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

Posted on September 19, 2024 by Cliff Mills

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.

[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.]

I. INTRODUCTION. This is the second of a two-part account of (a) how I dealt with the various issues posed by three-plus years in Santo Tomas Internment Camp (STIC) in Manila during World War II (WWII); and (b) the continuing post-WWII impact of STIC upon literally my entire life — the STIC Factor, for short. Its role over the years, as hinted at in the title, has been magnified because its sources have been both internal and external — that is, it has appeared not only at my own initiative, but also as a result of the actions of others. In other words, the STIC Factor has been ubiquitous — it has been both long-lasting and pervasive, able to make itself felt at any time, regardless of my own state of mind.

As for the word “iniquity,” its use might seem to imply that all aspects of Camp life were negative in nature. It is true, of course, that not all of my memories associated with the Camp are positive, to put it as mildly as possible. But there are also some enjoyable memories associated with STIC, such as those concerning friendships made within its confines, and especially those linked with Liberation Day, 3 February 1945. In light of those conflicting realities, it should become evident that the term “iniquity” serves more of an alliterative than a descriptive function. And as for the subtitle, it simply rephrases the main title, in order to reinforce the latter’s import.

To summarize the objectives of these recollections: Part 1, on the personal impact of STIC while within the Camp, discussed the ways in which I attempted to deal with the slings and arrows that the Nipponese launched at their captives. Part 2 traces the numerous instances in which Camp life, and particularly friendships from that period, affected my entire post-STIC history, up to and including this very day — and literally so, as will be shown at the end. And now on with these reminiscences — these exercises of a memory unaided by tangible factors, such as a (lost) diary and the detail it would provide.

SIDEBAR. The diary’s loss loss resulted from an unfortunate series of events. When I went off to college in 1948 (as my parents returned to Manila), I left a few of my things, including the diary, in a Chinese chest (photo at left), which friends of my parents kindly agreed to store in the basement of their home in Portland, Oregon (where I had completed high school). Much later, after my wife and I finally moved into a home in Maryland in 1972, my mother kept asking (in letters from Manila) whether I wanted the Chinese chest shipped to me, and I stupidly kept saying no (why, I have no idea). Eventually I was informed that burglars had broken into the friends’ home in Portland, had forced open the chest, and had vandalized its contents (perhaps angered by their lack of value). Finis for the diary. I can never forgive myself for its loss. (When it was too late, the chest at last was shipped to Maryland.)

II. POST- LIBERATION. The time span covered in Section II would be more accurately called the immediate post-liberation period. It includes three distinct phases: my family’s nearly two months in the Camp between Liberation Day and our departure at the end of March; our 37-day trans-Pacific voyage from Manila to the Los Angeles port of San Pedro; and our short stay in Los Angeles. The latter two topics are included in this section because, although we were no longer in STIC, we were certainly of STIC; inclusion of the first topic is explained next.

A. WITHIN STIC. This part is entirely about events that occurred in (and around) STIC; thus it could be argued that it does not belong in a chronicle that is supposed to cover STIC’s impact on my post-Camp history. But the point is that I am making a sharp distinction between two versions of the Camp, the Nipponese and the post-Nipponese; my view is that the latter effectively marked the start of a “new era” (for me and others). And aside from that, the immediate post-liberation phase witnessed several developments that merit attention. The most pleasurable one can be quickly dispatched, for the fact of our enjoyment of and gratitude for Army food needs no clarification. But not all post-liberation consequences were positive — and in that respect there is one other food-related matter to discuss.

1. A LULU OF A LOO. Three distressing developments occurred at about the same time just after liberation, effectively creating a perfect storm for its victims. First, the drastic change in diet caused many internees to experience diarrhea. Second, on February 7 Nipponese artillery began to shell the Camp from across the Pasig River to the south, and continued to do so for several days. Third, the Camp’s water supply was cut off. Because the shells were affecting the southeast area of the Main Building, that section was ruled unsafe and its residents were asked to move elsewhere. And, since the men’s bathrooms were located on the south side of the building, men had to use the women’s bathrooms, which were on the opposite side of the building. That fact, combined with the rampant diarrhea, produced unusually lengthy lines leading to the women’s bathrooms. But, since there was no water supply, the commodes were filled with, shall we say, unsavory matter. Bucket brigades and water-carriers valiantly did their best, but it was not possible for supply to match demand.

I managed to avoid the women’s bathrooms for a couple of days by using outdoor latrines that had been dug behind the Main Building. But inevitably I got in the line for the third-floor women’s bathroom. When I finally made it to the line’s head (no pun intended), I found that, as Hartendorp said of Education Building toilets, “The stench was overpowering.” [Hartendorp, II, 547] (I consider that an understatement.) As I waited my turn within the bathroom, I noted the following: (a) of the five stalls, men were allowed to use only the first one, closest to the entrance; (b) a bathroom monitor (monitress?) kept the line from extending beyond the men’s stall; and (c) stall privacy depended on flimsy curtains that hung to about two feet above the floor. (I did not see the scene, below.)

[Note: The stalls in the men’s bathrooms, at least in the main building, had no privacy whatsoever, as depicted in these Donald Dang sketches – “mens’ privacy” was an oxymoron.]

When at last I entered the first stall, I adjusted the curtain, warily eyed the overflowing commode, and then began the tricky task of keeping my lowered shorts out of the mess with my left hand while gingerly balancing above the commode by placing my right hand against the partition. At that critical moment, a little girl about two years old, who was standing in line with her mother, ducked her head under the curtain and stared at me with wide-eyed curiosity. Momentarily rendered speechless by the sudden intrusion, I could only glare at her. Then, as I was about to bellow something impolite, her mother noticed and pulled her back into the line. And so finally I was able to unburden myself in relative privacy — thus ending an ignominious (though perhaps retrospectively amusing) tale on a high note, literally as well as figuratively.

2. GI GENEROSITY. Any number of situations displayed the generosity, solicitude and patience of GIs in their interactions with internees (aside from food-sharing). As one example, many Camp kids (of all ages) each would latch on to a GI and sort of “adopt” him — follow him around, show him around the Camp, etc. — for as long as the GI was in the Camp. I have never forgotten the name of “my” GI — Bernie Moore, who was from New York. He patiently humored me when I took him to meet my parents. At one point he asked how old I thought he was, and I — a very poor guesser — estimated about ten years too high; he thought that was amusing, but I felt quite embarrassed. When he left STIC, I asked for his parents’ address in New York so I could write them a letter — and I did so. I have always wondered whether he made it through the war.

After the month-long Battle of Manila ended, a kind GI gave my parents and me a Jeep ride across the Pasig to see what was left of our house, as well as of Manila. After navigating through the rubble in the streets, we found that our house was almost totally demolished. Only part of the rear (kitchen) wall was still standing, with the range dangling from it. All the houses in the area were in the same shape; it was not a pleasant sight, and we did not stay long.

SIDEBAR. It was only in recent years that I learned (via the internet, of course) how the Nipponese had murdered our next-door neighbors on our south side, the Reyes family (whom I lauded for their neighborliness in an earlier article [Meadows (c)] ). The gory details are as follows.

Feb. 9: Ermita and Malate are put to the torch. Nicanor Reyes’ living room is piled high with furniture and drapes; gasoline is poured over them. The founder of Far Eastern University and some members of the family burn there after being bayoneted, but young daughter Lourdes who has hidden in a closet, and her wounded mother and aunt, flee to [Calle] Leveriza to join her grandmother. Against a wall, the four set up a makeshift shelter with burned GI sheets. In the shelling, Lourdes’ mother who is shielding her, and her aunt, and grandmother, are killed. [Internet Archive, n.p.]

An enjoyable aspect of the immediate post-liberation period was that of the GI-handled entertainment. That included Army assistance for the omnipresent Dave Harvey and his stage shows, of the kind that had helped sustain the Camp for so long (although unknown to all, as I noted in his biography, his health was an issue [Meadows (a)] ). Far more frequent — in fact, almost every other day, on average — were the films that the Army screened for us. As seen in the movie list in Part 1, by the time we had left the Camp we had watched as many movies post-liberation as we had seen during three years of internment. [Meadows (b)] (I remember that, after watching a 1944-release movie titled “Higher and Higher,” I wondered why a leading role had gone to an unimpressive skinny actor named Sinatra.)

There is one more GI-related episode to highlight. Our pre-war friends the Rechters, mother and son (with whom we had stayed as the Nipponese approached Manila in December 1941, as previously noted), had not been interned because they had German passports. During the Battle of Manila, however, the Nipponese bayoneted Mrs. Rechter to death and thought they had done the same to her son, Otto Rechter. But he survived and somehow managed to persuade a Filipino samaritan to get word to my father in STIC about his plight. As described in an earlier piece, my father was able to enlist the help of a GI to move Rechter to the Camp hospital, thus saving his life. [Meadows (c)]

3. ODDS AND ENDS. On a matter related to Nipponese shelling of the Camp, I will briefly repeat something I have likely covered before. When the shelling began, my mother was resting on her bed, which was directly under one of the windows in her first-floor room 2A. On hearing the explosions, she got up to look for my father and me. Shortly after that, a shell exploded on the window ledge above her bed, and the shell’s heavy cap tore through the middle of her bed and lodged in the cement floor underneath. I later retrieved it from that spot and added it to my collection of STIC memorabilia (photo below).

Then there was the time, when the Battle of Manila had ended, that a friend (identity unrecalled) and I decided to walk as far as possible toward the Pasig to observe the destruction. Naturally we did not tell our parents of our plans, either before or after our escapade. Using the military-issued passes that allowed us to leave the Camp at any time during the day (see below), we headed south toward the Pasig. On the way we saw our fill of the destruction, which worsened as we approached the business district. We encountered occasional groups of GIs, most of whom were riding in Jeeps; one yelled at us that we shouldn’t be there, but otherwise we had no trouble. By the time we could see the Pasig in the distance, we decided not to push our luck by continuing all the way to the river, and instead returned to the Camp.

And one more story to close the immediate post-liberation period. About a month after General MacArthur visited the Camp on February 7 and a few days after the Battle of Manila ended, Mrs. Jean MacArthur also visited the Camp, on her own. At this point I have to repeat a bit of background by way of explanation. My father owned an office equipment company before the war, and my mother ran the store while he was out tending to the sales and service sides of the business. (For outgoing mail, note his return-address stamp on 1938 envelope below.)

Mrs. MacArthur occasionally stopped at the store for purchases, and came to know my mother. (As I recall, she once purchased a Hermes Baby, the Swiss portable typewriter — touted on the envelope left — that my father sold exclusively in the Philippines.) On the day she visited STIC, she happened to see my mother in the Main Building; she not only recognized her, she also remembered her name, and they spoke briefly. I witnessed the encounter from a distance, so did not hear the conversation. (Later Mrs. MacArthur saw off our truckloads of repatriates — and likely others as well — when we departed from Manila, as mentioned below.)

SIDEBAR. This anecdote is irrelevant but noteworthy. One day when my father was away from the office, a Filipino entered and demanded that my mother open the safe. She told him that only the store-owner knew the combination, and he was out. The man said he would wait for the owner’s return, and sat down. Then my father phoned to check in, and she told him of the situation, speaking Yiddish. When the Filipino suspiciously asked about the call, she said it was from a foreign customer who didn’t speak English and who wanted to talk to the owner. Soon my father returned with a policeman, who of course arrested the man.

B. OCEAN CRUISE. Toward the end of March we learned that finally we were to leave for the U.S.; we had been cleared for departure about a month earlier (see notice at right). We were issued Army attire for the trip, but of course this was not done in a fitting room and, therefore, the clothing was rather ill-fitting, to say the least. Regardless, on March 27 we were among the 460 or so ex-internees loaded onto open-air trucks for the ride to the pier. As our truck left the Camp I looked back with a mixture of anticipation and, yes, sadness over leaving a place that had made — and that was to continue to make — such a huge and indelible impression on my life. No doubt I would have been equally sad over leaving my friends, except that many had already departed.

The trip through the rubble of Manila would have been more depressing had we not already seen the widespread destruction during the Jeep ride to see our house. After a bumpy ride we arrived at Pier 7, which was badly banged up but still standing. Docked there was a troop transport named the SS John Lykes (below). It was about 420 feet in length and about 5,000 gross tons in weight; it could carry as many as 1,300 GIs; and it was “armed with two 3-inch guns forward, a 4-inch gun aft, and several 20-millimeter guns.” [Lorenzen, 101-102] The Lykes had been a freighter before it was converted to a troopship at New York in late 1943. During 1944 it had made numerous stops throughout the Pacific war zone, including at Noumea, Milne Bay, Buna, Finschhafen, Brisbane, Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Morobe, Hollandia, Langemak, Oro Bay, Lae, and Torokina. In January 1945 it left its home port of San Francisco and made stops at Finschhafen, Hollandia, Leyte, Lingayen, and Subic before arriving at Manila. (Moving ahead to conclude the story of the Lykes, it eventually reached New York in February 1946, at which time its use as a troopship ended.) [Charles, 197]

Before the Lykes could dock at Pier 7, Manila Bay had to be cleared of such obstacles as mines and sunken ships. The massive task was completed, at least as far as Pier 7 was concerned, by late March, although the first U.S. ship had entered the bay early in March. The following passage provides an idea of the enormity of the job.

