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FOR A 9-YEAR-OLD American girl finishing three years in a Japanese detention center during World War II, liberation was sweet.
"The [U.S.] soldiers gave us their C-rations, and we got sick from eating the chocolate. Our stomachs couldn't handle the food after being on such a limited diet for so long," remembers Ann Wohlhueter of Stafford County. Now 69, she looks back at the years she spent in captivity during the Japanese occupation of Manila in the Philippines.
Before the Second World War, Manila, the capital of the Philippines, was considered one of the most beautiful cities in Asia and was often described as the "Pearl of the Orient." Ann Wilson Wohlhueter was born there in 1936. Her father, Eugene Wilson, was from Illinois and went to Manila as a teacher. He later joined the civil service. Her mother, Josephine Hemenway, was from the Philippines and was a secretary. Ann was an only child.
Manila was bombed by the Japanese on the same day they attacked Pearl Harbor. It was Monday in the Philippines, since that country was on the other side of the international date line.
On Dec. 25, 1941, Gen. Douglas MacArthur declared Manila an open city, which meant there would be no resistance to enemy takeover. The Japanese were quick to occupy the city, and then they were faced with the question of what to do with the thousands of American and European civilians.
"I was almost 6 years old," recalls Wohlhueter. "Notices were sent to the various neighborhoods to be ready to be picked up by the Japanese. People in our area were picked up on Jan. 6, 1942. We were told we could only bring clothing for three days. Their calendar must have been different from ours because they held us for 37 months," she says.
The Japanese decided to use Santo Tomas University in Manila as a detention center. Santo Tomas was founded in 1611 and was the oldest university in Asia. It comprised numerous buildings in a four-square-block area, and the campus was surrounded by high walls.
"We were some of the first to arrive," says Wohlhueter. "The Japanese separated the men from the women and children. Since inside space was limited and the population so high, eventually families were allowed to build small huts around the campus buildings. The Japanese were very strict, and they insisted that the huts had to be open on all sides at all times so that the soldiers could see inside. Our hut was very small and just big enough for little more than our beds," Wohlhueter remembers.
The camp would have a steady population of more than 4,000 prisoners, but some 10,000 would pass through the camp during the war. They were largely a cross section of teachers, missionaries, American company employees, civil servants, tradesmen, nurses, reporters and so forth. The vast majority were American and middle class. Most of the rest were English, Australian or Canadian. The fall of Manila produced the largest capture of American civilians in history.
The detainees were allowed to organize a committee to run the daily routines of the camp. All adults were given jobs. Wohlhueter's father worked in the garden and taught seventh-grade science. Her mother worked in the kitchen. Schools were set up to continue the children's education. There were very few books and not enough paper for the students to do classwork or homework. The Japanese would not allow classes in civics, history or social studies.
"My father would tell me everything he could remember about each American president and what happened during their terms. They stopped holding classes the last year, as we were too weak from malnutrition to climb the stairs to the second-floor classrooms," Wohlhueter says.
The camp committee even arranged for theatrical and singing productions to keep up morale. One internee was Dave Harvey. He had been in vaudeville, and his wife was an actress. They put on a production of "Private Lives." Most of the productions were skits, with a lot of singing and dancing. The skits were filled with inside jokes that the Japanese would not get, but the prisoners did.
Food was a problem from the beginning. For the first two years, the prisoners were fed a mixture of rice, a few vegetables and small, bony fish three times a day. The food was of very poor quality. By the third year, they were fed only twice a day. It is estimated that each person subsisted on 500 calories a day the final year.
Great effort was made by the camp committee to ensure that the children received the best food. They also realized that it was very important to set up and maintain a routine for the children that included school and playtime.
"I was quite a tomboy. We used to play marbles, but my father did not like me to play for 'keeps,'" Wohlhueter says.
For the first two years, prisoners were allowed to meet Filipino friends and relatives at the gate. The Japanese occupation was extremely difficult on the general population of the Philippines, but somehow the people on the outside managed to find enough to bring to Santo Tomas to help the prisoners survive.
"One of the first things the Japanese did was to make us exchange our money for their occupation money. We called it 'Mickey Mouse' money. It was almost worthless. My grandmother was from the Philippines and she was not interred. She brought us clothes and food from home. We were allowed one visit a week," Wohlhueter says.
