Author: Frank Ephraim
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252091116
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
A harrowing account of Jewish refugees in the Philippines With the rise of Nazism in the 1930s more than a thousand European Jews sought refuge in the Philippines, joining the small Jewish population of Manila. When the Japanese invaded the islands in 1941, the peaceful existence of the barely settled Jews filled with the kinds of uncertainties and oppression they thought they had left behind. In this book Frank Ephraim, who fled to Manila with his parents, gathers the testimonies of thirty-six refugees, who describe the difficult journey to Manila, the lives they built there upon their arrival, and the events surrounding the Japanese invasion. Combining these accounts with historical and archival records, Manila newspapers, and U.S. government documents, Ephraim constructs a detailed account of this little-known chapter of world history.
Author: Bonnie M. Harris
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299324605
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
During World War II, the United States government and many Western democracies limited or closed themselves off entirely to Jewish refugees. By contrast, a Pacific island nation decided to keep its doors open. Between 1938 and 1941, the Philippine Commonwealth provided safe asylum to more than 1,300 German Jews. In highlighting the efforts by Philippine president Manual Quezon and High Commissioner Paul V. McNutt, Bonnie M. Harris offers fuller implications for our understanding of the Roosevelt administration's response to the Holocaust. This untold history is brought to life by focusing on the incredible journey of synagogue cantor Joseph Cysner. Drawing from oral histories, memoirs, and personal papers, Harris documents Cysner's harrowing escape from the Nazis and his heroic rescue by the American-led Jewish community of the Philippines in 1939. Moving and rich in historical detail, Philippine Sanctuary reveals new insights for an overlooked period in our recent history, and emphasizes the continued importance of humanitarian efforts to aid those being persecuted.
Author: Marion Kaplan
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300249500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
An award-winning historian presents an emotional history of Jewish refugees biding their time in Portugal as they attempt to escape Nazi Europe This riveting book describes the experience of Jewish refugees as they fled Hitler to live in limbo in Portugal until they could reach safer havens abroad. Drawing attention not only to the social and physical upheavals of refugee life, Kaplan highlights their feelings as they fled their homes and histories while begging strangers for kindness. An emotional history of fleeing, this book probes how specific locations touched refugees’ inner lives, including the borders they nervously crossed or the overcrowded transatlantic ships that signaled their liberation.
Author: Edgar D. Whitcomb
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0359267890
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
Escape from Corregidor is the harrowing account of Edgar Whitcomb, a B-17 navigator who arrives in World War II Philippines just before its invasion by the Japanese. Whitcomb evades the enemy on Bataan by fleeing to Corregidor Island in a small boat. He is captured but later manages to escape at night in an hours-long swim to safety. Captured once again weeks later, Whitcomb is imprisoned, tortured and starved, before being transferred to China and eventual freedom.
Author: Mark Berhow
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1782004351
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 135
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Book Description
The Philippines were declared an American Territory on January 4, 1899, and fortification construction soon began on the islands in the mouth of Manila Bay. Among the sites built were Fort Mills (Corregidor), Fort Frank, and the formidable "concrete battleship" of Fort Drum. The defenses suffered constant Japanese bombardment during World War II, leading to the surrender of American forces. In 1945 the forts were manned by Japanese soldiers determined to hold out to the bitter end. This title details the fortifications of this key strategic location, and considers both their effectiveness and historical importance.
Author: Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 161775160X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Manila is not for the faint of heart. Population: over ten million and growing by the minute. Climate: hot, humid and prone to torrential monsoon rains of biblical proportions. The ultimate femme fatale, she's complicated and mysterious, with a tainted, painful past. The perfect, torrid setting for noir. Edited by Dogeaters (Penguin, 1991) author and National Book Award Nominee Jessica Hagedorn, and featuring original stories from a stunning group of multi-award-winning authors.
