COPY OF THE LETTER FOR PRESENTATION TO THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE, IN SUPPORT OF BILL H. R. 1823

BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF., March 13, 1947.

TEMPORARY COMMITTEE OF AMERICAN INTERNEES,

In Care of P. R. Danner, United States Life Insurance Co.,

New York, N. Y.

GENTLEMEN: Referring to your letter of March 4 addressed to "Dear fellow internee" which was sent to me by Mr. William F. Boericke, a member of your committee, I wish to register my name and address with you.

I was a prisoner in Santo Tomas for 3 years and 2 months. Mr. Boericke can testify to this fact. Mr. Boericke can also testify that I came into "camp" without any finances whatsoever as I was just a tourist in Manila, and my monthly income from the States was cut off as soon as war was declared. Due to this fact and also having no outside contacts who could send in food for me even at the very beginning, I began to lose weight immediately.

For twenty-odd years I have lived in Beverly Hills, Calif., with my mother, and we are well established here. I was in Manila for about a year before war broke, just on a trip.

I have already written to my Congressman and will also write to the other two who are members of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce mentioned on your list who are representing California.

The Japanese made no effort to send me back on the Gripsholm despite frantic efforts of my family who had an extremely influential person and nationally known person use all his influence in Washington, D. C., and the request was issued.

I would gladly go to Washington, D. C., to testify only if it was absolutely necessary as I am now working with a large national insurance company as a stenographer, but I wish to say that the fact that I was a prisoner hindered me from getting work for a year because of a nervousness of speech which developed from starvation (and also probably because a few days after my arrival home, I almost died), and people were naturally unwilling to employ me. In my present work, one of the chief excuses my employer gave for not giving me a raise was that my health was not good enough.

Sincerely yours,

(Miss) HELEN LOUISE WOLFE.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to say at this time, and I would like to inform Mr. Wilson that at the conclusion of these hearings, if there are statements of witnesses in letter form or otherwise that you would like to make a part of this record, and who have not had the opportunity to be present to testify in person, you may submit them to either the clerk or myself, and we will give consideration to their being made a part of the record.

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. That might take some weeks. Will that make any difference?

The CHAIRMAN. I will leave it to Mr. Hinshaw to determine whether weeks is too long.

Mr. WILSON. I think that the witnesses that will appear before this hearing will give you a pretty good description, and it is the balance of everybody concerned.

The CHAIRMAN. It is our desire to enable you to put your full case before the committee in its hearings, so that we will have every viewpoint that you have knowledge of, and it is for that reason that I suggested that they could be made, possibly, a part of the record.

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much for that opportunity.

The CHAIRMAN. We will be in recess until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.

(Whereupon, at 5:30 p. m., Thursday, March 20, 1947, the committee adjourned until 10 a. m., Friday, March 21, 1947.)

ENEMY PROPERTY COMMISSION

FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 1947

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, in room 1334, New House Office Building, Hon. Charles A. Wolverton (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

We will resume hearings on H. R. 873 introduced by Mr. Beckworth and H. R. 1823 introduced by Mr. Hinshaw. The first witness will be Mr. Don Bell.

Is Mr. Bell present?

(There was no response.)

Mr. MCGOWAN. He is not here, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bennett.

STATEMENT OF ROY C. BENNETT, EDITOR AND GENERAL MANAGER OF THE MANILA DAILY BULLETIN, MANILA, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bennett, will you give your name and address? Mr. BENNETT. My name is Roy C. Bennett. My present address is 11041 Weddington Street, North Hollywood, Calif.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that the congressional district represented by our colleague, Mr. Hinshaw?

Mr. BENNETT. It is.

The CHAIRMAN. You have a good representative. You may proceed, Mr. Bennett.

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, I am sure that we all agree with that statement, and perhaps he knows better than we, out there, how they feel about Mr. Hinshaw.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, true worth always shines out wherever it is and the work of Mr. Hinshaw has been exhibited so often in this committee that I would assume that even though we have a more limited acquaintanceship with him, you are to detect that he is entitled to the compliments we seek to pay him.

Mr. HARRIS. Very well said.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bennett.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I spent more than a quarter of a century on the far eastern news front. I went to the Far East first in 1918 as a newspaperman and I was in that part of the world, with the short exception of about 2 years,

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until I was repatriated to the United States in 1945 after the liberation. of the Americans in Santo Tomas.

During the war I spent 16 months, the first 16 months of the war, as a political prisoner. I was the first political prisoner arrested in the Philippine Islands. I was arrested not for any offense that I had committed, but because I was an American newspaperman, and the Japanese arrested me to suppress that which I represented in the Philippine Islands. I was 13 months in a cell of torture. You have heard from a Catholic sister, Sister Mary Trinita, about the horrors of Fort Santiaga Prison. I know those horrors first hand. I spent 389 days in that prison; but I am not here particularly to report a personal experience story. I am here essentially to report on the buildup to the situation that was climaxed by the Japanese against the Americans at Pearl Harbor and then later their conquest throughout the Pacific, and in that connection I speak in behalf of the American community-the American community who contributed to building an American institution, a democratic institution, in the Philippine Islands.

I consider that the Americans who stayed in the Philippines to be trapped by the Japanese in occupation paid the price-their own personal price for American unpreparedness. They were war casualties just as certainly as were those of the armed forces wounded or killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the enemy drive through the vast areas which the forces of democracy were unprepared and unable to defend.

We of the ill-fated group of civilian Americans caught and tortured by a successful enemy force of aggression in the Philippines now find that in effect we were expendables. We do not presume to say that there was any cold and calculated plan so describing us officially, but the job that fell to us resolved itself into just that. Whatever might be our fate in the ultimate course of the war, for all practical purposes in the early phases, in the period of enemy successes, we simply had to be written off in order that the long-range program for the eventual defeat of the then victorious enemy could be carried out.