People who had enough money were able to buy things on the black market. A bartering system also developed throughout the camp. Sometimes, Red Cross packages were allowed into the camp. "Only one in 10 got through," says Wohlhueter.
The Japanese tried to limit the flow of information into the camp. They were unsuccessful, as the locals passed information into the camp and also took out information. There were tall buildings across the street from the university, and Philippine locals would climb to the roofs and signal information to those inside.
Possession of radios was a capital offense. Some men were able to construct a radio, but it was dismantled and its different parts kept hidden in different areas of the camp when not in use.
"Most information traveled by word of mouth. We had a great rumor mill going most of the time," remembers Wohlhueter.
There was only a limited number of guards who walked along the top of the walls surrounding the university. The Japanese knew that if anyone did escape the confines of the detention center, there were few places to go. Once, in 1942, three young men did manage to escape. They were soon captured on the beach and brought back. They were tortured, forced to dig their own graves, and executed. This was a clear message to the rest of the population. There was one successful escape in January 1945, not long before the camp was liberated.
There was a public-address system that was used to give orders and information to the general population. "I remember a man named Don Bell use to play 78-rpm records over the system. He played Irving Berlin records and sometimes Disney's 'The Three Little Pigs' for the children," Wohlhueter recalls. The internees were notorious for writing their own lyrics to popular tunes.
The captors were very strict about allowing the prisoners to show patriotism. The last Fourth of July they spent in captivity, prisoners were allowed to put on a program. No speeches or patriotic songs were allowed. One person got up to recite a poem. It began: "Oh say, can you see"
"Before you knew it, the entire audience joined in, and we recited all four verses of our national anthem. The English, Australians and Canadians all joined in and said it with us. For some reason the Japanese didn't catch on," says Wohlhueter.
"We had almost no medical supplies. Once I fell and cut my chin open on a picnic table. Five men held me down while they stitched me up without anesthesia," she says. "There was one guard that we hated above all others. His name was Abiko. All prisoners were required to bow to Japanese officers. He made everyone bow very low. He would look for every reason to punish prisoners, and he would often double the punishment. One of his favorite punishments was to cut the already low rations of food."
On Feb. 3, 1945, Philippine civilians got a message through to the camp that the Americans were nearby and would liberate the camp soon. The next day, the camp was liberated by the 1st Cavalry, the 37th Infantry and the 44th Tank Battalion.
"Some artillery shells hit the camp, and they landed mighty close," remembers Wohlhueter. MacArthur had heard that the Japanese were planning to massacre the internees, so he sent troops on ahead to prevent it. Abiko was killed in the attack. Some Japanese officers took some children hostage and barricaded themselves in one of the buildings. The Americans talked them into coming out. In all, 466 prisoners died during 37 months of captivity. Most died from starvation and malnutrition.
Most of Manila was destroyed in a monthlong campaign to drive the Japanese from the city. There was house-to-house fighting, and the Japanese put up stiff resistance. When Wohlhueter's father returned home, he found most of the neighborhood, including their home, destroyed. Her parents had hidden their sterling silver in the closet, but the heat of the flames had melted it into a jumbled mess.
Since their home was destroyed, Wohlhueter's family stayed at Santo Tomas until they were able to get a boat to the United States at the end of March 1945. The voyage took a month, and they landed in San Pedro, Calif. They were delayed for a day from disembarking because another ship had to unload first. Entertainer Dinah Shore was in Los Angeles and, hearing about the delay, took her band down to the docks and performed for the ship.
When they went ashore, Wohlhueter's family went to buy clothes. While they were in the store, little Ann saw a doll that she really wanted. Two teenagers heard that she had just returned from being in a Japanese detention center and bought the doll and gave it to her.
In later life, Wohlhueter taught Spanish in schools in New York and Connecticut, served as an officer in the Air Force and eventually settled in Dale City in 1972. In 2003, she and her husband of 37 years, Bob, moved to England Run in Stafford County. They have two grown sons, James and Charles.
Wohlhueter isn't bitter about her experiences. The one thing she recalls distinctly is being hungry for three years. Afterward, she could never stand being hungry again. She remembers that she had difficulty whenever she heard stateside stories about the hardship of rationing during World War II.
"Rationing is much better than having nothing at all," Wohlhueter says.
ARCH DI PEPPE is an antiques appraiser and freelance writer living in Stafford County.