Port reconstruction began before the liberation of the city. Retreating Japanese troops blew up portions of the docks and intentionally sunk hundreds of small and large vessels to slow down the American and Filipino campaign. American airplanes had bombed the largest piers in their invasion. As one military engineer put it, ‘The clearing of the harbor and the repair of damaged piers was the most extensive salvage job ever undertaken in any theater of war.’ Working twenty-four hours a day and sometimes still under fire from enemy snipers and mortars, military personnel and local laborers began repairing port facilities as soon as Japanese forces were ousted from the Intramuros district. [Hawkins, 98-99]

Manila, Pier 7, 27 March 1945

The foregoing account explains why the Lykes was the first repatriation ship to leave Manila. Several groups of internees — the more privileged ones, as some of us used to say enviously — had left STIC before we did, but that was by air, usually to Leyte and then onward by ship. As for our group, we were in a long line of trucks waiting to deposit their passengers as close to the gangway as possible (photo right). Then, as we waited in line to be checked in and to board the ship, we saw that Mrs. MacArthur and her son were there to see us off. As one source notes, there was also a military band playing “California Here We Come.” [Warne, 259].

After boarding, we separated to find our sleeping quarters. Our hold, presumably like the others, was hot and stuffy, with portholes covered by blackout curtains. It was filled with rows of mostly five (some had four) vertically-stacked bunks. Many of them had already been claimed, by ex-internees or by returning GIs, who numbered about 500 on the trip. We found one stack not too far from the ladder (aka stairway), with the second and third bunks unoccupied. My father took bunk #2 so that, if necessary, he could help me get into and out of my bunk in the middle of the stack. Mosquito nets were unnecessary, but in some ways the hold’s sleeping quarters were no better than those in STIC. Not that I ever felt like complaining — far from it. Still, I could not help recalling that good old room 43 once had received a “cleanest room” award (at right).

We boarded the ship on March 27, but we did not leave until the next day. Dodging numerous wrecked ships on the way out of Manila Bay, as I recall we then joined a large convoy, though accounts differ on that point. Regardless, it was a large convoy of 40-50 ships, which were visible in every direction; the Lykes was roughly in the middle of the convoy, probably to protect us from Nipponese submarines, which were still active in the vicinity. After a stop at Leyte, the convoy headed south, toward what was then called Hollandia in New Guinea; there we restocked, refueled, and took on more military personnel. (According to one source, we were there for three days [Flynn, 189].) My recollection is that we then sailed south, unescorted — no more convoy, around the Solomon Islands and then northeast across the Pacific. We made an offshore stop at Honolulu, where immigration and FBI agents boarded to check us out. Then it was on to San Pedro, where we arrived on May 2 but did not debark until May 3. (We were supposed to dock at San Francisco originally, but that was changed because of the first meeting of the UN there, which meant that all hotels would be fully booked. [Flynn, 194] )

[Note: Counting the two days we spent on board before leaving and after arriving, and adding a day for crossing the International Date Line, the trip lasted a total of 39 days.)

My recounting of the voyage lacks the detail that my lost diary contained, but several memories remain in my mind.

(2) On the sad side, a little girl died during the trip, apparently due to the after-effects of the Camp; she was buried at sea.

(3) At Hollandia, I remember the mountains in the background; the GIs enjoying themselves floating in the bay on various kinds of rafts, including what looked like pontoons; and some military nurses and a number of GIs who boarded for the return trip.

(4) We crossed the equator (twice, going south and then coming back north) and the International Date Line, and received certificates for the crossings. As shown below, the certificate for the latter is much fancier than is the one for the former.

(5) We used to stake out positions on deck where we could lie down — preferably in the shade of a lifeboat — in order to escape the stifling holds. Whenever the crew wanted to wash down the decks, we would wait for the cleaning to end so we could regain our shady spots before others beat us to them. Many people slept on deck at night, but we did not, for the decks were considerably harder — without some sort of padding — than were the bunks.

(6) There was an abandon-ship drill soon after we left Manila. Then, in the middle of the night after we had left Honolulu, we were awakened by a genuine abandon-ship alarm. I remember struggling to put on my Mae West (aka life jacket) while scrambling up the ladder to the deck. There we stood around in the darkness until we received the all-clear and returned to our bunks. I later learned that an unidentified sub had been spotted, that it didn’t respond to signals, and that it passed us and submerged, identity unknown but suspected by many to have been Nipponese. (For detailed accounts of the incident, see Warne, 263-264, Marshall, 186-187; and Flynn, 191.]

(7) Last of all, there was the single most impactful event of the trip for me. One day in mid-April I was taking a salt-water shower in the middle of the day, when nobody else was likely to be around. Then the daily news report over the ship’s loudspeaker system announced that President FDR had died. I was shocked, having known no other president during my lifetime (Herbert “chicken in every pot” Hoover was in office when I was born). I recall staring at the bulkhead (aka wall) for some time while I attempted to process the news.

[Note: The assassination of JFK in 1963, which had a comparable effect on me, continued the streak of presidents elected every 20 years, starting in 1840, who died in office. That streak ended when Ronald Reagan barely survived an assassination attempt in 1981.]

C. CALIFORNIA INTERLUDE. As already noted, we arrived at San Pedro on May 2 but did not debark until the next day. A ship with a much larger number of ex-internees (the Admiral Eberle) also had arrived on May 2, and they were scheduled to be processed first. After we debarked as bands played, we boarded buses for the ride to Los Angeles, about 25 miles away. On the way I mainly recall seeing mostly vacant fields and noticing fruit stands by the side of the road. We were taken to the Elks Club in Los Angeles, where many ex-internees were greeted by relatives and friends; we did not expect, nor did we find, anyone to meet us. Red Cross personnel were there to help, and they provided money to buy clothes, made hotel reservations, and arranged for our train travel to Portland, Oregon, where many of my father’s siblings and other relatives lived.

I do not recall the name of our hotel, but it seemed to be in a downtown section. Thus almost immediately we were able to learn what it felt like to walk around in an American city — after all, my mother (originally from Poland) and I had never been to the U.S., and my father had left the country in 1928. During one of our walks, I noticed a nearby area that was named MacArthur Park; I assumed, and later confirmed, that it was named after the general. At one point we passed a theater and my father suddenly decided we should see a movie; ironically, it was a WWII film, titled “Objective Burma,” starring Errol Flynn (poster left). And finally an amusing note — on our walks before we bought new clothes, other pedestrians would stop and stare at us — three gaunt persons in ill-fitting army clothing. No doubt they knew about us from local news reports about the arrival of two shiploads of ex-internees, and they often spoke words of support and encouragement.

After about three days, we packed our Red Cross-furnished suitcases and took a taxi ride to the railroad station. And it was there, at Union Station in Los Angeles, that in my mind there occurred the final formal and irrevocable break between me and the entire Philippines/WWII/STIC experience — it was over permanently, and I was gripped by a feeling of acute melancholy. The very moment of the final break was epitomized by the fact that, as we prepared to board our train, I looked around and saw in the distance other ex-internees — including youths I had known — preparing to board their own trains. Realizing that I probably would never see my Camp friends again was an unsettling feeling.

II. TRANSITION. As our train pulled out of Union Station, anticipation over what the future might have in store made it fairly easy for me to more or less forget about the past and to look forward to the transition from the post-liberation phase into a new life in a new country. A complete transition, however, took considerably longer than might have been expected, for the STIC Factor remained a constant — and did so into my career (or fully adult) stage more than a dozen years later.

A. HIGH SCHOOL DAYS. Perhaps because anticipation was dominant (plus lack of diary), I cannot remember anything notable about our train trip to Portland, almost 1,000 miles north of Los Angeles. We arrived at Union Station in the Rose City one day before May 8, which became known as V-E Day. My father had notified one of his brothers of our arrival time, thus we were met by many of my father’s relatives, including two brothers and one sister. My aunt hugged me so tightly that I could hardly breathe. One of my uncles, formerly in the U.S. Foreign Service, then took us to an apartment in southeast Portland that he had prepared for us — for he happened to be the owner of the apartment building. The unit was fully furnished, including even a Packard-Bell radio, which happily furthered my childhood-acquired radio-listening habit, and enabled me to listen to V-E Day celebrations the next day.

[Note: When that same uncle invited us for dinner the first time, as we entered his home his whole family — which included three daughters — began to sing an unusually appropriate Cole Porter hit song of the time, titled “Don’t Fence Me In.”]

After we had settled into our new home and neighborhood, we headed to the nearby Washington High School (which is no longer in existence). WHS was located about ten blocks from our apartment — a 20-block round-trip walk I was to make for the next three school years (often along with a youth my age who lived in the same apartment building). Needless to say (he said needlessly), we took with us to WHS my STIC “credentials.” Those consisted of my STIC report cards and a three-page letter. Dated 17 January 1945, the letter had been prepared shortly before liberation by the STIC Education Department, to be used for eventualities such as mine. It was signed by department chairman Don W. Holter, and was addressed “To Any Education Official Concerned.” [Holter, 1; below]

The WHS principal was an old-school chap with the odd name of Stephen Smith. He proved to be quite reasonable: merely complete certain designated summer school courses, he said, and I could seamlessly continue into second-year high school in the Fall — which, of course, is exactly what happened. Additionally, Smith must have told the school newspaper about me, because I was interviewed when the Fall term began, with resulting article at right.

Disregarding chronology at this point, I later graduated on schedule in 1948, just as I would have done at the American School in Manila had WWII not intervened. Moreover, at the graduation ceremony, Principal Smith, in his opening remarks to the large audience gathered for the occasion, to my surprise included a brief account of my STIC background and arrival at WHS. And to supply an additional touch of the STIC Factor, present at the ceremony were none other than our very good Camp friends, Mr. and Mrs. Paul and Gladys Schafer. (They and their sons Paul and David — who was almost exactly my age — had moved to Portland from Kansas in 1946; they promptly got in touch with us when they arrived, surprising us at our apartment.)

The role of the STIC Factor during my high school years is further demonstrated by the following four examples, the last three of which reflect STIC-derived — i.e., internal — factors, which were described in Part 1.

(2) My interest in sports once led me to take to school a portable radio, then still a novelty, in order to listen to the World Series. I don’t know why I thought I could get away with it, for the teacher soon asked me what I was doing in the back of the room, where I was sitting. When I confessed, she said — this may be hard to believe — “Why don’t you turn it up so we can all listen.” (A baseball-famous Oregonian was playing in the Series.)

(3) This one resulted from two other STIC-acquired attributes — my somewhat idiosyncratic sense of humor and my interest in fictional detectives. This combination prompted me to write (on my Hermes Baby typewriter) several short stories about the famed detective Shinlock Bones and his sidekick O. G. Whatsoname. Though I wrote them for personal enjoyment, it turned out that some of my classmates also found the stories to be amusing; in fact, a girl who sat behind me in one class (Nancy Wilson) used to ask whether I had anything new to read. (Titles of three stories shown below; more on Shinlock Bones in the next Section.)

(4) This event stemmed entirely from my STIC-sourced sense of humor. At WHS, the physics courses were taught by William V. Green, a short, wizened, irascible old fellow. He had been at WHS for decades; some three decades earlier, during WWI, he had mentored Linus Pauling, the only person in history to receive two unshared Nobel Prizes. Green met his classes in shirt sleeves, suspenders, and bow tie (and also trousers); he wore glasses, had remnants of wispy white hair, and sported a hook nose which rivaled that of Dick Tracy. And, most relevant here, he was deceptively alert. One day in his introductory physics course, he was discussing something about charged objects, conductors, coulombs, and so on. As he talked, I was inspired to draw a picture of a bus whose destination plate read Coulombus Circle, with a conductor who was charging passengers their fares, and so on (along lines I simply cannot recall). I was sitting at one end of the fifth row of the room’s theater-type platform, and I thought I was safely hidden from Mr. Green’s view. He was standing behind his desk, as was his custom, while I happily engaged in what I believed was a surreptitious display of my drawing to friends who were seated near me. But old Mr. Green had spotted the activity and, to my consternation, he abruptly left his desk and walked up the steps of the platform to my end seat. Standing over me, he told me to hand him the drawing. He looked at it, struggled to suppress a smile, and asked if he could keep it. Quite relieved, of course I said yes. (Unfortunately, I have no copy of the drawing, and could not possibly reproduce it.)

One last occurrence requires an explanation of its indirect link to STIC. The Oregon state high school basketball tournament was being held at the University of Oregon (UO) arena in 1946; and WHS, which had won the title in 1945 (when I was in STIC), was again playing in the title game. One of my WHS friends drove his own car, and four of us decided we should drive about 100 miles south to the UO in Eugene to watch the championship game. (By the way, we saw the game free, because we learned that if we followed an underground tunnel — housing UO heating conduits — leading toward the arena, we would emerge in the basement of the arena, which is indeed what happened; photo below is of the arena, which dates to 1927 and which has been replaced.) The connection with STIC is this: that experience (though WHS lost the game) influenced my decision to attend the UO rather than any other Oregon school (let alone any out-of-state school, where tuition would have been much higher than UO’s ca. $45 per term.) And here is the key point to explain the STIC-UO link: UO became the scene of many STIC-related developments, virtually none of which would have been, or even could have been, duplicated elsewhere (as will become evident). And so, on to my college days.

