I. Introduction

During World War II (WWII), thousands of American and Allied nation civilians endured more than three years of imprisonment (1942-1945) by the Japanese Empire in Manila’s Santo Tomas Internment Camp (STIC), among others.  Many former internees — and others as well — have produced numerous works about their experiences.  Using conventional terminology, those works can be divided into two categories, primary and secondary.  Very briefly, primary sources are original materials by those who personally experienced certain events; while secondary sources are based on studies of primary sources, however defined.  The distinction will vary, of course, depending on the nature of a given project.

Identifying the primary works written about STIC is a relatively simple task.  Indisputably they would include — and perhaps even be limited to — the three books that likely most, if not all, STIC alumni, and others interested in STIC history, would select as indispensable works.  Those three books and their authors comprise a Big Three hallowed within the STIC community.  Listed in alphabetical order of their authors, they are: 

• A. V. H. Hartendorp, The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, two volumes (1967); abridged version published as The Santo Tomas Story (1964)
• James E. McCall, Santo Tomas Internment Camp: STIC in Verse and Reverse — STIC-Toons and STIC-tistics (1945)
• Frederic H. Stevens, Santo Tomas Internment Camp, 1942-1945 (1946)

While I would not necessarily claim that any other publication qualifies as a primary source, in my opinion there is one work that unquestionably merits special attention.  This is not to say that it has been overlooked or neglected, but it has never been viewed as even remotely comparable to the Big Three books.  Clearly that is because it is not a conventional (non-digital) book; rather, counting its front & back pages, it is only a humble ten-page mimeographed pamphlet — or brochure, to use a fancier term.   

Nonetheless, I believe that pamphlet could well be regarded as a major secondary source, if not the equivalent of a semi-primary source (to coin a phrase).  That possibility could be inferred just from its title and its publication date.  That and related identification appear on the title (or cover) page as follows: The Liberation Bulletin of Philippine Internment Camp No. 1 at Santo Tomas University Manila, Philippines February 3rd, 1945.  

Three aspects of the title page are worth pointing out.  One is the significance of the date, which is annually observed by the STIC community as Liberation Day.  Second, the un-italicized title will instead be italicized herein, as befits a published work: The Liberation Bulletin.  And third, the author’s name, Peter Richards, is barely noticeable (if you squint while searching for it) at the bottom of the title page. 

That third fact helps explain Richards’ virtual anonymity within the STIC community.  Much more of a factor is that Richards himself, though not a recluse, definitely was not a publicity-seeker; he consistently avoided the limelight.  As one result, there are absolutely no photos of him to be found on the internet, except for one group photo — and even there, he is partially obscured.  This chronicle seeks to ameliorate, if not reverse, that lamentable situation.

Regardless of how it is categorized, The Liberation Bulletin — hereafter cited simply as the Bulletin — is a significant work in at least three senses.  The most obvious one is that it is the creation of an individual who, like the Big Three authors, was also a STIC internee (though he was decades younger, and was English rather than American).  Second, the Bulletin provides, in one handy site, basic information about the Camp and its inmates that is not always conveniently available elsewhere.  Finally, and in this case uniquely, it is distinctively linked with Liberation Day, by far the most significant date in STIC history, as will be shown in due course.    

SIDEBAR.  Should my high opinion of the Bulletin be unconvincing, perhaps a judgment of the Bulletin’s financial value would help support it.  To be specific, a November 2025 notice on the site of well-known bookseller AbeBooks stated that a used copy of the Bulletin was for sale for 1,000 pounds (plus shipping).  A check of that same site in April 2026 indicated that its copy of the Bulletin (clearly the same one) was still listed at the same price (this time its equivalent in U.S. dollars, plus shipping).  However the Bulletin is ranked by STIC devotees, therefore, presumably relatively impartial observers judge it to be of considerable monetary significance.  

This is how the AbeBooks site described the Bulletin:    

About this Item: First and only edition. Illustrated title-page, improvised adverts as well as a plan of the camp. Stapled A4 sheets, light staining, browning, folding marks, and marginal wear to last leaves. 8pp. Manila, February 3rd.  From January 1942 to February 1945 Manila’s Santo Tomas University was converted into an internment camp that held more than 3,000 civilians. The present pamphlet was printed shortly after liberation. It contains a plan of the camp, a chronology of events, and statistical information about the prisoners. “Published and edited by Peter C. Richards. Reproduced on the Gestetner duplicator, which, without breakdown, worked every day throughout it’s internment”. Includes improvised adverts for General Electric, Mobil Oil, Chesterfield cigarettes (they satisfy), Globe Wireless Ltd., and the Cardinal Insurance Company.  Rare. Only one copy in OCLC (US Army War College).

