Preface
Leonore’s Suite is a work of historical fiction inspired, but not constrained, by true events. I tried to walk with young Lee through her thirty-seven months of captivity in the Philippines, asking how the pampered young ex-pat (thirteen-and-a-half at the time of capture) became the strong and driven woman that she was. Lee saw Santo Tomas Internment Camp as the crucible of her life—so much so that even her headstone bears her POW medal.
The Author’s Note at the end clarifies key elements of truth and fiction in the novel, and the Chapter Notes do so in detail, but Lee Iserson and her best friend, Mary Louella Cleland—along with many other characters in these pages—were real Americans interned by the Japanese in Manila’s Santo Tomas Internment Camp between 1942 and 1945. As teens, they came of age under adverse and very unusual circumstances. As adults, they never ceased to marvel at how profoundly their experience had shaped them. |
Chapter One
I.J.A.
I.J.A.
Manila, January 6, 1942
I went off to prison in a Cadillac.
When I saw that shiny, black limo pull up outside our Taft Avenue apartment building, an electric jolt shot through me. Was this our jailor’s pick-up truck? Just weeks before, that gleaming Caddie probably sped Americans in evening gowns and dinner jackets to Christmas parties at the Manila Hotel. Now here it was again, curbside in the red haze of a beastly hot morning. Its toothy, chrome grille smiled at me, and its fenders bulged like black angel wings. But would it speed us to our doom? My heart hammered and for a second, my chest tightened painfully.
“Let’s go, Lee.” My mother’s no-nonsense tone jerked me into the present.
Well, at least the waiting was over: at thirteen-and-a half, I specialized in impatience. I was first out the door and onto the sidewalk, straw suitcase in hand.
“Put here! Put here!” a Japanese officer barked, slashing his curved sword from my suitcase to the rounded trunk of the Caddie. The tip of his saber just missed my leg. I almost barked right back at him, but Mommy darted forward and whisked the little maleta from my hands and into the trunk.
Another soldier with round glasses gestured and shouted something I took to mean: “In, in, in!” Mohair scratched the backs of my thighs as I slid across the seat. Whose limo was this, anyway? My mother and eleven-year-old sister Betty slid in next to me, Betty clutching her small stuffed bear.
If I hadn’t been so terrified, the whole situation would have seemed funny. No open convoy truck or soot-covered bus for the American Family Iserson. Instead, a seven-passenger limo—Cadillac’s 1942 model with rounded headlamps, white-walled tires, and posh mohair seats. We were going off to prison in style.
Kay and Harry Hodges, our neighbors, squeezed onto the bench seat alongside us. Then came a British family of four, the unshaven dad smelling of gin. Our captors tossed in six suitcases that didn’t fit in the trunk. Finally, the three Japanese soldiers crammed into the front seat, completing our sardine arrangement. Where were they taking us?
“Snug for twelve, isn’t it?” Kay drawled. Her southern accent and attempt at humor soothed despite our circumstances.
“Let’s hope we don’t have far to go.” My mother placed her chin close to my ear and spoke with forced lightness. “Daddy will be sorry to have missed this part.”
A knot loosened in my stomach. Daddy loved Cadillacs, but he was a thousand miles away in the tiny town of Zamboanga on the southernmost island of Mindanao. He’d been gone for almost two months. I knew his job—building an airstrip down there—was important, but I missed him every single day, and worried that the Japanese would conquer Mindanao too. All of these islands are American territory and will be targets, I’d heard him tell my mother the day before he left. We’ll defend from Mindanao. But that hadn’t worked very well. The knot in my stomach tightened again.
A glass partition separated us from our captors, but we saw the soldier behind the wheel hesitate. Then he floored the gas pedal, rocketing us forward. Betty’s bear, Cuddles, hit the floor, and she clasped our mother’s arm in a death grip.
“Runty little bastards can’t even drive,” the grizzled Brit across from us muttered in a deep voice that carried all too well.
Mommy’s green eyes darted toward the window partition, then back to the loose-lipped Englishman.
“Two wheels or four legs—if it ain’t got those, they can’t manage it,” he groused. “Never saw such a pathetic excuse for a conquering army in all my life.” His voice was rising now, and the smell of gin wafted from his breath.
