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Ann Wilson, in the yard of her home in Manila when she was 5, shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Ann Wohlhueter's father taught English in the Philippines. She and her parents were imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp in 1944, when they finally got permission to celebrate the American Independence Day. |
BY HUGH MUIR
Sixty-five years after reciting "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a subdued Fourth of July celebration under the watchful eyes of Japanese soldiers in an internment camp in the Philippines, Stafford County's Ann Wohlhueter again spoke lines from the anthem last week.
This time, it was for a group of wounded American veterans in Richmond.
Wohlhueter--who was 8-year-old Ann Wilson when she was an internee with her parents in Manila--belongs to the Readers Theater, a group in Falls Run in southern Stafford that gives readings at retirement homes, hospitals and nursing homes. She and her husband, Bob, settled in the 55-and-over community a few years ago.
Last week, a cast of five presented an Independence Day program at McGuire VA Hospital in Richmond. Among the readings was the national anthem, with Wohlhueter and three others each reciting one of the four stanzas.
"The veterans seemed appreciative and moved," Wohlhueter said later. "For me, it relived my memory of July 4, 1944. I was in a crowd of prisoners on a university campus in a Manila suburb, with my parents and some 4,000 other internees. We were there, under guard, to celebrate the Fourth of July."
By that time, the civilians had been held by the Japanese for 21/2 years, since the fall of the Philippines in December 1941, following the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Wohlhueter was in the country because her father taught English there.
In July 1944, the prisoners--mostly 2,800 American civilians, but also including British, Australians and Canadians--had, for the first time, been granted permission to observe Independence Day.
But no speeches, the camp commandant said, and no music, no singing, no parades--nothing overly patriotic.
DEFYING THE JAPANESE
The internees gathered in an open space of the University of Santo Tomas, a 350-year-old, walled, 20-acre complex in northern Manila where foreign civilians were interned after the Japanese took over the Philippine capital.
Wohlhueter, then 8, and her parents, Eugene and Josephine Wilson, lived in a shack in the university's courtyards.
"We had the commandant's orders, so there was no particular program for the July Fourth gathering," Wohlhueter said.
People spontaneously began talking about how they'd celebrated back home. Much of the talk turned to food.
"Fried chicken, hot dogs, apple pie," Wohlhueter said. "It was a favorite subject. We had so little to eat."
Then a man stood and said he wanted to recite a poem he memorized in grade school.
He began reciting "The Star-Spangled Banner."
"After the first few words," Wohlhueter said, "others began to join in."
By the end of the first stanza, she said, thousands--Americans and allies alike--were quietly speaking the words. There were some incendiary lines:
The armed guards, about a dozen, remained impassive.
"None knew any English," Wohlhueter said.
A ROUSING RETURN
When the final "land of the free and the home of the brave" line was spoken, those gathered quietly dispersed to their quarters.
"It was evening and curfew was approaching," Wohlhueter said.
It was the only such celebration at Santo Tomas. Five months later, Allied forces led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur--making good on his promise, "I shall return"--invaded the Philippines. On Feb. 5, 1945, after intense fighting in the city, Manila fell and the internees were liberated.
Wohlhueter and her family arrived back in the United States by ship in early May 1945. Soon they were traveling across the country by train toward home in her father's native Massachusetts.
They stopped to visit her grandparents in Peoria, Ill. As they emerged from the train station, they were confronted by a huge parade and people flooding the streets.
"I turned to my father," Wohlhueter recalled, "and said, 'Grandpa didn't have to go to all this fuss just for us!'"
Her father laughed. It was May 8, 1945: VE Day.
Hugh Muir: 540/735-1975
Email: hmuir@freelancestar.com
