The Iron Gates of Santo Tomas

The Iron Gates of Santo Tomas PDF Author: Emily Van Sickle
Publisher: ChicagoReviewPress + ORM
ISBN: 1613738102
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
A gripping memoir documenting one couple’s experience being imprisoned by the Japanese on a Philippine college campus during World War II. This is a gripping eyewitness account of internment during World War II in the Philippines. Van Sickle and her husband, Charles, were among a group of foreigners who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Trapped in Manila after its surrender to the Japanese in 1942, they were incarcerated in the vast forty-eight-acre campus of Santo Tomás University, the only place in the city large enough to accommodate all the prisoners. The university grounds were enclosed on three sides by high concrete walls and iron bars; Santo Tomás turned out to be “a made-to-order concentration camp.” Every day spent on this seventeenth-century campus was a struggle for survival. Van Sickle offers a fascinating, detailed, and insightful account of life at Santo Tomás. The prisoners—5,000 at the outset—were thrown on their own resources for food and the simplest types of comfort. The internment camp became a kind of school of human relations: additional curricula forced upon the prisoners, the author says good-humoredly, were Entomology, the science of bed bugs; Structural Engineering, the art of sleeping on a cot; Chemistry, or washing clothes; Philosophy, or waiting in line; Industrial Engineering, opening a can; Physical Education, or the missing drink. As they suffered together, the internees managed to form a community of sorts that sustained them until their liberation in February, 1945. Van Sickle’s story is unique and personal narrative, and her retelling of the camp’s liberation is dramatic and powerful. Praise for The Iron Gates of Santo Tomas “Involving memoir of a woman caught with her husband behind enemy lines after the fall of Manila in WW II. . . . A valuable addition to the history of WW II.” —Kirkus Reviews “The story is unique and fascinating to read. . . . A well-written memoir.” —Library Journal

The Iron Gates of Santo Tomas

The Iron Gates of Santo Tomas PDF Author: Emily Van Sickle
Publisher: ChicagoReviewPress + ORM
ISBN: 1613738102
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Get Book Here

Book Description
A gripping memoir documenting one couple’s experience being imprisoned by the Japanese on a Philippine college campus during World War II. This is a gripping eyewitness account of internment during World War II in the Philippines. Van Sickle and her husband, Charles, were among a group of foreigners who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Trapped in Manila after its surrender to the Japanese in 1942, they were incarcerated in the vast forty-eight-acre campus of Santo Tomás University, the only place in the city large enough to accommodate all the prisoners. The university grounds were enclosed on three sides by high concrete walls and iron bars; Santo Tomás turned out to be “a made-to-order concentration camp.” Every day spent on this seventeenth-century campus was a struggle for survival. Van Sickle offers a fascinating, detailed, and insightful account of life at Santo Tomás. The prisoners—5,000 at the outset—were thrown on their own resources for food and the simplest types of comfort. The internment camp became a kind of school of human relations: additional curricula forced upon the prisoners, the author says good-humoredly, were Entomology, the science of bed bugs; Structural Engineering, the art of sleeping on a cot; Chemistry, or washing clothes; Philosophy, or waiting in line; Industrial Engineering, opening a can; Physical Education, or the missing drink. As they suffered together, the internees managed to form a community of sorts that sustained them until their liberation in February, 1945. Van Sickle’s story is unique and personal narrative, and her retelling of the camp’s liberation is dramatic and powerful. Praise for The Iron Gates of Santo Tomas “Involving memoir of a woman caught with her husband behind enemy lines after the fall of Manila in WW II. . . . A valuable addition to the history of WW II.” —Kirkus Reviews “The story is unique and fascinating to read. . . . A well-written memoir.” —Library Journal

The Iron Gates of Santo Tomás

The Iron Gates of Santo Tomás PDF Author: Emily Van Sickle
Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers, Limited
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
To bring with them. It was six months before the Japanese gave them even a meagre food allowance - 25 cents a day for adults. In Santo Tomas, Emily Van Sickle says, the prisoners "learned many things, some funny, some tragic, that are no part of a normal college curriculum." This is a fascinating, detailed and insightful account of life in a civilian concentration camp where each day saw a battle for survival. The prisoners - 5,000 at the outset - thrown on their own.

