Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
Former teacher recalls life as Japanese prisoner of war
Julie Grady
WEST BOYLSTON WEST BOYLSTON - Cecily (Mattocks) Marshall's new book, "Happy Life Blues: A Memoir of Survival," is fresh from Dunn & Co., but the book itself has been a long time coming.
"I've had the idea for ages," said Marshall, a former Clinton High School teacher, who was a former Japanese prisoner of war during World War II in the Philippines. She was only 10 years old at the time.
"We had to hide in the mountains for a year," she said.
"We" was her mother, a Boston University graduate and school principal, her father, a native Englishman turned missionary, and her two younger siblings.
Her parents were steadfast, optimistic and truly faithful, according to the book, which may explain the comportment of Marshall herself: trustworthy, cheery and realistic.
"This story is really about two people who had a lot of courage," she said, referring to her parents. "There were pioneers in every age."
After meeting abroad, her parents started a family and settled in Manila, in the Philippines, a cosmopolitan city with Spanish-inspired architecture located on the northern island of Luzon.
When Marshall was about 9, the whole family relocated to the island of Mindanao for a new mission assignment. Zamboanga, their new hometown, was quite a change from Manila.
"We moved to an outpost," Marshall said of Zamboanga. But the community did boast a lovely shoreline.
"It was our front yard," Marshall said. "Life was so peaceful. I remember the ocean and the colorful boats, called `junks,' with their sails. My friends were locals. I felt a part of the community."
Her journey from the Philippines to Central Massachusetts included a one-year stint hiding in the jungle and a two-year period when she was prisoner of war in Japanese camps.
It is a story that she hasn't told often since gaining her freedom.
The book, published by the Clinton publishing company, Dunn and Co., is her way of talking about her life in the Philippines, which was interrupted by World War II, and her family's capture by the Japanese, concluding with her arrival back to the country of her mother's birth, a land she didn't know at all.
Back to the United States
After the liberation of Santo Tomas, an internment camp in Davao, on Feb. 3, 1944, the mission paid for the family's trip to California.
A cross-country journey followed from California to Waltham, Mass., her mother's hometown.
Some may have called the trip a homecoming of sorts, but Marshall didn't see it that way.
"It felt temporary. The Philippines was home," she said. "That was all I knew."
Adjusting to life in America was a difficult process for her; the undertones of society were new to her.
"New England wasn't entirely in tune with the events over there. They were more connected to Germany," Marshall said.
Through the act of being displaced and starting over from square one, she learned not to complain. Now, Marshall said that she can look back and truly appreciate what her parents went through. But, there's still one slightly negative recollection: Red corrections.
"I was missing a lot. I had bad English grammar. I wrote about my experience and it came back with red marks all over it," she said. This teaching methodology initially discouraged Marshall from writing her story as a young girl.
Marshall worked to catch up and eventually became a teacher after graduating from Middlebury College in Vermont.
She taught at the Clinton middle and high schools, becoming a fairly well-known personality in the area. She was also the coordinator for the bilingual educational department.
"I was very involved," she said of her days teaching. "My experiences made me very empathetic to new students."
And it was not just any transfer students, either. She particularly connected with those coming in from Vietnam\l "I", Laos, Korea and Taiwan.
"My Chinese even came back a little," Marshall said.
She said she loved her job so much and that she had very fond memories of Clinton. Her husband, Peter, worked at Nypro.
Still, those red correction marks of yore had driven her to stay rather silent about the events of World War II. Marshall hadn't said much over the years, until she was invited to speak at a Clinton High School graduation.
Despite the inner turmoil that might be expected of a silenced prisoner of war, Marshall said she didn't intend to write the book for cathartic purposes only.
"Originally, I wrote it for my children and grandchildren, who have never heard the story from beginning to end," she said.
When they were growing up, she did give they some glimpses of her past, such as telling them she had to eat "lugao," boiled rice with a mushy consistency, "and you're complaining about dinner?" she would tell them. Or, her children would whine about school "Mom, you don't know how boring school is," they would tell her, adding, "You didn't even go to fourth grade!"
Life as a prisoner
Nevertheless, light-hearted teasing didn't make the previous ordeal any less fearsome.
"We had to deal with snakes, wild boar and monkeys. There were no doctors, no nurses and no medicine," Marshall said of her time hiding in the mountainous jungle.
It was the Subano tribe that taught her family how to survive. They learned how to farm and uncovered alternative medicine; for example, tropical ulcers - called jungle rot - were treated with egg membranes and the soaked leaves of guava trees.
Other trades included cobbling, knitting straw socks out of bamboo needles and making dishware down to the very last spoon.
But, the Japanese eventually captured them and took them to Davao, where the family members were forced to live in an old cabaret. Happy Life Blues, as it was ironically named, served as an internment post with 280 internees and many more cockroaches. The wildlife out of the jungle became more threatening as cobras and scorpions infested the building.
To pass the time, Marshall made dolls and teddy bears. She even wrote music; she was quite the piano player.
Marshall's "amah," or nurse, Serafina, reminded her of her childhood when they reconnected about 50 years later.
"Serafina reminded me of what a little brat I had been," Marshall said, with a laugh.
In spite of some of her prisoner experiences, Marshall said one of her most terrifying memories in life is being at sea on Christmas Eve in the hull of an unmarked Japanese ship, not knowing whether it was going to be attacked by U.S. submarines. One of her happiest memories - no surprise - was being liberated from a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
Marshall said she hopes, with her book, not to revise history, but to add to it. She writes in the introduction:
"...it was time to speak out, or to write about that of which few people are aware. What happened ... to Allied men, women and children trapped in the jaws of a rapidly advancing Japanese army as it devoured much of Southeast Asia, is not widely known."
This general lack of knowledge could play a part in what Marshall believes is a "resurgence" of interest in World War II.
"There's more interest now," she said. Although, Marshall isn't sure exactly why, she said she's obliged to fill the historical hole.
Even though part of her past is filled with images of a war torn country, other parts are filled with outrigger boats and calm shores and her book reflects that.
Marshall doesn't aim to fill in every event or military maneuver or political undertone. Her book takes on a child's perspective as she and her family invests their tremendous faith in miraculous survival.
"Happy Life Blues: A Memoir of Survival" will be available on Amazon.com. The cost is $15. Other outlets will be announced in the future.