My Faraway Home: An American Family's WWII Tale of Adventure and Survival in the Jungles of the Philippines [Hardcover]

Mary McKay Maynard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2001

Here is a beautifully written, courageous memoir of a wartime childhood behind enemy lines.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and simultaneously attacked the Philippines, eight-year-old Mary McKay, her parents, and several other American families working on Mindanao fled into the jungle for what they thought would be a short evacuation until they could be rescued by the Navy. Their wait lasted two years.

My Faraway Home is the fascinating story of how they survived. The refugees encountered typhoons, fires, and cobras; they lived on dwindling stores of canned food, traded with loyal Filipino villagers who wouldn't betray their hideout, and learned to improvise their own shoes (from rubber tires), soap (from pig fat), and other necessities. Into this upside-down world of anxious waiting and frayed tempers came occasional simple joys-a Fourth of July feast, a birthday party, a pet goldfish in a glass jar.

Mary Maynard also describes their escape on a submarine dodging enemy torpedoes, and recounts how her teen-aged brother, away in boarding school when the Japanese invaded, survived a prison camp and the bombing of Manila.

Like the classics The Diary of Anne Frank or Empire of the Sun, My Faraway Home gives a fresh perspective on war through a child's eyes. It is also a luminous coming-of-age story that captures the universal experience of a child's attempt to decipher the adult world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Eight-year-old Mary McKay's father managed a gold mine on the Philippine island of Mindanao when the war in the Pacific erupted in December 1941. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines, the McKays quickly gathered what supplies they could and fled into the jungle. They believed that their stay would be brief; General MacArthur himself had reassured Mary's father that the war would be over in a month. The days turned into weeks and the months into two harrowing years, lived in close confinement, with increasing privations as the (often worm-infested) food supply fell and their group swelled with more refugees. Eight months after Pearl Harbor, some chose to surrender to the Japanese and be interned in prison camps, but the McKays moved farther into the jungle, where they were plagued by disease and shortages of essential items. Eventually, a submarine arrived to evacuate American civilians, taking them through torpedo-laden seas to Australia. After the war, in 1947, they went back to the Philippines, where, ironically, more tragedy was waiting. McKay, whose recollections are bolstered by excerpts from her mother's journal, makes the details of life in the refugee camp immediate, from the heat and smells to fears that the Filipino or German nationals in their camp might betray them. With the glut of male-centered WWII chronicles this season, these recollections provide a welcome perspective on a far-flung corner of the war. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

On the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the author was an eight-year-old living in the Philippines, where her father ran a mine. Her parents thought the war would be over in weeks. Instead, they were forced to flee to the jungle, where they stayed in hiding for two years while battling heat, hunger, and natural disasters such as fire and typhoons. All the while, young Mary and her parents worried about her teenage brother, away in boarding school near Manila. A fascinating chapter at the end tells Bob's story, how he managed to stay alive in internment camps and outlast the bombing of Manila. In November 1943, the family escaped on a submarine, but the danger was not over--the sub came under attack. Maynard writes simply yet effectively, capturing the feeling of what it was like for her younger self to experience the horrors of war and the exhilaration that was also a part of it. A fascinating look at a different home front. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 275 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press; 1st edition (July 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585742619
• ISBN-13: 978-1585742615
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,819,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Faraway Home Takes Us To a Place No More, August 27, 2001

By 

o pearl "pearl jones tranter" (Vallejo, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: My Faraway Home: An American Family's WWII Tale of Adventure and Survival in the Jungles of the Philippines (Hardcover)

An enlightening story about Americans caught up and stranded in the jungle on Mindanao, the southernmost, large island of the Philippines at the start of WWII, My Faraway Home is told through the eyes of a young girl from the intellect of an adult woman. Touching excerpts from Mary McKay Maynard's mother's diary weave in and out of this tale of a group of Americans in a jungle hideaway using every survival skill they have to live their lives with some sort of order. Descriptions of the way life was back then and the beauty of the country are a special visit to a time that is no more. The slowness of day to day living eventually leads to as fine an adventure as any escape story provides. Off to a slow start with one day rather like the next, I became enchanted and pulled into the story so that I could not put it down and stayed up until 3 am reading it until it was done. Yes, I liked it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars WW II -- UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL, April 18, 2003

