Captured: The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines, 1941-1945

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication

captured The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines,1941-1945 F R A N C E S B. C O G A N More than five thousandAmerican civilian men, women, and children living in the Philippines during World WarII were confined to internment camps following Japan's late-December 1941 victories in Manila. Captured tells the story of daily life in five different camps—the crowded housing , mounting familial andinternational tensions, heavy labor, and increasingly severe malnourishment that made the internees' rescue a race with starvation. Frances B. Cogan exploresthe events behind this nearly four-year captivity, explaining how andwhy this little-known internment occurred. A thorough historical account, the book addresses severalcontroversialissues about the internment, including Japanese intentions towardtheir prisoners and the U.S. State Department's role in allowing the presence of American civilians in the Philippines during wartime. Supported by diaries, memoirs, war crimes transcripts, Japanese soldiers'accounts, medical data, and many other sources. Captured presents a detailed and moving chronicle of the internees' efforts to survive. Cogan compares living conditions within the internment camps with life in POW camps and with the living conditions of Japanese soldiers late in the war. An afterword discusses the experiences of internment survivors after the war, combining medical and legal statistics with personal anecdotes to create a testament to the thousands of Americans whose captivity haunted them long after the war ended. FRANCES B. CO6AN is a professor of literature in the Honors College at the University of Oregon, Eugene. Sheis the author of Ail-American Girl: TheIdeal of Real Womanhood in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America (Georgia). Captured This page intentionally left blank The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines, 1941-1945 Captured FRANCES B. COGAN The University of Georgia Press Athens and London © 2000 by the University of Georgia Press Athens, Georgia 30602 All rights reserved Designed by Kathi Dailey Morgan Set in 10 on 13 Electra by G&S Typesetters Printed and bound by Maple-Vail The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Printed in the United States of America 04 03 02 01 00 C 5 4 3 2 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Cogan, Frances B. Captured: the Japanese internment of American civilians in the Philippines, 1941–1945 / Frances B. Cogan p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8203-2117-6 (alk. paper) 1. World War, 1939–1945 — Prisoners and prisons, Japanese. 2. World War, 1939–1945 — Concentration camps — Philippines. 3. Prisoners of War — United States — History — 20th century. I. Title. D805.P6C63 1999 940.54'7252'09599 — dc21 99-30959 CIP British Library Cataloging in Publication Date available ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8203-4352-5 Dedicated to My husband, Daniel}. Cogan and My daughter, Elizabeth B. Cogan One purchased my academic freedom for six months and listened to every rewrite The other pulled books from shelves and listened even to notecards Both made finishing this book possible This page intentionally left blank ...