B. UNIVERSITY PHASE. After my high school graduation, as previously noted, my parents returned to Manila (where my father had rebuilt and restored both our pre-war home and his office-equipment business), and I moved about one hundred miles south of Portland to the University of Oregon. My years there are replete with irrefutable evidence of STIC’s enduring impact.

1. Undergraduate days. An example of the STIC Factor appeared almost immediately in my freshman year. I was enrolled in the ROTC program, which at that time was compulsory (for undergraduate men, but not for ex-GIs; see my photo right). At the field where we were to be taught how to march, on the first day the ROTC commanding officer — an Army colonel — began with instructions. One was a warning that we were not to wear sunglasses at drill, without a medical excuse. As mentioned in Part 1, an eye problem in STIC had enabled me to leave the Camp to see my pre-war eye doctor. With that in mind, I decided to see what would happen if I wore sunglasses at the next drill. There, when we were lined up in formation, the colonel began inspection. He stopped abruptly in front of me when he saw my sunglasses, and demanded to know why I was disobeying instructions. I replied “Chronic conjunctivitis bilateral, SIR!” Looking surprised by my response, he hesitated for a moment, undecided as to what to do; then without another word he moved on to complete the inspection. I continued to wear the sunglasses at drill and was never questioned again. STIC had triumphed once more, via both my excuse and my Nipponese-derived antipathy to overbearing authority.

During that same time frame another self-derived STIC Factor occurred. For an English Comp (aka Composition) class, one assignment was to submit a paper whose specifications I do not recall. Anyway, I wrote a piece titled “Pearl of the Orient” (as Manila was known before WWII). It contrasted Manila’s pre-war reputation with the actuality of its destruction in the war, which made it second only to Warsaw as the most devastated city in the world. The professor selected my paper as the only one he read to the class, and cited it as exemplifying various characteristics (irony, etc.). Like my high school instructor Mr. Green with my drawing, Professor Thomas (I recall only his last name) asked if he could keep my paper, thus once again I lack a copy.

A second EEE — enjoyable eye episode — occurred at the end of my sophomore year, in June 1950. The Korean War began at that time, and I was soon called up for a physical examination prior to induction into the Army. The various exams passed without incident until I came to the last one, which was the eye exam.

Said the examining officer, “Read the eye chart.”

Said I, “Eye chart? What eye chart?”

He snapped impatiently “Read the chart on the wall.”

Playing with fire, I said “Wall? What wall?”

Then before he could unload on me, I explained that my eyes had gone bad as a result of three years in STIC. So he examined my eyes and confirmed my statement, whereupon he declared “You shouldn’t even be here” and told me I could leave. Later I received official notice that I had been classified 4F, and that is how I missed out on a free trip to Korea. Thus it turned out that not only had STIC triumphed yet again, in so doing it had actually done me a huge favor by keeping me out of the Korean War.

Moving on, I recall no less than four other STIC-related events from my upper-division years. As to the first one, in Part 1 I discussed the marble games that I had played in the Camp. So one day during my junior year the idea occurred to me to see whether I could persuade some of my UO dorm friends to play marble games in the area outside our wing of one of the two temporary Quonset-hut structures known as the Vets Dorms, now long-since dismantled. (Each wing was named after a UO GI who had died during WWII, and ours was named Nestor Hall, as noted in the article below.) Lo and behold, not only did I succeed in organizing a marbles contest, but the episode was covered (by a friend) in the UO Daily Emerald newspaper (at right).

Second, I took a course titled “Short Story Writing” from a Harvard-educated professor named Robeson Bailey, whom I knew because he was also the tennis coach. After having submitted a few innocuous stories, I decided that I could save time and effort by handing in one of the aforesaid heavily STIC-influenced Shinlock Bones adventures that I had written in high school just for fun. The first one did not get an enthusiastic response. Nevertheless, I submitted a second Bones tale, and the response was even harsher. I then recklessly turned in yet another Bones yarn (“The Affair of the Missing Chameleon”), and the third time was the charm; the good professor’s irritated — if not downright hostile — reaction is shown at right. So I finally was forced to conclude that I had better abandon the Bones gambit and henceforth should submit only “normal” stories. (I do not recall my grade for the course, except that it was not an “A.”)

The third episode developed when, while looking through some of my papers, I ran across a copy of STIC Internews, which I had probably pilfered from my room 43 bulletin board. Thus reminded, I decided to emulate that eminent Camp publication by posting on our dorm bulletin board a weekday-daily single-page newsletter; it was mainly about dorm and campus-wide issues, based on STIC-derived humor expressed in the form of commentary, parody book reviews, jokes, etc. I named it “The Daily Finger,” (see below) but not for the impolite reason some might suspect (though I didn’t mind the implication); rather, it was because the lede of each issue fingered — put the finger on — some dorm or campus miscreant (in my view), such as lousy dorm chow-hall food or a losing coach or even the hapless UO president. (At one point, I took on an assistant to share the load, but he definitely did not pan out.) After a few weeks, one dorm resident took exception to something I had written and tore down the offending issue, whereupon the next issue of course ruthlessly fingered him. I was quite pleasantly surprised when said critic then actually posted an apology for what he had done. On another occasion, a would-be competitor named “The Daily Toe” quickly succumbed to being fingered. Like the marbles episode, this one also was reported in the Daily Emerald (above right). Moreover, copies of the Daily Finger were submitted by request and were placed in the UO Library in 2002, and in addition the whole episode was written up in the Autumn 1952 issue of Cascade, a UO publication. See below for the latter.

The fourth circumstance was only indirectly linked to STIC at best, but a connection can be posited nonetheless. It took place during the nearly three-week break between fall and winter terms of 1951-1952 (UO is not on the two-semester system). My parents gifted me a Pan Am holiday trip to visit them in Manila, where I had not been since 1945. During my stay they of course showed me the sights of a rebuilt city; and, on a visit to the University of Santo Tomas, I took several photos (see below), including one from the window of my former room 43. It can be argued, therefore, that the event described next was indirectly related to STIC.

Martin in front of STIC main building

West Santo Tomas patio, cleared of shanties

View from Santo Tomas, room 43

By the time I returned from Manila and arrived at my UO dorm, it was about 3 a.m. Upon opening the door to my room, I was met by a rather disconcerting sight — during my absence, my dorm pals had filled my room with crumpled-up newspapers. To exact a measure of vengeance, I proceeded to arouse everyone by banging on their doors. One result is the following outstanding photo of the room’s well-dressed and just-returned prospective occupant. Then my dorm buddies helped clear my room of all the newspapers. That created a knee-high pile of papers in the hallway, which caused Katie, our dorm caretaker (I forget her exact title), to lose her composure when she arrived at 8 a.m.

2. Graduate days. There is one other STIC-UO link that began in my undergraduate days; however, it is covered later separately, because it also spans my UO graduate years. In fact, it extends well beyond that period, thus its resulting length, which reflects the extent of the STIC Factor. Apart from and in addition to that, my UO graduate period encompassed at least four other STIC-related instances that I can recall.

In 1939 Gene Smith reached the Wimbledon quarter-finals in both singles and doubles; in 1936 he won a doubles tournament as the partner of tennis immortal Don Budge (one of only two men ever to win the calendar grand slam — all four majors in the same year); in 1935 he won the Canadian International singles title; and his career record includes wins over Jack Kramer and the then world top-five Aussie Adrian Quist. Via online sources, here is more information to round out the picture. Morris Eugene Smith (1912-2005) was born of missionary parents in Nagasaki, Japan; he grew up there and in Korea (which its Nipponese rulers called Chosen); he played tennis for U. of California Berkeley during 1931-34; and he was inducted into the UCB Sports Hall of Fame in 2001.

Gene Smith, Luzon, 1945

(b) The next graduate-era event occurred on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the liberation of STIC. I wrote an article for the Daily Emerald (at right) about a forthcoming celebration of that momentous day. (My name was in the article, so the byline was a pseudonym used for such occasions). The story included the names of the three UO students involved in the liberation, two of whom were ex-internees Don Rounds and myself — the third was a liberator, ex-Cpl. Leo Nuttman, then in law school. The final paragraph (in phrasing I’m proud of) is an invitation to attend the celebration directed at “all persons who were interned in Santo Tomas, those who aided in its liberation, all who have been in or hope to visit the Philippines, and all those who have been or expect to be in the United States armed services as well as those who have been or may in the future be liberated thereby or therefrom.”

(c) This event occurred about a year later, when my girl friend (and future wife), Marilyn, found herself in a position familiar to students at all educational levels — she had a short paper due the next day for an English class, but could not think of anything to write about. Whereupon my STIC background came to the rescue, and I typed (on my trusty Hermes Baby) a paper titled “The R.O.S.T.L.L.” — which stands for “The Royal Order of Santo Tomas Liberators and Liberatees.” Because the paper was based on my article cited in the preceding paragraph, I was taking a chance that her professor had not read it, or at least would not recall it. I won the gamble, but I was disappointed that the paper received a grade of only “A-“ — however, at least Marilyn was pleased. The above shows the professor’s comments and penciled-in corrections.

(d) As in the aforesaid “Case of the ROTC Sunglasses,” I regard this episode as a manifestation of a STIC/Nipponese-derived antipathy to overbearing authority. It began when, as I was taking Marilyn to dinner and a movie, a cop pulled me over and gave me a ticket for running a red light. But as the light had turned red only when I was already in the intersection, I decided to take the case to traffic court. I carefully prepared a set of questions designed to prove that the cop was wrong (too complicated to explain here), and as a result the judge even told off the cop before dismissing the case. So the cop then got his fellow cops to start harassing me; they kept pulling me over with phony excuses (e.g., a claim that my car resembled one that was reported stolen — but when I checked the records, that was a lie). Then one day a cop pulled me over and said that the police chief wanted to see me. When he tried to extort money from me with a laughable, totally preposterous accusation (also too complicated to explain), I went to see the now legendary head of the UO law school, Orlando J. Hollis (1904-2000); he was dean from 1945-1967, succeeding Wayne Morse after the latter was elected to the U.S. Senate. On hearing my story, Hollis immediately made a single phone call, and that was the end of the harassment.

3. Don Rounds. We now come to the previously-cited story that began in my undergraduate days and continued into my graduate phase and beyond. It is thus also a lengthy account, as noted above, and in any event its protagonist richly deserves his own separate coverage.

Donal (no “d”) Paul Rounds was born in 1927 and died of cancer in 2006, one month short of his 79th birthday. He was born in California but grew up mainly in the Philippines, where his Baptist missionary parents moved in 1932. When the Pacific war began, his parents were living on the island of Panay and he was attending Bordner High School in Manila. The Nipponese captured his parents and younger brother — along with about a dozen other missionaries — in December 1943, at which time they beheaded all of them in the infamous episode known as the Hopevale Massacre (right). Don did not find out about that until after STIC liberation. (Here is the link to “Hopevale Martyrs” in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopevale_Martyrs .) I could never understand, but always admired, how calmly Don could talk about such a horrific occurrence.

Don himself was interned in STIC on 5 March 1942, according to his obituary. By sheer coincidence I happened to be standing in front of the Main Building entrance on that morning — I remember it clearly because of what happened next. A flatbed truck drove up from the gate and stopped in front of the Main Building, where I was standing. I watched as about 20 new internees began to get down from the truck, each with a suitcase of some kind. My interest naturally centered upon the lone teenager in the group, who of course was Don Rounds. We eventually became friends mainly because, like my room 43 roommate Eric Sollee (as noted in Part 1), he did not care that I was three years younger than he was.

After liberation, having completed high school in the Camp, Don attended the University of Redlands, located about 63 miles east of Los Angeles. He graduated in 1950 with a B.A. in Art. His obituary states that he entered the University of Oregon the following Spring; and that is when and where this narrative begins. Once again it starts at the UO tennis courts; as was later to be the case with Gene Smith, I had finished playing and was leaving the courts when I found someone standing in my way. I looked up and there was Don Rounds, smiling broadly — obviously to my utter astonishment. I never did learn how he had tracked me down at the UO, how he knew to check at the tennis courts, and how he recognized me six years after we left the Camp, when I was only 14. Anyway, before proceeding with this account, I will complete Don’s history. He graduated from the UO School of Architecture in 1958, and then had a distinguished career as an architect, in Seattle, Oregon, and California. Then he and his wife Ula Mae, whom he married in 1959 and who died in 2002, retired to Ashland, Oregon, to be near their three children.