Surviving a Japanese Internment Camp

Surviving a Japanese Internment Camp PDF Author: Rupert Wilkinson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476612188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
During World War II the Japanese imprisoned more American civilians at Manila's Santo Tomas prison camp than anywhere else, along with British and other nationalities. Placing the camp's story in the wider history of the Pacific war, this book tells how the camp went through a drastic change, from good conditions in the early days to impending mass starvation, before its dramatic rescue by U.S. Army "flying columns." Interned as a small boy with his mother and older sister, the author shows the many ways in which the camp's internees handled imprisonment--and their liberation afterwards. Using a wealth of Santo Tomas memoirs and diaries, plus interviews with other ex-internees and veteran army liberators, he reveals how children reinvented their own society, while adults coped with crowded dormitories, evaded sex restrictions, smuggled in food, and through a strong internee government, dealt with their Japanese overlords. The text explores the attitudes and behavior of Japanese officials, ranging from sadistic cruelty to humane cooperation, and asks philosophical questions about atrocity and moral responsibility.

Indestructible

Indestructible PDF Author: John R Bruning
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316339393
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
In this remarkable WWII story by New York Times bestselling author John R. Bruning, a renegade American pilot fights against all odds to rescue his family -- imprisoned by the Japanese--and revolutionizes modern warfare along the way. From the knife fights and smuggling runs of his youth to his fiery days as a pioneering naval aviator, Paul Irving "Pappy" Gunn played by his own set of rules and always survived on his wits and fists. But when he fell for a conservative Southern belle, her love transformed him from a wild and reckless airman to a cunning entrepreneur whose homespun engineering brilliance helped launch one of the first airlines in Asia. Pappy was drafted into MacArthur's air force when war came to the Philippines; and while he carried out a top-secret mission to Australia, the Japanese seized his family. Separated from his beloved wife, Polly, and their four children, Pappy reverted to his lawless ways. He carried out rescue missions with an almost suicidal desperation. Even after he was shot down twice and forced to withdraw to Australia, he waged a one-man war against his many enemies -- including the American high command and the Japanese--and fought to return to the Philippines to find his family. Without adequate planes, supplies, or tactics, the U.S. Army Air Force suffered crushing defeats by the Japanese in the Pacific. Over the course of his three-year quest to find his family, Pappy became the renegade who changed all that. With a brace of pistols and small band of loyal fol,lowers, he robbed supply dumps, stole aircraft, invented new weapons, and modified bombers to hit harder, fly farther, and deliver more destruction than anything yet seen in the air. When Pappy's modified planes were finally unleashed during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, the United States scored one of the most decisive victories of World War II. Taking readers from the blistering skies of the Pacific to the jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines to one of the the war's most notorious prison camps, Indestructible traces one man's bare-knuckle journey to free the people he loved and the aerial revolution he sparked that continues to resonate across America's modern battlefields.

Philippine Sanctuary

Philippine Sanctuary PDF Author: Bonnie M. Harris
Publisher:
ISBN: 0299324605
Category : Jewish refugees
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
"Of the many refugee trails filled with stateless Jews fleeing Europe during the decades of the Nazi Regime, the odyssey of Cantor Joseph Cysner's escape from Hamburg to Poland to the Philippines stands unique. Joseph escaped the fate of thousands of refugees held at border-camps along the German-Polish border in 1938 and joined hundreds of European refugee Jews ultimately saved from destruction between 1937 and 1941 by little known rescue plans in the East Asian Community of the Philippines. His rescue by Commonwealth officials President Manual Quezon and High Commissioner Paul V. McNutt, and American Jewish businessmen and leaders in Manila, illuminates their heroic efforts in organizing selection and sponsorship programs that overcame limits imposed by the US and other countries during the refugee crisis and heroically saved as many souls as they could before war intervened. Even though it too was ill-fated by the Japanese invasion, Quezon's remarkable offer demonstrated what could be accomplished when nation's leaders were willing to put aside political agendas to act in the universally noble cause of saving human lives. By opening their doors to the refugees, the Filipinos also opened their hearts and gave them a new homeland. Joseph Cysner's personal story of refuge in the Philippines and the vibrant Jewish community that arose there weaves itself throughout the humanitarian efforts to aid the persecuted with a sanctuary in the Pacific. This book resurrects these important events from historical oblivion"--

