Limerick: 80 years since Liberation Day by Martin Meadows

Santo Tomas Internment Camp Liberation, 1945

80 years since Liberation Day
(3 February 1945 – 3 February 2025)

Former internee Janice Crabb’s Polio Story

Janice Crabb in The Winona Daily News 10 January 1950Former Santo Tomas Internment Camp (STIC) internee, Janice Lee Crabb, tells her personal experience with polio in an article which appeared online in the WinonaPost, (Winona, Minnesota). The article, titled To vaccinate or not, appeared on 22 January 2025.

Janice’s parents, Dorothy and Robert Crabb, were interned in STIC when Janice was born on 22 January 1942. Janice states that “I was 9 months old and just beginning to walk. There was no epidemic. My mother went to three other doctors before she finally believed it, and that was mostly because that woman doctor had two children who’d also had it.”

She goes on to state “I reveal all this because since Dr. Salk discovered his vaccine, there are no more polio epidemics! I am now 82 years old, soon to be 83. I thank the universe that my three children did not have to go through the anguish my parents did and that I have been able to live long enough to enjoy my own grandchildren into their adulthood.”

Photograph courtesy of The Winona Daily News (Winona, Minnesota) of 10 January 1950
Click to read the entire article.

CPOW 2025 Reunion Notice

STIC liberation with children on a liberator tank in front of main buildingAs was announced last year, the CPOW.org 2025 Reunion will be held in Sacramento, California, on February 21st thru 23rd at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Sacramento Riverfront Promenade. This special event is to celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of the civilian and POW camps in the Philippines. The preliminary schedule and registration form is displayed below. Just click on the form to print or download. Following that, a registration form for joining CPOW, or for renewing your membership, is supplied.

CPOW 2025 Preliminary Reunion Registration
CPOW 2025 Membership Form

Download both forms in PDF format

Link to the January 2025 issue of Beyond the Wire

Passing of ex-internee Martha Collins Blanchard

I am saddened to announce the passing of of ex-internee Martha Collins Blanchard on 8 January 2025 in Vero Beach, Florida. Martha was born in Shanghai, China, in 1929. In early 1942, “Marty” and her mother, Dr. Martha Dyer Collins, were interned in Santo Tomas Internment Camp (STIC). They had been on their way to the United States when the War broke out. Her father, Dr. Daniel Joseph Collins, was interned in China.

The family was reunited when they were repatriated on the S.S. Gripsholm, which arrived at New York City, Dec. 1, 1943. After repatriation Martha attended the University of Michigan and St. Lawrence University.

The family is mentioned in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri) article of 5 December 1943 titled “St. Louis Woman Missionaries Tell of Life in Jap Prison Camps.”

Link to her full obituary at Legacy.com.

The Ubiquity of Iniquity or STIC’s Lasting Impact by Martin Meadows

PREFACE: A FOREWARNING? The Pearl Harbor attack of 7/8 December 1941 created uncertainty as to the future among Philippine residents.  They included my parents and me, for we were unaware that an event of nearly a decade earlier (ca. 1933) in effect had foreshadowed our wartime fates.  That event occurred during a visit to Baguio, the country’s (nearly) mile-high summer capital, roughly 150 miles north of Manila.  One day we drove the 40 or so miles from the Pines Hotel (where we usually stayed) to Mount Santo Tomas, which is about a half-mile higher than is Baguio.  (Described in Wikipedia as a “potentially active” volcano, it last erupted in 1641.)  We parked at the base of the mountain and hiked up the steep earthen trail to the Lodge at the top (there was no road to the top then).  We had intended to return the same day, but rain, accompanied by premature darkness, compelled us to stay overnight at the Lodge rather than hike down the rain-slick trail in the dark.  We had no idea, of course, that our somewhat ill-starred escapade augured that eventually we would be involved, next time unwillingly, with another place also named after the 13th-century theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Santo Tomas.  Nor did I know that the unpleasant version of Santo Tomas would affect my entire post-1941 life.