Don Rounds, Roll Call 1957

Of my many contacts with Don at the UO, three stand out (aside from our initial meeting). One was his participation in the UO festivities related to the tenth anniversary of the liberation of STIC, as described above. The second one occurred just a year later, in 1956, when Liz Lautzenhiser Irvine (then also living in the Pacific Northwest) somehow got in touch with one of us (I do not recall who it was) to ask us to submit photos and personal data for a forthcoming publication titled Roll Call 1957; it was to contain thumbnail sketches of as many former STIC teenagers as could be tracked down, in the U.S. and elsewhere. Don and I took photos of each other and mailed our data to Liz and her two co-editors, who did indeed complete and distribute their publication on schedule in 1957.

The third episode had to do with the fact that Don, in a manner unknown to me, had come into possession (perhaps simply by squatter’s rights) of a broken-down 19th-century frame structure, which its off-and-on itinerant denizens called “The Shack.” It had neither heat nor air conditioning, but it did have a fireplace; in the winter its occupants, usually numbering between eight and a dozen, would place their sleeping bags as close to the fireplace as possible. By late 1957, when I was in the process of tearing myself away from the UO, I frequented the hallowed confines of The Shack, using a sleeping bag I borrowed from an old dorm friend. In effect, we were the original hippies (sans drugs).

In early 1958 I returned the borrowed sleeping bag, said my goodbyes, and headed east in my trusty 1954 Ford. But that was not quite the end of my Transition period. As it was winter, I took the southern route to the east coast. That enabled me to stop in Tucson, Arizona, to see my old STIC and Portland pal Dave Schafer, and his wife Rita. Disregarding chronology again, this is his history, according to his obituary. Dave was a fighter pilot with the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War; he married Rita in 1954; a geologist, he worked for mining companies in Manila and in Montana; he moved to New Mexico in 1964, where he became one of the first 20 licensed balloonists there; and he also was a part-owner of South Western Skyways. [Albuquerque Journal, 2] The photo above, which I took during my 1958 trip east, shows him with cigarette in hand — a fact that helps explain why he died of esophageal cancer in 1990 at the age of only 59 (whereas his older brother Paul died in 2021 at the age of 91).

My move to the east coast did not mark the end of my student days, but it did minimize the role of the STIC Factor. It did so in large part because it put an end to the fun and games of my lengthy UO phase (marbles, Daily Finger, Shinlock Bones, ROSTLL, The Shack, etc.). Once again ignoring chronology, a brief summary of my post-UO educational record and subsequent career is in order at this point. With PhD from the U. of Maryland in hand, I “professed” for over 30 years at American University in Washington, D.C. That span included three one-year overseas teaching assignments — at the U. of the Philippines, the U. of Sierra Leone, and the U. of Dundee in Scotland. The first two were enabled by Fulbright awards, and the third one by an exchange professorship; and not to be overlooked were coinciding sabbatical years as well. And a final observation to conclude Section II: needless to point out, my American School education and my STIC experience provided the essential foundation for my career.

III. CAREER PHASE. Section II highlighted the various encounters that I continued to have with the STIC Factor in general and with old Camp friends in particular (including Liz Irvine, cited earlier as intermediary in 1956). That narrative helps explain why I consider that my Transition stage covers the entire 1945-1958 span (rather than just, say, 1945-1946). On the other hand, 1959 sharply marked the start of my “adult” life. By the end of 1959 I had passed several milestones: (a) I was married; (b) I was pursuing my PhD on the east coast, this time sans fun and games, as noted; and (c) thanks to Marilyn, we had our first daughter (who by a strange coincidence is now head of CPOW/Civilian Ex-POWs).

My Career Phase contains two distinct periods insofar as the STIC Factor is concerned — the latter remained fairly constant during the 1960s and 1970s, but then in the last two decades of the century it fell into the proverbial “few and far between” category. Its first Career-era appearance was externally-sourced, in the form of the professor in one of my PhD courses, Gordon W. Prange (1910-1980). A fluent speaker of Japanese, he had spent 1942-1951 first in the U.S. Navy and then as the Chief Historian on MacArthur’s staff. As such, he had gathered enormous amounts of material in Japan about the Pearl Harbor attack, from interviews of both American and Nipponese military personnel and civilians. His account of the attack, titled “Tora! Tora! Tora!” was published in two installments in the Reader’s Digest in 1963. It later became the basis for the 1970 movie of the same title (poster below), as well as for the 1981 book At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. After Prange’s death, two of his former students, on his instructions, reduced the book’s original manuscript of more than 3,500 pages to less than 900 pages.

It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that Prange’s course refreshed and reinvigorated my STIC sensibilities. Indeed, I was immediately inspired to focus my Camp-acquired sense of humor on a then well-known jargon-heavy book titled Power and Society, which I did not highly regard. The result was my very first published article, a parody of said book that appeared in 1960 in a journal now called The American Behavioral Scientist (originally PROD — acronym for Political Research: Organization and Design). Using a word that I made up for the occasion, the title of my article was “Gustatology and the Individual.” (A recent Google search for the word produced one result — the title of my article.) Just as that word reflects my sense of humor, the fact that gustatology has to do with the activity of eating perhaps also reflects the sub-conscious lingering effects of the deficiencies of that specific activity in the Camp. [Meadows (e)]

The next several instances of the STIC Factor happened on subsequent trips to the Philippines. Two occurred while I was a Fulbright visiting professor at the University of the Philippines in 1964-1965. The UP president at the time was Carlos Romulo (1899-1985), who had held numerous important posts (including president of the UN General Assembly) and received innumerable honors. The indirect link to STIC comes from the fact that he was next to MacArthur in the famous (staged) photo of them wading ashore at Leyte in October 1944. Romulo invited my wife and me to meet with him in his UP office, and also invited us to an outdoor evening party at his residence. Another incident took place when I was asked to present a talk in the UP auditorium on the impending 1964 U.S. presidential election, and was introduced to the audience as a former STIC internee.

Then, on other visits to Manila in the 1960s, I encountered two leading names in STIC annals. One was Peter Richards of “The Liberation Bulletin” fame (somehow he published it on Liberation Night); I saw him, for the first time since STIC, at the Army-Navy Club. And at a party I talked with A.V.H. Hartendorp, author of the two-volume work The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines. To my surprise he later mailed to me in the U.S. signed copies of the two volumes, apparently because I had written a favorable review (see below) of the one-volume condensed version, titled The Santo Tomas Story (1964). [Meadows (f)]

Review of The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines

In other episodes, STIC was only tangentially linked to papers on the Philippines that I presented at various conferences in the 1970s, and to articles I wrote about Philippine politics that appeared in various scholarly journals. And the STIC Factor was virtually non-existent outside of the Philippine context, and particularly so when I taught overseas in Sierra Leone and in Scotland. Yet even in Sierra Leone, external sources managed to remind me of my Camp days — something that otherwise would not have come to mind — via two distinctive Sierra Leonian features.

The first time appeared after we arrived and moved into our university housing, which had been unoccupied during the summer. When I opened a closet in one of the bedrooms, hordes of huge cockroaches came pouring out, and I had quite a time trying to corral them before they could dash elsewhere (evidently they could not fly, unlike Philippine cockroaches). This incident reminded me of one that took place in STIC, when my room’s wood floor was ripped out to provide firewood for the kitchen, thus unleashing swarms of roaches. [Meadows (d)] In addition, Sierra Leone resurrected my interest in ants (described in Part 1). There were termite hills in our yard, and I used to break open one of them in order to watch large black ants move in to grab termites and haul them off to their nest.

Just about the last gasp of the STIC Factor in this phase happened in 1977, when I attended the 25th anniversary reunion of the UO class of 1952. Of course Don Rounds was long gone from both The Shack and Eugene by then, but after the reunion I made it a point to stop in Ashland, in southern Oregon, where he and his wife Ula Mae lived. It was a great pleasure to see him again after the passage of almost two decades, and to catch up on news of STIC friends.

SIDEBAR. Don revived memories of The Shack when he asked me to tell his wife “that story,” which she didn’t believe. I said I didn’t know what he meant, but he kept saying “Just tell it.” So I assumed he was referring to the time The Shack had been condemned and I was the last person there, presumably illegally, in my borrowed sleeping bag. When I heard what I thought were officials entering the front door without knocking, I grabbed my sleeping bag and dashed out the side door to my car. That was indeed what Don wanted, for it convinced his wife of his veracity — though I don’t know why it was doubted on such a minor matter.

Not long after my 1977 visit, Don was involved in an effort to make Oregon ex-internees eligible for the Oregon Veterans Home Loan Program and the Federal Veterans Programs; and then to have Oregon’s U.S. congressional delegation attempt to pass similar legislation in the U.S. Congress (at right). As might be expected, nothing came of the effort.

This concludes a review of STIC-related events that occurred during my Career period. They continued to happen regularly at first, and at the slightest reminder or provocation (as with the cockroaches and the termite hills in Sierra Leone). As noted, however, they took place with decreasing frequency during the last two decades of the century. But that trend has been completely reversed in the course of my post-Career or final stage — the frequency of the STIC Factor not only has increased, it has done so exponentially, as demonstrated next.

IV. CONCLUSION. That trend reversal is easily explained, by considering the effects of four major — indeed, life-altering — developments. In chronological order, they were my retirement in the 1990s; acquisition of my first computer in the 2000s; my wife’s stroke, and subsequent death, in the 2010s; and the Covid pandemic of the 2020s. Those four profound changes have combined to radically increase my interest in, ability to do research into, and time to deal with, the subject of STIC and its history.

The effects of those changes began when I finally was able to attend my first ex-internee reunion, held in San Diego in 1999. Because such reunions mostly are held in the western U.S. and in February, teaching duties had caused me to miss earlier reunions. Though not a reunion that ended in a “0” or a “5,” that of 1999 was unusually well attended. For the edification of ex-internee readers, I will list as many names as come to mind, which means only names of those whom I spoke with (and thus can better recall). Their ranks included Don Rounds (and wife), my ex-roommate Eric Sollee (see Part 1); Harold and Jack Earl (former neighbors in the mid-1930s); Marge Hoffmann Tileston; my former basketball coach Herb Riley (Part 1); Dennis Greene; Dave Levy, of the perfect bridge hand (Part 1); Charles Schoendube; Buck Parfet; Ed McCreary; Rosemary Stagner; the Goynes family; Liz Irvine; Dodie Peters; Bill and Ellen Thomas Phillips; and many others whom I cannot recall. (One high point was a secluded chin-fest with Don Rounds and Harold and Jack Earl.) Sadly, all are gone now.

In the next few years after that reunion, there were several STIC-related events. First, I was asked to submit my vita for a book that was published in 2001 — Georgia Payne and Paul Schafer (eds.), Legacy of Captivity. Then I was interviewed twice about STIC — the first two of several later interviews. (I would not have known about the book and the first interview had Paul Schafer not notified me of both matters.) And finally, there was a distressing development concerning Don Rounds. I used to phone Don in Oregon periodically from my home in Maryland; then in 2006 a nurse (self-identified) answered my call and said Don was in hospice. Nevertheless, he sounded his usual calm, cool and collected self, seemingly unruffled by anything. His death in 2006 was a blow to all who knew him.

My interest in all things STIC, already greatly enhanced by the various events just discussed, went into overdrive when I acquired my first computer in 2007, incalculably broadening my horizons. Then the twin disasters of my wife’s death and the Covid pandemic had the combined effect of causing me to sell my house in Maryland and to transfer to my Florida condo. Here, safely away from almost all direct human contact, I have spent my time writing about the varied aspects of Camp life and history. I have not checked, but I believe that most of my STIC-related pieces, in Philippine Internment and elsewhere, have appeared since 2020. There is no better example of the enormously increased impact of STIC in this final stage. (Not to mention that almost daily I still use my pre-war Boy Scout knife, which I kept under wraps throughout internment. See above left)

This memoir has, I believe, decisively demonstrated the ubiquity of iniquity, meaning STIC’s lasting influence, at least in my case. On the one hand, that statement seems to provide the basis for a logical ending to this account. On the other hand, however, it also raises two questions that deserve answers. One is whether my case is typical — in other words, what has been the role of the STIC Factor among other former internees? That, of course, I cannot possibly answer. What I can do is to emphasize that in no way do I mean to suggest or imply that my situation has been true of others; nor should any such inference be drawn. Obviously each case is unique, and thus conclusions on this matter will vary accordingly.

Second, this narrative raises another question: Is it possible (a) to pinpoint the pros and the cons of the STIC influence; and, if so, (b) to determine which predominates, the positives or the negatives? As to the first part of the question, it is certainly possible, and even easy, to detect examples of each. The following assessment of the consequences (iniquities) of the Camp’s long-lasting impact (its ubiquity) is presented in terms of its most easily detectable effects. In other words, it does not delve into such largely incalculable topics (and their disputable findings) as that of economic/financial issues; rather, it deals with tangibles, both the negative and the positive.

And nothing is more tangible than bodily health. As one source puts it in jargonish fashion, “[It is] important to call attention to the effects of the past, not only on what in history is construed as [the] present but also through the inscription of this past in the body, directly affecting our senses. . . .” [Hogan (ed.), 17; italics added] On that basis, the negative personal bodily effects of STIC have been as follows: badly impaired vision (correctable); a severe case of periodontal disease (not correctable); and stunted growth (preventing me from attaining NBA stardom).

