Reviewer June Maffin:Living on an island in British Columbia, Canada, Dr. Maffin is a neophyte organic gardener, eclectic reader, ordained minister (Anglican/Episcopal priest) and creative spirituality writer/photographer with a deep zest for life. Previously, she has been grief counselor, broadcaster, teacher, journalist, television host, chaplain and spiritual director with an earned doctorate in Pastoral Care (medical ethics i.e. euthanasia focus). Presently an educator, freelance editor, blogger, and published author of three books, her most recent (Soulistry-Artistry of the Soul: Creative Ways to Nurture your Spirituality) has been published in e-book as well as paperback format and a preview can be viewed on YouTube videos. Founder of Soulistry™ she continues to lead a variety of workshops and retreats connecting spirituality with creativity and delights in a spirituality of play. You can find out more about June by clicking on her Web Site.
Author: Terry
Wadsworth Warne
ISBN: 978-1-4327-8973-2
Until the bombing of Pearl Harbour on December 7,
1941 when, within hours of that secret attack, a similar assault is
launched by the Japanese military on the Philippine islands with the
intention of overtaking the American Protectorate that kept families
like yours safe from the Japanese who wanted complete control over
the seaways surrounding the Philippine islands.
Life abruptly
changes. You and your parents abandon your home in the security
of the Del Monte compound and flee to the dense mountain jungle to
hide from the Japanese army where you live in fear of being captured,
for almost a year.
This is the story of little Terry who, now
eight years old, finds herself and her parents in a series of
Japanese prisoner of war camps dealing with starvation, malnutrition,
intestinal complications, serious infections, high fevers, ulcers on
their bodies, and exhausting and frightening trips in the dirty holds
of Japanese freighters dodging US submarines and planes.
Survival
in the POW camps goes from bad to worse. After picking out the
weevils, bugs and foreign matter from the vegetable peelings and
weeds Terry manages to steal, her caloric intake drops from 800 to
600 calories a day. In the shelling of Santo Tomas, she and her
parents huddle together for sixteen hours to protect one another from
the flying concrete and shrapnel. In transfer after transfer
from one POW location to another, young Terry comes to experience
war, imprisonment, poverty, hunger, malnutrition, illness, beheadings
and unrelenting fear. There was always the very real threat
that when they were finally liberated, they would all be killed
because the Japanese wanted to leave no evidence.
When
Terry is eleven, she and the others are finally are liberated and
returned to the United States, only now she is twenty pounds lighter
than before the war began three years earlier.
Terry Wadsworth
Warne’s autobiography is a powerful reminder of philosopher and
poet George Santayana’s words “Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.” This story, told through the
eyes, mind and heart of a child, is a personal portrayal of a tragic
historical reality. Had the book been screened with an intense
edit, this captivating and terrifying story about growing up in an
ugly time in history under an evil regime would have had more of an
impact. However, it is a book that deserves to be included in school
libraries and on church shelves for it provides a credible and
poignant warning to humanity and is also a story of the spirit
of forgiveness.
In spite of the ill treatment she and her parents received under the hands of the Japanese, because of a strong personal faith in God's grace and the words of Shakespeare “What e’er thou art, act well thy part," the spirit of forgiveness was and is present today in the heart of author Terry Wadsworth.