Used
£ 1,000 [about $1,300 USD]
£ 27 shipping from United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Quantity: 1 available

Whatever standard is used to evaluate the Bulletin, its significance cannot be fully appreciated on its own, as simply another publication.  It is best understood in terms of both who produced it as well as 

how it was produced; moreover, the latter factor includes its production not only intellectually but also physically.  While the pamphlet’s creation has been far from unknown, its creator has been rarely if ever cited or mentioned in works about STIC.  The objectives of this survey are to enhance recognition of, and thereby appreciation for, both creator and creation.  

This will be done via coverage of three twentieth-century time periods: (1) in Part II, the pre-WWII lives of Bulletin creator Peter Richards and his wife, Dolores Richards (co-producer of the Bulletin, as detailed later); (2) in Part III, the Richards’ three-plus years in STIC, including in particular a description of their efforts to publish the Bulletin; and (3) in Part IV, a brief summary of their post-WWII histories.  Part V is entirely on Richards’ own account — not presented publicly until 1985 — of the 3 February 1945 liberation of STIC.  Finally, Part VI presents a brief conclusion 

II. The pre-WWII years

Peter Clifton Richards OBE (1909-1992) was born in Streatham, Surrey, on 25 September 1909.  His parents were Herbert Arthur Richards CBE and Elsie Stainton Richards.  His father was in the British Consular Service (equivalent to the U.S. Foreign Service) and was posted at such locations as Iran, Ivory Coast, (Commissioner for) the South Pacific, Peru, and the U.S. (Chicago).  As a result, by the time Peter was five years old he already had traveled around the world.  He was born in England only because his mother had returned to give birth there from the Ivory Coast, where his father was stationed at the time.  (As an interesting sidelight, Richards at one point [in the Peter Richards Collection] mentions that his parents had escaped from France in 1940.)  

In 1919 Richards enrolled at Sherborne Preparatory School, in the town of Sherborne, Dorset, on the southwest coast of the U.K.  In 1923 he entered Sherborne School, an independent boarding school for boys that is known as the oldest school in Britain.  (It is worth noting that the school was founded in the year 705, was re-founded in 1550, and its A-level results placed it in the top 1% of all English schools as of 2016.) According to the school’s “Old Shirburnian Society Archives,” Richards resided at the Sherborne School’s Abbey House during 1923-1927. 

Upon completing his education in 1927, Richards joined the Anglo-South American Bank; so, by the time he was 18 he was in his first full-time job.  While in that position he was posted to Spain — to Barcelona in 1931 and to Valencia in 1934.  Thus he was a Spanish-speaker by the time he resigned from his job one year later.  (Actually, by then Richards already was an accomplished linguist, because while in school he had taken, by his own account, quite a few years of several languages, as will be recounted later.) 

Richards then moved from the banking business to a very different field.  In 1935 he joined D. Gestetner Ltd., well-known maker of widely-used duplicating machines.  He was with Gestetner for two years, a period that proved to be extremely significant for his future years in STIC.  That was partly because Richards learned how to operate, and care for, Gestetner duplicators — knowledge that proved to be invaluable during WWII.  At least equally important was where the company posted him.  Initially, it was to the U.K.; then it was to Singapore in 1936; and finally he was sent to Manila in 1937, where the most important events of his life were to occur.  

In Manila in 1937, Richards again changed jobs, transferring from Gestetner to Smith Bell & Company, a well-known firm which had been in the Philippines since 1838.  Its activities were quite diversified — import-export, commercial, industrial, insurance, etc.  Richards’ bio does not specify the nature of his job; however, the answer likely is provided by an official document that I found.  According to a Philippine government report, as of 1937 Richards was an agent of the Crown Life Insurance Company.  [“Annual Report of the Treasurer of the Philippines” for fiscal 1937, Part II]   Since Smith Bell acted as agents for a variety of companies, Crown Life no doubt was one of them.  

Richards was with Smith Bell in Manila when he met his future wife, whom he married in 1939.  At this point, therefore, we turn our attention to her.  Unfortunately, there is not much information about her to be found online, apart from the bare essentials. Her official birth name was Dolores Beltran de Lis Opisso. (Richards uses a different name order — Dolores Opisso y Beltran de Lis [as found in the Peter Richards Collection].)  She was born in Manila on 21 September 1908, to a wealthy family of Spanish descent. 

However, in a common practice among long-time Spanish residents in the islands, the family held Philippine citizenship (as did Dolores).   

