldiers materialized from behind, quickly subduing the foolish Japanese who thought to make a stand.

  With the speed of flawless practice, the army entered, set up their perimeters, secured new foxholes and set about reclaiming Santo Tomás. Young GIs tumbled from Sherman tanks with names like Battlin’ Basic and Georgia Peach. They made their work look easy, a sure sign of the immense skill they’d acquired amid the ugliness of this war.

  After three years of waiting, the exchange took place in mere minutes. The threatened prisoners were now the protected citizenry, freed by the unabashed, brazen undertaking of General MacArthur’s magnificent young men. His Flying Column.

  . . . .

  As welcome as that blessed moment was, it was also the moment that the big Japanese guns that had been focused on Manila swung about and trained their killing force on Santo Tomás. The final Battle for Manila had begun. Several hundred internees who had survived starvation now perished, felled by an Imperial Army that was slow to recognize they no longer held the city.

  The Japanese guards held two hundred men hostage in the Education Building for some twenty-four hours before finally demanding that his men be given an escort to the edge of the city. MacArthur’s men provided the escort and transported the guards safely to the edge of Manila. And into the hands of guerrilla forces who were only too eager to exact their revenge.

  Through that first long day and longer night, Dorothy worked without rest at the hospital where injured internees were brought. The water had failed again early that day, making triage challenging. Dorothy’s momentary panic over diminishing supplies was quelled when the soldiers began bringing stockpiles of their own medicine and equipment into the hospital. And barrels of water.

  When the bombardment finally quieted and medical personnel were able to re-establish quasi normal shifts, Dorothy slept. But her eagerness to at last celebrate liberation had her slipping from the bed earlier than she might have to seek out her children.

  Now she stood in rapt silence, still feeling the tug from Bobby’s hand that had drawn her to the graveled quadrangle beyond the garden. She had to look up to see his scrappy little face now, beaming atop a huge American tank where he sat on the knee of an American GI.

  She had held him at bay as long as she could, keeping the children with her at the clinic while the Japanese mercilessly shelled the campus. They seemed relentless, aiming all their vitriol at the U.S. troops, only managing to kill or maim more internees than soldiers. The dust had not yet settled as the enemy guns began to discover what it felt like to be overrun by the Allies. The soldiers knew when it was safe and encouraged the internees to come out. Dorothy knew that she needed to offer her children this moment of rejoicing. And to share it with them.

  . . . .

  She felt indecent, nearly naked in her flimsy, threadbare cotton. The uniforms of these soldiers looked like veritable suits of armor, made as they were of thick, sturdy khaki that might still keep a crease if not so covered with the filth of the battlefield. By comparison, their very sturdiness seemed to mock her disheveled state.

  These fellows looked as capable as their actions proved they were, and she had been surprised to note how small and careworn the Japanese soldiers looked by contrast when at last they had been marched out of the Ed Building.

  The young men were everywhere now, and Bobby could scarcely keep from scrambling out from under his bed each time a spate of shelling resumed. A particularly friendly squad had built their small bunker just beyond the Annex, and both children were mesmerized by the easy banter that drifted through the window. And by their infinite supply of chocolate.

  The soldiers’ jocular tone never missed a beat as they went from “at ease” to full alert. They could sight in on a rogue gun that sought to pin them down and quickly silence it, resuming their conversation exactly where it had left off.

  Santo Tomás Internment Camp

  Limited Private Edition - Frederic H. Stevens

  © 1946 - page 380-381

  To be shelled when every internee had that feeling of exaltation of being freed, petrified the minds of all. They were dazed, and absolutely helpless from physical or nervous shock. The horrors they had suffered in the past faded into insignificance and were beyond comprehension. Each shell had a sound all its own... They saw their comrades, their wives and children torn to fragments. They had no chance to retaliate—they could only say: “Thy will be done.”

  ...No one knew just where a safe place was, but the opinion was that the north side of any building was the safest.

  ...So, now in the Camp’s temporary graveyards were rows of newly dug graves and in them were the mortal remains of those unfortunate internees who had fought starvation and cruel treatment of the Japanese for over three years, only to lose their lives at the end—but they died with the knowledge that America had come back—that over them would float the flag they loved. To the survivors, there was the dimness of the future, a new life to begin from scratch.

  The second night of bombing was merciless, and the sound of crumbling masonry told Dorothy there would be scores of wounded needing attention.

  But at last Fred gave the all clear and Bobby scrambled out to check on his crew. Dorothy scooted out from under the bed and brushed the debris from the back of Fred’s shirt. He had stretched himself across the opening at the edge of the bed, shielding them from the chips of mortar and brick that flew in the window when the enemy gun had made a direct hit taking out the corner of the opposite building. Her fingers made swift reconnaissance and found only scratches. Carol stayed where she was, finishing up the latest entry in the notebook her “Yank” had gifted her.

