Camp Holmes Internment Camp

Shortly after the move to Camp Holmes the Japanese relaxed the rules for internees and until stricter rules were imposed in February 1944, the internees concurred that conditions were "not too bad." Food, consisting mostly of rice, bananas, and sweet potatoes, was adequate, albeit barely, and limited in variety. The principal emotion felt by the internees was boredom.^[10] Dysentery was the principal health problem.^[11]

The internees were mostly self-governing. The Japanese appointed an Executive Committee, called the "General Committee" or "men's committee" to manage the camp which, in turn, appointed a "women's committee." The two committees quickly became elective, although women did not have the right to vote for the members of the General Committee. A brusque surgeon, Dr. Dana Nance, was the initial head of the men's committee and Ethel Herold, equally brusque, the head of the women's committee. The men's committee had veto rights over the women's committee.^[12] In 1943, women's suffrage was put to a vote with 181 in favor and 168 opposed—but the men's committee refused to honor the results, stating that the Japanese would not approve of women voting. Women continued to be denied the right to vote for members of the all-male General Committee.^[13] The women's suffrage issue was a symptom of camp politics and political rivalry between Nance and Dr. Beulah Ream Allen. Both were transferred by the Japanese to other internment camps later in 1943.^[14] Liaison with the Japanese authorities was through Elmer Herold and Nellie McKim, a missionary who spoke high-status Japanese and used her diplomatic skills to resolve problems between the Japanese and the internees.^[15]

Japanese policy was to keep men and women separated and cohabitation was prohibited. Girls and boys under 10 years of age lived with their mothers. This policy broke down over time and several babies were born during the internment years.^[16]

Camp Holmes was run by its internees on a communal basis with every internee assigned a task. In the prominent Halsema family, E.J. Halsema, former mayor of Baguio, swatted flies and mopped floors; his wife Marie prepared vegetables for cooking; married daughter Betty Foley prepared baby food, washed clothes, and supervised school study halls; her husband, Rupert, cut and hauled firewood; and brother James Halsema, a graduate of Duke University, edited a daily news summary and helped push a garbage wagon.^[17] “…work assignments followed an elaborate ‘Master Sheet’, drawn up by internee Gus Skerl, that would have done credit to the operational studies of a major corporation."^[18] Dr. Augustus (Gus) Skerl, a British mining geologist, also grew yeast on banana skins gleaned from the garbage to provide vitamin B to those suffering from beri-beri.^[19] When soap ran short, Skerl made soap from alkali derived from peanut shells.^[20]

An event which bolstered both the health and the morale of the internees was the arrival of Red Cross food boxes in December 1943. Each internee received one food box weighing 21 kilograms (46 lb) and packed with a large variety of foodstuffs. The Japanese camp commander, Captain Rokuro Tomibe, was praised by the internees for his efforts to retrieve the food boxes from a warehouse in Manila and arranging their transport to Camp Holmes.^[21]

In April 1944, two internees escaped from Camp Holmes. The Japanese Kempeitai tortured three internees to attempt to get information about the escapees and eliminated some of the privileges they had granted the internees. The Japanese halted most commerce in food and other items between the internees and the local Filipino community and forced internees to build a fence around Camp Holmes. Tomibe was later relieved of his duties as camp commander.^[22]

As the war began to go badly for the Japanese, conditions became worse and by October 1944, internees wrote a letter to Japanese authorities appealing for more food to avoid starvation. With the Allied invasion of the Philippines by the combined American and Filipino ground forces, the Japanese wanted to use the barracks at Camp Holmes for their soldiers and in late December 1944, trucked all the internees at Camp Holmes to a new home within the high walls of Bilibid Prison in Manila. There, they resided under very difficult conditions until liberated on February 4, 1945 by American soldiers engaged in expelling the Japanese army from Manila.^[23]

After World War II, Tomibe was arrested for being a suspected war criminal. James Halsema and Robert Sheridan, the only Catholic priest at Camp Holmes, wrote letters to U.S. authorities offering to testify on his behalf. The charges against Tomibe were dropped.^[24] The former internees have had several reunions, one in 1977 in which Tomibe was the guest of honor.^[25]

Several factors influenced the relatively benign conditions at Camp Holmes compared to other internment camps. The camp was small compared to, for example, Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila. The community was cohesive with recognized leaders and organized in a democratic but communal manner in which the internees were mostly equal and all had assigned tasks to perform. The "have nots" including women with children fared better at Camp Holmes than they did at Santo Tomas. Japanese management of the camp was more lenient than at other camps.^[26]