bobdina
09-16-2009, 12:32 PM
World War II POW, now 75, feels urgency to share story
By Steve Liewer
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. September 16, 2009
Tom Crosby was a boy in the Philippines when Japan invaded and forced foreigners into internment camps. He spent three years in captivity. - Sean M. Haffey / Union-Tribune
PRISONERS OF WARBY THE NUMBERS
142,247: U.S. prisoners of war since 1917, including 17,011 who died in captivity
4,120: POWs from World War I
130,201: from World War II
7,140: from Korean War
725: from Vietnam War
47: from Persian Gulf War
1: from 1993 Somalia conflict
3: from 1999 Kosovo conflict
9: from Iraq war
1: from Afghanistan war
Online: For more stories of local residents who survived wartime captivity, go to sdpow.org -- the Web site for the San Diego County chapter of American Ex-Prisoners of War.
“Sometimes they'll have an oxygen bottle, or a walker, or a cane. But they're there; they're living history.”
TOM CROSBY
The photo at right, part of an exhibit at the Balboa Park veterans museum, shows malnourished prisoners at a World War II internment camp in Manila.
The photo at right, part of an exhibit at the Balboa Park veterans museum, shows malnourished prisoners at a World War II internment camp in Manila.
Tom Crosby's time as a prisoner of war in the Philippines is documented in an exhibit at the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center in Balboa Park. The top sketch is of his mother in 1944.
Tom Crosby's time as a prisoner of war in the Philippines is documented in an exhibit at the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center in Balboa Park. The top sketch is of his mother in 1944.
U.S. tanks broke down the gates of the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in the Philippines on Feb. 3, 1945, freeing 3,700 prisoners who were held there by the Japanese.
These people weren't soldiers who fought on the Pacific front of World War II. They were Western civilians who got trapped in the capital city of Manila after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which pulled the United States into the conflict.
About 500 of them were children, including 8-year-old Tom Crosby.
As the tanks approached, the prisoners feared that their captors might kill them. After a standoff, though, they were spared in exchange for the guards' safe passage to the Japanese front lines.
“The rescue teams got to us just in time,” said Crosby, now 75 and living in the South Bay neighborhood of Palm City. “It was a relief to be reunited with my mother. I didn't know if I would see her again.”
Friday is National POW/MIA Recognition Day, an annual commemoration that dates to 1979 but typically garners little public notice.
Crosby works to raise awareness of POWs by speaking at local schools about his captivity, meeting with community groups and volunteering as a docent at the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center in Balboa Park, where his childhood ordeal is documented in a permanent exhibit.
He feels the pressure of time.
Of the roughly 138,000 Americans taken prisoner during wartime since 1941, fewer than 23,000 were alive at the end of 2007, the last time the Department of Veterans Affairs gave an estimate.
Most of the living POWs are from World War II and the Korean War, a generation that is dying off rapidly. Crosby is among the youngest members of the San Diego County chapter of American Ex-Prisoners of War, one of the nation's largest with 250 members.
The group is raising money for a memorial, to be built at the planned veterans cemetery at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, that will survive long after its members are gone.
Crosby is one of thousands who attend support groups for POWs through the VA. Mental-health experts say post-traumatic stress disorder, which was labeled only in 1980, is nearly universal among former POWs.
Sometimes the symptoms — including anxiety, nightmares, depression and alcoholism — are suppressed for years, then surface after being triggered by a late-life event such as retirement or the death of a spouse, said Dr. Jeffrey Matloff, senior PTSD psychologist for the San Diego VA Healthcare System.
In other cases, the POWs learn to live stoically with the effects of their trauma.
“These are some of the most resilient people I know,” Matloff said.
Linda Gatto-Woitek, a social worker, hosts a weekly support group in Mission Valley for former prisoners of war. Gatto-Woitek said their age and life experience give them coping skills that younger patients may not yet possess.
“They've had it longer. They filled their lives with a lot of activity to help them forget,” said Gatto-Woitek, a POW coordinator for the VA.
That's no less true of people, including Crosby, who were imprisoned as children.
Crosby lived what he remembers as an idyllic childhood in Manila, the son of an American businessman and his wife, who worked for the chamber of commerce. The couple had settled in the Philippines, in a villa staffed with nannies and other helpers.
Crosby's parents separated by late 1941, and his father returned to the United States. He stayed in Manila with his mother, brother, grandmother and aunt.
On Dec. 8 of that year, Japanese forces began bombing U.S. military facilities in the Philippines. They invaded the country two weeks later. Crosby and his family spent Christmas night huddled in an air-raid shelter.
Just after New Year's, Japanese soldiers ordered all foreigners to pack some clothes, mosquito netting and three days' worth of food.