[Note: In addition, my daughters might cite another negative — the fact that I used to tell them at mealtimes to eat all of their food, which negatively affected their bodily well-being.]

The positive side of the ledger includes non-personal as well as personal outcomes. As to the former, by now three generations of my progeny have been able to utilize various aspects of my history for their coursework (a STIC “mini-bonus”?). Much more to the point, at the personal level, easily the most obvious results have been twofold: (a) STIC served to keep me out of military service during the Korean War; and, as implied above and made explicit here, (b) STIC has served to keep me going by giving me a clear and definite purpose — namely, that of documenting as many aspects of Camp history as possible. In short, both my physical and my mental well-being are at the very least partially attributable to the STIC Factor. I would say that, on balance, the positives outweigh the negatives.

But over and above those results, there is an equally tangible consequence still to highlight — one which clinches my view about the ubiquity of iniquity. In the Introduction to this account, I emphasized that the STIC Factor extends up to “this very day” — literally as well as figuratively. The explanation for that assertion begins with my parents. In 1982 my father sold his office-equipment business and my parents finally left Manila, where they had lived since 1928. They decided to move to Boca Raton, Florida, in part because several Manila and STIC friends already lived there.

When my parents arrived in Miami in the summer of 1982, they were met, and temporarily housed, by an old friend from — where else? — STIC. His name was Dr. Izydor Werbner (1910-2006); and, like my mother, he was originally from Poland. He was one of the around 1,200 Jews who escaped the Holocaust when they were allowed into the Philippines in the late 1930s; Werbner himself arrived in Manila in 1939. After WWII he worked as a psychiatrist in medical facilities in Oregon (where we got together with him several times; photo below) and in Ohio. He and his wife retired to Florida, where they lived in Hallandale Beach, about 30 miles south of Boca Raton.

Summer 1946 — Mount Hood in background; MM family on right, one of my aunts second from left (her husband took the photo), and Izydor Werbner at left.

Werbner told my parents that he knew a good place for them, and took them to the Boca community where I now live. My parents quickly found a suitable condo unit (the largest model — two bedrooms, two baths), and it was furnished; thus they were able to move right in. I inherited it from them, and I have lived in it full time for several years now. This situation is all because, and only because, of a friendship that began in Santo Tomas Internment Camp. QED.

I have now definitively and conclusively proved, beyond peradventure of doubt (whatever that means), the ubiquity of iniquity — the lasting impact of the Camp on me, up to and including the present. I believe, therefore, that nothing could be more appropriate than to conclude these recollections with this specially devised epigram: OMNIA VINCIT STIC.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albuquerque Journal, “David Wells Schafer” (7 March 1990)
Charles, Roland W., Troopships of World War II (1947)
Cox, Samuel, “H-Gram 066: At Dawn We Slept,” The Sextant (23 December 2021), n.p.
Flynn, Rosemary Stagner, Behind the Walls: The True Story of a Teenage Prisoner of War (2011)
Hartendorp, A.V.H., The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines (1967)
Hawkins, Mike B., From Colonial Cargo to Global Containers: An Episodic Historical Geography of Manila’s Waterfront (PhD dissertation, 2022)
Hogan, Colman and Marta Marin-Domine (eds.), The Camp: Narratives of Internment and Exclusion (2007)
Holter, Don, unpublished three-page letter (17 January 1945)
Hughes, Michael J., “Review of At Dawn We Slept,” Studies in Intelligence (June 2020), 61-63
Internet Archive, “February 1945: The Rape of Manila” (n.d.)
Irvine, Elizabeth, et al. (eds.), Roll Call 1957 (1957)
Lorenzen, Angus, “Going Home,” in We Were There Too Uncle (2018), 101-103
Mail Tribune, Jacksonville County, Oregon, “Donal Paul Rounds Obituary” (8 September 2006)
Marshall, Cecily M., Happy Life Blues: A Memoir of Survival (2007)
Meadows, M. (a) “A WWII Manila Prison Camp’s Maestro of Mirth,” Philippine Internment (2023)
_________ (b) “My Three Years in a Quandary and How They Passed,” Philippine Internment (2024)
_________ (c) “Impressions of an Itinerant Internee,” Philippine Internment (2020)
_________ (d) “A Little-Known STIC Episode,” Philippine Internment (2016)
_________ (e) “Gustatology and the Individual,” PROD (May 1960), 32-33
_________ (f) “Review of The Santo Tomas Story,” American Political Science Review (September 1966), 737-738
Payne, Georgia and Paul E. Schafer (eds.), Legacy of Captivity: Memoirs of American and British Civilians Interned in the Philippines (2001)
Prange, Gordon W., At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (1981)
Warne, Terry W., Terry: The Inspiring Story of a Little Girl’s Survival as a POW During WWII (2012)
Wikipedia, “Gordon Prange” (n.d.)
_________ “Hopevale Martyrs” (n.d.)
_________ “Mount Santo Tomas” (n.d.)

I would like to do now what I have deplorably neglected to do after several earlier articles — namely, to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Cliff Mills and of Sally Meadows.

Other articles by Prof. Meadows:

Passing of ex-STIC Internee, Richard Bell

Posted on September 6, 2024 by Cliff Mills

According 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.

Before 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

Posted on August 9, 2024 by Cliff Mills

CPOW (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.

For 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

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Cliff Mills

I 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:

The 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

Posted on May 16, 2024 by Cliff Mills

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.

II. NON-LEISURE ACTIVITIES. As noted, the concern herein is with the non-adult perspective in general and on youths in particular. Thus the word “pastime,” which normally denotes leisure time and its enjoyment, for present purposes is used more broadly. It encompasses two unavoidable, not necessarily enjoyable, and often time-consuming features of non-adult life — its educational and its medical/health aspects. Those are the first two subjects to be discussed; their placement is meant to signify that they are conceptually different as well as spatially separate from what are usually regarded as leisure pastimes.

A. EDUCATION. Though not a leisure activity in the usual sense, education nevertheless is covered herein both for the record and for the sake of comprehensiveness. At the outset, it should be emphasized that the STIC Education Department had an outstanding and incredibly dedicated faculty (whose members, don’t forget, were not paid for their services), as well as an efficient administrative staff. (Special recognition must be accorded to the Camp’s sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Helen Toyne, who had taught at the American School; she died in 1944 of a normally minor infection, owing to lack of medical supplies.) Moreover, all of the members of that department worked under conditions that were extremely difficult, as can be easily demonstrated in both quantitative and qualitative terms.

Quantitatively, the length of the school day was limited. There were several reasons for this, not least of which was the endurance (and attention span) of both teachers and pupils, especially as the years passed. Additionally, classes were terminated toward the end of 1944, as American forces neared Luzon and as malnutrition increasingly affected both instructors and students. And all the while the educators handled a full load of students; even though schooling was optional, almost all children attended class (early on, about 300 between the ages of 6-15, and 300 between 16-20). Some 500-700 were enrolled for credit in the College Department; and more than 1,000 internees attended Adult Education classes. [Hartendorp, I, 34, 159]

Qualitatively, Camp education was adversely affected by both the limited availability of supplies and textbooks, and the curtailed variety of subjects covered. As to the latter, post-1900 history, and geography and maps were banned, art and music course-work was limited, and science course lab work was virtually impossible. As to the former, some classes had only one, or at most two or three, textbooks for perhaps a dozen or so pupils; thus schedules for sharing the books had to be arranged among the students, and/or the books were made available for them at specified hours. The Education Department created three of its own libraries — for Study Hall, Reference, and Children — all supervised by trained librarians. Those libraries contained more than 2,000 volumes, including around 1,000 children’s books. [Hartendorp, II, 422]

In general, furthermore, classroom facilities were not exactly ideal for learning. Initially, in fact, classes (in my case, for the sixth grade) were held outdoors in the morning shade behind the Education Building (except during inclement weather, of course). For the 1942-43 school year and later, however, conditions improved considerably; thanks to the cooperation of Santo Tomas University authorities, classes were moved to the top (fourth) floor of the Main Building, where space was occupied by two large former laboratories, which were partitioned into more than a dozen classrooms.

Regardless of the adverse conditions, however, my own education proceeded on schedule, and I concluded elementary school in the Camp. After the wartime-enforced class cancellations following the Pearl Harbor attack, I resumed and finished sixth grade in April 1942, then completed seventh grade in 1943, and eighth grade in 1944; and I was in first year high school when all STIC classes were called off on 24 December 1944. In that connection, I often have been asked whether the nature of education in STIC adversely affected my post-STIC studies. As I plan to explain in my next account, the short answer is — no, it did not. And in any case, despite its many limitations the STIC educational experience provided me with my most prized possession (thanks to artist James McCall).

SIDEBAR. The topic of “Religious Activity” (or an equivalent term) at best is only indirectly related to that of “Education” in general. I mention it here only because pre-war I had been learning to read Hebrew, and internment put an end to that — though that did not unduly disappoint me, nor did the fact that there was no Jewish Sunday school (there were perhaps a half-dozen or so Jewish youths in STIC). On one occasion, though (as described in an earlier article), my father and I were allowed one-day passes so I could have a bar mitzvah ceremony at the Manila synagogue. [Meadows (a)] Overall, clearly, religious matters occupied very little if any of my time in STIC.

B. MEDICAL/HEALTH. While in STIC I experienced three major, or at least non-minor, health-related episodes; two of them were relatively serious, in light of the prevailing wartime and prison camp conditions. Considering them in chronological order, the first and the most serious of the three occurred, oddly enough, on my very first full day in the Camp. As this matter also has been recounted before, it will be only briefly summarized here. [Meadows (b)]

1. DYSENTERY. I slept fitfully my first night in the Camp, and I awoke in the morning with a high fever, a symptom of what was later diagnosed as a case of amoebic dysentery. I was taken to what was then the Camp hospital (before the Santa Catalina dormitory was converted into the Camp hospital). It was a small, one-story frame structure in the area behind the Main Building; it had housed the University’s mining and/or electrical engineering classes, and it later served as the Camp’s Isolation Ward. During the three weeks I was there, two events occurred that stick in my mind. At one point early on, I overheard a nurse who took my temperature tell another nurse that it was 106.2º F (41.2º C) — a reading I have never forgotten. And toward the end of my stay, a nurse offered to help me get out of bed for the first time in nearly three weeks; I dismissively said I did not need help, but of course I collapsed onto the bed when I attempted to stand up.

It was fortunate that a Camp hospital was functioning by the time I was interned. In my previously-cited piece I did not discuss how the hospital came into existence, so a brief review of that process is warranted here. When STIC opened, there were no medical facilities whatsoever. According to the nurse who was in charge of organizing medical facilities, her group had to move five times before they located the building described above. Much of the equipment for the new hospital, such as beds, was obtained from the Red Cross and donated by other sources; and it was delivered on trucks that had to return several times before being allowed into the Camp. The early equipment included only a few bedpans, and a couple of basins for bathing some 75 patients, using only cold water until internee workers installed a boiler. [Davis, 29] Nonetheless, had that hospital not been in operation when I was interned, the outcome for me might have been very different.

[Note: All nurses at that time were civilians; no captured U.S. military nurses were interned before March 1942.]

2. HONG KONG FOOT. I cannot remember when exactly, but probably in early 1943 I decided I had to do something about a medical problem — a case of what was known in the Camp as “Hong Kong foot.” At the time I thought that was merely amusing internee slang, but I later learned that Hong Kong foot was a colloquial term in China for athlete’s foot, because early Western missionaries found that the problem was widespread in Hong Kong. In any case, it was difficult to avoid developing the condition in STIC, in large part due to the Camp’s modesty-shredding communal shower facilities that both males and females confronted — in addition to the country’s high levels of temperature and humidity.

I do not recall the details, but at one of the Camp’s clinics — the one in the Education Building — the treatment I received for Hong Kong foot was as follows. First I had to soak my feet for up to a half hour in a solution of warm water and salicylic acid. Then an ultra-violet lamp was positioned to bathe my feet for about the same length of time. The treatments continued daily for several weeks, after which the condition had cleared up completely. Nor do I recall that it recurred in the Camp; but had it done so, the clinic could have dealt with it only if the necessary supplies and equipment still had been available.

SIDEBAR. Unwilling to trust my memory as to the treatment’s details, and to forestall potential critics, I include the following description of the treatment for fungal infections. “Foot baths became a vital ritual [in STIC] since rampant fungus infections developed almost immediately in men who walked barefoot in the warm, humid climate [and in others]. At first, the nurses treated the infection with potassium permanganate, a purple-colored antiseptic. When those supplies became exhausted, they used boric acid soaks, a mild antiseptic solution, and finally plain warm water baths and hot sun. If an infection became particularly painful, the nurses applied a mixture of alcohol, bichloride of mercury and salicylic acid.” [Norman, 308] Since I do not recall most of that, either the cited supplies had run out, or my case was not deemed serious enough for such treatment.