So Far from Home

So Far from Home PDF Author: Bruce Elliott Johansen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description


The MacArthur Highway and Other Relics of American Empire in the Philippines

The MacArthur Highway and Other Relics of American Empire in the Philippines PDF Author: Joseph P. McCallus
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597976040
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
It has been more than a century since the American conquest and subsequent annexation of the Philippines. Although the nation was given its independence in 1946, American cultural authority remains. In order to locate and lend significance to the relics of American empire, Joseph McCallus retraces the route Gen. Douglas MacArthur took during his liberation of the country from the Japanese in 1944 and 1945. While following MacArthur's footsteps, he provides a historical and geographical account of this iconic soldier's military career, accompanied by a description of the contemporary Philippine landscape. McCallus uses the past and the present to explore how America influenced the country's political and educational systems and language, as well as the ramifications of the continued U.S. military presence and the effects of globalization on traditional Filipino society. He examines the American influence on its architecture and introduces to the reader the American expatriate business community--people who have lived in the Philippines for decades and continue to help shape the nation. The MacArthur Highway and Other Relics of American Empire in the Philippines is an absorbing look at how American military intervention and colonial rule have indelibly shaped a nation decades after the fact.

The A to Z of World War II

The A to Z of World War II PDF Author: Anne Sharp Wells
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810870266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
World War II dominates world history today as it dominated world attention over 60 years ago. In spite of the alliances that bound many of the same participants, the war was essentially two separate but simultaneous conflicts: one involved Japan as the major antagonist and took place mostly in Asia and Pacific; and the other, initiated by Germany and Italy, was contested mainly in Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. The A to Z of World War II: The War Against Japan traces the brutal conflict from Japan's seizure of Chinese territory in 1931, through the onset of war with the Western Allies in 1941, to the use of atomic weapons by the United States in 1945. It also addresses the aftermath of the war including the formation of the United Nations and the American occupation of Japan. As the first of two volumes covering World War II, this volume concentrates on the war in Asia and the Pacific so the user benefits from the comprehensive explanations of the people, places, and events that shaped much of that region's 20th-century history.

Historical Dictionary of World War II

Historical Dictionary of World War II PDF Author: Anne Sharp Wells
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538102560
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
World War II was the largest and most costly conflict in history, the first true global war. Fought on land, on sea, and in the air, it involved numerous countries and killed, maimed, or displaced millions of people, both civilian and military, around the world. In spite of the alliances that bound many of the same participants, the war was essentially two separate but simultaneous conflicts: one involved Japan as the major antagonist and took place mostly in Asia and the Pacific; and the other, initiated by Germany and Italy, was contested mainly in Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. This book focuses on the lesser known war, the war with Japan. It begins with Japan’s seizure of Manchuria from China in 1931 and covers Japan’s ambitious attacks on Pearl Harbor and other territories ten years later, the use of atomic bombs on Japan’s cities, and the end of the Allied occupation of Japan in 1952. Although Japan renounced war in its 1947 constitution, conflict continued across Asia, as former colonies fought for independence and civil war engulfed other areas. Historical Dictionary of World War II: The War Against Japan, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on the military, diplomatic, political, social, economic, and scientific aspects of the war, in addition to the lives of the people who participated in and directed the war. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the war against Japan during World War II.

Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila

Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila PDF Author: James M. Scott
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393246957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 631

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Book Description
“Illuminating.… An eloquent testament to a doomed city and its people.” —The Wall Street Journal In early 1945, General Douglas MacArthur prepared to reclaim Manila, America’s Pearl of the Orient, which had been seized by the Japanese in 1942. Convinced the Japanese would abandon the city, he planned a victory parade down Dewey Boulevard—but the enemy had other plans. The Japanese were determined to fight to the death. The battle to liberate Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the city and a rampage by Japanese forces that brutalized the civilian population, resulting in a massacre as horrific as the Rape of Nanking. Drawing from war-crimes testimony, after-action reports, and survivor interviews, Rampage recounts one of the most heartbreaking chapters of Pacific War history.