WWII Internees Held by Japanese Hold Reunion : Nightmare Still Haunting Civilian POWs

Carol Talbot was in the dining room of her Seal Beach Leisure World apartment, working on her book, when she heard the rapid “tat-tat-tat” of gunfire.

In an instant, she was crouched in a fetal position beneath the dining room table, covering her ears. For her, it was World War II again.

“When I was under the table, I was back in the prison camp,” Talbot said.

Later, realizing where she was, she got to her feet. Still, the sounds persisted. She walked outside and saw that a group of Polynesian entertainers were banging bongo drums for a crowd of retired people basking in the August sun.

Stranded in Manila

Talbot, 67, is among about 7,300 American civilians who were held prisoner by the Japanese in World War II. Stranded in Manila on her way to do missionary work in India, she spent more than three years as a civilian prisoner of war, after the Japanese overran the Philippine archipelago in late 1941.

Survivors of the Philippine camps gathered again for the first time since the war Friday at the Holiday Inn in Fullerton.

Although the three-day conference has been organized for former civilian POWs, former military POWs from all wars are expected to attend.

Most of the civilian POWs were held by the Japanese in the Philippines. The theme of the meeting is “Memories Together” and about 400 people are attending.

More than 700--about 10%--of the American civilian POWs died on the islands at Los Banos, Santo Tomas University in Manila and Bilidad. Many of the survivors still experience nightmares more than 40 years later.

It is the starvation they remember most. They had only rice mush and little of it. Many ate weeds to stay alive.

Writing Book

“I really wanted to push away the experiences,” said Talbot, who is writing a book about her ordeal. “If I had known how much I would have to relive those experiences to write this book, I wouldn’t have done it.”

Henry Sioux Johnson, 58, a professor of Asian studies at California State University, Long Beach, is a former internee and a conference organizer. He hopes the event will serve as a catharsis for many survivors still tortured by memories.

“We hope this conference will get us organized, so we can help each other. Some of us have been living dead for too long,” he said.

Johnson spent 37 months in the squalor of Los Banos prison camp. Then only 14, he and his two brothers and a sister had been on their way to the United States from China, where their father was a missionary, but their ship left them in Manila. They were captured when the Japanese invaded the city.

All four children survived the camp, but they remained separated from their parents until after the war.

Four Decades

Johnson also wanted to forget. Four years ago, Johnson suffered a heart attack and learned that starvation and beriberi had contributed to his condition almost four decades later. It was then that he began to study the long-term emotional and medical effects that internment had on thousands of American civilians.

In the recently completed study, Johnson found that the Philippine internees were eligible for federal benefits and lifetime medical care, but most chose not to take them.

“We wanted to get away from World War II. We were our own worst enemies. We didn’t go out and let people know what happened to us. But we had something to share,” Johnson said.

Most of the survivors are reluctant to talk about their ordeal. But they are willing to discuss their beloved 11th Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, which rescued more than 2,000 of them at Los Banos, and the 1st Cavalry Division, which liberated a like number at Santo Thomas University in Manila.

Although the internees have never held a reunion among themselves, they often attend reunions of the two Army divisions.

‘Emotional Amnesia’

“Most of us suffer from emotional amnesia. We have a way to block out all the unpleasant things,” Johnson said. “We went to reunions with the airborne and cavalry divisions, but that was to rejoice over our rescue.”

Now, finally, they are willing to describe life in the prison camps.

“When you’re in a place like that, you just exist. And you worry about all the frightful things going on,” said Dorothy Hinck, now 88, who lived in a camp with her five children and plans to attend the reunion.

“People who have never been in a prison camp can’t ever realize what it was like,” she said. “Everything you experience in a place like that remains very vivid in your mind. You never knew if you would be dead or alive the next day.”

Hinck and her husband lived in the Philippines for more than 20 years. They decided to stay there after World War I, when her husband was discharged from the Army. He was a customs official until the fall of 1941, when the military recalled him.

Died on Assignment

In late November, John Hinck died while on assignment in Australia. The ship carrying his body back to Manila arrived the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

On Jan. 23, 1942, a squad of Japanese soldiers, armed with bayoneted rifles, knocked on the Hincks’ door, and she and her children--ages 6 through 20--would not know freedom again until Feb. 23, 1945.

The Hinck family first was kept at Santo Tomas, a four-century-old Catholic university the Japanese converted into a prison camp.

From there, the Hincks were transferred to Los Banos, 30 miles south of Manila. Today, there are no traces of the prison camp in the jungles.

The Hincks remember scrounging for food. They also remember that the Japanese built wooden dining tables for the internees, but as the years dragged on and people died of starvation, the tables were used to build coffins.

“All everybody had in their heads was food,” said Hinck, who now lives in Fresno.

Her son, John, 58, who lives in Huntington Beach, also remembers the starvation. His most vivid recollection was asking a guard if he could climb a tree and pick coconuts for his family. The guard gave his permission.

“I was halfway up when I heard the bolting of the rifle,” he said. “I looked down, and he had the gun pointed at my back. I creeped down and walked away. The whole time I felt the rifle pointed at my back. I thought he was going to shoot me.”

John Hinck’s older brother, Ed, 62, of Fresno remembers 20 days of solitary confinement for trading a pack of cigarettes to a Filipino friend for a handful of nails. His buddy was tortured.

“I could hear him screaming at night,” he said.

Ed Hinck also remembers another Filipino friend who was tortured to death for striking a Japanese guard. The Filipino was strung up and used “for bayonet practice.”

‘Never Screamed’

“All day long they poked at him. He died the next day, but he never screamed. Not once. They made us watch that,” he said.

Talbot, fresh out of Biola College, had resolved to serve God by teaching and helping India’s poorest children. Her dream, eventually realized, was postponed until 1947 by her internment.

Talbot set sail from Los Angeles aboard the liner President Grant in the fall of 1941. When she reached Manila, the vessel was commandeered by U.S. military officials. She was stranded.

Cables home did not reach her parents. She stayed at a hotel for a time and was frightened at night by the air raid sirens. Later, she went to a friend’s home outside Manila. Soon after that, she was captured.

Talbot keeps a neat scrapbook of the items she acquired during her captivity. She also has most of the poems she wrote at Los Banos. There are wrappers for cookies and chewing gum a paratrooper gave her after her rescue.

Skin Disease

Talbot contracted beriberi and impetigo, a contagious skin disease that turned her into the “camp leper.” For months, no one could come near her and she struggled with her faith.

“I was diseased and I was dying of starvation. But He was showing me what it was to be diseased and sick. He was giving me empathy for the people I was going to minister to in India,” she said. “I bowed my head and thanked God for it.”

At dawn on Feb. 23, 1945, U.S. paratroopers, aided by 300 Filipino guerrillas providing ground cover, stormed the Los Banos camp and in 45 minutes killed about 200 Japanese guards and rescued the internees.

“We thought the whole American Army had come,” Talbot recalled.

After their rescue, the internees were taken in amphibious tanks to Muntinglupa across a lake from Manila, where they were served soup from steaming trash cans. The next day, during a thanksgiving service, the liberated Americans drank communion wine from .50-caliber shells. One of those shells is Talbot’s most precious possession.