The Iron Gates of Santo Tomas: A Firsthand Account of an American Couple Interned by the Japanese in Manila, 1942-1945

by Emily Van Sickle

Book Overview

When Manila fell to the Japanese in January, 1942, the Van Sickles were among the enemy aliens taken by the victors to the campus of Manila's University of Santo Tomas, where they were to remain unwilling "guests" for more than three years. This is a fascinating, detailed and insightful account of life in a civilian concentration camp as gripping and readable as any tale of adventure.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0897333799
• ISBN13: 9780897333795
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Length: 357 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great eyewitness account

Having recently learned that my uncle was a member of the 1st Cavalry, 5th Regiment and part of the "Flying Column" which liberated Santo Tomas in Feb 45, I was fascinated by Mrs. Van Sickle's eyewitness account of her time in the camp, and of her retelling of the evening of liberation. Her storytelling STYLE isn't particular gripping, but her STORY itself IS gripping and she tells it with an honest, informative approach.

A Wonderful Memoir of Struggle

Emily Van Sickle has written a wonderful memoir of her struggle during World War II to survive internment by the Japanese in the Philippines. Interned in Santo Tomas University with her husband, Emily chronicles the daily boredom, increasing starvation, and then the unbridled excitement of liberation by U.S. troops.Anyone interested in first-person wartime stories should read this book. It adds a new dimension to World War II stories of internment--this is unlike the experiences of European Jews and of Japanese-Americans, but still gives the reader pause to wonder at the atrocities of war.