Dolores’ father was lawyer and businessman Don Antonio José Ignacio Alfredo Nicolás María Opisso y Icaza.  He was born in Manila in 1880 and died in Madrid in 1953.  Her mother, Isabel Beltrán de Lis, was born in Madrid in 1884 and died in Washington, D.C., in 1912, when Dolores was only three years old.  Her father remarried, and eventually had a total of seven children, counting Dolores; it was not an uncommonly large family, given the time and the place.  Dolores was a Filipino citizen until she married Richards, when she assumed British citizenship.  She died in 1988. 

And that is all I could find online about Dolores Opisso Richards.  However, I can add two more facts, both derived from personal knowledge.  The first point is a minor one — namely, that while her given name was Dolores, in STIC (and likely elsewhere) she was known as Dolly.  Second, and considerably more important, Peter and Dolores Richards never had any children.  And now to conclude with some online information — Dolores Richards died in Manila on 16 August 1988, preceding her husband’s death, also in Manila, by four years.  That ends coverage of the Richards’ lives prior to WWII.

[Note.  My cited personal knowledge stems from the fact that the Richards and the Meadows families were good friends in STIC, and long after WWII as well — a friendship that continued even after my parents left Manila in 1982 (as described later).  I do not know whether the friendship predated WWII.]

III.  WWII: STIC and the Liberation Bulletin 

WWII reached the Philippines on 8 December 1941 (customary reminder: December 7 in the U.S.), and the Imperial Japanese Army entered Manila barely three weeks later, on 2 January 1942.  Shortly thereafter, Richards lost his job with Smith Bell (which was quickly shuttered), and he and his wife, being British citizens, were interned in STIC, along with several thousand others regarded by the Nipponese as enemy aliens — citizens of countries at war against Japan.    

Not long after STIC opened on 4 January 1942, its prisoners had completely organized the operations of the Camp — of course with the approval and under the supervision of their Nipponese captors.  Without going into detail, suffice it to say that each adult internee was assigned a specific task to perform.  Peter Richards quickly became involved in two key aspects of Camp life — education, and Camp news and information.  (The task that his wife was assigned is not known for sure, but my recollection is that, like my mother and many other women, she was assigned to one of the several vegetable-peeling squads.) 

The topic of education can be summarized quickly and easily, both in general and with regard to Peter Richards’ role.  A complete educational system was organized, at first primarily for the Camp’s 600-700 school-age children, but in time also for adults.  The system worked well, thanks mainly to the fact that numerous educators — teachers and professors from Philippine schools and universities — had been interned.  Richards had no experience as a teacher, but he knew Spanish well, and he was recruited to teach beginning Spanish.  

As for Richards’ activities on the information front, that was a natural, as a result of his pre-war employment with the Gestetner company in the 1930s.  The importance of his experience with Gestetner duplicators cannot be overstated.  One source summarizes the situation that confronted the prisoners when they were interned, and by implication emphasizes Richards’ role, as follows. 

On January 24, 1942, less than three weeks after the internment camp was established, the first issue of Internews, a news sheet, was published. It was a two-page back-to-back mimeographed publication on legal-sized newsprint. The demand for information was so great and took a considerable amount of time and energy of the executive committee that it decided that a newspaper was the best way to disseminate information quickly and efficiently and to avoid the circulation of rumors.  [Galang, n.p., also citing Enriquez, p. 10; italics added]

Internews was but one of several regularly scheduled publications that Richards helped to make available to the internees, along with many other kinds of material, both “official” and unofficial.  All served to keep the inmates informed, bolster their often sagging morale, and provide a (censored) connection to the outside world.  Richards was a vital cog in the team of internees that kept the Camp informed and entertained.

Interestingly, Richards’ expertise as a publicist also contributed to his role as a teacher, thanks once again to his familiarity with the Gestetner duplicating machine.  At this point it would be appropriate, possibly even helpful, to explain how such a duplicator worked — namely, by forcing ink through a stencil wrapped around an inked drum onto paper to create a mimeograph, in a process called mimeography.  (A stencil, in this instance, is a thin sheet of paper with letters cut from it, used to produce the letters on an underlying surface by applying ink through those cut-out letters.)

How Richards’ two STIC responsibilities were intertwined has been described in a publication of the Sherborne School, which he had attended in the 1920s.  (All four of the following indented quotations are from the same source, which is cited only at the end of the last of the four quotations.)

