Led by The Spirit: Interned by the Japanese

Here, six thousand marines and navy men had been interned. Most of them had died from disease, mistreatment and starvation. The mattresses and mosquito nets given our group to use had been used by them. Everything was stained and incrusted as the result of their manner of death. Dysentery, dengue and malaria had devastated their ranks. The injured had no care and bled to death or rotted upon the mattresses.²⁴

An epidemic of dengue fever swept through the prison. Johnson suffered from it for fourteen days before he began to recover. At the same time, all three of their children fell sick. The worst of them was little Margaret Joy, who was not quite three years old. While MacArthur’s forces battled the Japanese, this little girl fought for her life. Galley, Knowles, and Carlson came to their aid, demonstrating the sacrificial love of Christ at a time when it was desperately needed. Then these missionaries, too, fell sick, and Galley was transferred to Santo Tomas, another internment camp in downtown Manila.

Margaret Joy’s battle raged for several days. She had already suffered much hardship in her young life, and no one was sure she would make it. Prayer was continually offered for her. This alone was enough to stress her parents under ordinary circumstances, but nothing was normal. Ravaged by three years of war, most of it in internment camps, and with a battle being fought right outside the prison walls, the strain must have been incredible. At one point, Margaret Joy turned to Leland and said “Daddy, I go to see Jesus.”²⁵ Unspeakable terror gripped his soul. Words failed him and he and Helen cried out to God day and night. But little Margaret didn’t die. God touched her and restored her to complete health.
Meanwhile at Los Baños, Appleby and Baldwin were going through their own trials. Baldwin described the situation:

Soon only American planes were soaring over the Islands, and life became very difficult for us. Food became scarcer and scarcer, and we learned what starvation rations meant. In the middle of the morning we were given two kitchen spoonfuls of rice gruel. At 4:30 in the afternoon we were given the same portion with perhaps some vegetable tops added. The gruel kept getting thinner and thinner, and never more than two spoonfuls a day.²⁶

Meanwhile, MacArthur’s forces continued their drive toward Manila, and the Japanese fought for every inch of the city. Trapped Japanese soldiers raped and pillaged, ripping open the wombs of pregnant women and burning hospitals with patients inside, committing atrocities matched only by the pillage of Nanking, China, several years before. At least one hundred thousand civilians died.²⁷ The stench of unburied bodies still pervaded the streets.²⁸ Allied and Japanese firepower reduced the city to rubble. Manila suffered destruction greater than any other city in the entire war, with the exception of Warsaw, Poland.

 

Liberated!

On February 22, 1945, MacArthur received an intelligence report stating that the Japanese planned to execute the prisoners at Los Baños at 7 a.m. the next day. Thankfully, the prisoners themselves were unaware of this. The Los Baños camp was twenty-five miles behind enemy lines, and the general knew he would need a miracle to get everyone out alive. At three minutes to seven the next morning, the internees saw U.S. paratroopers descending from the sky! United States tanks had crept to the outside of the camp the night before, waiting for the paratroopers to get inside and open the doors. When Baldwin saw one of the troops she cried out, “Girls, look, an American soldier!”²⁹ She thought he was beautiful. Later, she reflected that the soldier was probably dirty and greasy, but it didn’t matter.³⁰ The internees were loaded onto the tanks and taken away. Appleby sustained burns on her shoulder as she was crammed into a tank that was firing shells at the enemy and the empty, hot shell casings fell on her. A kind soldier, assuring her that the shells were American, put a coat over her. In spite of enemy fire, not one soldier or internee was killed in the rescue effort. Even General MacArthur concluded that God had helped them.

Tags: interned, japanese, led, spirit

Category: Church History, Winter 2020