By 

Theresa Welsh "The Seeker" (Ferndale, Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Faraway Home: An American Family's WWII Tale of Adventure and Survival in the Jungles of the Philippines (Paperback)

Ms Maynard reaches a long way back into her memory to bring us this absorbing tale of a family forced to hide in the jungle on Mindanao when World War II broke out. The Japanese took over the Philippines, leaving nine-year old Mary McKay, her parents and a brother away at boarding school, stranded. With the American Pacific fleet sunk at Pearl Harbor, General McArthurs advice that Americans were in no danger turned out to be very wrong. McArthur was a stockholder in Mindanao Mother Lode, a mining operation where the authors father worked. From a comfortable existence with servants to cook their meals and wash their clothes, this family had to flee to another inactive mining camp well into the interior of the island, where they were further from the Japanese soldiers now swarming over the coastal areas.

Other families in the same situation lived with them at Gomoco, a gold mining camp that consisted of a few rickety buildings with a little stream flowing by. That stream became a river as it flowed to the coast, but boats could not navigate through the shallow water near the camp. Marys father was in charge of the collection of people who came and went over a two year period, and he presided over numerous arguments, often over whether to use more of the canned food or (as Mr. McKay thought) to preserve it for the even tougher times that might come.

In the end, the family is rescued by an American submarine that took them aboard to share the tight quarters with sailors, dodging Japanese ships as they made their way to Darwin, Australia. Marys brother Bob spent the years in internment camps and was rescued from a prison in Manila when the Americans finally came and took back the Philippines. General McArthur kept his promise to come back.

The book includes snatches of Marys mothers diary which she kept during the years of hiding. I suspect this was the main source of information from so long ago, although surely a girl who lived through so much peril and fear would not forget these events. But research and that diary must have supplied many of the details. Mary gives us interesting glimpses into the complicated relationship of her parents -- a father who could not understand his wifes need for comfort and reassurance, and a mother who begged her Filipino suppliers to find lipstick, believing that putting on a good face could hide her fears. The author also is willing to deal with the lopsided relationship between the Americans and the hard-working and loyal Filipinos, who did most of the work of keeping the foreigners fed and safe. That did not keep the Americans from feeling superior or making fun of the pigeon English spoken by the natives. It took many more years of living for the author to see how insensitive and ungrateful were these actions.

I found the story pulled me in as I read, and I wanted to find out what new problems would appear and to learn how this family would finally found their way back home, whatever home had come to mean to them. Once Mindanao fell they had to decide whether to give themselves up (as the Japanese demanded of all Americans) or to continue to try to evade notice. Eventually enough servicemen and civilians who did not surrender themselves were able to put together an organized guerilla action to provide mutual support, harass the Japanese and keep in contact with American military forces fighting the war. That led to the submarine rescue and the end of the book, an interesting story from a time soon to be relegated to history books as memories fade completely and the story tellers are with us no more. This book is a rare opportunity to see the war from a new perspective, through the eyes of a child who experienced the disruption and terror of war up close and personal.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars evocative and insightful, February 3, 2002

By 

"baliktad" (St. Louis, MO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Faraway Home: An American Family's WWII Tale of Adventure and Survival in the Jungles of the Philippines (Hardcover)

I learned about this book from my high school alumni web page and read it mostly out of curiousity. A fascinating book, a coming-of-age tale of a young girl in wartime. I so appreciated the author's skillful melding of her childish observations and her retrospective adult understanding of this difficult period of her life. She unflinchingly, and often humorously, describes the colonial prejudices of her parents and other Americans in their small community, their condescension toward Filipinos and Filipino-American mestizos, the tensions arising from a basic incompatibility between her parents, their strained relations with other fugitives from the war, and even a sexual assault. What makes the book so special, beyond its extraordinary tale, is the author's mature and sensitive handling of the subject matter. She owns up to her own failings and seeks to understand and forgive those of others, without condoning bad behavior. As an expatriate child in the Philippines (more than 20 years ago), I too felt superior to and made fun of the locals and am now heartily ashamed of it. Just as it took age and distance to fully appreciate my family, I can now admit to my love for the Philippines and her peoples. Our situations were so different, nevertheless McKay's words resonated strongly for me and inspire me to seek to develop even a fraction of her graciousness.

I highly recommend this book.