“We didn't know if it was going to be three days (of detention) or much longer,” Crosby said.
The expatriates — mostly American, British and Australian — were loaded aboard trucks and taken to the sprawling grounds of the 330-year-old University of Santo Tomas in downtown Manila.
Women lived in one building. Adult men bunked on cots in a gymnasium, while boys and younger men were divided by age and separated into classrooms on the third floor of the education building. Crosby and his brother turned over desks and pushed them together to form temporary beds, until the Red Cross provided real ones later.
The third year of internment — 1944 — brought near starvation. Meat disappeared from the menu. Meal portions grew ever smaller. Many of the prisoners, including Crosby, developed beriberi, a malnutrition disease caused by a lack of vitamin B1, which is found in milk, meat and grains.
Crosby's grandmother sometimes boiled shoe leather and made her grandsons drink the foul-tasting brew for the bit of protein it contained. He also remembers rummaging through the guards' garbage for bones to use in his mother's soup.
“(My mother) couldn't believe we had sunk so low,” he said. “But it saved our lives.”
During their last evening of captivity, Crosby heard gunfire in the distance. He wasn't sure if Japanese or American forces were winning.
On the evening of Feb. 3, 1945, a few hundred cavalry soldiers liberated the camp — all but the building where Crosby and other young prisoners were held hostage by 65 Japanese guards. The U.S. troops shouted through bullhorns at the boys to move to the back of the room and lie down.
“That's when all hell broke loose,” Crosby said. “There was a shootout. I still remember the tracers coming in the windows, taking out the ceilings over our heads.”
Unable to dislodge the Japanese, the Americans granted them safe passage out of the compound after 36 hours of negotiations.
Three months later, Crosby and his family steamed across the ocean on a Liberty ship and arrived in San Francisco on the day Germany surrendered. They moved to San Diego in 1949.
Crosby spent four years in the Navy and later worked 13 years for Rohr Industries and 25 years for the city of Coronado, in jobs related to finance and purchasing.
For decades, he said little about his wartime experience. After prodding from his wife, Nancy, Crosby has talked publicly about his imprisonment in recent years.
And through the local ex-POW group, he has found an environment in which he feels completely at ease.
“The camaraderie is unbelievable,” Crosby said. “Sometimes they'll have an oxygen bottle, or a walker, or a cane. But they're there; they're living histor
By Steve Liewer
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. September 16, 2009
Tom Crosby was a boy in the Philippines when Japan invaded and forced foreigners into internment camps. He spent three years in captivity. - Sean M. Haffey / Union-Tribune
PRISONERS OF WARBY THE NUMBERS
142,247: U.S. prisoners of war since 1917, including 17,011 who died in captivity
4,120: POWs from World War I
130,201: from World War II
7,140: from Korean War
725: from Vietnam War
47: from Persian Gulf War
1: from 1993 Somalia conflict
3: from 1999 Kosovo conflict
9: from Iraq war
1: from Afghanistan war
Online: For more stories of local residents who survived wartime captivity, go to sdpow.org -- the Web site for the San Diego County chapter of American Ex-Prisoners of War.
“Sometimes they'll have an oxygen bottle, or a walker, or a cane. But they're there; they're living history.”
TOM CROSBY
The photo at right, part of an exhibit at the Balboa Park veterans museum, shows malnourished prisoners at a World War II internment camp in Manila.
The photo at right, part of an exhibit at the Balboa Park veterans museum, shows malnourished prisoners at a World War II internment camp in Manila.
Tom Crosby's time as a prisoner of war in the Philippines is documented in an exhibit at the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center in Balboa Park. The top sketch is of his mother in 1944.
Tom Crosby's time as a prisoner of war in the Philippines is documented in an exhibit at the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center in Balboa Park. The top sketch is of his mother in 1944.
U.S. tanks broke down the gates of the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in the Philippines on Feb. 3, 1945, freeing 3,700 prisoners who were held there by the Japanese.
These people weren't soldiers who fought on the Pacific front of World War II. They were Western civilians who got trapped in the capital city of Manila after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which pulled the United States into the conflict.
About 500 of them were children, including 8-year-old Tom Crosby.
As the tanks approached, the prisoners feared that their captors might kill them. After a standoff, though, they were spared in exchange for the guards' safe passage to the Japanese front lines.
“The rescue teams got to us just in time,” said Crosby, now 75 and living in the South Bay neighborhood of Palm City. “It was a relief to be reunited with my mother. I didn't know if I would see her again.”
Friday is National POW/MIA Recognition Day, an annual commemoration that dates to 1979 but typically garners little public notice.
