December 8, 1941 came like a storm as the Japanese aircraft began bombing and strafing Manila and other American outposts in the Phillippines Island, at that time an American colony. For Karen Lewis, the daughter of an American accountant for a gold mining company, it started out as an adventure - leaving the mining camp at Baguio to head for safety in Manila. It quickly became much more harrowing - three years of confinement in Santo Tomas, a Catholic University just across the Pasig River from the city proper, along with 3,000 other mostly American and English detainees.
Karen was 9 years old at the time, and witnessed the resilience and determination of the adults to organize a highly functioning and organized community, with school, dining halls, sanitation and entertainment under the watchful eye of their Japanese civilian commandant. But when he left after a year and was replaced with a military commander, things took a darker turn, and discipline often proved brutal and rations dwindled down to starvation portions. News was hard to come by, but filtered through hidden transistor radios as the Allied offensive pushed the Japanese back through the South Pacific to the gates of Santo Tomas, shortly after MacArthur's prophesied return.
We talk about her daily life in the camp, how it was organized and how it functioned, as well as the odd coincidences and humanity from detainees and guards alike. Lewis gathered up her story along with three other women for "Interrupted Lives: Four Women's Stories of Internment During WWII." The well-known painter and stalwart of the Ojai Studio Artists has lived in Ojai for 30+ years and stays active with gatherings of Santo Tomas survivors.
We did not talk about Joe DiMaggio, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon or William Howard Taft.
