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- Description:
- In the second of two oral history interviews, Virginia Emrich describes her service in the American Red Cross during World War Two. Emrich says that she was sent to Australia in 1944 and then to Manila in June 1945 where she was quartered in a bombed-out building with indoor toilets and showers, but with little privacy. Emrich remembers regularly hearing gunfire and bombs as U.S. troops tried to dislodge the Japanese, setting up a recreation hall for the 11th Airborne Division and regularly suffering earthquakes and tropical rains. She says that she was never hungry during her time in the Red Cross, but was often homesick, cold and tired and always sustained by the conviction that she was doing something worthwhile. Emerich says that she was sent to Japan in September 1945 to open recreation clubs for U.S. occupation forces and that although she enjoyed her time in Japan, she finally asked to be shipped home to care for her aging mother.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-06-11T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Edna Miller talks about her work as a teacher in the city of Baguio, Philippines beginning in August 1941 and being interned as a prisoner of war in a camp in the mountains outside of Manila after the Japanese invasion. Miller discusses the conditions in the camp, the prisoner's diet, holding makeshift church services, the behavior of the Japanese guards and her fellow prisoners. After the camp was liberated in 1944, Miller says that she decided to stay in the Philippines and joined the American Red Cross and then after the war ended, took a job with the U.S. Army teaching soldiers until 1947 when she left Manila for the states. Miller, who later taught in Army schools in occupied Japan, says that she has no regrets about her overseas experiences, despite the hardships and that her greatest thrill was meeting General Douglas MacArthur when her POW camp was liberated. Miller is interviewed by Evelyn McHiggins.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-06-30T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Patricia Young Berri talks about her service in the American Red Cross during World War Two from February 1944 to March 1945. Berri says she was working as a secretary for Shell Oil in Houston and doing USO work when she volunteered and was first assigned to the 117th Station Hospital in Leyte in the Philippines to coordinate patient recreation. She was next sent to a Naval base on Palawan and later Samar to await transport back to the United States. Berri talks about the ARC uniforms, the train ride to San Francisco and landing in Leyte and says that she didn't mind the cold showers or the tent life there, but had a difficult time adjusting to the Filipino unisex latrines. Berri is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-04-04T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In a poignant oral history interview, American Red Cross worker Ruth Wysor talks about her adventures while serving in the Philippines during World War II and in American occupied Japan after the war, including being held prisoner in a Japanese prison camp and adopting and raising a war orphan. Returning to the Philippines with General Douglas MacArthur and the American Army, Wysor says that she was separated from U.S. forces, driven into the countryside and wounded and captured by the Japanese. She describes being held in the infamous Santo Tomas Internment Camp, subsisting on a diet of rice alone and receiving no medical attention. The camp was finally liberated after three months and she says that her untreated knee wound continues to trouble her forty years later. After the war, Wysor says that she was sent to Kamakura to help set up the first Red Cross club in Japan and that her unit befriended a group of destitute missionary sisters who lived nearby and gave them food, supplies and medical care. Wysor says that the nuns also cared for orphans and that she became godmother to a little girl, cared for her when she became ill and finally applied to adopt her. With the help of General MacArthur himself, Wysor says that she was finally able to return to the United States with her new daughter and became the first single woman in the state of Ohio to be allowed to legally adopt a child. Wysor says that her adopted daughter thrived in the U.S. and has gone on to be a successful adult. Recorded at the AOA Convention held in San Antonio, TX. Wysor is interviewed by Alf Thompson and Betty Thompson.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project