Crosby works to raise awareness of POWs by speaking at local schools about his captivity, meeting with community groups and volunteering as a docent at the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center in Balboa Park, where his childhood ordeal is documented in a permanent exhibit.
He feels the pressure of time.
Of the roughly 138,000 Americans taken prisoner during wartime since 1941, fewer than 23,000 were alive at the end of 2007, the last time the Department of Veterans Affairs gave an estimate.
Most of the living POWs are from World War II and the Korean War, a generation that is dying off rapidly. Crosby is among the youngest members of the San Diego County chapter of American Ex-Prisoners of War, one of the nation's largest with 250 members.
The group is raising money for a memorial, to be built at the planned veterans cemetery at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, that will survive long after its members are gone.
Crosby is one of thousands who attend support groups for POWs through the VA. Mental-health experts say post-traumatic stress disorder, which was labeled only in 1980, is nearly universal among former POWs.
Sometimes the symptoms — including anxiety, nightmares, depression and alcoholism — are suppressed for years, then surface after being triggered by a late-life event such as retirement or the death of a spouse, said Dr. Jeffrey Matloff, senior PTSD psychologist for the San Diego VA Healthcare System.
In other cases, the POWs learn to live stoically with the effects of their trauma.
“These are some of the most resilient people I know,” Matloff said.
Linda Gatto-Woitek, a social worker, hosts a weekly support group in Mission Valley for former prisoners of war. Gatto-Woitek said their age and life experience give them coping skills that younger patients may not yet possess.
“They've had it longer. They filled their lives with a lot of activity to help them forget,” said Gatto-Woitek, a POW coordinator for the VA.
That's no less true of people, including Crosby, who were imprisoned as children.
Crosby lived what he remembers as an idyllic childhood in Manila, the son of an American businessman and his wife, who worked for the chamber of commerce. The couple had settled in the Philippines, in a villa staffed with nannies and other helpers.
Crosby's parents separated by late 1941, and his father returned to the United States. He stayed in Manila with his mother, brother, grandmother and aunt.
On Dec. 8 of that year, Japanese forces began bombing U.S. military facilities in the Philippines. They invaded the country two weeks later. Crosby and his family spent Christmas night huddled in an air-raid shelter.
Just after New Year's, Japanese soldiers ordered all foreigners to pack some clothes, mosquito netting and three days' worth of food.
“We didn't know if it was going to be three days (of detention) or much longer,” Crosby said.
The expatriates — mostly American, British and Australian — were loaded aboard trucks and taken to the sprawling grounds of the 330-year-old University of Santo Tomas in downtown Manila.
Women lived in one building. Adult men bunked on cots in a gymnasium, while boys and younger men were divided by age and separated into classrooms on the third floor of the education building. Crosby and his brother turned over desks and pushed them together to form temporary beds, until the Red Cross provided real ones later.
The third year of internment — 1944 — brought near starvation. Meat disappeared from the menu. Meal portions grew ever smaller. Many of the prisoners, including Crosby, developed beriberi, a malnutrition disease caused by a lack of vitamin B1, which is found in milk, meat and grains.
Crosby's grandmother sometimes boiled shoe leather and made her grandsons drink the foul-tasting brew for the bit of protein it contained. He also remembers rummaging through the guards' garbage for bones to use in his mother's soup.
“(My mother) couldn't believe we had sunk so low,” he said. “But it saved our lives.”
During their last evening of captivity, Crosby heard gunfire in the distance. He wasn't sure if Japanese or American forces were winning.
On the evening of Feb. 3, 1945, a few hundred cavalry soldiers liberated the camp — all but the building where Crosby and other young prisoners were held hostage by 65 Japanese guards. The U.S. troops shouted through bullhorns at the boys to move to the back of the room and lie down.
“That's when all hell broke loose,” Crosby said. “There was a shootout. I still remember the tracers coming in the windows, taking out the ceilings over our heads.”
Unable to dislodge the Japanese, the Americans granted them safe passage out of the compound after 36 hours of negotiations.
Three months later, Crosby and his family steamed across the ocean on a Liberty ship and arrived in San Francisco on the day Germany surrendered. They moved to San Diego in 1949.
Crosby spent four years in the Navy and later worked 13 years for Rohr Industries and 25 years for the city of Coronado, in jobs related to finance and purchasing.
For decades, he said little about his wartime experience. After prodding from his wife, Nancy, Crosby has talked publicly about his imprisonment in recent years.
And through the local ex-POW group, he has found an environment in which he feels completely at ease.
“The camaraderie is unbelievable,” Crosby said. “Sometimes they'll have an oxygen bottle, or a walker, or a cane. But they're there; they're living histor