{"id":3773,"date":"2019-01-29T16:09:20","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T00:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/?p=3773"},"modified":"2019-01-29T16:09:27","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T00:09:27","slug":"the-boy-who-wasnt-interned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/?p=3773","title":{"rendered":"The boy who wasn&#8217;t interned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By all accounts, Michael Seats should have been interned in Santo Tomas Internment Camp.&nbsp; At thirteen, he and his mother had fled Hong Kong, leaving his father behind.&nbsp; They were housed in the Sulphur Springs hotel, along with many other British refugees.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3834\" style=\"width: 214px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philippineinternment.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Seats-Michael-1943.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3834\" data-attachment-id=\"3834\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/?attachment_id=3834#main\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philippineinternment.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Seats-Michael-1943.png?fit=226%2C333&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"226,333\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Seats-Michael-1943\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt;Michael Anthony Seats, 1943&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;Michael Anthony Seats, 1943&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philippineinternment.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Seats-Michael-1943.png?fit=204%2C300&amp;ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philippineinternment.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Seats-Michael-1943.png?fit=226%2C333&amp;ssl=1\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3834\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philippineinternment.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Seats-Michael-1943.png?resize=204%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Michael Anthony Seats, 1943\" width=\"204\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philippineinternment.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Seats-Michael-1943.png?resize=204%2C300&amp;ssl=1 204w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philippineinternment.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Seats-Michael-1943.png?w=226&amp;ssl=1 226w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 204px) 100vw, 204px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3834\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Seats, 1943<\/p><\/div>\n<p>However, rather than being interned, he was able to get passage on one of the last ships leaving Manila, and ultimately landing in Perth, Australia.&nbsp; From there, he gained passage on another vessel bound for England.&nbsp; After sailing through the Panama Canal his ship joined a convoy for several days.<\/p>\n<p>However, after his ship left the convoy, it was attacked by a German submarine!&nbsp; Rather than giving away the rest of the story, you can read his harrowing account&nbsp;in a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=Gm_oksLHwVEC&amp;pg=PA10&amp;dq=sulphur+springs+manila&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiYueSn5_XeAhVlilQKHYW2D18QuwUIPTAD#v=onepage&amp;q=ggg&amp;f=false\"><em>Boy&#8217;s Life<\/em> article of July 1943 titled &#8220;We Were Torpedoed.<\/a>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I would have loved to gotten an update from Michael, but, unfortunately, he passed away in Western Australia in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By all accounts, Michael Seats should have been interned in Santo Tomas Internment Camp.&nbsp; At thirteen, he and his mother had fled Hong Kong, leaving his father behind.&nbsp; They were housed in the Sulphur Springs hotel, along with many other British refugees. However, rather than being interned, he was able to get passage on one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p49RCb-YR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3773"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3844,"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3773\/revisions\/3844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3773"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippineinternment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fpost_folder&post=3773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}