Helen Colijn: Digging Graves in the Internment Camp

Helen (center) and her sisters.

The Dutch East Indies, 1939.

Credit: Song of Survival

THE JAPANESE GUARD held up two fingers. Only two graves. A few days earlier it had been eight.

Helen Colijn, a Dutch teenager, along with three other prisoners, had volunteered for grave duty. Sometimes digging graves didn’t seem as depressing as living in the filthy internment camp with all of the starving, sick, and dying women.

Helen’s view of death had changed drastically during her imprisonment. It was no longer a shock, and barely a sorrow. It occurred nearly every day. Few of the surviving prisoners still had the energy to grieve.

But Helen could do something to help: she could dig. The guards wouldn’t do it, so it was up to the prisoners. She wished the guards would at least give them better digging tools...


From "Helen Colijn: Rising Above" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater

Helen Colijn: The War is Over

"On August 24, 1945, the prisoners who were not bedridden were summoned to a spot outside the guardhouse. The camp commander told them the war was over. He didn’t tell them who had won.

The following day, the women began to receive items they’d previously been told were unavailable: food, medicine, blankets, bandages, mosquito nets, towels. Many weak prisoners continued to die, and all of them had to carry on in the squalor of the camp. But they were no longer starving. And they knew help was on the way.

On September 7, 1945, Dutch paratroopers entered the camp. They said 'they had never seen such awful conditions' [in the camps they’d been liberating] and were amazed that anyone could live like this.'"

From "Helen Colijn: Rising Above" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater

Maria Rosa Henson: "Don't be ashamed."

"Then one morning in 1992, she heard a woman on the radio discussing the topic of so-called comfort women who had been forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese government during the war.

Maria Rosa began to shake uncontrollably. She heard the woman on the radio discuss something called the Task Force on Filipino Comfort Women. 'Don’t be ashamed,' the woman said. 'Being a sex slave is not your fault. It is the responsibility of the Japanese Imperial Army. Stand up and fight for your rights.'

'My heart was beating very fast,' Maria wrote later of that moment. 'I asked myself whether I should expose my ordeal. What if my children and relatives found me dirty and repulsive?'

She didn’t call in, but she listened to that radio station every day. A few weeks later, she heard a similar announcement. She began to weep. At that moment, her daughter Rosario walked in. Maria Rosa finally told her the truth.

Rosario helped her get in touch with the task force. Maria Rosa was interviewed on tape, Rosario at her side. It was extremely difficult, but also a relief. 'I felt like a heavy weight had been removed from my shoulders,' she wrote later, 'as if thorns had been pulled out of my grieving heart. I felt I had recovered my long-lost strength and self-esteem.'

Maria Rosa was the first Filipina comfort woman to break her silence..."


From "Maria Rosa Henson: Rape Survivor" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater

Maria Rosa Henson: Filipina "Comfort Woman"

"At gunpoint, the sentry led Maria Rosa to the second floor of a Japanese garrison. There she saw six other women. She was led a small room with a bamboo bed and no door, only a curtain.

On the following day, one that she would later describe as “hell,” Maria Rosa discovered why she and the other women had been brought to the garrison. A Japanese soldier entered her room. He pointed a bayonet at her chest. She was terrified; she thought he was going to kill her. Instead, he slashed her dress open. Then he raped her.

Twelve more soldiers followed..."

From "Maria Rosa Henson: Rape Survivor" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater

Margaret Utinsky learns of Jack's death

"Margaret wondered if Jack was receiving any of these supplies. She hadn’t heard anything from or about him yet. But she was willing to do anything just in case her actions might be helping him. “Risks did not seem too dangerous,” she wrote later, “when I thought of him inside those fences.”

In December, Margaret heard that the surviving men were being moved to a new prison complex, consisting of three camps, located near Cabanatuan City. By way of two Filipino contacts in the Miss U Network, Margaret started communicating with an American officer in the prison named Colonel Mack. She sent him a note, asking if he knew anything about the fate of a Jack Utinsky. A note came back:

Dear Miss U:

You have many friends in this place. . . . I am deeply sorry that I have to tell you what I found out. Your husband died here on August 6, 1942. He is buried here in the prison graveyard. . . .

