The Santo Tomas POW camp: Background information when reading Valiant Women

The Santo Tomas POW camp

This article relates to Valiant Women

In Valiant Women, author Lena S. Andrews features the true stories of women serving in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. Among the women profiled is Navy nurse Dorothy Still, who was working in the Philippines when World War II broke out. She was taken prisoner by the Japanese and sent to Santo Tomas internment camp, where she remained for three years.

Santo Tomas was the largest Japanese prison camp in the Philippines holding enemy civilians, located at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. More than 3000 civilians, mostly Americans, were imprisoned there in tight quarters. Among them were 400 children.

In the early days, Filipino citizens were allowed to bring supplies to give to prisoners, but eventually that permission was revoked, and when administration of the camp was put under the authority of the Japanese military rather than civilians the situation rapidly declined. According to Albert E. Holland, who kept a diary of his time in the camp, the Japanese budgeted 1700 calories per inmate per day, but by November of 1944, there was only enough food to give them 400. Jean Hick, another survivor, recalled their desperation. They would eat anything to ward off starvation: banana roots, unpalatable weeds, and even hibiscus leaves, until they realized they were "slightly poisonous." One woman traded a $700 ring for ten pounds of rice to feed herself and her two children.

Keeping up morale in the camp was difficult; the inmates got outside news, and hearing that prisoners in Europe received a daily kit of food made their own malnourishment even harder to accept. They were only allowed to send a single postcard a month to their families, and letters from home were delayed as much as 18 months, when they came at all. Starvation, poor morale, and a high death rate led to conflict within the camp. Late in the war, Holland records Japanese officials handing out jail sentences to those who stole food or tried to get double portions.

Dorothy Still was one of 77 military nurses imprisoned by the Japanese at Santo Tomas and Los Banos internment camps. Known as the "Angels of Bataan and Corregidor," they set up a hospital at Santo Tomas to keep their fellow POWs alive, controlling epidemics caused by unsanitary conditions via public health campaigns.

Amazingly, all 77 nurses survived their imprisonment, though one estimated that she would have been dead if liberation had been four or five days later. She weighed 95 pounds at the time she was rescued. Dorothy and her compatriots illustrate the bravery and commitment shown by so many women during World War II.

The "Angels of Bataan and Corregidor," U.S. army nurses held in the Santo Tomas internment camp, arrive at Hickam Field in Hawaii on February 20, 1945. Photo courtesy of the United States Army Center of Military History

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This "beyond the book article" relates to Valiant Women. It originally ran in September 2023 and has been updated for the August 2024 paperback edition. Go to magazine.