Harry Hodges leaned toward the Brit. “Let’s talk history later, shall we old chap?”
“Please, Aubrey,” the man’s wife fixed him with a pleading stare.
The Aubrey Man was right though—about the pathetic conquering army. We sped past four soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army cycling with all their might down Taft Avenue, one of Manila’s main boulevards. They looked like something right out of a Keystone Cops movie.
Mommy, Betty and I had watched the Army parade into Manila four days before, from behind the slatted shutters of our apartment. Dozens of soldiers came pedaling in—on bicycles, for gosh sake—with Rising Sun pennants flying from the handlebars. Then a few trucks lumbered by, then soldiers on horseback with sabers trailing the beasts’ bellies.
We couldn’t believe it. Our invincible American army had abandoned us to these puny warriors on bicycles and horses?
Well, that explained why our conquerors were hijacking every nice car they could find. Some of our friends typed up receipts for the Japanese to sign before they took their cars. And some of their officers were so polite they actually signed them. “One Packard Limousine requisitioned from Mr. Milton Greenfield on January 3, 1942.” Uncle Milton showed me his receipt. He had a few choice words to say about General Douglas MacArthur when he did.
MacArthur is an ass. I’d heard Daddy say that a million times.
General MacArthur, Commander of U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East, sure wasn’t the most popular guy in the PI right now. Ego size of the Titanic, my father complained. MacArthur had been a hot-shot military celebrity, living in a fancy penthouse suite on the top floor of the Manila Hotel, eyes trained west “on the turquoise waters of Manila Bay and the Jap menace,” he said. That was before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and outfoxed him by invading from the north. Now MacArthur was holed up on the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay, vowing “to rout the invaders” from that position of strength. But could he do it?
“Mommy!” Betty shrieked as our Caddie bucked to an abrupt halt, catapulting all of us forward.
The boney rear end of a carabao—a plodding, horned ox—practically mounted the hood of our Caddie. Carabao were accustomed to sharing crowded roads with cars, trolleys, and horses. But they sped up for no man. We Americans, in our Studebakers, Packards, and Caddies, were used to jockeying for position with Manila’s oxen and horse-drawn taxis, but that experience—as well as driving itself—seemed brand new to the Japanese. Welcome to Manila, Mr. Rising Sun.
My mother scooped pop-eyed Betty on to her lap to comfort her, while the soldiers squabbled over how to restart the car. The guard with round glasses rifled through the glove box and unearthed a treasure that he waved proudly before his fellow captors. I craned my neck above the glass partition to see "Operating Hints for the 1942 Cadillac." Mommy saw it too and rolled her eyes.
***
I went off to prison in a Cadillac.
When I saw that shiny, black limo pull up outside our Taft Avenue apartment building, an electric jolt shot through me. Was this our jailor’s pick-up truck? Just weeks before, that gleaming Caddie probably sped Americans in evening gowns and dinner jackets to Christmas parties at the Manila Hotel. Now here it was again, curbside in the red haze of a beastly hot morning. Its toothy, chrome grille smiled at me, and its fenders bulged like black angel wings. But would it speed us to our doom? My heart hammered and for a second, my chest tightened painfully.
“Let’s go, Lee.” My mother’s no-nonsense tone jerked me into the present.
Well, at least the waiting was over: at thirteen-and-a half, I specialized in impatience. I was first out the door and onto the sidewalk, straw suitcase in hand.
“Put here! Put here!” a Japanese officer barked, slashing his curved sword from my suitcase to the rounded trunk of the Caddie. The tip of his saber just missed my leg. I almost barked right back at him, but Mommy darted forward and whisked the little maleta from my hands and into the trunk.
Another soldier with round glasses gestured and shouted something I took to mean: “In, in, in!” Mohair scratched the backs of my thighs as I slid across the seat. Whose limo was this, anyway? My mother and eleven-year-old sister Betty slid in next to me, Betty clutching her small stuffed bear.
If I hadn’t been so terrified, the whole situation would have seemed funny. No open convoy truck or soot-covered bus for the American Family Iserson. Instead, a seven-passenger limo—Cadillac’s 1942 model with rounded headlamps, white-walled tires, and posh mohair seats. We were going off to prison in style.
