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Garlic salt. Celery salt. Brown sugar, white sugar, confectioner's sugar.
The fragile, yellowing booklet in Dorothy Flynn's hands lists hundreds of groceries her mother wanted to buy when — if — she ever got out of Japanese prison camps in the Philippines.
Fed little more than rice mush and wracked with diseases such as beriberi, people in the camps were always thinking about food, Flynn said.
When American troops rescued them on Feb. 23, 1945, Flynn, her family and more than 2,000 other people were so dazed and hungry, they didn't say much of a thank-you, the Grass Valley resident recalls.
The liberating raid often is forgotten because it happened the same day U.S. Marines raised an American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima (see the famous image on Page A5).
Now, almost 65 years later, Veterans Day is Flynn's chance to speak out.
“I'm so thankful for the vets,” the 71-year-old grandmother said. “Without them, I wouldn't be alive.”
Flynn isn't exaggerating.
Flynn's parents were both doctors who moved from California to the Philippines around 1938 to be medical missionaries with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Her father, Herbert Honor, was director of the Manila Sanitarium. But when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, everything changed for the Honor family.
Flynn remembers her father performing thyroid surgery on his wife while lookouts stood in the hospital hallway, watching for the Japanese soldiers who were on their way in.
When they arrived, the soldiers confiscated the family's belongings and put them in an internment camp. Most of the prisoners were American civilians.
Though she was 3 when she was imprisoned with her father, Herbert Sr., older brother Herbert Jr., and mother Vera, Flynn has vivid memories of the stay and the three camps they bounced between.
She lived in bamboo barracks with thatched roofs. Some of the prisoners were teachers and taught at a makeshift school.
She even learned a song in Japanese, but she forgot it because her mother never liked her to sing it out loud.
The tide of the war in the Pacific was turning against the Japanese in early spring 1945, and the gaunt prisoners at Los Banos, in Laguna province, couldn't help but notice their captors digging a long, shallow trench at the camp.
Friday — as they all lined up for a meager breakfast — was when the Japanese were going to execute the prisoners, according to the rumors Flynn heard.
The hungry masses didn't realize the 11th Airborne Division of the U.S. Army had been plotting how to raid the camp for months and had started to advance toward Los Banos two days earlier.
They had the help of spies and Filipino locals, who helped diagram the camp and plan the logistics of the raid.
They knew that after dawn, the Japanese guards met in the yard to do calisthenics, propping their guns together like teepees.
That Friday, just before breakfast, American paratroopers rained down from the heavens.
“The sky was full,” Flynn remembered.
Troops attacked guards and cleared the prisoners out of the barracks, hurrying them to the amphibious Amtrac vehicles that crawled onto land to ship the civilians to safety.
Prisoners couldn't gather many of their belongings, so some layered on every piece of clothing they could on that sweltering, tropical day.
Soldiers even had to set fire to some of the barracks to oust the last dazed prisoners who lingered and refused to leave.
That day, 2,147 people were ushered to freedom, and not a single civilian died.
“It was a God thing,” Flynn said.
The only thing that haunts her today is the cruel revenge the Japanese took on the Filipino locals days later.
Furious that residents around Los Banos had aided the Americans by gathering intelligence, Japanese soldiers torched homes and killed suspected conspirators.
About 1,500 locals died in the massacre.
Soon after the raid, her family returned to America, where they started up a medical practice in Southern California. Flynn eventually became a registered nurse and still works at Auburn Faith Hospital.
One day, she was taking care of a retired Air Force veteran. Curious, she started asking him questions.
Did you serve in the Pacific?
Yes.
In the Philippines?
Yes.
In the 11th Airborne?
She had found one of her saviors, and she thanked him for it.
Every Veterans Day luncheon or festivity is a poignant reminder of her rescue, and Flynn chokes up when she looks through the photos documenting her three-year ordeal.
She almost died at age 6.
“I wouldn't be sitting here in Grass Valley and able to enjoy my family,” Flynn said. “It makes me very appreciative.”
To contact Staff Writer Michelle Rindels, e-mail mrindels@theunion.com or call (530) 477-4247.