3. ELBOW FRACTURE. I dealt with this subject in an earlier post [Meadows (b)], but I did not explain what caused my broken arm, as it was not relevant there. It is relevant here because it makes clear not only how the break happened but, more importantly, why it was so serious — for that October 1943 event resulted in a complex fracture and dislocation of my left elbow. An account of the accident will follow a brief biography of the hero of that episode — Dr. Lindsay Z. Fletcher. He had been our family doctor pre-war, and as such had presided at my birth (I still feel his non-gentle slaps from that occasion).

A photo of young Dr. Lindsay Z. Fletcher

Lindsay Fletcher was born in December 1890 in Montrose, South Dakota. He graduated from the University of South Dakota and from the Northwestern University Medical School. He married Mary Donahoe (1890-1977) in August 1914, and they later had three sons. Dr. Fletcher arrived in the Philippines in 1925, as a Captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and as the personal physician of the Governor-General of the Philippines, Leonard Wood. After Wood’s death in 1927, Dr. Fletcher was discharged from the Army and entered private practice in Manila (meanwhile his wife became an elementary-school teacher at the American School). In STIC he worked tirelessly serving the internees. Among other duties, he was the Camp’s medical director and also director of the Santa Catalina Hospital. I am absolutely convinced — actually, I am certain — that his extensive and unceasing Camp responsibilities caused his early death in Manila (of “heart failure”) at the age of 59 in February 1950.

[Note: In contrast, and as evidence, his U.S.-resident older sister, Alice Fletcher Irvin (1885-1975), died at the age of 90. For a description of his unbelievably rigorous 12-15-hours daily medical/surgical routine, see Stevens, 118.]

Now to describe the aforesaid accident. To set the scene, I was among internees who were watching a basketball game at the Camp’s outdoor earthen court. I was standing behind a long, black, fully-occupied bench. When several people got up and left, I cleverly decided that, instead of walking around the long bench to get to the vacated space, I would crawl through the wide opening between the bench’s back-rest and its seat. As I was doing so, something happened (I did not see what it was) to cause those sitting down to stand up. Thus, with suddenly not enough weight to hold down the bench as I crawled through, my own weight caused an imbalance, and the bench began to fall backward. My next clever move was to instinctively thrust my left arm straight down, presumably thinking to break my fall. As a result, on hitting the ground, the lower half of my arm was snapped back to form a 90-degree angle with the upper half — that is a normal angle, except that in this case it was in the opposite direction from normal. As I laid on the ground in a daze, with the bench on top of me, somehow I managed to pull my lower arm back to its normal position. Meanwhile people were gathering around and the sun was beating down on me. Someone ran to Santa Catalina for help, and eventually I was carted off to the hospital in a stretcher, in shock and in great pain.

After examining my arm, Dr. Fletcher quickly gained permission to take me to an outside hospital — probably St. Luke’s, where he was authorized to make daily rounds. [Kaminsky, 163]. Fortunately such outside trips were still possible, as the Nipponese military had not yet taken control. I had long thought (and so stated in my article cited earlier) that Dr. Fletcher wanted to set my arm under St. Luke’s fluoroscope because STIC lacked such equipment. However, in recent years I have run across references to a Camp fluoroscope still operative as of late 1944. [E.g., Holland, n.p.; but it was a “weak” one, according to Stevens, 123]. I have therefore concluded that Dr. Fletcher took me to St. Luke’s Hospital in order both to take advantage of their supply of plaster of Paris, which the Camp did lack, as well as to use their “non-weak” fluoroscope. (St. Luke’s, it should be pointed out, often provided free medical treatment to internees. [Stevens, 115])

[Note: Margo Tonkin Shiels states that, when her brother Bill broke his arm, “The camp doctor bandaged it with a bamboo split. Plaster of Paris was not available in the camp.” (Italics added.) The arm healed, but it was permanently deformed; he was advised after the war not to have it reset because that would further weaken it. (Shiels, 7)]

At St. Luke’s Dr. Fletcher had a difficult time setting my fracture. For either the hospital lacked anesthetic due to wartime conditions, or my case was deemed not serious enough to justify squandering it on me. As a result, my screams of pain during the procedure must have alarmed the occupants of the entire building, and perhaps even residents of the surrounding neighborhood. Moreover, my entire arm had become very badly swollen, thus application of the plaster of Paris cast — from shoulder to wrist — was not a pain-free operation. It was quite a relief, therefore, to return to STIC and to recuperate in bed for four days in the Camp hospital.

That was just the beginning of a lengthy process. For several weeks — I do not recall how many — I had to await removal of the shoulder-to-wrist cast while the swelling subsided and the trauma abated. In the meantime, the itching of my arm under the cast almost drove me crazy; I tried desperately to reach under the narrow opening along the length of the cast, but of course that was impossible. And as for that almost interminable period of time in general, I seem to have blocked from memory the vicissitudes of having had to cope with Camp life with only one usable arm.

[Note: According to the headline of a fairly recent article, “Revolutionary New Arm Cast is Waterproof, Breathable, and Itch-Free.” (Good News Network, n.p.)].

When the cast at last was removed, I almost passed out from the pleasure I experienced as my whole arm was washed and cleaned at the clinic in the Education Building. Then began a lengthy process of almost daily visits to the clinic; there one of the military nurses put me through a rigorous routine intended to deal with my frozen arm. It simply could not budge even a fraction of an inch from the 90-degree angle at which the cast had kept it motionless for weeks. First the nurse had me soak my left arm in hot water for at least 15 minutes, as I recall, to loosen it up. Then she had me lie down; got on top of my left arm; and, using both of her arms, pushed down and pulled back on my arm repeatedly with all of her strength. At the first few sessions the arm did not budge; but then, quarter-inch by quarter-inch, it began to give in to the nurse’s grim determination. After a month or so she had completed the job — my arm had regained its full range of motion, and there was no outward evidence that it had been broken.

To conclude this medical episode, my left arm avoided the near-certainty of permanent deformation (as happened even in the above-mentioned case of Bill Tonkin’s “normal” break). That result was thanks to two individuals whom I consider literally to be genuine heroes. Had Dr. Fletcher not done such a phenomenal job under St. Luke’s fluoroscope (despite having to cope with my non-stop screaming and writhing), and had one of the military nurses (whose name regrettably I have long since forgotten) captured on Corregidor not worked on my frozen left arm almost daily for weeks, it would have been deformed.

4. MISCELLANEOUS. Mention of a few other trivial matters will round out this section. I do not specifically recall having contracted dengue fever in the Camp, but that is certainly a possibility; I had come down with it several times pre-war, and anyway it was regarded as a minor affliction and a fact of life in the Philippines — thus there is no reason to remember any such occasion. Nor do I recall having had in the Camp any childhood-related diseases such as measles or chicken pox. I do remember that at one point it became a fad among male youths (including myself) to have their heads shaved; if I recall correctly, that fad may have started initially as a semi-playful reaction to the prevalence of lice. Finally, at one time my pre-war eye problem bothered me — chronic conjunctivitis bilateral was its formal name — and my mother and I were allowed day-passes to visit my pre-war eye doctor, whose last name was Sevilla. I recall no other medical issues I had while in STIC.

III. LEISURE ACTIVITIES. For the most part, children and youths interned in STIC continued to engage in the same kinds of pastimes that they had enjoyed pre-war. Most of their games and activities took place outdoors whenever possible, where they could be free of possible supervision, as opposed to being cooped up indoors, where adults would be strung out along the hallways, playing card games, mahjong, chess, checkers, and board games; reading; knitting; etc.

A. INDIVIDUAL. We turn now to the specific activities that attracted my interest and helped me deal with my quandary, starting with those that I pursued on my own (individual pastimes) and those I enjoyed along with others, whether as participant or as spectator (group pastimes). Actually I started out in the Camp mainly as a loner; for example, when former scoutmaster B.G. Leake once invited me to join his popular boys’ club, located in the Education Building, I did not accept.

1. “WILDLIFE.” Among my early personal Camp pastimes were reading, my preferred activity, and three that involved Camp “wildlife” (loosely defined). Among the latter was my most idiosyncratic activity (some may call it “idiotsyncratic”) — the one that explains why I was known to my STIC peers as “the ant man.” I had always been interested in observing small critters of all kinds; for instance, I well recall the time I observed, inside our garage, a large spider grappling with a huge cockroach, then victoriously carting it off to enjoy its next meal.

[Note: One ex-internee claimed that boiling red ants in a certain way produced a kind of tangy sauce that could be added to spice up whatever food was available. (Terry, 106)]

(b) Another and much less enjoyable pastime was that of coping with bedbugs. Normally this was merely a fact of life in the Camp and certainly nothing out of the ordinary, pastime or otherwise. However, during much of my time in room 43, on the third floor of the Main Building, I had an obnoxious neighbor. The cot next to mine (on my left side when lying supine) was occupied by a red-bearded former Merchant Mariner who was known as Skipper Wilson. As far as I could tell, Wilson hardly ever showered or even washed. His bedding was crawling with bedbugs, as were his mosquito net and towel (which was draped over the long rope that suspended his, mine, and others’ nettings). So it became one of my unpleasant but necessary “pastimes” to pick off bedbugs heading my way, via the aforesaid line and otherwise. (Our room monitor, Henry Pile — also a former seafarer, as I recall — told me he could not satisfy my request to move Wilson out; but eventually he did move out, to my immense relief.)

[Note: As an example of the pervasiveness of bedbugs in STIC, when I started getting mysterious bites on my stomach, I discovered that the bloodthirsty bugs were ensconced in the spaces of my belt buckle!]

(c) A third “wildlife”-related activity was possible only during the first year or so of the Camp’s existence, after which time the fauna in question disappeared. It had to do with the flock of pigeons that no doubt had nested undisturbed for a long time — well before STIC — in the upper reaches of the Main Building. During the early months of internment, bread was available to internees, who often did not need to consume all of it to assuage hunger. Thus I was delighted to learn that, if I stood in front of the Main Building and spread pieces of bread on my outstretched hands and arms, flocks of pigeons would perch on them to partake of the feast. But my willingness to dispense bread came to an end at about the same time the unfortunate pigeons vanished from the scene at the hands of increasingly hungry internees.

(2) READING. This was the personal pastime that consumed most of my leisure time, throughout internment. Before the war I had enjoyed reading, and had acquired modest collections of reading matter for youths, such as Big Little books and comic books — collections that would be worth huge fortunes today. Below are examples that I owned of each kind.

After I was released from the Camp hospital following my bout of dysentery, one of the first things I did was to check on libraries. To my delight, a library — the main Camp library, aka the free library — had been set up in the lobby of the Main Building. To the left as you entered the front door and in the corner, there was a wooden counter, curved at one end; librarian(s) behind the counter passed out books, as they were turned in, to the internees lined up in front of the counter (and often also along the lobby wall, waiting to work their way up to the counter). Often, 250 books or more were issued in one day. The closer you were to the head of the line, the better was your chance to snag a good book before somebody else did so.

As for the quantity and quality of the main library’s holdings, those eventually totaled about 3,600 volumes; most of it came from the Manila YMCA and from donations by internees. As time passed, however, more than 500 books became “completely worn out despite constant patching and rebinding”; some of the more popular volumes were rebound four or five times. Later 600 books were sent to the Los Baños camp and 50 to the Baguio camp. Thus in time there were only about 2,500 books in circulation at the main library, to serve around 4,000 internees. [Hartendorp, II, 422; Holter (a), 6; and (b), 4]

SIDEBAR. The following reflects the interesting perspective of a woman who helped repair books.

” . . . I was in charge of the high school and college reference library. We had about 500 books in circulation. There were so many qualified college teachers that a course in first year college was offered, primarily to keep high school graduates from losing so much time. Several schools were allowed to bring in their libraries from the city, and, of course, they were censored. Some maps were removed from the encyclopedias; in fact, one volume of the Britannica they [the Nipponese] kept — the “C” one, which we supposed had too much about China. Several valuable private libraries were brought in to us because they would be looted outside. We had a well-organized book binding group; and besides our own, we mended all the grade school books. There was plenty of work, but also plenty of good help. The school people were most appreciative and glad to work with us. There were about 700 school children through high school.” [Tuschka, n.p.]

As for quality, it was not outstanding, but it was the best that could be hoped for under the circumstances. One defense of the main library was that it contained “some excellent biographies, historical and general fiction and a set of Harvard Classics,” which isn’t saying much. [Holter (a), 2] Nevertheless, the main library absolutely provided me with more than enough reading to satisfy me; certainly it never occurred to me to look for more at any of the private rental libraries. In that regard, it is worth noting that one of the private libraries contained 700 volumes, another had about 1,500, and a third held 1,000. Thus their combined total of some 3,200 books, added to the main library’s eventual total of 2,500, means that the total of all books in circulation was well under 6,000. [Hartendorp, II, 422]

Now to recount my own reading history. Lacking a list of books I read in the Camp, and rather than try to list at random whatever titles that happen to occur to me, the best way to proceed is to select categories of subject matter, and then to list the authors within each category whose books I recall having read — and if possible something about their content.