Kay and Harry Hodges, our neighbors, squeezed onto the bench seat alongside us. Then came a British family of four, the unshaven dad smelling of gin. Our captors tossed in six suitcases that didn’t fit in the trunk. Finally, the three Japanese soldiers crammed into the front seat, completing our sardine arrangement. Where were they taking us?
“Snug for twelve, isn’t it?” Kay drawled. Her southern accent and attempt at humor soothed despite our circumstances.
“Let’s hope we don’t have far to go.” My mother placed her chin close to my ear and spoke with forced lightness. “Daddy will be sorry to have missed this part.”
A knot loosened in my stomach. Daddy loved Cadillacs, but he was a thousand miles away in the tiny town of Zamboanga on the southernmost island of Mindanao. He’d been gone for almost two months. I knew his job—building an airstrip down there—was important, but I missed him every single day, and worried that the Japanese would conquer Mindanao too. All of these islands are American territory and will be targets, I’d heard him tell my mother the day before he left. We’ll defend from Mindanao. But that hadn’t worked very well. The knot in my stomach tightened again.
A glass partition separated us from our captors, but we saw the soldier behind the wheel hesitate. Then he floored the gas pedal, rocketing us forward. Betty’s bear, Cuddles, hit the floor, and she clasped our mother’s arm in a death grip.
“Runty little bastards can’t even drive,” the grizzled Brit across from us muttered in a deep voice that carried all too well.
Mommy’s green eyes darted toward the window partition, then back to the loose-lipped Englishman.
“Two wheels or four legs—if it ain’t got those, they can’t manage it,” he groused. “Never saw such a pathetic excuse for a conquering army in all my life.” His voice was rising now, and the smell of gin wafted from his breath.
Harry Hodges leaned toward the Brit. “Let’s talk history later, shall we old chap?”
“Please, Aubrey,” the man’s wife fixed him with a pleading stare.
The Aubrey Man was right though—about the pathetic conquering army. We sped past four soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army cycling with all their might down Taft Avenue, one of Manila’s main boulevards. They looked like something right out of a Keystone Cops movie.
Mommy, Betty and I had watched the Army parade into Manila four days before, from behind the slatted shutters of our apartment. Dozens of soldiers came pedaling in—on bicycles, for gosh sake—with Rising Sun pennants flying from the handlebars. Then a few trucks lumbered by, then soldiers on horseback with sabers trailing the beasts’ bellies.
We couldn’t believe it. Our invincible American army had abandoned us to these puny warriors on bicycles and horses?
Well, that explained why our conquerors were hijacking every nice car they could find. Some of our friends typed up receipts for the Japanese to sign before they took their cars. And some of their officers were so polite they actually signed them. “One Packard Limousine requisitioned from Mr. Milton Greenfield on January 3, 1942.” Uncle Milton showed me his receipt. He had a few choice words to say about General Douglas MacArthur when he did.
MacArthur is an ass. I’d heard Daddy say that a million times.
General MacArthur, Commander of U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East, sure wasn’t the most popular guy in the PI right now. Ego size of the Titanic, my father complained. MacArthur had been a hot-shot military celebrity, living in a fancy penthouse suite on the top floor of the Manila Hotel, eyes trained west “on the turquoise waters of Manila Bay and the Jap menace,” he said. That was before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and outfoxed him by invading from the north. Now MacArthur was holed up on the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay, vowing “to rout the invaders” from that position of strength. But could he do it?
“Mommy!” Betty shrieked as our Caddie bucked to an abrupt halt, catapulting all of us forward.
The boney rear end of a carabao—a plodding, horned ox—practically mounted the hood of our Caddie. Carabao were accustomed to sharing crowded roads with cars, trolleys, and horses. But they sped up for no man. We Americans, in our Studebakers, Packards, and Caddies, were used to jockeying for position with Manila’s oxen and horse-drawn taxis, but that experience—as well as driving itself—seemed brand new to the Japanese. Welcome to Manila, Mr. Rising Sun.
My mother scooped pop-eyed Betty on to her lap to comfort her, while the soldiers squabbled over how to restart the car. The guard with round glasses rifled through the glove box and unearthed a treasure that he waved proudly before his fellow captors. I craned my neck above the glass partition to see "Operating Hints for the 1942 Cadillac." Mommy saw it too and rolled her eyes.
***