Tag Archives: Philippines

Everyone Goes to Gladys’s: In Memory of December 7, 1941

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In 1941, an American woman named Gladys Savary owned and operated one of the most well-known restaurants in Manila, the capital city of the Philippine Islands. She and her French husband André, always looking for new adventures, opened the Restaurant de Paris, “Manila’s Smartest Restaurant,” in 1932. But most of its considerable clientele simply referred to it as Gladys’s, and the place filled up night after night. Almost any American living in Manila would acknowledge that everyone goes to Gladys’s.

When the war started in Europe in 1939, André left the Philippines (and his marriage to Gladys) to join the French military. Despite the European hostilities and the growing unease about Japanese aggression in the Pacific, Gladys had no qualms about remaining in Manila. “I even became a convert to the popular theory that Japan wouldn’t do any attacking of the Philippines because she could just walk into them in 1946 when Philippine independence [from the United States] would become effective.”

[Rear Admiral Francis W. Rockwell, USN (1886-1979), (center), Commandant of the 16th Naval District, at his headquarters after a Japanese air raid on Cavite Navy Yard, Philippines, 17 December 1941. With him are members of his staff: Lieutenant Commander Frank J. Grandfield (left) and Lieutenant Malcom Champlin. National Archives 80-G-243708]

Gladys remained hopeful into the fall of 1941, though she witnessed daily the increased activities of the military in and around Manila. She never slept on Sunday night, December 7 (Manila is on the other side of the International Date Line). She had invited some friends to the restaurant for dinner in celebration of the promotion of a British naval officer she knew. After their meal, they headed over to the Jai Alai Club to watch a match, then stopped at a nightclub before moving on to the Manila Hotel for drinks on the pavilion. Gladys and her friends concluded their evening at an all-night gambling den where they played roulette until dawn.

Gladys had no time for sleep before she needed to get out to the market Monday morning to buy the day’s food for the restaurant. Her servant Nick brought her morning coffee and the newspaper and said, “Honolulu’s bombed. What’ll we do now?” Gladys’s first thought was about business. The restaurant would be busy, she predicted, because people were always hungry. She told Nick they would do their shopping as usual. “War or no war, we have to eat. Nobody can know what’ll happen.”

Indeed, she could not know, though she may have suspected, that things would get much worse. The Japanese bombed Manila, too, and by early 1942 they occupied the city. American nationals were rounded up and confined on the grounds of Santo Tomas University. But Gladys had no intention of sitting out the war in an internment camp. She decided to evade internment and do what she could to assist those who could not. She planned to undermine the Japanese occupiers whenever possible. She risked her life and resisted.

Gladys Savary was just one of many who defied the Japanese in the fight for freedom. I think about her every year on December 7 to remember and honor the variety of sacrifices millions of people made during World War II to stop the spread of tyranny. If you are interested in finding out exactly what Gladys did during the war, read Angels of the Underground: The American Women Who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/angels-of-the-underground-9780199928248?cc=us&lang=en&

Prisoners in Paradise

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Natalie Crouter, a forty-six-year-old American wife and mother living in the Philippine Islands, sat down at the end of an evening in late October 1942 to write in her diary. She recounted a school pageant, which her two children, Fred and June, participated in, celebrating both Halloween and Thanksgiving. Natalie was especially moved by the Thanksgiving portion of the show, which retold the familiar story of the first Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth Rock. This year in particular, she felt a personal connection to the tale of people in a strange land worrying about food, getting along with an alien population, and just surviving.

Natalie ended her diary entry that evening lamenting that “we are waiting for America.” Her contemporaries may have regarded those five words as an opening phrase that would end “to win this war.” In the fall of 1942, Americans waited, hoped, and prayed for the United States to win its arduous battle against the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy. But American women did not wait in idleness. They expressed their patriotism and support for the war through action, taking up a variety of work ranging from riveting in airplane factories to enlisting in the armed forces to serving donuts and lemonade at USO socials.

In many ways, Natalie Crouter waited for victory just like other American wives and mothers. She kept a close eye on the activities of her two children, monitoring their progress in school, keeping track of their health, and discussing the war and its possible implications for their future.

A smart and resourceful woman, Natalie adjusted to doing without materials and foodstuffs, substituting new items into her family’s wardrobe and diet to replace the unattainable ones. She generally expressed optimism for a decisive Allied victory, but at times she despaired because it was taking so long.

The longer the delay, Natalie knew, the more likely she and her children, confined to a concentration camp, would die.

Coinciding with their attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese struck at other American territories, including the Philippine Islands. The Americans living there were trapped. When the Japanese invaded and occupied the islands in January 1942, the Crouters became enemy aliens. To prevent sabotage and humiliate the Allies, the Japanese rounded up all Allied civilians, including women and children. The Japanese viewed them as hostages, valuable bargaining chips.

Natalie, her husband Jerry, and their two children were interned along with about five hundred other civilians in Baguio, a mountain resort city north of Manila on the island of Luzon. Altogether, close to fourteen thousand American civilians spent about three years as prisoners of the Japanese.