(a) Humor. I cannot recall anything about the nature of my pre-war sense of humor, or whether I even had one. But I definitely had one after the war, and its eclectic nature since then has been determined in large part by my Camp readings. In addition to the aforesaid Robert Benchley, I devoured whatever books were available by such humorists as (in no particular order) S. J. Perelman (who had worked with the Marx Brothers); Leo Rosten, aka Leonard Ross (known for his Hyman Kaplan works); Thorne Smith (Topper, etc.); P. G. Wodehouse (Jeeves, etc.); H. L. Mencken (acerbic critic); Stephen Leacock (Canadian point of view); Will Cuppy (hard to beat his book title, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody); Ambrose Bierce (The Devil’s Dictionary); and the usual standbys such as Mark Twain and James Thurber. Any others are beyond recall.

(b) Mystery/detective/crime fiction. These first two categories provided my favorite reading matter, perhaps in part because both were so well-represented in the Camp’s main library. The best-known authors in this group included Erle Stanley Gardner (legal gumshoe Perry Mason); S. S. Van Dyne (the foppish Philo Vance); Dannay and Lee (who were actually Nathan and Lepofsky) used the pseudonym Ellery Queen (also the name of their famous fictional flatfoot); Earl Derr Biggers (Honolulu sleuth Charlie Chan); Rex Stout (portly orchid-lover Nero Wolfe); Leslie Charteris (Simon Templar, aka the Saint); and of course such standbys as Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Christie, Hammett, and Chandler. For some reason a book by Frank Gruber comes to mind, titled The Glass Key, but I recall nothing else about it.

(c) Adventure. By far my favorites were the novels by F. Van Wyck Mason, set in many exotic sites (about the oft-promoted U.S. Army intelligence agent Captain/Major/Colonel Hugh North); Kenneth Robeson (Doc Savage — “The Man of Bronze”); Sapper/H.C. McNeile (Bulldog Drummond); Sax Rohmer (master criminal Fu Manchu); and of course Edgar Rice Burroughs (whose name is synonymous with that of Tarzan of the Apes); plus various non-Tarzan novels by Burroughs.

[Note: My room 43 roommate, Eric Sollee (more on him later), often recommended Jeffery Farnol, author of numerous adventure books, but I do not recall ever seeing any at the main library.]

(d) Science fiction. The main library had too few books of this genre available, but they included the Jules Verne classics. Most of the rest were by none other than the prolific Edgar Rice Burroughs. One of his series of books was set on Mars (which he called Barsoom), and chronicled the adventures of John Carter. Another series centered on Carson of Venus, as one title put it. And a third series was set at the center of the earth, which he called Pellucidar. Burroughs also wrote several books set on the earth’s moon. One non-Burroughs book in particular made quite an impression on me, not because of the story itself but because of its impressive (to me) vocabulary — Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men.

(e) Westerns. The only names I can recall in this category are those of Zane Grey (especially Riders of the Purple Sage); Max Brand (who, interestingly, was also creator of the “Dr. Kildare” character); Owen Wister (whose The Virginian dates to 1902); again the incredibly prolific Edgar Rice Burroughs; Clarence Mulford (Hopalong Cassidy); and Johnston McCulley (the Zorro novels).

(f) Series for and about youngsters. I read quite a few of these, whatever was available. I can’t remember the authors’ names, but I do remember that the various series were mostly about brash and daring youngsters, including Nancy Drew, Tom Swift (no relation to Taylor Swift), the Hardy Boys, Bomba the Jungle Boy, and Poppy Ott — oh yes, and the famed novelist Booth Tarkington produced a short series about a lad named Penrod.

(g) Non-fiction. Though I did read some non-fiction works, the only ones I can think of offhand were by Frank Buck (of “Bring ‘Em Back Alive” fame), and by two well-known naturalists/explorers/photographers/authors named Osa and Martin Johnson; and I also recall reading Osa Johnson’s I Married Adventure. Occasionally, if nothing I wanted to read came through the line of internees waiting at the library counter, I would borrow an encyclopedia or a dictionary to peruse (oddly, they were not in demand); elsewhere I have mentioned how this came in handy during one of the quiz shows I was on, as staged for the Camp by STIC entertainment head Dave Harvey. [Meadows (c)]

(h) Miscellaneous. This catch-all category is for American authors I haven’t troubled to categorize, including many from the nineteenth century: Cooper, Poe, Irving, Twain again, Alcott, Melville, Sinclair, Dreiser, Stowe, Hawthorne, S. Lewis, H. James, Thoreau, Whitman, H. Adams, Emerson, London, etc.

To conclude this section at last, I will summarize as follows: Overall, during approximately 1,100 days in the Camp, I would estimate that I read a minimum of 500-600 books. At times I easily read a book a day, especially those from section (f) above. As noted earlier, reading was the primary consumer of my leisure time.

B. GROUP. As an only child, perhaps I was inclined to be an introvert from the start, but that did not prevent me from engaging in several of the standard kinds of group pastimes. In the Camp as elsewhere, those included a number of typical kinds of diversions, of which four in particular appealed to me — namely, mass entertainment (in the form of movies and stage shows); cards; games; and sports. For the non-adults, one feature is worth mention — the playground equipment, such as slides and swings, placed in front of the Annex, which housed only mothers and children.

(1) MOVIES/STAGE SHOWS. Undoubtedly my favorite group pastime in STIC — as it probably was for most if not all internees — was watching the occasional movies, and the nearly weekly shows (vaudeville-type and others) that were staged by the Camp’s head of entertainment, a professional performer known as Dave Harvey (full name David Harvey MacTurk). I was tempted to furnish an account of this particular group pastime, presented as it was in “The Little Theater Under the Stars”; but I decided to resist temptation for the simple reason that I have already provided such an account. [Meadows (c)] Instead of a rehash, therefore, we proceed to the next pastime.

SIDEBAR. One thing I have never done before is to present a list of all the films that were shown in STIC. Below is that list, exactly as I penciled in the titles as soon as possible after each movie. The left-hand column lists those movies that were shown before liberation; the other column lists movies that were shown between liberation and the time my family left STIC on 27 March 1945 to board the John Lykes troop transport docked at Pier 7.

(2) CARD GAMES. For all internees, I would guess that the most common group pastime involved multi-person card games. Internees played many different kinds of such games, but probably the most common kinds were poker (especially among the men) and bridge. In fact, so many bridge games were played in the Camp that the law of averages must have applied, because one bridge player was dealt a perfect hand — all his cards were of the same suit. (His name was Dave Levy, and he was about 20 years old. I chatted with him at the San Diego reunion [1999?], by which time he had changed his last name.)

[Note: It may be that solitaire card games were even more prevalent than group card games; obviously, however, solitaire is not a group pastime.)

I have never been a fan of card games, but I did play three kinds of card games in STIC. One was Bezique, which my parents learned to play to help pass the time; and they then managed to talk me into also learning the game, so I could occasionally play it with them. And they did the same thing with the game of Pinochle. Either they enjoyed the games so much, and/or they wanted to see more of me, as I was rarely around except at mealtimes. Bezique is known as a game for two players only, but it seems to me that the three of us played it together. I must admit, however, that I do not remember one single thing about the game, other than its name. (As Bezique is not widely known, here is a link to its Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezique.)

The third card game that I learned to play in STIC, also from my parents, was Casino. Sometime in 1943, as I recall, I began to play the game with my room 43 roommate, Eric Sollee, who was a really great guy. (He later became an All-American fencer at Harvard, and then a hugely successful fencing coach at several universities. I also got together with him at the San Diego reunion.) Though he was four years older than I was, he treated me as an equal, a most unusual thing among teenagers in STIC. We usually played at his end of the room, because his cot was next to one of the room’s windows (overlooking the front plaza), where it was brighter, roomier and a bit cooler than elsewhere in the room. We often played several times a week, and the noteworthy aspect of our game is that we kept track of our points on a cumulative basis, instead of starting from scratch each time we played. As a result, by Liberation Day we had played so many times that we each had accumulated totals of somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 points (I do not remember the exact totals).

(3) GAMES. Before WWII I had enjoyed collecting marbles, attracted by their beautiful designs and colors. Thus I took with me into the Camp a small sackful of the prettiest ones. Unsurprisingly, therefore, of the several kinds of games being played, I soon became interested in the marble games that youths of my age were playing; they did so in various locations on the Camp grounds, often in an area behind the Main Building, near the Annex. It did not take long for my observation of the games to change to participation, and I soon became as skilled as any of the other players. (I cannot recollect their names for certain, but it seems to me that they included Dave Schafer, Jack Manion, Joe Browne, Kenny Lane, Orion Von Stetten, Arthur Fisher, and Henry Sbitski, among many others.)

There were two main kinds of marble games that I played. In one kind, we would dig perhaps a half-dozen holes in the ground in a straight line, about 3-4 feet apart; the winner was the first player to sink his marble in all the holes in order, moving up to the last one and back down to the first one (as in golf). In the other marble game, we would draw a large circle in the dirt, perhaps 2-3 feet in diameter, and each player would contribute a set number of marbles to place within the circle. Then we would take turns using our “shooters” from outside of the circle, trying to knock out of the circle any marble that was within it; and if you did so, it was yours to keep. I played marble games fairly regularly for several months until I turned my attention to sports in general and basketball in particular. (But not before I had learned how to make a mean paper airplane — of course, that was long before paper became such a scarce item.)

(4) SPORTS. Before the war I was not interested in sports, either generally or in a particular sport. My sports participation was limited to playing soccer/football during recess at the American School. But with not that much else to do in STIC, I usually tagged along with friends who were going to watch a game of some kind. I too then became an interested spectator of the various games being played in the Camp (by those who presumably also had nothing better to do). Among Camp sports activities, which were organized soon after STIC opened, were the usual suspects — softball, soccer/football, boxing, and basketball, and even American football (e.g., the 1943 Thanksgiving Day East vs. West game.) Each sport had men’s and boys’ divisions; too, teams in each sport were divided into leagues, except for the individual sports of boxing, golf, hockey, and croquet. Hartendorp claims that females “rather slowly” got interested in sports, but it was not long before they had their own basketball leagues; in addition, girls had dance and other classes early on. [Hartendorp, I, 38]

Along with the usually large internee audiences, I watched teams perform in the various leagues, which is what initially hooked me on sports. Soon my interest centered on the game of basketball, which I especially enjoyed watching. As a result, when it was announced early in 1943 that a boys’ league was to be organized, I applied for selection to one of the teams. To accommodate the number of applicants, a league of four teams was formed; and each team was named after one of the four older teenagers who had volunteered to serve as coaches. Thus the teams were named the Farnes (for Wally Farnes), the Smakmans (for Deema Smakman), the Rileys (for Herb Riley), and the Schoendubes (I think for Charlie, not his brother Bob — but I do know that they pronounced their name as Shón-doo-bee. By the way, at the San Diego reunion I also spoke with both Herb Riley and Charlie Schoendube, as well as with Dave Levy of the perfect bridge hand.)

Fortunately for me, I ended up on the Rileys team, because its captain, Gordon Stagner, was easily the league’s best player. The league’s schedule was divided into four rounds of round-robin play; the Farnes won the first and fourth rounds, the Rileys won the second and third rounds, thus the Farnes and Rileys met in a best-of-three playoff for the championship, which the Rileys won in two games. And now, unveiled for the first time anywhere, are both sides of my STIC-created penciled record, showing the results of all games on one side of the worn and weathered page, and on its reverse side a list of the members of each team (though I used initials rather than first names). It will be quickly noted that the games were not particularly high-scoring affairs (click to enlarge).

The victory of “my” team, the Rileys, in effect marked the end of my participation in sports, and also even in most other group pastimes; that is because not long thereafter I broke my arm. Similarly, during that same time period STIC sports in general were approaching the close of their “golden age” of competition. For when the Nipponese military took control of the Camp in January 1944, they started to impose a starvation-type diet that eventually forced internees to severely curtail physical activity. As for me, these developments left no alternative but to concentrate on my favorite pastime of reading, which I continued to do until the Camp’s liberation.

IV. CONCLUSION. This terminates an account of the ways in which I attempted to cope with the quandary of how to pass three years of potential leisure time, courtesy of the benevolent Nipponese Empire and its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Whether I coped successfully is a matter of opinion rather than of fact. In any case, what remains to be done is the customary task of determining whether any meaningful and broadly applicable lesson(s)/moral(s) can be derived from the experiences of one individual.

In order to do so, the obvious approach is to ascertain whether I used my prison-camp time (or at least some of it) in a constructive manner — one that would benefit not only myself but ideally others as well (such as, for example, future young internees faced with a similar quandary). Sadly, the objective (and thus unsurprising) answer is that I did not do so — I failed to act more sensibly than I should have, throughout all three years of internment, as this record probably has revealed. Had I been a more mature youth — and I realize “mature youth” is an oxymoron (or even an oxyidiot) — presumably I would have acted more thoughtfully than I did.

The above statements raise two obvious questions: (a) why does being a voracious reader not qualify as being at least personally beneficial? and (b) what is it, exactly, that I could have done to avoid this particular criticism, given my wartime prison-camp situation? These will be answered in turn. On (a), clearly most of my STIC reading matter consisted of purely escapist fiction, or even what some would call trash. Needless to say, I would strongly disagree; however, that leads directly to (b) — what could I have done to satisfy critics on this score? Interestingly, the brief diary of Albert Holland, one of the Camp’s leaders, supplies an answer. Not only did he meticulously keep track of what he was reading (and make critical comments about it), the main point is that he also read only non-fiction and classic fiction — as I should have done, at least to the satisfaction of potential critics.