View of Baguio City [Note:   From our overnight stay at the Lodge, I remember several details: a blazing fireplace (something new to me); a cat that I played with; sleeping in my father’s shirt in lieu of pajamas; and a fabulous view of a clear sunrise, with clouds floating by below our elevated location, and Baguio in the distance, as it is in this photo from the mountain top.]
Continue reading

Passing of ex-STIC Internee, Richard Bell

Richard Bell, undated photoAccording to the Boulder Daily Camera, Richard Bell died in August 2024. He was born as Richard Orville Beliel in 1933 in Shanghai, China. His father, Clarence Alton Beliel Sr., was born in Grey, Oklahoma, in 1909. His mother, Lilia Fingerut Beliel, was born in Derbent, Russia, in 1910. His older brother, Clarence Alton Beliel Jr., was born in Shanghai in 1931.

After the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, Richard and his brother were sent to Holy Ghost Children’s Home, in Manila. After the closing of that facility, the boys joined their parents in Santo Tomás Internment Camp [STIC], where they stayed until liberation in February 1945.

Don Bell, 1945 photoBefore the War, Richard’s father was a radio announcer performing under the name Don Bell for the Mutual Broadcasting Company for station KZRH. There is a YouTube video of Don interviewing some newly liberated STIC internees. After liberation, Don continued his work in broadcasting. More information on Don Bell’s exploits can be found on Tom Moore’s website.

Richard, together with his Mother and brother, traveled on the U.S.A.T. General Charles Gould Morton, 1945 leaving Manila on 11 June 1945, arriving in San Francisco, California on 5 July 1945.

You can read about Richard’s education in the U.S. and his long history of working in education and theater in his obituary.

CPOW 2024 Reunion set for October in Norfolk, VA

The MacArthur MemorialCPOW (formerly BACEPOW) – Ex-Civilian prisoners of WWII in the Philippines, is having a special reunion in Norfolk, Virginia, from October 11-13 at the MacArthur Memorial. It is special because it will be with the U.S. Alamo Scouts who helped rescue Cabanatuan, Los Baños and Santo Tomás. It is also special because the Memorial (four stories high) has a new exhibit and presentation “Unprepared” about the Japanese attack on Manila several hours after Pearl Harbor. Many of us suffered under the Japanese Occupation for three years.

Norfolk is beautiful in the fall. It is the the home of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet with the Battleship Wisconsin, the largest built in WWII. Near the battleship, the Hampton Roads Naval Museum has many exhibits and admission is free. A sunset cruise on Chesapeake Bay before cocktails and dinner can’t be beat. We have arranged for a block of rooms for two nights at the Courtyard Norfolk Downtown, by Marriott, next to the Memorial at a cost of $169 per night. Please call Chris Larsen at 252-908-1303 or at calarsenjr@aol.com for more information before August 20.

CPOW 2024 Reunion Norfolk VA Registration FormFor a schedule of events, click the CPOW 2024 Reunion registration form on the right.


COMING SOON, SAVE THE DATE!
2025 CPOW Reunion set for February 21-23, Sacramento Embassy Suites.

More information will be released soon.

Passing of Georgia Lee (Barnes) Payne

Georgia Lee BarnesI am very sorry to report that, according to the Bolivar Herald-Free Press, ex-Santo Tomás Internment Camp (STIC) internee, Georgia Lee Barnes-Payne died on 28 June 2024 in Bolivar, Missouri. Georgia was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1929, and was interned in STIC along with her parents, G. Sheldon and Dorothy Lee Barnes, and with her sister, Carole Barnes (born 1931). A brother, Peter Sheldon Barnes, was later born in 1942. A second brother, Thomas Freeman Barnes, was born in 1945, shortly after STIC was liberated on 3 January 1945. Georgia was the last-living member of the interned Barnes Family.

They all traveled to U.S. on S.S. Cape Meares, leaving Manila on 10 April 1945, arriving in San Francisco, California, on 12 May 1945. They were en route to Kansas City, Missouri.

In 1997, Georgia authored Caught in the Crossfire: A Memoir. According to the publisher’s description, it is:

Georgia Lee Barnes, prewar photoThe true story of a young girl trapped between warring nations in the Philippines during WWII. To escape the terrifying bombings of Manila, she and her family flee to the hoped-for safety of a gold mine in the jungle. The family’s efforts, however, prove to be fruitless as they are finally imprisoned by the Japanese. Follow our young heroine during her three years of internment as she develops from an innocent twelve-year-old to a young woman, mature beyond her years.


