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Preface In 1994 I reunited for the first time with fellow Americans who as children had been imprisoned by the Japanese military in the Philippines. As I registered in the lobby of a Long Beach hotel,I spotted Reamo,my close boyhood buddy, whom I hadn’t seen in fifty years. Though he was dressed in coat and tie,I saw him as my shoeless and shirtless trusted playmate during the war.We shared remembrances,tears,and hugs,and I felt reborn.Other internees were there, too. Their faces had changed, but their voices had not. Those emotional moments rekindled memories of my life as a child of war. Reliving yesteryears with friends gave me the strength to think the unthinkable and write out my story. Following the war, I focused on my schooling and enjoyed the freedom to play. In the company of schoolmates, in homes or classrooms, or in play areas outdoors, I put aside my memories of the war. I leaned toward silence, piping up to chatter only about comfortable topics like the Boston Red Sox. As an adult,my life revolved around marriage,children,graduate study, military service, and my career as a college coach, athletic director, and professor. I dedicated summers to competitions in tennis and baseball, travel with our children, and visits with my parents. During my parents’ annual get-togethers with their internee friends, I listened with fascination to their clear recollections of prison life—some laughable incidents, but mostly anxious moments of sickness, hunger, torture, and pain. Those gatherings strengthened my memories and etched new ones. Yet with so little time for personal reflection, I continued to suppress my nightmarish recollections of the war. After the 1994 reunion with Reamo and fellow internees, however, historians at the Pacific Basin Institute in Claremont, California, asked me to share oral accounts of my imprisonment as a child. Another request from the MacArthur Foundation in Norfolk, Virginia, followed. By the xiv PREfACE time oral history archivists at Williams College requested my wartime recollections , I had begun jotting down notes of my life in prison. In 2000, my sons Kyle and Kurt—eager to learn about my childhood experience—planned a trip to the Philippines. A Foreign Service officer at the time,Kurt arranged our Baguio stay in the Ambassador’s Residence—a stone’s throw from Camp John Hay,where I was first imprisoned.North of Baguio we explored Camp Holmes, now known as Camp Dangwa, where I had been a captive for most of the war, witnessing torture and experiencing starvation. As my sons and I walked past the guardhouse next to the sunken garden, I saw a marker commemorating our internment. Looking out over the garden, my eyes grew teary. I again felt the love, hope, and support I had known throughout the war. After touring Baguio, my sons and I visited Manila’s Bilibid Prison, my last site of incarceration. From a rooftop adjacent to the prison, we observed Filipino prisoners milling about the courtyard, as my fellow internees and I had milled about years before. Although unprepared for the emotional peaks and valleys of this trip, returning to the Philippines sharpened my memories and renewed my commitment to record my story for others. I have benefited from many resources in the preparation of this book. Being a young confidant and bashful bunkmate of the civilian camp chairman for most of our internment, I was in a position to observe many of the challenges and incidents he faced. The conversations at summertime internee gatherings helped me add detail to my memoir. I also used many of my mother’s wartime notes and sketches as well as our postwar chats to help jog my memory. Over time, I perused many documents, books, and personal reports, all of which are listed in the bibliography. My visits with older internees, and even memorable visits with the former commandant Tomibe at his home in Japan, have contributed unique perspectives to my account. Thus, this memoir is written with love and admiration for those who shared so many trials and hardships with me during my life as a child of war in the Philippines. ...

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