The Crouter family was relatively lucky, since they managed to stay in the same camp. But to frighten and demoralize their captives, the Japanese decreed “no commingling” and forbade families to live together. Natalie and the children lived in one barrack, with Jerry housed separately. Visits were allowed, but touching was limited. Family life was altered, strained, with the children struggling to adjust and make sense of their new reality. Fear was a daily companion.

The Japanese understood what they were doing. They not only had hostages, they had compliant hostages. The adults in the camps proved reluctant to overtly resist Japanese authority. Parents like Natalie and Jerry did not want to risk any retaliation that might be taken out on the children.

To find out what happened to the Crouters and other Americans, you can read

or my own,

978-0-7006-1003-7

which opens with Natalie’s story. The cover photo was taken in the Baguio camp, before the worst of the wartime deprivations took hold.

An edited version of Natalie’s diary was published in the 1980s:

Image result for forbidden family crouter

 

 

 

December 7, 1941

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Gladys Slaughter Savary, an American woman living in Manila, the capital city of the Philippine Islands, had not even been to bed when Pearl Harbor was bombed. That Sunday night (Manila is on the other side of the International Dateline), she invited some friends to her Restaurant de Paris for dinner, a celebration of the promotion of a British naval officer she knew. After their meal, they headed over to the Jai Alai Club to watch a match–a “great weakness” of Gladys’s. Then they stopped at a nightclub before moving on to the Manila Hotel for drinks on the pavilion. Gladys and her friends concluded their evening at an all-night gambling den where they played roulette until dawn. When they finally dropped her at home, the newly-promoted British admiral said, “Kids, that’s the last fun we’ll have together for a long, long time.”

Image result for Jai Alai club manila 1930s Jai Alai Club, Manila

It was too late–or too early–for Gladys to go to sleep. As it was, she would have just enough time to shower, change, and eat a bit of breakfast before venturing out to the market to purchase the day’s food for the restaurant. When her servant Nick brought her morning coffee and the newspaper, he said, “Honolulu’s bombed. What’ll we do now?”

Image result for honolulu dec. 7, 1941KCBX-FM photo

Gladys’s first response was as a businesswoman. The restaurant would be busy, she predicted, because people were always hungry. She told Nick they would do their shopping as usual. “War or no war, we have to eat,” Gladys wrote in her diary. “I bought everything in large quantities. Nobody can know what’ll happen.”

During the ensuing days, as bombs fell on Manila and utilities stuttered on and off, Gladys worried about how long she would be able to keep the Restaurant de Paris going. It also did not take her long to realize that other people needed help, and the restaurant came in handy for meeting some of those needs. Gladys fed the American and Filipino soldiers who patrolled her neighborhood. “I haven’t time to do canteen work or roll bandages,” she jotted in her diary on December 16th, “so I have a private canteen for the lads. When they go on duty they get coffee and pastry here, and when they finish duty I hand them out something a bit stronger. Both seem to be appreciated, bless them.”

Image result for manila dec. 8, 1941

The United States was at war with Japan. Gladys Savary and thousands of other Americans were trapped in the Philippines. It was true, no one could know what would happen. For more than three years, Gladys struggled to survive in enemy-occupied territory, risking her own safety and freedom to subvert the Japanese and help those in need.

The rest of her story can be found in Angels of the Underground: The American Women who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II.

 

 

Getting Ready for Memorial Day

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From the blog’s archives from last year:

We’re on the downside of May. This is always my favorite, favorite time of year. It marks my wedding anniversary. It means the end of another academic year. It means warm weather and the promise of even warmer, sunnier days–so welcome after the long Wisconsin winter.

Memorial Day kicks off summer. It’s an odd marker. Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day to honor those who died during the Civil War, is about remembering members of the military who died in service to their country. It became a federal holiday in 1971, and its observance was moved to the last Monday of May.

The women I wrote about in Angels of the Underground were not in the military. They didn’t die during World War II; they didn’t make the ultimate sacrifice. Horrified by the number of Americans and Filipinos who died during the battles of Bataan and Corregidor, who perished along the Death March, and succumbed to diseases in POW camps, they did whatever they could to minimize additional loss of life.

On this Memorial Day, remember those men.

An Unsung Hero

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Florence Finch has died. More than 75 years after her heroic actions in the Philippine Islands during World War II, she has received national recognition: The New York Times published her obituary two days ago.

I ran across Florence’s story when I was researching anti-Japanese activity in the Philippines. Her name came up in connection with Claire Phillips, one of the “angels” in my recent book. For a time, the two women were jailed together, having been arrested, questioned, and tortured by the Japanese occupation authorities in Manila.

Florence Ebersole Smith Finch was born in the Philippines to an American father and Filipina mother. In early 1942, she worked for the Philippine Liquid Fuel Distributing Union, which was run by the Japanese. She used her position to divert fuel to the resistance, and in her spare time she helped smuggle desperately needed supplies to American military POWs. For these actions, the Japanese sentenced her to three years of hard labor.

Florence, along with Claire Phillips, was rescued by American troops in February 1945. After joining her father’s relatives stateside, Florence joined the Coast Guard. Later, she received the Medal of Freedom for her resistance work in the Philippines.

Why isn’t Florence Finch more widely known? As her daughter Betty Murphy put it, “Women don’t tell war stories like men do.”

Of course, you can read more about Florence in Angels of the Underground. Learn more about women’s war stories.