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Waving 'Banner' of defiance

Stafford woman recalls her Fourth of July as Japanese POW in WWII Manilla

Date published: 7/4/2009

BY HUGH MUIR

Sixty-five years after reciting "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a subdued Fourth of July celebration under the watchful eyes of Japanese soldiers in an internment camp in the Philippines, Stafford County's Ann Wohlhueter again spoke lines from the anthem last week.

This time, it was for a group of wounded American veterans in Richmond.

Wohlhueter--who was 8-year-old Ann Wilson when she was an internee with her parents in Manila--belongs to the Readers Theater, a group in Falls Run in southern Stafford that gives readings at retirement homes, hospitals and nursing homes. She and her husband, Bob, settled in the 55-and-over community a few years ago.

Last week, a cast of five presented an Independence Day program at McGuire VA Hospital in Richmond. Among the readings was the national anthem, with Wohlhueter and three others each reciting one of the four stanzas.

"The veterans seemed appreciative and moved," Wohlhueter said later. "For me, it relived my memory of July 4, 1944. I was in a crowd of prisoners on a university campus in a Manila suburb, with my parents and some 4,000 other internees. We were there, under guard, to celebrate the Fourth of July."

By that time, the civilians had been held by the Japanese for 21/2 years, since the fall of the Philippines in December 1941, following the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Wohlhueter was in the country because her father taught English there.

In July 1944, the prisoners--mostly 2,800 American civilians, but also including British, Australians and Canadians--had, for the first time, been granted permission to observe Independence Day.

But no speeches, the camp commandant said, and no music, no singing, no parades--nothing overly patriotic.

DEFYING THE JAPANESE

The internees gathered in an open space of the University of Santo Tomas, a 350-year-old, walled, 20-acre complex in northern Manila where foreign civilians were interned after the Japanese took over the Philippine capital.

Wohlhueter, then 8, and her parents, Eugene and Josephine Wilson, lived in a shack in the university's courtyards.

"We had the commandant's orders, so there was no particular program for the July Fourth gathering," Wohlhueter said.

People spontaneously began talking about how they'd celebrated back home. Much of the talk turned to food.

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Date published: 7/4/2009