You will be told that he died of tuberculosis. That is not true. The men say that he actually died of starvation. A little more food and medicine, which they would not give him here, might have saved him.

This is terrible news for you, who have, with your unselfish work, been able to save so many others. All of us will always owe you a debt that we can never pay for what you have done.

I do want to say to you that this place is far more dangerous for your work than Camp O’Donnell was. Do not take risks that you took there. If you never do another thing you already have done more than any living person to help our men. My sympathy goes out to you in your grief. God bless you in all you do.

Sincerely yours, Edward Mack,
Lt. Colonel, U.S. Army

Jack had starved to death. Margaret blamed herself. “If he could have received just a little of the food I had given to others,” she wrote later, “he might be alive. If I had found him four months sooner, he might be alive..."

Camp O'Donnell burial detail

Excerpt from "Margaret Utinsky: The Miss U Network" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater: 15 Stories of Resistance, Rescue, Sabotage, and Survival. 

Minnie Vautrin: American Hero at the Nanking Massacre

"Minnie spent most of her time running from one end of the campus to another, trying to stay one step ahead of the raping, looting soldiers. Her commanding presence was enough to make some of them quit, but others, she wrote, would look at her “with a dagger in their eyes and some times a dagger in their hands.” One Japanese soldier became so angry with Minnie when she tried to prevent a looting, he pointed a gun at her. Another slapped her.

Meanwhile, the refugees continued to flood into Ginling, “with horror written on their faces,” wrote Minnie, and relating “stories of tragedies such as I have never heard before.”

Minnie was desperate. She decided to visit the Japanese embassy in Nanking to see if anyone there would help her.

A sympathetic embassy clerk wrote two official letters ordering the soldiers to leave the women of Ginling alone. He also gave Minnie some official “proclamations” to post on the outside of Ginling’s walls, declaring the campus off-limits to Japanese soldiers.

He even arranged for Minnie to be driven home in the embassy car. The driver told Minnie, “the only thing that had saved the Chinese people from utter destruction” were the “handful of foreigners” running Nanking’s safety zone. Minnie was glad to be making a difference, of course, but the driver’s words filled her with a certain despair: “What would it be like,” she wrote, “if there were no check on this terrible devastation and cruelty?”

On the following day, she tested the power of the letters..."


From "Minnie Vautrin: American Hero at the Nanking Massacre" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater. 

Claire Phillips learns of Phil's death at Cabanatuan

Claire Phillips

On October 17, 1942, Claire opened a nightclub located near Manila’s busy harbor. She named it the Tsubaki Club after a rare Japanese flower. Her opening night was a huge success, and she looked forward to earning more Japanese money to fund resistance efforts. But her mind was always on Phil.

The following day, Claire felt the time was right to get an update on him. She called on Father Theodore Buttenbruch, a fellow resister and German priest who the Japanese were allowing to visit Cabanatuan under careful supervision. She asked Father Buttenbruch if he would carry a message to Phil.

Two weeks later, the priest called Claire to his office. He had lists of POWs who had died at Cabanatuan. Phil had died, he said, on July 26, 1942.

Sketch made by a survivor of Cabanatuan

Library of Congress

A few days later, she received a sympathy note from Chaplain Frank Tiffany, who lived at Cabanatuan. Although Phil’s death certificate stated that he had died of malaria, Chaplain Tiffany told Claire the underlying reason for Phil’s death was malnutrition.

'But I beg of you,' he continued, 'not to forget the ones that are left. They are dying by the hundreds.'

Cabanatuan survivors, 1945

National Archives

Claire was heartbroken. It took her several days to recover enough to return to work. But when she did, the circumstances of Phil’s death gave her an additional motivation to keep the Tsubaki Club successful. She also became more motivated to engage in her own form of espionage.

The Tsubaki Club regularly entertained powerful Japanese civilians and military men who passed through Manila..."

From "Claire Phillips: Manila Agent" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater.