And They Returned

Evelyn Chapman Castillo

Description

A memoir chronicles the atrocities of war and one family’s will to survive while providing a window into a Filipino community desperate to preserve its culture.
In 1941, the Philippines was a mountainous island country populated by some seventeen million people that included Hipolita Chapman, the young widow of an American, and her children. But when the Japanese bombed Clark Airfield, Hipolita had to make the agonizing decision to evacuate her family and go into hiding in the mountains for nearly a year. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of their struggles.
In a fascinating narrative, Evelyn Chapman Castillo recounts the experiences of her Filipino-American family during the Japanese occupation of her homeland during the Second World War. As she details how her mother kept her family together during the Japanese occupation, she also chronicles their journey to join the resistance movement, the experiences of other family members and their house staff, the bloody assault of the US soldiers for the liberation of Leyte, MacArthur’s landing at Red Beach, the desperate struggle by the Japanese forces to take back the island, and their attempts to survive the indiscriminate bombings by the Japanese on the American-held island.
And They Returned chronicles the atrocities of war and one family’s will to survive while providing a window into a Filipino community desperate to preserve its culture.

Sujets

• Personal Memoirs
• Biography
• Philippines
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 22 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665742979
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

Extrait

PATERNAL GRANDFATHER
William Lewis Chapman
PATERNAL GRANDMOTHER
Emma Eslinger
FATHER
Lewis “Louis” Eslinger Chapman
October 1886 – 1941
MOTHER
Hipolita Dolina Chapman
1906 – 1985




SISTER
Emma May 1920 – October 1987
HALF SISTER
Ida 1920 or 1921 – death year unknown
SISTER
Ena May 1922 – March 2002
SISTER
Helen September 1924 – April 1999
BROTHER
Bill June 1926 – October 2010
SISTER
Mary July 1928 – November 2012
BROTHER
George August 1930 – March 1996
SISTER
Ethel April 1933 – November 1987
SISTER
Evangeline April 1935
SISTER
Evelyn March 1937
BROTHER
Danny 1939 – survived 1 month





And they returned
LIFE IN LEYTE DURING WORLD WAR II



EVELYN CHAPMAN CASTILLO












Copyright © 2023 Evelyn Chapman Castillo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.




Archway Publishing
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Bloomington, IN 47403
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
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ISBN: 978-1-6657-4298-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4297-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023907635



Archway Publishing rev. date: 04/22/2023






TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PROLOGUE

PART I
CHIPPIE AND HIPOLITA
PART II
LEYTE ISLAND
PART III
SAMAR ISLAND
PART IV
THE BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF
PART V
SAMAR ISLAND

EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY






INTRODUCTION
And They Returned recounts the experiences of my Filipino-American family during the Japanese occupation of my homeland during World War 2. At the time, the Philippines was an American protectorate.
My father, Louis Chapman, was an American who remained in the Philippines after his discharge from the Army. Thousands of Americans like my father settled in the islands and married Filipinas. In 1922, when he was thirty years old, he wed my mother, then a twelve-year-old Filipina, named Hipolita. Their children would hold American and Filipino citizenships.
Nine months before the Japanese attacked my country in December 1941, and after almost twenty years of marriage, my father died. At just four years old, I was the youngest of their nine living children. When the war came, my two eldest sisters were married and lived elsewhere. And so my mother, Hipolita, was left to manage the seven children still at home. I was just a child, but I have many indelible memories of the three-year occupation that followed. Some are frightening. And some are details only a small child might remember. Besides my own, I have the memories that belong to my mother—the telling and retelling of dozens of family stories about that sad, worrisome, and fearful period. Through it all, her strength, determination, and wisdom helped us survive. I am glad I am able to pass on some of those stories. And They Returned is a tribute to her and to all brave Filipinos who endured those awful days.














NOTE ON LANGUAGE
This narrative begins in 1941, when English and, to a lesser extent, Spanish were the official languages of the Philippines, a mountainous island country then populated by some 17 million people. For almost four centuries, my people had lived under Spanish and then American rules. Most Filipinos could carry on a basic conversation in English. But on the different islands, different dialects were spoken. My first language was Waray (wuh-rye), Spanish names and words were sprinkled into our dialects. “Barrio,” the Spanish word for neighborhood, is one example. After we gained our independence in 1946, we developed our own national language, Filipino. Today the Filipino word for “barrio” is “barangay” (bah-rahng-aye), meaning village, district, or ward.



PROLOGUE
My mother had vivid memories of her childhood from an early age. Her family lived in a small town in Southern Leyte, one of the large islands lying midway down the thousand-mile-long archipelago that is the Philippines. Louis Chapman was a thirty-year-old American from Iowa when he married Hipolita, a twelve-year-old Filipina. They prospered financially. When Louis Chapman died, Hipolita was left to face the war alone with her young American-looking children.
Their story begins with an unusual courtship and then describes their family’s growth. Except for the tragic loss of their youngest child, life in the Philippines moved smoothly for the couple. By 1936, at the age of twenty-eight, Hipolita was a grandmother.
The war started in 1941, and the widow and her family evacuated and went into hiding in the mountains for almost a year. Later they were forced to live under the forces of the Japanese occupation in Tacloban and Leyte, their hometown. Their house had been used by the fearsome Kempetei, the Japanese secret police, as headquarters during the occupation.
This story chronicles my family’s accounts of WW2: the atrocities and degradation of war—the execution of an American captain and a Filipino sergeant after a futile escape from a prisoner war camp; the eldest daughter Emma and her husband’s death; her reluctant participation in the guerilla movement with her sixteen-year-old brother, Bill, in the jungles on the island of Samar; the torture of her loyal and trusted house boy; and her brother Bill’s first experience with love. To remain on good terms with the Japanese, the Chapman family opened a restaurant in Tacloban, Leyte, used for official functions and banquet and which ultimately kept them alive during the war. I recount the bloody assault of the US forces for the liberation of Leyte; MacArthur’s landing at Red Beach, about five miles south of Tacloban; the desperate struggle by the Japanese forces to take back the island; and our survival under the indiscriminate bombings by the Japanese on the American-held island.
This story ends with the return of my family to their home in Tacloban, finding it full of not only their memories from before the war, but also bearing scars left over from the war.



PART I
CHIPPIE AND HIPOLITA






CHAPTER 1
Before the assault on Pearl Harbor became a reality, the people of Tacloban began to talk about the serious threat of war, even though it was still hard to believe such a thing could happen to them. As they went about their daily business, the subject of war kept creeping into life. Some were talking about leaving their homes and hiding in the hills. But it wasn’t yet a reality, and so physically leaving was a difficult decision to make.
Hipolita Chapman, however, made plans to evacuate her family almost immediately. She had a little house built in Utap, a small sitio, a territorial enclave that forms part of a barangay, only a few kilometers outside of Tacloban at the foot of the mountain to the west, where she felt her family would be safe and far enough away from the town in the event of an air attack.
Mano Pasyo, the family cook, was at the marketplace when the news arrived: The Japanese were attacking. He took the tartanilla , a horse-drawn carriage, home, and before he could pay the fare, he grabbed the basket of food and jumped out, his fruits and vegetables falling into the street. He ran up to the house and through the living and dining rooms, dropping all that he carried as he screamed, “Mana Hipolita, it has come!”
His cheeks were flushed, and his large eyes were wild. Then he was out of breath and turned pale.
Hipolita became concerned because Pasyo looked like he might be having an attack of some sort, and he was already of an older age. She took him by the shoulders and sat him down. “Pasyo, you must slow down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
He took a deep breath. “The Japanese airplanes have bombed Clark Airfield.” He gulped another breath. “And some people at the marketplace were saying that anyone who has American blood in their veins will be shot.”
Fear gripped Hipolita’s heart. All her children, with their light hair and brown eyes, looked American. She sat on the bench by the kitchen table, unable to think straight. She didn’t know what to do; it had all happened so fast. Wanting to be alone, she went to her room to think. How she missed her husband then; he would have known what to do. Her mind wandered to the past and how she first met him.

H e had been building a road close to Hipolita’s birthplace. She was very young, around eleven years of age, and the eldest of four children, two boys and two girls. Being the eldest, she had to help her family by selling tobacco leaves and fruits. She carried the fruit in a basket on her head and sold them around town. Or if the family had enough money to rent a table, she sold them at the market. She was in charge of the fruit, and when she heard there was a construction crew in tow