“Peter was also in charge of the camp’s Gestetner duplicator on which he had to produce all the camp orders, regulations and forms, and which was kept on the Commandant’s desk to ensure he did not print any anti-Japanese propaganda. Using the duplicator Peter ingeniously produced a guide to Spanish grammar for the use of his students. He later described the process:

‘I had no problems with the grammar. I had had twelve years of French, ten of Latin, eight of Greek, and within the decade I had learnt to make Spanish my major working language, with Flemish and Catalan as side dishes. Now the mechanics of production gave me no difficulties. I had trained in Gestetner’s factory and had sold Gestetners successfully all over East Anglia, Devon, Cornwall, Malaya, Singapore and the Philippine Islands.’ ” 

That same account, taken from The Old Shirburnian Society Archives, continues with specific reference to the creation of The Liberation Bulletin.  It starts with a direct quotation from Peter Richards (italicized), followed by the publication’s own description of how the Bulletin was laboriously produced on a pre-war, lovingly maintained Gestetner mimeograph machine.  

“ ‘I did my own typing and designed my own layouts. Nobody knew better how the work had to be done in order to produce the perfect booklet. The resulting booklet (paper unintentionally with the compliments of the Japanese and of the University, stencils with the compliments of the Gestetner Office which was still operating in Manila as the property of Ludwig Sternberg, an Austrian refugee) was all my own work, including the cover drawing.’ ”

“It was using this duplicator that on the 3rd February 1945, while the Americans were liberating the camp, that Peter and his wife Dolly produced 2,500 copies of ‘The Liberation Bulletin’.”  However, weakened by starvation, the task of winding the handle of the duplicator was hard work and they could manage only 50 turns of the handle each before resting at the window from which they watched the exchange of fire between a machine gun in the upper floor of the neighbouring Education Building and the tank parked just outside the window.”  

Spanning a mere ten pages (and that counts the cover and the back page), the Bulletin nevertheless contained a wealth of information about STIC and its inmates, summarized as follows. 

“It also included the number of deaths in the camp; the daily energy values of food supplied to internees from February to December 1944; weight of vegetables produced by the camp garden during 1944; the average adult weight loss; the number of sanitary facilities available in the camp; the number of internees by nationality per camp; the price of commodities in the camp on 31 December 1944; and a plan of the camp.”   [Hassall, n.p.]

To see the actual pages of The Liberation Bulletin itself, click on this link or click on the individual page views below.

Page 1	Page 2	Page 3	Page 4
Page 5	Page 6	Page 7	Page 8

This completes a brief survey of the Richards’ magnum opus and how it was produced.  To further emphasize their incredible achievement, I hereby repeat what they did: by herculean effort, 2,500 copies of the Bulletin were printed, collated and ready for morning distribution scant hours after STIC — or at least most of it — had been liberated on the unforgettable night of 3 February 1945.  

I had hoped to be able to round out coverage of the Richards’ years in STIC with an anecdote or two, gleaned from the likeliest — and perhaps the only — reliable sources of that kind of material.  Those sources are, of course, the three books that were cited earlier by the Big Three authors, Hartendorp, Stevens, and McCall.  It was not entirely unexpected that nothing relevant could be found in the Stevens and McCall volumes, but it was quite surprising to learn that Richards is not listed in the Index of Hartendorp’s massive two-volume tome.  We move on, therefore to the post-Liberation period   

IV. The post-WWII years

After STIC was liberated in February 1945, more than two months later Richards and his wife began a lengthy journey to the U.K.  Along with over 200 other British citizens, they left Manila on April 10 on the S.S. Admiral Eberle, and arrived in San Pedro, California, on May 2 (the same day my parents and I arrived there on the S.S. John Lykes).  They then traveled overland to Halifax, Nova Scotia, from where they departed on the R.M.S. Scythia on May 10, arriving in Liverpool on May 25.  In a Philippine Internment piece, Cliff Mills calculated the miles that their trip covered.

• Manila to California, 7,393 miles / 11,898 km
• California to Nova Scotia, 3,685 miles / 5,931 km
• Nova Scotia to Liverpool, 2,722 miles / 4,380 km
• Total: 13,800 miles / 22,209 km

Taking little time off for recuperation, Richards then joined the Reuters news agency in August of that same year, 1945.   Eventually, and undoubtedly not at all by chance or coincidence, he was posted to Manila in 1947.  After five years he left Reuters and in 1952 became an independent journalist still based in Manila.  And, as might be expected, Richards, having been a long-time resident of the Philippines, engaged in other activities as well. 

 For instance, note the interesting case of a classified, lightly redacted 1953 CIA document, released for clearance in 1999.  It includes the notice of meeting, minutes of previous meeting, and membership of the Anti-Communist League of the Philippines.  Names of members included those of several well-known former STIC internees, such as Elsie M. Gaches, one of three vice-chairmen; attorney Ewald E. Selph; and Peter C. Richards, one of three member directors.  (I could find no other information online on this matter.)  

