I am saddened to report that ex-internee, Pamela Jane Brink, passed away in Prescott, Arizona, on 5 August 2025. Pamela was born in Cebu City on 24 September 1933 to parents Maude Elizabeth Rice and Myron Edgar Brink, who were married in the Philippines in 1928. Pamela was interned in the Cebu Internment Camp with her parents and her two brothers, John William Brink and Robert Arlington Brink, who were also born on Cebu. In December 1942 the 148 internees were shipped to the Santo Tomás Internment Camp. Later, due to overcrowding at STIC, the family was transferred to the Los Baños Internment Camp, where they were liberated on 23 February 1945.

The family traveled to the U.S. on the M.S. Torrens, leaving Manila on 10 April 1945, arriving in San Francisco, California, on 15 May 1945. Afterwards, however, Myron Brink died in Los Angeles, California, in October 1945.

According to her obituary, Pamela “attended junior high school, high school and college in Whitter, California, received her BS degree in nursing from Mount St. Mary’s College, Master’s degree from Catholic University of America, and her Ph.D in anthropology from Boston University. She spent most of her nursing career in academia at the University of Cincinnati, UCLA, University of Iowa and the University of Alberta.”

The three Brink siblings each recorded their memories of the War. In 2016, Pamela collected these remembrances in the book Only by the Grace of God, One Family’s Story of Survival during World War II as Prisoners of War in the Philippines. The book accounts of before the War, internment on Cebu, their transfer to Santo Tomás, their time in Los Baños, liberation, New Bilibid Prison and their repatriation on the M.S. Torrens. There is also short section on their lives in the U.S. after the War.




Link Pamela’s obituary hosted by RuffnerWakelin.com

Thanks to Robert A. Brink II and Maurice Francis for passing on the information of Pamela’s death.