Author: John D. Lukacs
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1668021331
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
The “riveting” (John Wukovits, author of Admiral “Bull” Halsey) and all-but-unknown account of ten American prisoners of war who escaped from a Japanese prison during World War II. On April 4, 1943, ten American prisoners of war and two Filipino convicts executed a daring escape from one of Japan’s most notorious prison camps. The prisoners were survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March and the Fall of Corregidor, and the prison from which they escaped was surrounded by an impenetrable swamp and reputedly escape-proof. Theirs was the only successful group escape from a Japanese POW camp during the Pacific war. Escape from Davao is the “remarkable” (Bill Sloan, author of Brotherhood of Heroes) story of one of the most extraordinary incidents in the Second World War and of what happened when the Americans returned home to tell the world what they had witnessed. Davao Penal Colony, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, was a prison plantation where thousands of American POWs toiled alongside Filipino criminals and suffered from tropical diseases and malnutrition, as well as the cruelty of their captors. The American servicemen were rotting in a hellhole from which escape was considered impossible, but ten of them, realizing that inaction meant certain death, planned to escape. Their bold plan succeeded with the help of Filipino allies, both patriots and the guerrillas who fought the Japanese sent to recapture them. Their trek to freedom repeatedly put the Americans in jeopardy, yet they eventually succeeded in returning home to the United States to fulfill their self-appointed mission: to tell Americans about Japanese atrocities and to rally the country to the plight of their comrades still in captivity. But the government and the military had a different timetable for the liberation of the Philippines and ordered the men to remain silent. Their testimony, when it finally emerged, galvanized the nation behind the Pacific war effort and made the men celebrities. Over the decades this remarkable story, called the “greatest story of the war in the Pacific” by the War Department in 1944, has faded away. Because of wartime censorship, the full story has never been told until now. John D. Lukacs spent years researching this heroic event, interviewing survivors, reading their letters, searching archival documents, and traveling to the decaying prison camp and its surroundings. His dramatic, gripping account of the escape brings this remarkable tale back to life, where a new generation can admire the resourcefulness and patriotism of the men who fought the Pacific war.
Author: John A. Del Gallego
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476635978
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
During the early months of World War II, Winston Churchill maneuvered to get the U.S. involved in the war to save his country from German invasion. Roosevelt, scheming to lure Hitler into a casus belli, ensnared Japan instead, resulting in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War that followed. When the doomed U.S. garrison in the Philippines soon capitulated to the Japanese, the atrocities inflicted on the Filipino and American units that surrendered were portents for the inhabitants of Manila. The history chronicles the 1945 recapture of Manila largely from the perspective of the civilian population, which suffered horrific brutality from the Japanese, followed by destruction and heavy loss of life during the American assault. Individual stories are included of citizens caught in the crossfire between the tenacious Japanese defenders and American troops determined to seize the capital city while minimizing their own casualties, regardless of the cost in civilian lives. More than 175 photographs document the events described.
Author: Stephen L. Moore
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399583564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
“[A] truly uplifting tale of deliverance from certain death . . . A deeply personal read, in which the reader is drawn into the highs and lows of the action, the tragedy, and the salvation, because Moore has so successfully drawn out the characters. . . . Compelling reading and hard to put down.”—Naval History The heroic story of eleven American POWs who defied certain death in World War II, As Good as Dead is an unforgettable account of the Palawan Massacre survivors and their daring escape. In late 1944, the Allies invaded the Japanese-held Philippines, and soon the end of the Pacific War was within reach. But for the last 150 American prisoners of war still held on the island of Palawan, there would be no salvation. After years of slave labor, starvation, disease, and torture, their worst fears were about to be realized. On December 14, with machine guns trained on them, they were herded underground into shallow air raid shelters—death pits dug with their own hands. Japanese soldiers doused the shelters with gasoline and set them on fire. Some thirty prisoners managed to bolt from the fiery carnage, running a lethal gauntlet of machine gun fire and bayonets to jump from the cliffs to the rocky Palawan coast. By the next morning, only eleven men were left alive—but their desperate journey to freedom had just begun. As Good as Dead is one of the greatest escape stories of World War II, and one that few Americans know. The eleven survivors of the Palawan Massacre—some badly wounded and burned—spent weeks evading Japanese patrols. They scrounged for food and water, swam shark-infested bays, and wandered through treacherous jungle terrain, hoping to find friendly Filipino guerrillas. Their endurance, determination, and courage in the face of death make this a gripping and inspiring saga of survival.
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.
