Derwin Davis, SR/WA, and -WWII POW

“The War” was “personal” to him.

Derwin Davis, currently a Project Acquisition Manager with BRI, has had a long career in the right-of-way field, including 41 years with CalTrans, from which he retired as second in charge of the Right-of-Way Division. Of especial interest here, however, is the fact that Derwin was also a WWII civilian internee, having been imprisoned by the Japanese in the Philippines.

In 1941 Derwin was ten years old and living with his parents in Manila, two blocks from the harbor. His dad was with the Army / Navy YMCA, and life in the upper class area of the city where they lived was good. The Davises were personal acquaintances of General MacArthur and his family. There was a lot for a young boy to do, including visiting many of the islands and native tribes.

However, the emerging Pacific hostilities and the attack on Pearl Harbor changed all that. All US military personnel left Manila, and the Japanese occupied the city on January 2nd, 1942. The Japanese announced that all the foreign civilian population remaining in the city would be confined within the walls of the Catholic University of Santo Tomás; families were instructed to wait at the curb ready for pickup by military vehicle, with only one suitcase per person allowed.

Santo Tomás was a walled campus. The grounds covered 54 acres and within this campus there were two main structures, the four-story classroom building and the three-story science building. The Japanese occupied a smaller administration building and patrolled the grounds, including from watchtowers on top of the walls. The internees occupied the classroom building, with women housed in the classrooms on one side, and the men on the other. Later, individual family shanties were permitted on the grounds; these were living quarters only and did not have electricity or plumbing and had to be “see through” from all sides.

At first, living conditions at the camp were quite tolerable; a camp governmental structure was set up, a central kitchen established, garbage was regularly collected, schools were created for the children, and recreational and entertainment activities were organized. Food was readily available from various sources, including supplies thrown over the wall by Filipino friends. Derwin remembers the Japanese general as saying, “While we are victorious, we can afford to be generous.”

Later, as the war began to turn against the Japanese, conditions at the camp worsened. In April 1944, the Japanese Military Police took charge of the camp and it became, officially, Manila Prison Camp No. 1. Allied bombing of areas around Manila increased the uneasiness of the prisoners’ captors, and their treatment of the prisoners became harsh.

The Japanese military began confiscating prisoner food to feed their own troops. Prisoners began to experience starvation. Adults began to short their own rations in order to preserve more food for children. By December 1944, Derwin’s dad was so weak he could not sit up in bed.

The Allies began to bomb Manila. Some shells fell within the prison compound. On the night of February 2nd, 1945, heavy detonations were heard. The Japanese captors started burning their records and taking all of the prisoners’ food. On February 3rd, the sky was filled with smoke, and conflagrations were seen south and east of the camp. A number of American planes flew low over the camp, and one pilot dropped his goggles with the message: “Roll out the barrel.” At 9 P.M., the US First Calvary, in an action reminiscent of a Hollywood movie, smashed down the camp gates and shot their way in. The prisoners were freed! The Davis family was released after more than three years of internment to return to the US and resume a “normal” life. At the time, Derwin was 13 years old and weighed only 54 pounds. We at BRI admire Derwin for his long-demonstrated professionalism, and we are fortunate that he was blessed to personally survive this POW incarceration, now well documented in the history books.
(By Stephen Rosenthal)