A Child in the Midst of Battle
Chapter One
That day was to go down in history as a day of infamy—December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Not many Americans realize that Manila was also bombarded that same day. But because the Philippines was on the other side of the International Date Line, it was December 8th for us. My sister Elyse and I were at a party celebrating the First Communion of our cousin, Tony Rocha. I was almost ten. Elyse had just turned seven.
The party was held on the top floor of a “highrise,” which in those days was probably only four or five stories tall. One of the guests left early, but quickly returned. “¡Los Japoneses han bombardeado Hawaii!” she cried frantically. “¡Muchos muertos en la base naval!”An eerie silence settled over the room. It was disbelief, perhaps, or suspicions confirmed, as grown-ups had been whispering about the possibility of war.
The party quickly dispersed. Elyse and I went outside. People rushed by on the street with frantic determination. Our driver, Irineo, drove us to the Army&Navy Club on the esplanade of Manila Bay where my parents, Fé and Ernest Berg, were attending a wedding.
We turned the corner and saw them waiting anxiously for us outside the club. When mom saw that we were unharmed she clapped her hands in a prayer of gratitude. Her shoulders slumped as if she were exhaling for the first time in several minutes.
We drove home in silence. Imperial warplanes swarmed in the sky. Bombs fell like dark rain on nearby air fields and ships in the harbor. Ordnance smoke drifted across the water. Some of the ships carried Christmas goods for sale in the local stores. Dad—who owned a department store called Berg’s on the fashionable Escolta Boulevard—lamented that his Christmas order was at the bottom of Manila Bay.
When we reached home, Mom put us girls—Elyse and me, and our sister Elaine, then three years old—under the heavy dining room table of Philippine mahogany in hopes that it would protect us from flying shrapnel. We were terrified, and prayed the rosary ever so fervently. Dad stood in the doorway watching fighter planes engaged in dogfights over the city.
I crawled out from under the table and stood beside him. American P-40s and Japanese Zeros twisted in the sky in a dangerous chase. Bombs fell to ground in a hail of smoke and debris. Mom screamed at me in panic until I crawled back under the table. She pleaded with dad to join us, but he just looked at her sadly and shook his head.
“There’s no point, Fé,” he said, “we don’t stand a chance. There aren’t enough soldiers to defend the city. The Americans will surrender, and the Japanese will march right in.”
Dad was right, and not for the last time. As a child he had survived World War I in Germany. Instinctively he knew what lay ahead of us.
Fierce bombing continued throughout December. Japanese warplanes dropped their loads of destruction on the city at every time of the day and night. The ack-ack of antiaircraft fire was deafening. Tracer bullets shredded the night sky. Whenever we heard planes overhead we scurried into a large closet beneath the stairs.
Day after day we held our breath at the sound of bombs whistling through the air—a horrible sound you don’t forget—and braced for explosions that rocked the earth. Ardently we prayed for the poor American soldiers who received the brunt of the attack.
I don’t know what the fighting was like for the soldiers, but for we civilians it was surreal. Set against a backdrop of fearsome daily battle, our lives continued pretty much as they had before the invasion—Irineo drove dad to work, and Elyse and me to school. Mom ran the house and visited with friends.
But where before the canvas of life had been cast in hues both idyllic and mundane, it then was stained the color of human viscera, brushed with violence. At any moment, the fighting might crash down around us. If luck was with us, we made it to a shelter in time. If luck was with us, we were protected from harm.
I went to school at Assumption Convent, which was operated by a French order of nuns. We students often had wondered what lay beyond the doors at the head of a particular wing of the school which was off limits to us. Soon the air raid sirens wailed, and we found out.
The sisters ushered us into a long interior hallway which led to their quarters, and told us to sit quietly on the floor. We huddled there in the dark for what seemed the longest time. We were protected well enough by the massive stone walls of the convent, yet still could hear the shells exploding outside. The nuns told us the Japanese were only bombing military installations, but it sounded to me as if the whole city was being razed.
Late in December, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of US Army forces in the Far East, acknowledged that his troops were insufficient to repel the Japanese offensive. American and Filipino forces retreated west across Manila Bay to Corregidor Island and the Bataan Peninsula. After pledging his return, MacArthur boarded a boat with his wife and son, and a few close aides, bound for Australia. No one thought it would take him three long years to make good his promise.
We spent Christmas Eve, 1941 in the shelter beneath the stairs. Dad had lined the little room with mattresses and pillows to make it as secure and comfortable as possible. Mom cursed the Japanese for picking that particular night to bomb the city nonstop.
Elyse and I worried about Santa Claus maneuvering his sleigh through enemy aircraft. Dad assured us that Santa was a miraculous being, and would find his way unharmed through the shelling. What a welcome relief it was to worry about Santa for one night instead of whether a bomb would destroy us where we lay. Finally we slept, albeit not with “visions of sugar plums” dancing in our heads.
Christmas morning dawned clear and quiet. We ran upstairs to our bedroom to see if Santa had made it through as promised. The previous night we had placed our shoes on the window sill, a custom of my father’s native Germany. There to my wondrous surprise I found my very first wrist watch, a beautiful gold timepiece with a black grosgrain band. Oh, Joy! And on the floor beneath my shoes was a lovely doll dressed in a nurse’s uniform. I was so grateful to Santa for braving enemy bombers to bring us our gifts.