SIDEBAR. To honor Holland as well as to further discredit my own reading, here is a list of some of his reading matter: biographies of Pasteur, Mme. Curie, Allenby, and Caesar; works by Thomas Mann, Harold Nicholson (his trilogy on diplomacy), Charles Beard, Jacques Maritain, and Willa Cather; poetry; and classic fiction by Conrad, Huxley, Marquand, and even Budd Shulberg (whose book What Makes Sammy Run elicited surprisingly lengthy philosophical comments from Holland). On the other hand, it could be argued that it is unrealistic, if not downright oxymoronic, to expect a teenager to think and to act so maturely, especially in a prison-camp situation.

Moving from the speculative to the flippantly factual, one minor potential result of this chronicle is that it could help provide a bit of balance to the history of internment camps. According to Australian historian Christina Twomey, most internment-experience historians have been women, who moreover were concerned primarily with the female perspective; as a result, civilian (but not military) men’s prison-camp experiences have received less coverage than those of women. [E.g., see Twomey.] If that is indeed the case (I have not bothered to check), therefore, since I am not a woman (at least, not the last time I checked), I can claim — as both a male and a former civilian captive — that this personal story may help provide some historical balance.

Much more seriously, there is a broadly meaningful lesson to be drawn from my solution to the time-passing quandary. And that solution is to recognize that I — and likely many other Camp youths — in actuality did not confront a genuine quandary to begin with! To help explain this apparent contradiction — quandary vs. no quandary — the first step is to keep in mind the distinction between the abstract notion of a quandary and its concrete manifestations. In the abstract, no doubt at first internees might have believed they had a time-passing quandary, and especially so upon realizing they were imprisoned indefinitely. In practice, however, they mostly had little difficulty in passing time in a multitude of ways.

The crucial next step is to take into account a view that might be surprising, perverse, and counter-intuitive to those not familiar with Camp life. It is expressed in the assertion that, for many if not most STIC youths (including myself), internment created an apparent paradox: a newfound freedom within prison walls. Of former internee youths who have commented on this phenomenon, Karen Kerns Lewis has described it most clearly in the following passage.

Skeptics might wonder whether presumably objective and impartial non-internee observers would agree with that assessment. One “neutral” observer, the late noted POW researcher Roger Mansell, asserted the following as early as 1943: “In general the really old people have found it most difficult of all . . . to make adjustments to [STIC] internment conditions, both physical and mental; and children have come off best. Compression of their world meant little to them, for it was small to begin with.” [Mansell, 7; italics added] A recent study states that, “at least initially, many children experienced a degree of freedom within captivity that they had not known prior to war.” Children and youths “were actors in their own right” rather than “passive objects of adult interventions . . . .” [Terry, 87 et passim] Moreover, that sentiment among youths occurred not only in STIC but in other Nipponese camps as well, such as the Stanley camp in Hong Kong. [Archer, 175 et passim]

Of course, even accepting the validity of the “no quandary” position, that does not mean that it applied universally. For one thing, what may have been true for some Camp youths was not necessarily true for all. Too, what was true for youths at one time was not necessarily true at all times. Additionally (and certainly in my case), awareness of Camp “freedom” did not preclude awareness that it existed only within the strict limits imposed by the Nipponese; in other words, freedom from this particular quandary did not mean freedom from other and more serious issues, for youths and adults alike.

Aside from the quandary matter, two other issues should be noted. One is that many adults believed that “chaos reigned” as a result of the fact that, in exercising their newfound freedom, the Camp’s youngsters — mainly the children, not the youths — were running wild and causing a serious problem. [Terry, 95] And finally, at the most general level of analysis, this chronicle does not deal with the contentious issue of the reliability and validity of memory — particularly the memories of youthful internees. On that point, I will say only that I have presented my memories on the subject at hand, and as far as I am concerned they are simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial — so much so that the memory issue is not relevant here.

Regardless of such qualifications and cautions, they do not undermine my basic contention: whatever other issues youths and all other internees faced, their problems did not necessarily include a (concrete) time-passing quandary. And that claim, assuming its validity, leads to the final question to be considered here: can any broadly meaningful lesson(s) be derived from this narrative — in other words, what, if anything, is “the moral of this story”?

To generalize from personal experience, one major lesson emerges from this account. It can best be explained within the context of the following concise summary of the above: STIC youths were entirely able to function (i.e., keep occupied) on their own initiatives; and, as a result, for the most part they did not necessarily suffer from a (concrete) time-passing quandary. With that in mind, we now consider the key that enables recognition of the moral of the story.

That key centers on the innumerable reports that have appeared in all kinds of media, including technical journals. They maintain that contemporary American youths are afflicted by a “mental health crisis” — one that is largely attributable to social media. That crisis presumably originated in the wider society, as exemplified by adults who were “Bowling Alone.” [See Putnam] Soon the societal crisis had engulfed the youth sector, whose plight is typified by youths who are “On the Phone, Alone.” [See Leonhardt] That brings us at last to “the moral of this story” — namely, whatever else they may have suffered, STIC youths did not suffer from a generalized “mental health crisis.” For they were neither alone nor captives of technology, having lived long before such conditions developed.

That judgment is not only unsensational, perhaps even unsatisfactory to some; it is also negative, in the sense that it does not explain why something happened; rather, it explains why it did not happen. Nonetheless, regardless of its nature, it concludes this first of two personal recollections — on my reactions to, and the lasting impact of, Santo Tomas Internment Camp.

Archer, Bernice, The Internment of Western Civilians Under the Japanese 1941-1945 (2004)
Benchley, Robert C., My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)
Davis, Dorothy, “I Nursed at Santo Tomas, Manila”, The American Journal of Nursing (January 1944), 29-30
Good News Network, “Revolutionary New Arm Cast Is Waterproof, Breathable, and Itch-Free” (29 November 2019), n.p.
Hartendorp, A.V.H., The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, vols. I and II (1967)
Holland, Albert E., The Santo Tomas Internment Camp Diary of Albert E. Holland, 1944-1945 (1945)
Holter, Don W. (a), Unpublished three-page letter addressed “To Any Education Official Concerned” (17 January 1945)
——————— (b), Unpublished nine-page manuscript titled “Wings” (n.d.)
Kaminski, Theresa, Prisoners in Paradise: American Women in the Wartime South Pacific (2000)
Leonhardt, David, “On the Phone, Alone”, New York Times (10 may 2022), n.p.
Lewis, Karen Kerns, in Nova and Lourie (eds.), Interrupted Lives: Four Women’s Stories of Internment During World War II in the Philippines (1995)
Mansell, Roger, quoted in Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Philippine Archives Collection, POWS/Civilian Internees. . . (15 November 1943)
McCall, James, Santo Tomas Internment Camp: STIC in Verse and Reverse (1945)
Meadows, M. (a), “The Bar Mitzvah of a WWII Axis Internee”, Philippine Internment (2023)
—————— (b), “Impressions of an Itinerant Internee: My Varied Lodgings in STIC”, Philippine Internment (2020)
—————— (c), “A WWII Manila Prison Camp’s Maestro of Mirth: The Dave Harvey Story”, Philippine Internment (2023)
Norman, Elizabeth M., We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese (1999)
Putnam, Robert D., Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2001)
Shiels, Margo Tomkin, Bends in the Road (1999)
Stevens, Frederic H., Santo Tomas Internment Camp, 1942-1945 (1946)
Terry, Jennifer R., “. . . Children’s and Youth’s Activities in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp, 1942-1945”, The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth (Winter 2012), 87-117
Twomey, Christina, “Captive Women and Audiences: Internment in the Asia-Pacific in World War II,” Meanjin (1999), 45-57
Tuschka, Yetta J., Unpublished manuscript titled “Life in Santa (sic) Tomas 1941-1944 (sic) (n.d.)
Wikipedia, “Bezique”

Other articles by Prof. Meadows:

Passing of Isabel Cogan Krebs

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Cliff Mills

I 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.

Sally Meadows DAR presentation

Posted on February 26, 2024 by Cliff Mills

CPOW Commander, Sally Meadows, delivered a talk on 19 January 2024 titled Former Civilian POWs and their internment by the Japanese during Japan’s Occupation of the Philippines in World War II. The presentation was sponsored by the Los Altos chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). A short review of the talk was recently published in the Los Altos Town Crier under the title Sharing Stories: Sally Meadows recounts family POW experience.

Sally recounted the civilian internee experience in the Philippines drawing on historical records and the stories of her father, Martin Meadows, who, with his parents, were interned in Santo Tomás Internment Camp (STIC) from January 1942 through 3 February 1945.

The meeting was very well attended and the presentation generated much discussion. The full presentation is currently online (see link below)

Link to the article at the Los Altos Town Crier.
Link to the one-hour 19 January presentation.

Santo Tomás kitchen workers

The Smothers Family’s link to Philippines, by Martin Meadows

Posted on January 29, 2024 by Cliff Mills

A veritable blizzard of media accounts followed the death on 26 December 2023 of Tom Smothers, the senior half of the famed Smothers Brothers, whose show-business credentials date to the 1960s. The purpose of this post is not to add to that blizzard; on the contrary, my initial intention was simply to briefly highlight that the brothers (in what I thought was a not-well-known fact) had been evacuated from the Philippines not long before the Pearl Harbor attack brought the U.S. into WWII; and — a slightly better-known fact — that the brothers’ father, a Major in the U.S. Army, later died while in Japanese captivity. My initial post, consisting of a grand total of four lines, has since been transformed into this somewhat more extensive report.

Why the changed plans, and what did that involve? My initial reaction soon changed when I looked through the flood of accounts about Tom Smothers and his family. I then decided to look more closely into the whole family’s history prior to the immediate post-WWII period. Given that context, my revised decision resulted from the fact that virtually all of the stories about the Smothers family displayed one or more of the following shortcomings — information was either non-existent, incomplete, and/or just plain wrong. (That verdict applies, for example, to the article whose link is attached at the bottom, along with two illustrative paragraphs from the article, which are excerpted from about 1/3 of the way into the article. The verdict even applies to the Wikipedia entry on the brothers.)

To make it clear at the outset, however, this narrative does not seek to present a comprehensive review of the family’s history; nor does it deal in any way with the Smothers Brothers’ show-business history, which, as noted, has been covered by innumerable writers. Its purposes are twofold: to present the highlights of the missing and thus almost completely unknown record of the head of the Smothers family prior to his arrival in the Philippines in 1940; and to clarify the almost always incorrect, and often even badly-garbled “facts,” relating to the Smothers children’s births and their arrival in and later evacuation from the Philippines.
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Leanne Blinzler Noe

Posted on January 18, 2024 by Cliff Mills

Former internee Leanne Blinzler Noe details her family’s experiences in Santo Tomás Internment Camp (STIC) in a recent article at HistoryNet titled At Eight-Years-Old this Girl Survived the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, written by Barbara Noe Kennedy in January 2024.

Leanne and her younger sister, Virginia, were both born in California where their father, Lee Edward Blinzler, was working for a mining company in Yreka. After that mine closed, Lee moved the family to the Philippines. Soon after, Leanne’s mother died and Leanne and her sister were boarded at the Holy Ghost College, Manila, to be taken care of by German nuns. Leanne continues her story to tell how she, and her sister, eventually ended up in Santo Tomás Internment Camp (STIC) in December 1944.

The Blinzlers were repatriated on the U.S.S. Admiral W. L. Capps, leaving Leyte, 20 March 1945, arriving in San Francisco on 8 April 1945 (see additional passenger list for Lee Edward Blinzler).

In 2012 Leanne wrote the book MacArthur Came Back: A Little Girl’s Encounter With War in the Philippines.

The above photo is courtesy of Barbara Noe Kennedy and the article contains several other photographs covering before the War, during and after liberation in January 1945.

Link to the complete article online.

Sally Meadows to speak in Los Altos, CA

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Cliff Mills

CPOW Commander, Sally Meadows, is set to speak Los Altos, California, at noon on Friday, 19 January 2024. Sally will be delivering a talk on “Former civilian POWs and their internment by the Japanese during Japan’s Occupation of the Philippines in World War II.”

The program is hosted by the Los Altos Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). The Chapter focuses on local historic preservation projects, genealogy research, fundraising for a Foothill College scholarship fund, environmental conservation, service to veterans, and other community projects. The talk will be held in the Apricot Room of the Los Altos Community Center, 97 Hillview Ave, Los Altos.

According to the announcement:

“The presentation will explore a largely unknown facet of World War II in the Pacific: the fact that thousands of civilians, including Americans and citizens of other Allied nations, were held captive by the Imperial Japanese military in internment camps throughout Asia – specifically, those who were interned in the Philippines and how they survived over three years of captivity. The stories include why these people were in the Philippines when the war started, how the internment happened, life in camp, and the eventual liberation by General MacArthur’s forces.”

Link to the complete article online and to register for the event, visit bit.ly/POW-19.

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