Angelina Trinidad: World War II Filipina Nurse: Liberation!

Everybody was jumping. Some are crying. It was so nice. I even want to remember it. I always try to remember when the Americans landed in a barrio before Sibulan, Calo. It is a small coastal barrio with small huts. Fishermen live there. The Americans landed there. I’m not sure how many, but they landed in landing barges—two or three. When they open the landing barge, I remember very well the American soldiers were all in camouflage uniforms. We were there by the road with the mountains at our back. Juaning Dominado, the husband of Tita Gras is the one who instructed the Americans whether to bomb because they were bombing the mountains because it was the Japanese that were in the mountains now and the guerrillas are down from the mountains already! So he instructs where—to the left, to the right. So we were there beside him and we can see and hear. We saw the Americans came wading in the sea.

I did not see any Japanese anymore after that. After we left for the mountains, I never saw any Japanese any more. When we were up in the mountains, the guerrillas were always watching. They would ambush the Japanese that would come near. There is always a small fight between the guerrillas and the Japanese, but I never saw them.

After they landed and we were able to go back to the house, everyone came to the Big House. We had lots and lots of American officers in the house because Tita Belen was very friendly. They always made parties.

Angelina, July, 2012, looking through the letters Benjamin sent her while he was imprisoned by the Japanese

Angelina Trinidad Locsin, now 96, lives in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, The Philippines, with her two daughters, Maria Teresa and Maria Trinidad, and their husbands.  Benjamin, who she married on March 1, 1944, died in 1997.  So did her only son, Ramon Tomas, in July 2015.  Angelina's four grandchildren, three sons-in-law and eight great grandchildren live in the Chicago, Illinois area.
Her incredible memory continues to amaze family and friends!

Angelina Trinidad: World War II Filipina Nurse: Into the Mountains

Benjamin was released in 1943. He started working in Santiago hospital in Manila and worked there for a while. That was all rice field then. It was the only building there that catered to the Spanish community. And then Benjamin had to go home to bring medicine for his father, Vicente Locsin.  

Benjamin and I got married in 1944. Then we went home to Dumaguete. There were so many Japanese sentries there. You had to bow to them and smile. Vicente was getting very worried because the Japanese army was taking lots of professionals for questioning and they never came back. So he was scared that they will take his son.

It was only when we came home to Dumaguete and there were lots of Japanese coming to the house because Vicente befriended the Japanese because he did not want the Japanese to be against us. So when we came and they saw that Benjamin was a doctor, they got close to us when somebody was sick. They would call us and they would stay and make kwento (chat).

Benjamin's sister, Gracia Dominado, lived in a house across from us. She played the piano, so when the Japanese would come, they would call her to play for them. The Japanese officers knew all the classical music. They would tell her, “you play Hungarian Rhapsody.” They were very educated and were really gentlemen. I have no bad thoughts about the Japanese that I came in contact with. They were all educated, respectful. But the lower-class, not the officers—the enlisted men they call “low class,” they were the ones that abuse and kill and torture.

I was scared only when they began picking up prominent men like men who worked in the hospital or were engineers or in the treasury before the war. The Japanese picked them up for questioning and then they never come out again, are never seen, and many were executed. One time there was a friend of Benjamin's. I don’t remember his name. He was like mestizo (Spanish blood mix). We had a small clinic with Benjamin downstairs. That’s where we talked with him and we made stories with him. One time when he was going out already, the Japanese came and told him to go with them, and we never saw him again. That was the time when I got scared.

So when Vicente said, “I think it’s high time that you go to the mountains because I think the Japanese are getting suspicious.” That was the time we went. We arrived here after we were married in maybe late April and we went to Zamboanguita by boat in September. So it was 5 months were were here in Dumaguete. After that, we stayed in Zamboanguita for 2 days and then were taken up to the mountains  by the runners of the guerrillas.

I enjoyed it there [in the mountains] because I was playing mah-jong every day! That’s where I learned really how to play mah-jong. There were 3 families that stayed together: the Dominados the Aviolas, and the Montebons. That’s why we call the place, “Do-Al-Bon.” That was a famous place before. The families of those guerrilla officers lived together in like a long barracks. They divided it into 3 compartments—one space for the Dominados, Aviolas, and Montebons. It was decorated with sawali–very native—and each compartment has a stairs, so it’s private really, you’re not together. But every morning after breakfast we start playing mahjong already. The wife of Montebon, Aviola, and Dominado are all mahjong players so they taught me how to play. So it was not scary for me at all.