The fragile, yellowing booklet in Dorothy Flynn's hands lists hundreds of groceries her mother wanted to buy when — if — she ever got out of Japanese prison camps in the Philippines.
Fed little more than rice mush and wracked with diseases such as beriberi, people in the camps were always thinking about food, Flynn said.
When American troops rescued them on Feb. 23, 1945, Flynn, her family and more than 2,000 other people were so dazed and hungry, they didn't say much of a thank-you, the Grass Valley resident recalls.
The liberating raid often is forgotten because it happened the same day U.S. Marines raised an American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima (see the famous image on Page A5).
Now, almost 65 years later, Veterans Day is Flynn's chance to speak out.
“I'm so thankful for the vets,” the 71-year-old grandmother said. “Without them, I wouldn't be alive.”
Flynn isn't exaggerating.
Flynn's parents were both doctors who moved from California to the Philippines around 1938 to be medical missionaries with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Her father, Herbert Honor, was director of the Manila Sanitarium. But when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, everything changed for the Honor family.
Flynn remembers her father performing thyroid surgery on his wife while lookouts stood in the hospital hallway, watching for the Japanese soldiers who were on their way in.
When they arrived, the soldiers confiscated the family's belongings and put them in an internment camp. Most of the prisoners were American civilians.
Though she was 3 when she was imprisoned with her father, Herbert Sr., older brother Herbert Jr., and mother Vera, Flynn has vivid memories of the stay and the three camps they bounced between.
She lived in bamboo barracks with thatched roofs. Some of the prisoners were teachers and taught at a makeshift school.
She even learned a song in Japanese, but she forgot it because her mother never liked her to sing it out loud.
The tide of the war in the Pacific was turning against the Japanese in early spring 1945, and the gaunt prisoners at Los Banos, in Laguna province, couldn't help but notice their captors digging a long, shallow trench at the camp.
Friday — as they all lined up for a meager breakfast — was when the Japanese were going to execute the prisoners, according to the rumors Flynn heard.
The hungry masses didn't realize the 11th Airborne Division of the U.S. Army had been plotting how to raid the camp for months and had started to advance toward Los Banos two days earlier.
They had the help of spies and Filipino locals, who helped diagram the camp and plan the logistics of the raid.
They knew that after dawn, the Japanese guards met in the yard to do calisthenics, propping their guns together like teepees.
That Friday, just before breakfast, American paratroopers rained down from the heavens.
“The sky was full,” Flynn remembered.
Troops attacked guards and cleared the prisoners out of the barracks, hurrying them to the amphibious Amtrac vehicles that crawled onto land to ship the civilians to safety.
Prisoners couldn't gather many of their belongings, so some layered on every piece of clothing they could on that sweltering, tropical day.
Soldiers even had to set fire to some of the barracks to oust the last dazed prisoners who lingered and refused to leave.
That day, 2,147 people were ushered to freedom, and not a single civilian died.
“It was a God thing,” Flynn said.
The only thing that haunts her today is the cruel revenge the Japanese took on the Filipino locals days later.
Furious that residents around Los Banos had aided the Americans by gathering intelligence, Japanese soldiers torched homes and killed suspected conspirators.
About 1,500 locals died in the massacre.
Soon after the raid, her family returned to America, where they started up a medical practice in Southern California. Flynn eventually became a registered nurse and still works at Auburn Faith Hospital.
One day, she was taking care of a retired Air Force veteran. Curious, she started asking him questions.
Did you serve in the Pacific?
Yes.
In the Philippines?
Yes.
In the 11th Airborne?
She had found one of her saviors, and she thanked him for it.
Every Veterans Day luncheon or festivity is a poignant reminder of her rescue, and Flynn chokes up when she looks through the photos documenting her three-year ordeal.
She almost died at age 6.
“I wouldn't be sitting here in Grass Valley and able to enjoy my family,” Flynn said. “It makes me very appreciative.”
To contact Staff Writer Michelle Rindels, e-mail mrindels@theunion.com or call (530) 477-4247.
