From Niece Christine Enright Snyder

 Worcester Nun Rescued
60 years ago from
Japanese Internment Camp

February 23, 1945

by
Christine A. Snyder
137 Frye Street
Marlborough, MA 01752
508-303-3717
the.snyders@comcast.net

With the 60^th anniversary of the end of World War II, there will be many individual milestones coming up – VE day (Victory in Europe) in the spring, and then VJ day in the summer.

 A 104 year old Worcester native and Maryknoll missionary, Sister Beata Mackie will remember her own 60^th anniversary liberation from the Japanese.   On February 23^rd in 1945 she saw a multitude of parachutes open over her internment camp in the Philippines.  Liberation had come, thank God almighty, liberation!

 Young Clarisse Mackie, a member of St. Paul’s Cathedral parish, dreamed of spreading the word of God to those in foreign lands.  In 1923 her dream came true as she entered the newly formed order of Maryknoll missionary sisters.  After a brief stay in Hawaii the newly professed Sr. Beata was finally on her way to the Asian missions, to the Philippines. 

              All was to change drastically in December of 1941.   Sister Beata was imprisoned by the Japanese with other religious under house arrest, suffering countless deprivations.  Then in the summer of 1944 hundreds of clergy and religious of all denominations were transferred to the dreaded Japanese internment camp called Los Banos, south of Manila.   Separated from the lay internees, their part of the camp was good-humoredly dubbed “Vatican City” while the lower half was “Hell’s Half-Acre.”  In the barracks used as a makeshift chapel there were over 130 masses offered daily.[1]   (Flanagan, page 18)

 While most prison camps are liberated as the army fights its way inch by inch through the enemy ranks, this camp was well behind the Japanese enemy line.    The internees’ lives were in imminent danger of being annihilated.  The raid had to proceed, and rapidly. 

 It was an amazing rescue operation with over 2,100 civilians lead to safety unharmed, yet very few have ever even heard of it.  And there is a reason, actually a photograph, that took the world’s attention, pushing the Los Banos rescue to the back page.

             The reason the world has yet to herald this most daring and most successful of all civilian rescues ever made is that it occurred on the exact same day as the Battle of Iwo Jima.  The headlines were filled with that famous photo of the five marines raising the flag.  

 The Japanese were systematically starving the prisoners in Los Banos, while fruit was growing just beyond the compound's fences.

             The U.S. officials were extremely concerned that with the advance of the Americans pushing the Japanese back, survivors might not be left alive in the camps.  The prisoners might be slaughtered outright before they could be liberated.

 The prisoners prayed for liberation, but they also knew that their end might be at hand through the merciless second-in-command, Konishi.   The day before the liberation, the bishop had exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and public recitation of the rosary. 

             The American forces were given secret information about the daily routine of the Japanese guards by three selfless and brave inmates of Los Banos. These men were able to escape through a hole in the fence, rendezvous with the Americans and the Filipino guerillas at night, then sneak back into the camp undetected.  

The next morning a three-way rescue was brilliantly executed: ground forces surrounding the camp at 7 a.m.;   amphibious vehicles (amtracs) ready to help ferry survivors across the lake;  and nine planes dropping paratroopers exactly at that 7 a.m. hour.  

It all went off miraculously as scheduled.  When so many variables could have gone wrong, nothing did.  

John Fulton of Kinnelon, New Jersey, a staff sergeant heading up the American ground forces and Filipino guerrillas, said in a telephone interview, “Our signal to attack was when that first parachute appeared out of the lead plane.  So that’s all I was looking for was that first parachute. 

“I was on the ground with the Filipino Guerillas.  Two or three internees from the camp had escaped several days earlier.  Those three all wanted to return and attack the camp also.  And then members of the Reconnaissance Squad were also very vital at that point.  They were also on the ground.   Each of us [the internees, the Recon Squad and myself] were assigned anywhere from five to eight Guerillas each.  They stationed us at different areas all around the camp; we really surrounded the camp.