It seems that, by the end of the 1950s, Richards decided to retire.  There is no mention of that to be found, but the evidence is clear.  First of all, his post-1959 bio is entirely blank, despite the fact that it was created many years later, in 1982.  Second, it can be assumed that the Richards were financially secure; I do not know about his finances, but his wife’s wealthy father had died in 1953, and she undoubtedly had inherited some of his wealth.  And finally the clincher — Richards and his wife left Manila and traveled to London in 1959, then almost immediately embarked on several lengthy excursions, as if to celebrate his retirement.  

 The only accessible information on their trips is that Richards and his wife traveled extensively in Europe and in Central and South America during 1959-1960.  The only thing I could find about them in that period was a brief item reporting that Dolores Richards had obtained a visa while they were in Brazil in 1960.  Fortunately the story included her passport photo (the one shown earlier), or this account (just as in the case of her husband) would lack her photo.  In it she appeared much the same as I remembered her from STIC, when she had been 15 years younger than she was at the time of the photo.  

Upon completing their travels, in 1960 or 1961 the Richards thereupon returned to Manila, not to the U.K.  At that point the trail grows cold; as noted, Richards’ bio lists not a single thing after 1959.  The only post-1960 direct mention of Richards that I could find was a statement in his Sherborne school’s publication that he had received the OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1976, for his services to Anglo-Philippine relations.  By chance, however, I also happened to come across an indirect reference to Richards. 

That indirect reference revealed that Richards had engaged in an extensive and lengthy correspondence with a British historian who lived in Wales.  The latter was extremely interested in the Philippines and in fact had lived there for three years.  Richards had written him some 60 letters over a span of a dozen years — a remarkable average of five (snail-mail) letters per year.  The letters are located in the archived collected papers of a striking individual named Ifor Ball Powell.  Although Powell’s activities are extraneous to the Richards story, in my opinion they merit Sidebar coverage. 

SIDEBAR.  Ifor Ball Powell was born in Wales in 1902, and died there at the end of December 1985 (thus the latter date often is cited as 1986).  The available online information provides no evidence as to whether or not he and Richards had ever met; they could not have met in the Philippines, as Powell lived there long before Richards arrived.  In any event, they kept in close touch, as noted, for many years, as detailed next.  

In the Powell archive is a section titled “Correspondence with friends and colleagues” section; and therein can be found “Letters to Ifor Ball Powell from Peter Richards 3 Apr. 1973 to 12 Mar. 1985.”  Those letters are further specified as being from “Peter C. Richards. (Reuters News Bureau, Manila).”  It was the mention of Richards that led me to delve into Powell and his Philippine connection.  The latter’s archive consists largely of Philippine-related material, collected over a period of 60 years (1926-1986).  The explanation for that intriguing fact starts with a brief account of his history.

Powell attended Aberystwyth University (to use its current name) in the early 1920s.  The university, Wales’ first, was founded in 1872.  When Powell was there, he came under the influence of members of the newly-founded International Politics Department (which, incidentally, claims to be the first such department of study created anywhere).  After he graduated, he received a Rockefeller fellowship that took him to the University of Michigan to study U.S. history.  There he became interested in Asia in general and later in the Philippines in particular, where he arrived as a Rockefeller scholar in 1926.  Then, according to one source:

He spent three years visiting islands in the central and southern Philippines, collecting a vast amount of information and material on the government, economy and history of the islands. He was particularly interested in the history of the British in the Philippines and collected material on British firms and society. After his return to Britain, and for the rest of his life, Ifor Powell continued his interest in and links with the Philippines, writing to many Filipino friends and colleagues and maintaining an extensive collection of press cuttings.  [Archive Hub, n.p.]

Now here we come to the most interesting aspect of Powell’s Philippine sojourn, at least as far as this account is concerned.  It requires a second detour — a “mini-Sidebar,” in effect — into one of the main reasons for the original detour into Powell.  His archive includes photographs he took on field trips in Southeast and East Asia as well as in the Philippines.  By sheer chance — an incredible instance of serendipity — I happened across what turned out to be a noteworthy photograph that Powell had taken in 1928.

I found that photograph in a Facebook site — which, to further strain credulity, I had just recently joined unknowingly and accidentally (I must have clicked on the site).  The photo was (and is) in a site called “Memories of Old Cebu.”  A 2025 entry therein contains a photo that was taken by Powell in Cebu in 1928.  That photo is a crisp clear image of Col. Guy O. Fort of the American-controlled Philippine Constabulary.  Its significance stems from Fort’s relevance to the history of WWII.  

