Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:13 | One of the worst things about the prison camp for Elizabeth Lowe's family was that they were split apart. The older boys in one building, the older girl in another and the young children and her mother in yet another. Fortunately, there was a doctor and medicine available when she was bitten by a rabid dog, but there was no medicine that could cure starvation.
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Until the age of seven, Elizabeth Lowe lived in Hong Kong with her missionary parents. As war raged in China, her father sent the family to the Philippines to wait for the war to end. He was convinced the United States would not become engaged, but then Pearl Harbor happened and the Lowe family wound up in a Japanese prison camp for expatriates.
Hearing a loud commotion on the street corner nearby, eight year old civilian expatriate Elizabeth Lowe ran to see what was happening, and she will never forget the sight. It was the Bataan Death March and Japanese soldiers were beating and bayoneting the Allied prisoners as they staggered by. It was the most disturbing thing she witnessed during the war.
The civilians in the Manila prison camp tried to keep up a normal life when possible. There was a makeshift school for the children, but there was no escaping the malnutrition and constant hunger. Elizabeth Lowe's adventurous sisters would scavenge scraps from the Japanese mess but it was still precious little.
The Japanese knew MacArthur was only a hundred miles away and advancing, so they made plans to execute all the men and boys in the prison camp at morning roll call. Elizabeth Lowe describes what happened when American volunteers streaked to the camp after the general was informed of that.
The liberated civilians were treated like special guests by the soldiers who saved them, and later by the sailors on the trip home from the Philippines. Elizabeth Lowe had her twelfth birthday while en route, and she was taken to the galley for a treat, Sadly, her father did not make the return trip.
All of Elizabeth Lowe's family had scars, both physical and mental, from their time in a Manila prison camp during the Japanese occupation. It failed to crush the spirit in any of them, however, and her mother and one of her brothers returned to Asia as missionaries after the war.
