Customer Reviews

Three Year Picnic: An American Woman's Life Inside Japanese Prison Camps in the Philippines During WWII

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I stopped by the booth at the book fair in November that the publisher of this book put on. Evelyn Whitfield was manning the booth that day. She had sold all the copies of her book, but she was such a warm personality and sold other people's books so well, that I had to order a copy of her book.

She wrote the manuscript shortly after her release and return from three years spent in Japanese prisoner of war camps in the Philippines. This was not originally meant to be published as a book, but for some reason she has dusted it off and published it. I suspect the Premiere Editions is a vanity publisher, though I do not know for certain.

First off, I must get out of the way that the writing is somewhat amateurish. I might characterize it as something I would write.

She tends to write as I would expect someone of her generation who is not a writer would, with much respect for the sensibilities of the people like her. Everyone in her prisoner of war camp holds up rather well under the circumstances. She does not write much about disagreements, and the ones she does write about she laughs off as minor. While not having experienced the horror of a prisoner of war camp, my experience with living in close quarters with people is that arguments are much more serious that one would gather from the plucky crowd who inhabits her camps.

But several things do come through the story. The lack of contact with the outside world comes through so much in the story that I found myself wondering if they ever made it out alive. Having met the author, I know that she did. She does not fall into the trap of describing the events taking place outside the camps. As a reader, you have no context to compare against. As I suspect that they had little context in which to place themselves during their incarceration.

The absolute precariousness of their position shines through loud and clear as well. One never finds her in the exaggerated position where she is near death due to the capriciousness of a Japanese guard. No guns being pointed at her head. However, subtly she paints a canvas with arbitrary decisions regarding food, shelter, and bowing which show how much at the mercy of others they were.

The hope that the prisoners exhibit also is apparent. The internees attach themselves to any rumor that whips through the camp. Sightings of planes. Contact with former employees and acquaintances through camp fences. The disappointment shows when their camp translator is no longer allowed to translate in meetings with the Japanese authority, because she can understand the words they say in addition to the official translation.

I highly recommend this book. While not the greatest writing, her story is compelling.

This can happen to any of us, let's not forget it.

Many don't know what happened to American civilians in the Phillipines during WWII.

How inspiring that people like ourselves can survive such unbelievable treatment and then not only live to tell about it but take on the task of humbly sharing the experience in the hope that others, by knowing what can happen, may work towards preventing this from ever happening together.

This is a book that I and others I've shared it with, couldn't put down.

Recently, at a family reunion, I met a lifetime friend of my wife's family. He was part of the team, crptographer, that rescued Evelyn and the others from the camp. It was fascinating to hear from him more about the conditions found there in the Phillipines.

This is well told history, truly interesting history.

Mrs. Whitfield writes clearly and interestingly about her three-year internment in a Japanese prison camp during World War II. A far cry from Hitler's barbarism, the camps in the Phillipines carried their share of inhumanity, starvation, and sadness. But Mrs. Whitfield's book gives us a window without bitterness. Her three years were dangerous, exciting, sad, and funny--simplistic adjectives which do not do justice to her special style of writing. For the young and old--and all of us in between.

As secretary to the inmates' governing committees, the author had an unusual inside view of their struggles to maintain the health, safety and morale of American and other allied men, women and children held captive over three years in the Philippines, climaxed by the horrible three week battle that destroyed Manila. Accompanied by contemporary photos, sketches and maps.

The underlying stress on the daily life of the author and her fellow prisoners is very apparent despite the author's genteel and somewhat oblique manner of description. I imagine that one must avoid full descriptpions of the pain the psyche undergoes in order to maintain a sane perspective. Many people did not survive their prison camp experiences for many reasons. Just think of eight people sharing a 4oz tin of food and thinking how lucky there were to have it! The Japanese were brutal, horrible people in WWII. I lived in the Philippines during some of the VietNam war years and felt as if I lived on another planet despite having all of the conveniences of American life. This book was a treasure read. I contemplated the courage of ordinary people in extreme circumstances as I read it.

When I first read the title of this book "Three Year Picnic," I didn't pay too much attention. And I thought it is a book about someone's vacation story. However, I noticed that there is a subtitle under the title, "An American Woman's Life inside Japanese Prison Camps in the Philippines during WWII" then I realized that it is NOT what I thought. This is a truth story about a young woman, Evelyn Whitfield who spent three years in a prison camp during the Japanese occupation. In the book she portrayed the life in a civilian prison camp (of course it was different from military prison camp). In the camp, prisoners suffered from starvation, lack of medical treatment, mulnutrition, etc. However, I didn't find any in depth torture or physical abused by the Japanese soldiers. That was the good thing in that camp. But I was surprised. This book is not as "horrible" as other wartime stories/memoirs. Then I understood why Evelyn put the book title in that way.