Link to the full obituary at Legacy.com.

My Three Years in a Quandary and How They Passed (in STIC), by Martin Meadows

My 10 Years in a Quandary, Benchley

I. INTRODUCTION.  In 1936 an instant best-selling book was published with the title My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew.  Title and book were typical of the noted humorist, author, film actor and columnist Robert Benchley (1889-1945).  As it happens, his was one of the many books I read during my three-plus years as an honored civilian guest of the Imperial Japanese Army in Manila’s Santo Tomas Internment Camp (STIC) during World War II (WWII).  But obviously I did not foresee that, some eight decades later, I would modify Benchley’s book title to use for myself.  My story herein is the first of two accounts tracing the Camp’s impact on me, first during and then after WWII.  This first recollection is intended to answer one of the typical questions asked of ex-internees about life in a Nipponese prison camp.  (Unlike Benchley, though, my primary objective is not to elicit amusement.)

[Note: Thinking back to Nipponese instructions on preparing for Manila internment, I briefly considered the title “My Three Days in a Quandary — and How They Grew”; but I assumed that some potential readers would not would not understand the reference to the instructions that said to bring with you to the Nipponese processing of enemy aliens ‘enough food and clothing for three days.’ ”.]

Thanks to record-keepers extraordinaire Cliff Mills and Maurice Francis, my written answers to several of the aforesaid typical questions — necessarily centered only on the STIC scene — have been preserved and disseminated.  They have dealt with such matters as Camp living conditions, interactions with Nipponese guards, and the paucity of personal hygiene items (e.g., toilet paper).  The question to be dealt with herein is hinted at in the above title — specifically, what did I do (in effect, what was it even possible to do) to pass time during more than three years of enforced detention?  (And I had even more leisure time than did most internees older than I was, for when first interned I was too young by one year to be assigned a job.  Even when old enough, I was on an infrequently-utilized grass-cutting detail, composed of fellow teen-age males and equipped with dull and rusty scythes).  

The broad answer to the time-passing question is simple — while of course nothing out of the ordinary could be done, nevertheless many of the usual pastimes of life in the mid-twentieth century were available to the denizens of STIC both adults and non-adults. This narrative discusses the various pastimes chiefly from the perspective of the Camp’s non-adult members; the adults can speak and of course have spoken for themselves, in innumerable forums over the past eight decades.  As for non-adults, the concern here is with STIC youths — defined here to range from about 10-15 years in age — as opposed to younger children.  By way of preview, youths had available leisure activities chiefly involving sports, non-athletic games, and reading — plus their purely personal diversions from Camp life.  And a final introductory note on numbers — the Camp’s population of around 4,000 (sometimes more, sometimes less) included about 700 persons under the age of 21, and of that number roughly half fell into each side of the divide between 12 and 13.
Continue reading

Passing of Isabel Cogan Krebs

Isabel Cogan Krebs, undated photoI am very sad to report the death of Isabel Cogan Krebs on March 13, 2024, in East Greenbush, New York. The announcement of her death appeared on Legacy.com, provided by the Albany Times Union. The obituary covers mainly Isabel’s life post-internment.

Isabel Joan Cogan was born in Davao, on Mindanao, in 1934. Her British father, Edwin Osgood Cogan, was born in Manila in 1903 and worked for the International Harvester Company. Her mother, Helen Olga Cogan, was born in Calcutta, India, in 1909. Isabel and her parents were interned in Santo Tomás Internment Camp (STIC) in early 1942.

After STIC was liberated in 1945 the family was repatriated on the U.S.S. Admiral E.W. Eberle leaving Manila on 10 April 1945, arriving in San Pedro, California, on 2 May 1945.

Isabel was interviewed for No One Asked: Testimonies of American Women Interned by the Japanese in World War II, a PhD dissertation by Audrey Maurer, 1999, City University of New York.


Read the entire obituary at Legacy.com.

Photo courtesy of the Albany Times Union.