In 100 Miles to Freedom, U.S. Marine Bob Holland tells the story of the release of 3,700 American civilian prisoners of the Japanese at Santo Tomas University Internment Camp in Manila, the Philippines. Until their miraculous rescue on February 3, 1945, these civilians had been interned for more than three and a half years. This wartime account is complete with interviews of several prisoners describing their experiences and hardships in the camp, as well as black-and-white photos depicting Marines and prisoners during this tumultuous event in history. Discover why Brigadier General Robert E. Galer says that through this book, we can know and better appreciate what our proud and dedicated generation of true Americans did for our country.

In 100 Miles to Freedom, U.S. Marine Bob Holland tells the story of the release of 3,700 American civilian prisoners of the Japanese at Santo Tomas University Internment Camp in Manila, the Philippines. Until their miraculous rescue on February 3, 1945, these civilians had been interned for more than three and a half years. This wartime account is complete with interviews of several prisoners describing their experiences and hardships in the camp, as well as black-and-white photos depicting Marines and prisoners during this tumultuous event in history. Discover why Brigadier General Robert E. Galer says that through this book, we can know and better appreciate what our proud and dedicated generation of true Americans did for our country.

There have been countless books about the sub-human brutality of the Japanese to their prisoners-of-war, nearly all of which have been written by Soldiers. There have been few, if any, books which describe what it is like for a woman and her teenage daughter to find themselves suddenly swept in the holocaust of the war in the Pacific. For this reason the story if Isla Corfield is of exceptional interest. Captured by the japanese when the evacuee ship from Shanghai was diverted to the Philippines, Mrs Corfield and her daughter Gill found themselves interned with 3,500 other men, women and children at Santo Tomas, Manila's erstwhile University. The extraordinary way of life which evolved within the camp becomes gradually understandable as each person's character is related to the situation in which they find themselves: and gradually, as the entrepreneurs get into their stride, there emerge in microcosm all the 'amenities' of life 'outside the wire'- from restaurants to brothels. In 1944 the Corfields are moved to Los Baanos, a new camp in the country, where conditions are appalling and many die of starvation. But at last rescue comes at the hands of the U.S 11th Airborne Division in the form of a combined air/sea/land rescue operation of split-second efficiency, and the 2000 survivors are literally snatched from the jaws of death. This is the first time that a detailed account of this remarkable operation has been published. Celia Lucas has used the 36 exercise books which Isla Corfield risked death to keep to tell this very remarkable story of a mother and daughter who managed to preserve their sanity, their standards and their sense of humour when the world around them suddenly went mad.

During World War II the Japanese imprisoned more American civilians at Manila's Santo Tomas prison camp than anywhere else, along with British and other nationalities. Placing the camp's story in the wider history of the Pacific war, this book tells how the camp went through a drastic change, from good conditions in the early days to impending mass starvation, before its dramatic rescue by U.S. Army "flying columns." Interned as a small boy with his mother and older sister, the author shows the many ways in which the camp's internees handled imprisonment--and their liberation afterwards. Using a wealth of Santo Tomas memoirs and diaries, plus interviews with other ex-internees and veteran army liberators, he reveals how children reinvented their own society, while adults coped with crowded dormitories, evaded sex restrictions, smuggled in food, and through a strong internee government, dealt with their Japanese overlords. The text explores the attitudes and behavior of Japanese officials, ranging from sadistic cruelty to humane cooperation, and asks philosophical questions about atrocity and moral responsibility.

In this remarkable WWII story by New York Times bestselling author John R. Bruning, a renegade American pilot fights against all odds to rescue his family -- imprisoned by the Japanese--and revolutionizes modern warfare along the way. From the knife fights and smuggling runs of his youth to his fiery days as a pioneering naval aviator, Paul Irving "Pappy" Gunn played by his own set of rules and always survived on his wits and fists. But when he fell for a conservative Southern belle, her love transformed him from a wild and reckless airman to a cunning entrepreneur whose homespun engineering brilliance helped launch one of the first airlines in Asia. Pappy was drafted into MacArthur's air force when war came to the Philippines; and while he carried out a top-secret mission to Australia, the Japanese seized his family. Separated from his beloved wife, Polly, and their four children, Pappy reverted to his lawless ways. He carried out rescue missions with an almost suicidal desperation. Even after he was shot down twice and forced to withdraw to Australia, he waged a one-man war against his many enemies -- including the American high command and the Japanese--and fought to return to the Philippines to find his family. Without adequate planes, supplies, or tactics, the U.S. Army Air Force suffered crushing defeats by the Japanese in the Pacific. Over the course of his three-year quest to find his family, Pappy became the renegade who changed all that. With a brace of pistols and small band of loyal fol,lowers, he robbed supply dumps, stole aircraft, invented new weapons, and modified bombers to hit harder, fly farther, and deliver more destruction than anything yet seen in the air. When Pappy's modified planes were finally unleashed during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, the United States scored one of the most decisive victories of World War II. Taking readers from the blistering skies of the Pacific to the jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines to one of the the war's most notorious prison camps, Indestructible traces one man's bare-knuckle journey to free the people he loved and the aerial revolution he sparked that continues to resonate across America's modern battlefields.

Fe del Mundo's sister dreamt of becoming a doctor--a big dream for a girl in the Philippines in the early 1900s. When her sister dies, young Fe vows to take her place, a promise she carries with her the rest of her life. In 1936 she becomes the first woman and first person of Asian descent to study at Harvard Medical School. When WWII begins in the Pacific, Fe faces a choice: remain in Boston, where she is safe, or return to the Philippines, where she is needed most. Fe follows her vision and returns home to care for the American and British children forced into the internment camp at Santo Tomas. Beautiful color drawings bring to life this gentle and courageous character, her family and her patients. The story of the courageous Dr. Fe del Mundo, recipient of the Elizabeth Blackwell Award for distinguished women "whose life exemplifies outstanding service to humanity," and the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, will inspire children to pursue science and medicine in the service of humanity.