Col. Fort in Cebu, 1928

Same photo colorized

Fort (1879-1942) had served in the U.S. cavalry in the Philippines during 1899-1902, and remained there after the war.  When WWII reached the islands, Fort was promoted to brigadier general, and later took his troops to Mindanao.  There “they fought longer than other army groups” until Fort’s superiors ordered him to surrender, which he did under protest and after enabling many of his Moro troops to become armed guerrillas.  [Wikipedia, n.p.]

Fort then was taken to Manila, but later was returned to Mindanao to try to get a Moro rebellion to surrender.  When he refused to cooperate, he was executed by firing squad in November 1942.  “Fort is the only American-born general officer [MM note: out of a total of 18 generals who were captured in the Philippines] to be executed by enemy forces.”  [Wikipedia, n.p.]   (That ambiguous assertion does not specify whether it applies to all theaters of war or only to the Philippines.]    

Cardiff University, main building

We now return to our original detour to conclude briefly on Powell.  After returning from the Philippines to Wales, he devoted the rest of his life mainly to teaching history, except for a period during WWII when he was a temporary civil servant in the Labor Ministry.  At Cardiff University from the 1940s on he introduced new courses that helped make the History Department “one of the first . . . in the UK to widen its syllabus to accommodate new areas of interest created by the Second World War.”  

As a final note on Powell, it should be pointed out that his collected papers are held at the School of Oriental and African Studies Library, Special Collections, University of London.  The collection is arranged in three parts — personal papers, Philippine-related material, and miscellaneous — of which the 60 years worth of Philippine material is the largest part. [Archive Hub, n.p.; ellipsis added] 

It is worth noting that, as in the case of Richards and his wife, photos of Powell apparently do not exist — at least not online.

It is also appropriate to emphasize at this juncture that, in addition to Richards’ letters in the Powell archives, there also is a Richards collection of archived material.  While it is not accessible online, it is otherwise open access.  The collection includes, among other items, preliminary draft memoirs; travel with and without his wife; accounts by and about his parents; and Richards’ autobiography, written in 1982 but covering only until 1940.  The Richards collection is housed in the Middle East Centre Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford.  It is virtually without restrictions as to how it is used. 

As noted earlier, the Richards trail grows cold after 1960.  However, I can provide additional post-1960 information based on two personal sources — the Richards-Meadows families’ friendship cited earlier, and my own direct contact with Richards.  Initially I knew that the Richards were still in Manila through my parents.  But later I also knew about that directly, thanks to the fact that I taught at the U. of the Philippines (Quezon City campus) during 1964-1965 as a Fulbright professor.  At that time I had the good fortune to encounter Richards on several occasions at the Army Navy Club.  In the course of those encounters, he gave every impression of being happily and comfortably retired, very well fed, and devoid of any cares.  

Then in 1971, while returning to the U.S. from a conference in Australia, I stopped in Manila to visit my parents, who mentioned that Richards and his wife were still there.  And finally, years after my parents had returned to the U.S. in 1982, they told me that Richards had mailed to them two copies of a talk he had presented in Manila in February 1985, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Liberation Day.  But as usual, I failed to question them about the matter.

Fortunately, however, I found those two copies while going through my parents’ papers in the 2000s, some years after they had passed on.  One copy is an edited rough draft with inked corrections; and the other copy is the final draft, better called the finished product.  Why Richards mailed both copies to my parents is a mystery to me; I could (and did) speculate at length about his reasons, but the issue is trivial as well as irrelevant herein.   

Covered next are both versions of the Richards talk in 1985.  Since only the finished product merits full attention, it is presented first and reproduced in full.  It is followed by the edited rough draft, which presumably would not be of general interest (except perhaps to grammarians and to the curious).  In any case, it is included primarily for the historical record, though only via PDF rather than in full.  As a bonus, Richards’ signature (very lightly penciled in and barely legible) appears at the end of the rough draft.

The finished product is in pre-computer typewritten form.  It does not provide any new information, and it was not intended to do so.  And probably it might not have been able to do so anyway, given the effects of the passage of time on memory.  Richards’ presentation is precisely what an anniversary account is supposed to do — namely, simply to present a very general (rather than a detailed) recounting to an audience most of whom probably know little or nothing of the subject.  

So, enough for the background of the talk, and on to the main event — Peter Richards’ recollections of the events of 3 February 1945.  Some 40 years after STIC’s liberation, Richards presented his overview of that momentous night on two occasions: to the Makati Rotary Club at the Peninsula Hotel Ballroom on 5 February February 1985, and to the Rotary Club of Manila at the Manila Hotel on 7 February 1985.   

