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This article
is authored by John Ream, assisted by family members who were all prisoners..
Internment Camp #3
Camp John Hay, in Baguio, was bombed about six hours after Pearl
Harbor was attacked, after which local Japanese civilians were interned
there. On December 27, 1941, elements of
the Japanese invading force occupied
CAMP JOHN HAY Camp John Hay was a typical
Army post with barracks and support buildings, and the
Japanese designated it as Camp #3. When
the new prisoners arrived the men were segregated from the women and
children. In both sections mattresses
were placed on the floor of the barracks, crowded up to one another for
sleeping. Bathroom facilities and food acquisition were inadequate for the
number of people being housed. The water
supply was meager. In the evening, the
men and women were allowed to “commingle” in the tennis courts - “No
touching”. On April 23, 1942 Camp #3 was
moved to Camp Holmes about five miles north of Baguio
CAMP HOLMES Camp
Holmes (now Camp Dangwa ) had previously been a Philippine
Constabulary training camp situated in the fertile Trinidad Valley China Sea ,
it was the “Club Med” of POW camps.
Located at around 5,000-foot altitude, it was near pine forests and had
a year-round moderate temperature. Camp
Holmes was a large facility, with three large barracks, numerous isolated
cottages and some shop buildings. The
Japanese took over two of the cottages for their own use, while the internees
used the largest one for a hospital. The
mothers and small babies were assigned the remaining tiny cottage. A large kitchen and mess hall served the
whole camp.
BILIBID PRISON On
December 27, 1944 Camp #3 was moved from picturesque Camp Holmes to Old Bilibid Prison in Manila.
300 military POWs suffering from cholera were moved out of the old
three-story hospital building, which had been in the process of demolition
during pre-war times. These prisoners
were relocated to an adjacent compound in the prison and the civilians occupied
the partially demolished building. Bilibid Prison was within walking distance of the larger
Santo Tomas Internment Camp, but no interaction between camps was allowed. Conditions in Bilibid
were primitive: no chairs, few beds, or place to eat. Bathrooms were unsanitary troughs dumping
into the ground. Fortunately, liberation
came within six weeks of arrival.
American Mortar Crew behind Bilibid Prison
POPULATION Camp #3 had three distinct populations: miners, missionaries and
others. At the beginning of
incarceration the numbers varied widely as Chinese moved out, missionaries
moved in, then out, then back in. Some
were transferred to Santo Tomas mid-war, and some families who “took to the
hills” had to surrender. The population
stabilized at around 500 internees. Most
were American, a half dozen were British and a few were Australian.
MORTALITY Nineteen internees died while in Camp
#3. One was presumed to have been
tortured to death and eighteen died of other causes. Some of those related to malnutrition or lack
of adequate medical facilities.
ADMINISTRATION Camp #3
was fortunate to have as its commandants and administrators some Japanese who
were known to the prisoners. Prewar,
these Japanese had been carpenters, businessmen, photographers and other
occupations in the local community. One
of the commandants, Rokuro Tomibe,
was as humane as one could expect. He
helped make the internees stay as easy as it was possible for him to do. Camp #3 also was fortunate to have an older
internee, Nellie McKim, who had been born and reared
in Japan
Immediately upon being interned, a committee was formed to act as a
liaison with the Japanese and to do the day-to-day management of the camp. The committee members soon became elected,
subject to approval by the Japanese.
FOOD AND HEALTH Food was always a major
problem, especially at the start and at the end of internment. Food was always of poor quality and
inadequate portions. Breakfast was
usually rice (hard or soft) with a spoon of syrup and sometimes a rotten
banana. Lunch consisted of soup and
maybe a banana. Dinner was rice or gabi (an obnoxious, slimy potato-like vegetable much like
taro), a touch of meat and maybe some squash or chard which had been grown in
the camp. A few goats, cows and chickens
were maintained to provide milk and eggs for the children and the sick.
Off and on during internment, food from the outside could be purchased
from a little store, but the food problem worsened towards the end of
1944. When the camp was moved to
Hygiene was always a main battle, especially in Bilibid
Prison. Flies swarmed around the open toilets,
which were no more than slanted troughs one straddled. Occasionally someone would pour a bucket of
water to wash the waste into the ground.
