The Philippines may one of the lesser known theater of World War II, but that will change Thursday night with a program at the Edgecombe County Veterans Museum.
Chris Larsen Jr.’s presentation begins at 7 p.m. There is no charge. It will mark a year of similar programs every second Thursday of the month coordinated by Ben Brinson.
Larsen, whose father worked for Standard Oil, was a toddler when the Japanese bombed the Philippines eight hours after attacking Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Japanese troops occupied Manila. A defense under the command of U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur continued until an inevitable surrender in the spring.
MacArthur was ordered to escape on a PT boat to Australia, but he vowed, “I shall return.”
Most of the 80,000 prisoners of war captured by the Japs were forced to undertake the infamous "Bataan Death March" to a prison camp about 100 miles away. As many as 11,000 men, weakened by disease and malnutrition and treated harshly by their captors, died before reaching their destination.
“It’s the United States’ greatest military disaster,” Larsen said.
“Within 48 hours after the invasion,” Larsen continued, “my family and I were put into an internment camp at Santo Tomas along with other Americas, British, Australians, Norwegians and others who were living and working in the Philippines.”
The Larsens would stay in the camp for three years and two months.
“It was tough,” Larsen said. “My father was involved in an underground movement and was able to get information out to spies who had a radio.”
When the Japanese finally learned of the camp’s four leaders, including his father, they rounded them up. However, they took away a Clifford Larsen while searching for a C. Larsen.
“Those men were tortured and beheaded,” Larsen said.
The son was 4 and a half years old when the camp was liberated by U.S. troops on Feb. 3, 1945.
“I remember that,” Larsen said. “Somehow my mother and I ran through the Battle of Manila without being killed.”
He also recalls coming home on a Liberty ship, the USS Hannibal Victory, and seeing “big fish” in the ocean.
“They were two torpedoes that just missed us,” Larsen said. “Remember, the war wasn’t over. The Japs did not surrender until August.”
Larsen, 69, has an extensive library in his Rocky Mount residence about the war in the Philippines. He has given presentations in schools and at college and universities.
He and the former Eleanor Clark of Tarboro have been married 42 years. They have been back to the Philippines and visited the site of the camp, now a university.
“The Japanese camps had 10 times the deaths as the German concentration camps,” Larsen said. “The Japanese were especially brutal.”
The Thursday night programs have been averaging about 25 people who crowd into the museum's library. This program will be in the conference room to accommodate an anticipated larger audience.