We were too much in the dark on points of broad strategy to comprehend fully our own fate. We often developed false hope, based upon propaganda designed to deceive and confuse the enemy; we heard and treasured the reports that help and rescue were on the way. We bolstered our spirits with the hope that the turn in our favor might come soon-far sooner than it ever did come.

But with all of the confusion and chaos of the occasion, the realities of the situation were accepted in a manner creditable to the American spirit and the determination to carry through at whatever price.

Apparently, some persons in the United States, who have only a vague conception of what the Americans in the Philippine Islands took and why they took it and why they continued to take it, are under the impression that those caught by the enemy were responsible for their own fate in that they stayed on when they were offered the means of escape in advance. The practical fact is that they had neither official advice nor transportation facilities to escape while the road home was yet open.

Although it is true that some individuals, could have, and if duly warned would have, withdrawn and sought safety in the homeland, it

is a positive fact that the American community in the Philippines could not have been liquidated without a complete reversal of the whole American policy in the Philippines and a defeat of the program under which the aggression build-up of the enemy was met with a solid front. The whole official attitude in the Philippine Islands-as revealed in Army, Navy, and civil government offices-was that public morale must be maintained and that the Americans, collectively and individually must set an example to the Filipinos, an example to give no encouragement to the enemy through admission of weakness or unwillingness or unreadiness to meet any emergency which possibly might

arise.

If I may supplement this part of the report, I should like to inform your committee that on numerous occasions I personally, and members of my staff, as editor of the Manila Daily Bulletin, contacted the American High Commissioner, Mr. Sayre; the high commands in the Army and the Navy; and asked for suggestions as to how we might best support the American cause; how we might inform the public, both American and Filipino; what our duties were; what our responsibilities were; what our course of action should be. Only a short time before the war I personally called on Mr. Sayre. I informed him, "I am not here to ask an interview. I am not here to get anything for publication. I am here to get guidance, if I may. I should like to know what we should do in informing the public as to the situation as it is now developing and is expected to develop. I should like to know whether the course that we are pursuing now is the correct one; whether it is the course that our Government wants and expects us to pursue." I was informed that the course that we were pursuing was correct and that we-I personally-and the newspaper-were performing a valuable patriotic service in the support of the American flag and the cause of democracy. I asked him specifically if at any time there should be a tip, that this line or that line was to be taken, we should be glad to have his suggestions.

I told him that as an American newspaper publisher I considered it our duty to print the news, to be honest, but that we wanted to know what the official American attitude was, what the public attitude should be, so that we might be guided by that.

I got from him and then directly and many times indirectly through other sources, only outright praise of the policy that we were pursuing. Only a few days before Pearl Harbor I had occasion to talk to Admiral Hart, the commanding officer of the Asiatic Fleet, and the same day to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, then the high commander of American Army forces in the Far East, and in effect I asked that same question, with precisely the same results. In fact General MacArthur asked me there was several in the conference-General MacArthur asked me if I would stay for a little talk after the others had gone. He thanked me for the course that we were following. He said it was basically correct and thoroughly right, and in that course I must explain our basic policy was to maintain morale, to encourage an attitude of readiness on the part of the Americans and the Filipinos to meet the emergency and to set an example, an American example, to the Filipinos in a crises; to inspire in them confidence in that which the American flag stood for.

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When American Navy families, and later Army families, were ordered home, official press releases and comments studiously avoided the impression that this was intended as the start of a general American exodus. Emphasis was placed on the explanation that this action was taken for the convenience of the defense services, that the service wives were removed to make room for increased numbers of servicemen and defense equipment.

At the same time, a quiet campaign of reassurance was carried on based on several readily apparent facts, among them the fact that the family of the American High Commissioner was staying on, likewise the family of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the high commander of American Army forces in the Far East.

If it were not betraying a confidence I should like to report the conversations between representatives of the American community including my own wife, as one American, and representatives of the official American offices, including the High Commissioner's office there.

I can say here only that direct inquiries were made as to whether it was the intent that we should slip out while we were maintaining the attitude of standing by and setting an example. We asked in many ways whether on the quiet we should steal away.

The answers that we got, I think without exception-I know all of the answers that I got-were that "we are staying, are we not?" by "we" meaning the families of the High Commissioner and others. "What would the Filipinos think if we left? What would the Filipinos think if you left? You as Americans?"

The editorial and news offices of the Manila Daily Bulletin were in constant touch with the offices of all responsible authorities of the Army, Navy, and civil government-American and Filipino. Through these contact channels, we never once gained the impression that a general withdrawal of Americans was desired or considered practicable. On the contrary, we had every reason to feel that we were rendering a patriotic service and that our policy had complete sanction when news treatment and editorial comment were along lines calculated to build public morale and maintain normal community life.

Many were the occasions on which it would have been easy to spread panic, which, undoubtedly, would have resulted in immediate efforts of Americans to get home. However, shipping facilities did not exist for a volume of travel materially in excess of normal, and there was never indication of an official intention to provide emergency facilities or to create the demand for such extra facilities.

Elsewhere in the Far East, Americans were ordered home; ships were dispatched for their repatriation. But in the Philippines such was not the case, and such was not indicated as officially desirable. The Philippines as American flag Territory-and I might add that the official designation is "Territory" under the sovereignty of the United States-was in a status entirely different from the surrounding territories under other flags.

Americans in the Philippines, through the years of American building in and for democracy, never considered the undertaking in which they were participating essentially military. The undertaking as a whole was in fact far more civilian than military. Had it been otherwise, progress in the establishment of democratic institutions would have been deplorably less than it was.