Along the interior wall were several hundred graves of military
prisoners who perished from disease. An effort
to dig a well as an alternative source determined there was no place further
than about twenty yards from either the toilets or the graves and that the
water table was only about three feet below the surface. The major health problems were dysentery,
dengue fever, hepatitis and beri beri
in all locations.
WORK ASSIGNMENTS One of
the first persons to be drafted into service was the young manager of a local
hotel. Although Alex Kaluzhny
claimed no knowledge of cooking, he knew how much food to order for 500 people,
and became the head cook of the camp.
After repatriation, Alex joined a friend and started a restaurant in Oakland
Everyone in camp had to work in a job according to his/her
qualifications. Doctors, nurses,
teachers, cooks, handymen, blacksmiths, cobblers and others had to do their
part. Even students had to put in three
hours a week of community service. The
high school boys mostly served on the garbage crew, taking the garbage wagon
out of camp to the dump, under guard of course.
Others joined the men on the hill to chop wood for the kitchen
stoves. They also manned the kitchen
cleanup, allowing them a few extra scraps to fill out their diets. Women and girls cleaned vegetables, picked
stones and worms out of rice or worked in the camp gardens.
LIVING QUARTERS In
At the start of internment men were separated from women and children
and only allowed to commingle during certain times. This prohibition was slowly relaxed when
sexes were allowed to commingle for most of the day. However, it was not until April of 1944 that
families were allowed to live together.
EDUCATION Within a week of internment, school was started without books. After six months the Japanese allowed a
couple of men out to get books from the school, though. history and geography
books were prohibited. These men also
brought in enough recreational reading to open a small library, and Maryknoll nuns sent in books on occasion. If homework entailed the use of a book, it
had to be passed around because of the shortage. Paper was very scarce and pencils were used
down to the nub.
RECREATION Camp recreation included activities every Saturday night, bridge
tournaments, and softball tournaments (the three teams being juniors, seniors
and missionaries). Camp #3 had talented
people in many fields - science, drama, music, dance and others. Performances were put on regularly. These
evening events in the dining room were almost the only time the men and women
could be together. Mostly they were
segregated except for the commingling hour in the late afternoons where they
could walk about the parade grounds under the watchful eyes of the guards – no
touching. Sometimes the entertainment
was a clever spoof on some opera or Shakespearian drama. Several plays were put on by the high school
or elementary school. Each Christmas,
the prisoners would enjoy a traditional performance of the Nativity with music
from the camp choir. Creative production
and costuming peaked in the spectacular “Passion” play of Easter, 1944,
(depicting scenes from the Last Supper to the Crucifixion).
TREATMENT For the most part, physical abuse by the
Japanese was not a major problem. At the
beginning there were several incidents of cuffing some of the young male
prisoners. There were other incidents,
however, that could be described as nothing less than severe brutality. One missionary who was suspected as being a
spy against the Japanese while he was in
LIBERATION In late 1944 there were two sightings of U. S. aircraft over
On February 4, Commandant Ebiko presented
the camp’s chairman with a document freeing the internees. The Japanese were not seen after that. A patrol of the 37th Infantry broke into the
prison thinking it was a Japanese ammunition dump; they found 700 military
prisoners and 500 civilian prisoners.
Meanwhile the Japanese were blowing up and burning buildings surrounding
Bilibid. The
responsible commander from the 37th Infantry determined that the prisoners had
to be evacuated to escape the fires. The
prisoners who could walk started on foot to the north to a shoe factory called Ang Tibay. Since the 37th Infantry did not have enough
vehicles to take the non-ambulatory cases, the 1st Cavalry sent vehicles to
assist. The prisoners were fed K Rations
and returned to Bilibid the next day when it was
determined that the fire had burned up to the walls of Bilibid
before going out. After about three
weeks most of those in Camp #3 were flown to Leyte to await transportation to
the
First Red Cross Mail Call in Bilibid Prison after liberation