V. Peter Richards on STIC liberation 

A. The finished product

LIBERATION 1945

At Santo Tomas Internment Camp, we knew from the San Francisco Treasure Island Radio News that the American Forces were on their way to Manila and, also, that they had rescued the American military prisoners at Capas. We did not know how fast they were advancing nor what sort of resistance the Japanese were putting up.

On the morning of Saturday 3rd February 1945 it did not seem that there would be anything special about this particular day. But, around noon, several fighter planes came straight down from the north. They flew over our camp and close to the central tower of the University where, since 1942 the Japanese had been concentrating enemy civilians. We could see the pilots waving.

Quickly, reports swept the camp that a pilot had dropped a message as he passed. Indeed he had. A pair of goggles had landed in the east patio of the main building, telling us that rescue was near. The message was reported to read “Roll out the barrel. Santa Claus is coming on Sunday or Monday.” (This was Saturday noon).  [MM note: this is one of several versions of the message that can be found in other sources.]  

As the afternoon came and, with it, dusk we heard a good deal more firing from light weapons than we had heard before. We presumed that the guerrillas were getting more active. The firing became continuous from the north and, also, we heard the sound of heavier tanks than the Japanese had ever operated within our hearing. We simply concluded that they had brought up their front line equipment to get ready for the assault on Manila.

We were not expecting anything immediate, especially as the Japanese military detachment in the camp did not seem to be disturbed or alter any of its routines in spite of the noise of the firing, and of heavy vehicles continuing and increasing. There was a much heavier exchange of firing down towards or beyond the Far Eastern University.

At about 9:00 p.m. the camp was quiet and most of the people had gone to their beds or whatever. Then there was the sound of heavy vehicles on España Street, followed by a commotion near the front gate. Suddenly a bright spotlight from near the gate flashed around and across the Main building.  The internees remained as silent as mice and the Americans feared that the buildings had been evacuated.

Then a voice, an American voice, on a loud hailer shouted, “Are there any Americans here?” Three thousand voices shouted, “Yes.”  Engines started up and a tank, jeeps and cannon rolled up towards the buildings. The name on the first tank was “Battling Basic”. For a long time the internees went on singing “God Bless America” and other patriotic airs so loud that they could be heard by our families living a couple of miles away.

Meanwhile, those Japanese who had not been overwhelmed during the skirmish at the gate retreated into the nearby building, known to us as the “Education Building” where, at one end, they had their offices and quarters on the Ground floor. This narrow building became the front part of the U.S.T. Hospital as we now know it.  The Japanese moved up into the rest of the building and mingled with the several hundred male internees who were housed there. 

The Americans, then, could not fire into the building. But one Japanese remained near a window facing the Main building with an automatic weapon of sorts with which he exchanged fire with a tank that was parked alongside that small office building situated between the Education and Main buildings. Early the following day, before dawn, a truce was arranged and the Japanese groups were escorted out of the U.S.T. area and to the Japanese lines.

So, as soon as the American soldiers arrived, my wife and I dashed down into the camp office to complete our Gestetner work to put in the final date and other finishing touches to the pamphlet you have in your hand [‘The Liberation Bulletin’, 3 February 1945]. Our duplicator was in that little office building just out of the line of fire between the tank and the Japanese soldier.  We were very weak and turning that handle was tiring work. We took it in turns to do the work and to rest – to look out the window and admire the pretty machine gun bullets flying by. It never occurred to us that a small deviation on the aim of that soldier could have polished us off.

Other things were going on in that little office. The Manila Press group, led by Dave Boguslav of the Manila Times and Bessie Hackett of the Manila Daily Bulletin, had found Bill Dunn who had come back to Manila in one of those jeeps. They had much to tell each other and Bill had his carton of “K” Rations which contained, amongst other things, a tin of coffee. They couldn’t wait. They broke up the chairs, started a fire in the middle of the tiled floor and soon had a can of water boiling. My wife, Dolly and I enjoyed that coffee also, when we had completed our work.

The American military unit that stormed Santo Tomas was from the First Cavalry Division headed by General William Chase, which General MacArthur had sent to Manila to secure the Santo Tomas Civilian Camp, Bilibid (which held military prisoners), and Malacañang Palace, the symbolic seat of the Philippine Government. This group of tanks and jeeps had orders to stop for nothing, not to fight, just to make its objectives. They moved so fast that the Japanese only succeeded in blowing up the road bridges and culverts after the group had passed.