  Fred’s arms stretched across the small living space, one hand on his daughter’s foot, the other hooked through a belt loop on his son’s britches.

  Dorothy was satisfied. All was well.

  She grabbed her medical bag and kissed the top of Fred’s head before she dashed into the night. It wasn’t difficult to follow the cries of alarm that would lead her to the injured.

  She stopped, turned, and looked back at the window. Now all three were framed there, watching her as she sped on a mission of mercy. She blew a kiss, and they answered it in kind, and then she turned.

  Soon. Soon. Soon she would just be the mommy. But right now her hands were needed elsewhere. For now, for at least one more day, she would be the doctor.

  . . . .

  It took weeks for everything to get sorted out, and for the most part, the problems were easy to solve, trivial and merely a nuisance.

  Repatriation brought with it the blessings of food, the absence of fear for personal safety, and trepidation over how vastly the world had changed while the internees were absent from it.

  By the third of March, the Allies owned Manila.
The battle for the city which had originally been declared an Open City—meaning it should have remained free of military aggression—was at an end. Manila was horridly decimated.

  But it was over.

  What would the future hold? The future that had been so dearly longed for was now upon them. One mere step forward and they would be swept up in it. Would it demand more of them than they were able to offer?

  All the possibilities and the challenges that freedom embodied lay daily on each heart.

  On the second day after the soldiers arrived, news had swept through the camp that stopped every internee in their tracks, forced healing hearts to stutter and laughing lips to tremble into a muttered prayer.

  That was the day, they were told, that the High Command of the Japanese Imperial Army had scheduled mass executions for every internee in camp. Every man, woman and child was to have met their death at the hands of the Imperial invaders on February 5th, 1945.

  Terry: The Inspiring Story of a Little Girl’s Survival

  as a POW During WWII

  by Terry Wadsworth Warne

  During the shelling, Lt. Jerry Shea and his companion told my parents…they had seen the drums in the basement of the Main Building. The newspaper in Laramie, Wyoming, published a portion of a letter written by Robert Corey, one of our fellow prisoners who was a mining engineer, to his mother right after liberation that said the Japanese “had hidden dynamite and drums of gasoline throughout all this camp, with orders to kill and burn everyone in the camp at first sign of our soldiers.”

  My parents had been told that the Japanese had placed drums of gasoline in the basement of the Main Building with the intention of herding all the men and boys into the building and setting it on fire to kill all of them like they did to the American military prisoners on the island of Palawan. The women and girls were to be held as hostages and taken to the front lines for the protection of the Japanese troops.

  Japanese POW Kill All Policy

  Taken from an exhibit introduced during the

  Tokyo War Crimes Trial. It is known as the “Kill All Policy”

  and was admitted into evidence on the 9th of January, 1947.

  2. The Methods. (a) Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups or however it is done, with mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, decapitation, or what, dispose of them as the situation dictates.

  (b) In any case it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.

  I hereby certify that this is a true translation from the Journal of the Taiwan P.O.W. H.Q. in Taiwan, entry 1 August 1944.

  Signed, STEPHEN H. GREEN [American cryptographer]

  This document was transmitted to every POW Command and every POW prison camp commander.

  Though there was much speculation, at no time did Dorothy hear that any Japanese soldier had lit or attempted to light any of the deadly gasoline barrel bombs that had been stowed beneath the stairs in Main Building, just yards from the children’s ward. Yet knowledge that they may have been ordered to do so chilled her marrow.

  It seemed now that mere hours were all that had separated her family from victory in life and victory in death. A handful of minutes. That’s all.

  They had survived starvation, humiliation, deprivation and isolation. Blackouts, bombings, air raids and artillery shells. They had lived with courage and determination and abiding faith that they would see home again.

  After surviving three years and two months of captivity, Dorothy, Fred, Carol and Bobby joined hands and walked out of the blackout and into the light—a light of a very different kind. It was the light of freedom.

  Fred’s memoir — March 14, 1945

  No words can describe my feelings the morning I took a walk outside Santo Tomás. I suppose we shall never feel just right until we set foot on the USA. We have not dared even to dream of that until the boys came in for we knew what could easily be the end of our internment, altho that thought never disturbed us. One day when the full story has been written we may then fully realize how narrow was our escape. Nevertheless we shall always be grateful to those who gave all that we might live. The remainder of our lives however well invested cannot pay the debt.

  Carol and Bobby in Denver 1945

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  It wasn’t until April 9, 1945, that Dorothy ushered five-year-old Bobby and seven-year-old Carol Joy onto the repatriation ship bound for a San Pedro pier outside Los Angeles.