 “We’d crept up all around the perimeter of the camp,” Fulton continued.  “We stationed ourselves there for three hours waiting for the planes to appear. As soon as that chute opened up, we attacked the camp. I wasn’t looking up at the sky.  I was running on the ground, heading for the gate of the prison.  From there on, our attention was directed forward.  The point is we weren’t sure that the Japanese wouldn’t be right around the corner attacking us.”           

John Fulton continued, “The people were so confused as to what to do.  And a few of them were just adamant.  It was amazing, they just simply did not want to leave their stuff there.  That is all they had to connect them to the world they knew before was in a suitcase.  And to say, ‘Leave it!  Leave it!’- they just couldn’t do that.  They knew that they were behind enemy lines, but they didn’t understand the timing that was involved, no, they didn’t understand that.”   

John Fulton remembered, “So finally we had to set fire to the camp, we torched it.  That encouraged them.   Then they decided, ‘Yes, I guess we have to get out of here.’  But those were a distinct minority.  The great majority were oh blissfully happy to go.” 

Many prisoners were so weak they had to be driven on the amtracs the two miles to reach the lake. 

Sister Beata has not wanted to pass along any negative remarks about her experience.  She did, however, sooth one relative’s worry about possible torture: no, that had not happened to her she related.   “She never has anything bad to say about the Japanese,” her kid sister would say on more than one occasion.  “She’s a saint, I’m sure, a saint.” 

When asked if she rode the amtrac the two miles to the beach, Sister Beata answered, “No, I walked.” Why am I not surprised?  

“It was the most heartwarming experience I think I ever had.  Seeing all of those internees unload out of those amtracs, hugging together talking and laughing,” recalled Fulton.

 Sister Beata’s mother, Mary Ellen Quinn Mackie, had spent the entire war worrying over her eldest daughter's safety.   However on Christmas Day 1944 just two months before the rescue, Sister Beata’s mother passed away.  Recalling this event even this long removed brought a look of sadness to Sister Beata’s eye.  What a bitter-sweet occasion, to be free, yet to find out that she’d never see her mother again.  Looking with the eyes of faith though, the miraculous rescue could have been due to her mother’s intercession from heaven.  

 Maryknoll's founder, Mother Mary Joseph, worried for the safety of her more than fifty sisters imprisoned for the duration of the war. Amazingly all the sisters did return, with a dozen or so needing more time to recuperate at the Motherhouse in Ossining, New York.  That is, they were so emaciated they needed to get back to looking like themselves again lest they shock their parents. While most sisters left to see their families - Sister Beata, who had refused a ride to the beach but walked behind the amtracs, was one of those told to wait at the motherhouse.    

With the trip home to her father delayed a bit longer, it did not dampen the enthusiastic welcome she received.  She visited her married sisters and brothers, overjoyed to be home again.  “The U.S.A. looks grand,” she wrote upon her arrival in California. 

After her trip home, Sister Beata eagerly returned to the Philippines, as a teacher and then as principal to the people she’d grown to love so much.  

As a postscript: The cruel Japanese second-in-command, Konishi, was captured and tried for his war crimes.  While awaiting execution he had a change of heart and was instructed in the Catholic faith by an American priest.  Fr. John P. Wallace said about Konishi, “his embracing the Catholic faith was genuine and sincere.  He told me that he had been impressed by the example of Catholic sisters and priests whom he had encountered during the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines.”  [2]   (page 217 Flanagan) 

Sixty years have passed since the rescue, since the hard time of the imprisonment. Yet for all that, it’s certain that Sister Beata would say to “offer it up.”  Her perfect resignation to the divine will has been her signature and her legacy - and her peace. 

©  Christine A. Snyder, 2005.

SOURCES:

The Los Banos Raid: The 11th Airborne Jumps at Dawn, Lt. Gen. Edward M. Flanagan, Jr. USA (Ret.). Novato, CA : Presidio, c1986.

Fulton, John, Staff Sergeant USA (Ret.),  Kinnelon, New Jersey, telephone interview.

Mackie, Sister Beata, Maryknoll Motherhouse, Ossining, New York.

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