MacArthur’s order to the First Cavalry came after he had received intelligence reports from Manila that the Japanese High Command intended to disband the camps of the civilian and military prisoners and take them away from Manila.  For the 3,785 internees, the break-through represented the end of 37 months of confinement since the Japanese Army had marched into Manila on January 1, 1942.  It was marvellous! 

The northern half of Manila was soon secured right down to the Pasig River, whilst the retreated Japanese destroyed all the bridges and held the South.

We must not fail to remember that February 3rd was also the start of a month of hell for the southern half of the city, which was almost totally destroyed, and that some 90-100,000 persons, mostly civilians, were killed in that battle.

[Note.  For “originalists,” here is a link to the original typescript:

Liberation 1945 by P.C. Richards

B. The edited rough draft

It should be emphasized that the rough draft was typed on extremely long sheets of paper, which made it difficult to scan them as neatly (and as easily) as is usually possible.  That is a trivial issue, however, since this version is not needed for its content, as noted.     

Link to P.C. Richards Liberation 1945 rough draft

VI. Conclusion

It would be difficult to find a more fitting conclusion to this chronicle than the Liberation Day fortieth anniversary address by the creator of an invaluable contribution to STIC history.  For essentially that address represents the culmination of The Peter Richards Story.   It does so in at least two ways.  

For one thing, obviously the Richards presentation serves as a most appropriate chronological conclusion to this narrative about the life and career of a consequential member of the STIC community.  And second, in effect it provides what is intended to be a conceptual framework for the understanding and appreciation of the Peter Richards creation — in both the intellectual and the physical senses — known as The Liberation Bulletin. 

WORKS CITED  

[The following is an informal listing, and in no particular order; it includes both works actually used and those merely mentioned herein.]

• Peter C. Richards, The Liberation Bulletin (3 February 1945)
• Peter C. Richards, “Liberation 1945,” 40th Anniversary Address (5 and 7 February 1985)
• Peter C. Richards, “Liberation 1945,” 40th Anniversary Address, edited rough draft (n.d. )
• Peter C. Richards Collection (created 1982)  [held at the “Middle East Centre Archive, St Antony’s College, Oxford.”]
• “Letters to Ifor Ball Powell from Peter Richards 3 Apr. 1973 to 12 Mar. 1985”
• “The Papers of Ifor Ball Powell,” Archive Hub (n.d.).
• Rachel Hassall (school archivist), “Peter Clifton Richards OBE (1909-1992),” The Old Shirburnian Society Archives (n.d.)
• “Annual Report of the Treasurer of the Philippines” for fiscal 1937 (Part II)   
• Diana A. Galang, “Internews: Newspaper of World War II Internees at the Santo Tomas Internment Camp,”  National Memory Project (30 September 2025)
• Elizabeth L. Enriquez, “Coping with War: KGST Radio and Other Media Strategies of Civilian Internees in the Philippines in World War II,” Social Science Diliman (December 2010)
• “Memories of Old Cebu,” Facebook (9 April 2025)
• “Guy Fort,” Wikipedia (n.d.)
• “Anti-Communist League of the Philippines” (7 July 1953) [CIA document released 10 September 1999] 
• “Description and price of the Liberation Bulletin,” AbeBooks notice (November 2025, April 2026)
• A. V. H. Hartendorp, The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, two volumes (1967); abridged version   published as The Santo Tomas Story (1964)
• James E. McCall, Santo Tomas Internment Camp: STIC in Verse and Reverse — STIC-Toons and STIC-tistics (1945)
• Frederic H. Stevens, Santo Tomas Internment Camp, 1942-1945 (1946)

Listing of articles by Prof. Martin Meadows (arranged mainly by date of posting):

• Memorable Manila Mensches
• Limerick: 80 years since Liberation Day
• The Ubiquity of Iniquity or STIC’s Lasting Impact
• Book Review: Waiting for America: A Civilian Prisoner of Japan in the Philippines
• My Three Years in a Quandary and How They Passed (in STIC)
• The Smothers Family’s link to Philippines
• A WWII Manila Prison Camp’s Maestro of Mirth
• A Spooky STIC Short Story
• WWII STIC Icon Helps Solve a Mystery
• Tennis Great’s link to the Philippines
• The Bar Mitzvah of a WWII Axis Internee
• The Contrasting Cases of American and Japanese-American World War II Internees
• STIC Signature Songs (and Sources)
• Encounters with STIC Guards
• Santo Tomás Liberation
• A Post-Internment Wrestling Chronicle
• Impressions of an Itinerant Internee: My Varied Lodgings in STIC
• A Little-Known STIC Episode
• The STIC Tissue Issue
• The STIC Tissue Issue, Part II: The Women’s Perspective