I was living in the mountains, but Benjamin was asked if he would work. Major Dominado was very powerful, so when he asked Benjamin if he wanted to work, he said, “yes, I want to work. I want to help in the clinic up in the mountains." That was 1 1/2 hours walk from our house at Do-Al-Ban to the clinic. Benjamin stayed in the clinic. I would go and visit him at the clinic once in a while. But we would rest. There were small huts in the mountains. And you know the old people there did not know we were at war! They were saying, “why are you in the mountains?” We told them we escaped Dumaguete because there were lots of Japanese already there because we are at war. They would say, “why?” They remember only the owner of a Japanese store we had here and they didn’t know (why we are at war with him)!

Next: Liberation!

Angelina Trinidad: World War II Filipina Nurse: War and Occupation

The following are the recollections of Angelina Trinidad Locsin, witness to war in the Philippines.

Angelina Trinidad

I grew up when the Philippines was under American rule. Some of my teachers in the grades were Americans. We raised the American flag every Monday before classes begin and we recited the oath of allegiance. Friday after classes we assembled for the flag going down. I took up Nursing in American hospital, St. Luke’s. We had an American Superintendent of Nurses and American Episcopalian priest. We had several American chief nurses of every department. I graduated June 1941. We were the last nurses to graduate before the war. After graduation, I worked in a hospital on Negros Island. The hospital was run by American nuns. We had American doctor as director and head of the hospital; he was a reserve officer in the Medical Corps American Army.

Angelina Trinidad (left) with the rest of her graduating class

 

 

I was 22 years old and had been was working as a nurse just 6 months when war was declared on December 8 1941. I remember this very well because it was Feast of the Immaculate Conception. We all heard mass and when we came out of the chapel, Dr. Davies, our Medical Director was by the door with three American Army officers. They announced, “We are at war! The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor!”

There was commotion and confusion. Our nuns who ran the hospital were all Americans and Canadians. We were all crying. Dr. Davies told us that the hospital is being commandeered by the US Army. We were inducted in the USAFE January 13, 1942. Most of the hospital employees—doctors, nurses, technicians, and workers--were inducted into the US Army. We all boarded a boat and were brought to Mindanao where we set up the Army Force Hospital in Impalutao, Bukidnon.

We had dug-out foxholes around the hospital. That’s where we all jumped when we heard the sirens because the planes were coming near to bomb. So when we hear that we all run out of the hospital and jump in foxholes. I was scared that time. If we are working on a patient, we just leave them. There were assigned boys to stay and stand watching in each ward. We had 4 or 5 quonset huts: one for surgical patients, one for medical, one for the emotional like shell-shocked and depressed, and then we had one for operating room. We took rotations. I would work in surgical and then medical and then psych ward. We had to work there even though it wasn’t ready. We improvised.

The most scary part of the war was when I saw my first casualty. I think he was hit at the back. We could see his lungs breathing.

We worked in the hospital until we surrendered to the Japanese. After the surrender, they took all the Americans out. I don’t know where they brought them. There were only Filipinos left. And then we didn’t have Japanese patients yet, only Japanese officers coming around.

The oath of allegiance the Japanese made Angelina sign

But then in even not a month, they closed the hospital and brought all the nurses to Bukidnon and made us work in the civilian hospital of that town. And the Filipino men [including a young doctor named Benjamin Locsin with whom Angelina had fallen in love] were brought to a concentration camp near Bukidnon. They were just interned there. And then when the Japanese decided to bring us back to Manila, they loaded us the ones from Luzon.

Benjamin wrote me letters because they had a small cantine in the camp, and some girls sold food and toilet articles there. And Benjamin befriended some of the girls and said, “can I send letters with you?” But it was risky. One time it was not the girls that got caught: one of the boys who worked “detail” at the camp (they call it detail if you are made to work at the camp by the Japanese). He was caught with letters from people outside. He was punished. They were afraid they will kill him but they didn’t.  He was just punished. I don’t know how they did it. But the girls were never inspected so Benjamin smuggled his letters through the girls. There were days that the girls go to the camp maybe three times a week and Benjamin already had letters prepared for them to bring to me.

  

 

Next: Into the Mountains.

 

Footage of Jane Kendeigh, the first navy flight nurse to land on Iwo Jima

I was quite thrilled to receive the following link featuring an eight-minute video of rescue on Iwo Jima. I've seen B&W photos of Jane Kendeigh, the first navy flight nurse to land on Iwo Jima, a woman whose story is included in the book, but seeing her in action is quite startling.

Jane is seen at the seven-minute mark: http://bit.ly/1Yvmgy8