  Bobby had turned five just twelve days after liberation and left the confines of Santo Tomás for the first time only three days after that birthday. He’d barely turned two years old when they’d begun their years of confinement in Calinog, Iloilo, and then Santo Tomás. There was nothing in his memory of life outside a barbed wire fence or an iron gate. So everything about this immense world they called freedom was new to him. And not the tiniest bit of it was to go uninvestigated.

  Dorothy answered every question, explained every new task in great detail. Her little son’s eagerness to meet his grandparents touched Dorothy in a way she’d always known would happen but was incredibly moved to witness. When he asked if they would have to stand in line for roll call at Grandma’s barracks, she nearly wept.

  So it was rather a forgotten birthday, though Bobby never noticed. How could he, when he got to ride with his GIs on a troop transport, have the run of a tent city while the papers were sorted, and walk up the gang plank of the biggest ship he’d ever seen?

  How could he when every GI offered him Hershey bars and every Navy nurse gushed over his beautiful curly white hair? Birthdays were nothing compared to this. Not in his experience, at any rate.

  Departure for home took place under a melancholy cloud, as Fred stayed behind to find his way to Iloilo. He would retrieve the college files he’d hidden in a cave in the hills and get the college running again before he would join them stateside. The pain of separation kept tears flowing long after the ship slid over the horizon.

  They’d made the trip in 1941 aboard a belligerent’s boat, running silent and dark through enemy waters. The danger was not yet over, but the atmosphere among the passengers was one of nervous joy. Had the world moved too far beyond their reach while they were suspended in time?.

  June 5, 1945 — Letter from Fred

  ...next week I hope to go to the place where our missionaries hid out. Yesterday, the record of their tragedy was made official and I have a copy.

  [The college] seems to have fared very well: lost only 2 bldgs, but all but 10% of their library. Once I get these trips out of the way and something of an organized group set up, I am going to plan for home. Hope it will be the last of this month, but don’t count on it until I have more definite ideas. [It was not until August that Fred would be reunited with Dorothy, Bobby and Carol.]

  I am understanding too what a whale of a difference it makes to have the family here and not have them here. There is an emptiness that takes the fun out of work. I shall be glad when we can continue to plan things together and do them together. I am sure it was right to come here but I shall be mighty happy when I can turn my face homeward. Till then, I’m loving you one and all and am eager to be with you.

  Fred

  Bobby missed his dad—his best pal—sorely, so for twenty-three days at sea he made everyone on board his best friend and found more than enough time to get into mischief. The second day at sea, Dorothy stooped over to throw down a rug for him to sit on and threw a disc in her back. Now Mom was not the doctor, but the patient. Friends from camp looked after the children while Dorothy lay in agony in her sleep hammock below deck.

  But once they set their feet upon American soil, there was no holding her back. She laughed as Bobby discovered apples, carrots, and elevators. They spent hours in their own personal bathtub, reveling in the idea of one bathroom per family, personal automobiles, and pudding.

  Captured: The Japanes
e Internment of

  American Civilians in the Philippines

  by Frances B. Cogan

  ...as some explained later, leaving fellow internees proved much harder than anyone had originally thought it would be. Who else could empathize with their experience or turn an understanding eye on peculiar, camp-related behaviors: children, for example, unconsciously sneaking food away from a meal and secreting it in a room or finishing dinner by licking the plates—a “habit that was hard to break,” according to former internee Susan Magnuson DeVoe.

  And then came the reunions, introducing her son to her sisters and mother for the first time, watching their instant bond, and wiping each other’s tears. The generosity of their family and friends went miles toward setting them up for housekeeping, something Dorothy ferociously addressed. She would make a haven for Fred to come home to. Soon. But never soon enough. Every minute of separation was a trial, even knowing that it was temporary.

  The Japanese had been so very wrong. Deanna Durbin was indeed not dead! But oh, how the world had changed. Dorothy was making decisions over things she’d never even known about before. The ration cards everyone had used during the war were new and mystifying to her, though so very welcome. ‘Golly’ seemed to be a word she was going to have to work into her vocabulary. Women wore slacks now as much for fashion as for practicality. And everywhere she turned there was another telephone jangling off the hook. The sounds, the smells, the smiles—all were new to Dorothy.

  But there was one thing she’d known in her heart for months now. One thing she’d quietly come to terms with. She would not be returning to medicine. Doctor’s orders. And it wasn’t just her flagging health issues that had made up her mind for her. After one thousand twenty-one days in captivity her dear children had earned the right to her presence in their lives. Fully. Completely. Not what was left of her after sixteen hours a day in some emergency room. Bobby would get his wish. From now on, she would let someone else be the doctor and she would be the mom.