CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sagada
HOSTILITY FAILED TO DISLODGE the Community from its western
outpost in Davenport, but the combination of poverty, the Great
Depression and finally World War II compelled the Sisters to
withdraw from St. Katharine's in 1943, not without great sorrow. No
work of the Community ever inspired greater affection, on the part
of the Sisters, alumnae and staff. The Sisters liked to think that
those forty years in Davenport had helped to nurture the Church in
the area to vigor, breadth and zeal. This indeed had been suggested
earlier in a letter to Peekskill by the Rt. Rev. Theodore N.
Morrison:
If you knew the condition of Church life in Iowa in days
gone by—the hostility to Catholic teaching and practices—and
then could appreciate what the Sisters have done to bring
about among the people a broader, more intelligent and more
sympathetic attitude toward the Church's teaching and
worship, you would feel, I am sure, as I do, that the work
has been blessed of God and the results are not to be
measured by statistics giving the number of girls enrolled
or by the balance sheet of the treasurer.
The removal of the Community from a time-honored and beloved work
is always a time of testing. The Community's continued existence
depends at such times on the Sisters who give to obedience the
priority it clearly requires. What such changes cost could be
guessed by acquaintance with any of the Sisters withdrawn from the
mission houses in New York and Chicago when those two works were
relinquished. With loyalty, humility and costing obedience, they
purchased peace and continuing life for their Community.
The strength and flexibility required for change from one work to
another was also demanded in cases where a radical departure from
former goals created an entirely new work within the framework of an
older institution. A sweeping change came to the Sewanee community
in the forties, when construction of the Dixie Highway and other
roads made it possible for school buses to transport the children of
the Cumberland Plateau to the schools which the Works Progress
Administration had built during the Depression. A mission boarding
school was no longer required. A college preparatory school for
daughters of the faculty at the University of the South was needed,
and the Vice Chancellor of the University persuaded the Sisters that
such a program was feasible. St. Mary's-on-the-Mountain quickly won
a following and within ten years had been fully accredited by the
Southern Association for Secondary Schools and Colleges. By 1965 a
splendid new dormitory crowned the bluff, beside a new building
housing classrooms, library and laboratories. Expanded facilities
made it possible for the Sisters to extend the important program of
retreats for Associates and friends.
St. Mary's Hospital in New York adapted its services to the
growing need for a children's convalescent hospital. A bequest from
the estate of lumberman Henry S. K. Williams made possible the
purchase of a six-acre site overlooking Belt Parkway and Little Neck
Bay in Bayside, Long Island, where the Community erected a
million-dollar hospital of one hundred beds. Subsequent gifts made
possible an extensive department of rehabilitation medicine, opened
in 1960. Physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy
were thereby provided for children four to twelve suffering from
neuromuscular disability, bone and joint malformation or disease,
sequelae of trauma, burns and infections, including poliomyelitis
and encephalitis, vegetative dysfunctions and bronchial asthma.
Post-operative rehabilitation for lung and heart surgery cases was
also provided. The new program was integrated with the Training
School for Infant and Child Care, which gives its students basic
skills in pediatric rehabilitation.
The last decades of the century saw a series of changes in the
Community's oldest work, the House of Mercy. When in 1920 the
property at 214th Street and Bolton Road in northern Manhattan was
condemned to make a public park, the work was moved to a farm near
Valhalla in eastern Westchester County. Here on a gently sloping
hill was built St. Mary's-in-the-Field, with gardens, orchards and
tree-lined lanes. At the same time the trustees transferred the
trusteeship to the Sisters, and in 1924 the charter was amended to
define the purpose as centering on the care of abandoned, delinquent
or neglected children over twelve.
In its long span of development from the dreary days of Dickens
to present-day methods, the work achieved notable success, but not
without mismoves. One of these attracted much unfavorable notice. In
1920, after sixty-six years of accepting all races, the Sisters
began to refuse admission to Negro girls. Superiors indicated that
racial differences presented insurmountable difficulties when they
were added to the multiple problems of treating disturbed and
delinquent girls. In 1942 this policy gave rise to a storm of
unfavorable publicity and sharp criticism by public welfare
officers. The New York City Welfare Department threatened to
withdraw its dependents from five Protestant institutions unless
they complied with a non-segregation statute. Two secondary factors
influenced the Sisters' decision to withstand this order: the city's
action was taken precipitately, with more regard to its political
uses than to the welfare of the children involved; and the threats
sounded a trifle bombastic in view of the fact that city funds at
that time provided only about half the cost of maintaining each
child with minimum custodial care. Mother Mary Theodora denied that
race prejudice was behind the policy, and the issue was debated
throughout the summer, with welfare officials growing more coldly
critical and the Mother increasingly adamant. On October 19, New
York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, himself a loyal Churchman, pleaded
with the Sisters to reconsider their decision, adding kindly, "Your
Board and your staff occupy a position of dignity and distinction in
the field of child care."
The story broke in the morning editions of October 30, with the
New York Times and other papers naming the five offending
institutions and pointing out that twenty-four Roman Catholic and
five Jewish institutions had bowed to the non-segregation statute.
The Community's legal representatives begged the Superior for
permission to issue a statement in defense; she authorized a brief
statement, but one hardly calculated to court public favor. In a
letter to the Superior at St. Mary's-in-the-Field, the Mother
insisted stoutly, "We shall just have to grin and bear it." Whatever
the justice or wisdom of the Community's stand in 1942, it was
widely misinterpreted and was later reversed.
A sweeping change took place quietly at St. Mary's Home in
Chicago in the forties when institutional care gave way to foster
home care. Studies by trained social welfare workers prompted the
Sisters to sell the building on West Jackson Blvd. and buy property
at 5741 North Kenmore suitable to the needs of a foster home and
adoption agency. Between seventy and eighty children, from the newly
born to teenagers, could be cared for in this way. Behind each child
was a tragic story of illness, mental or physical; of destitution,
drunkenness or drug-addiction; of cruelty, desertion or parental
moral unfitness. Every effort is made to reunite parents and
children, but when this is impossible, the child is placed in an
adoptive home or a foster home. In some cases this is possible only
after extensive medical and psychiatric treatment. The Sisters and a
staff of trained case workers see that each child receives what he
needs by way of home care, medical and dental care, school expenses
and clothing. The generosity of friends enables the Sisters to meet
an annual budget in excess of $90,000 and late in 1964 plans were
made to erect a remedial treatment center for the emotionally
disturbed.
II
World War II found three Sisters of Saint Mary interned in a
Japanese prison camp in northern Luzon. For them, for the other
members of the Mission staff at Sagada, and for the Igorot
Christians, the War was an ultimate test of devotion and loyalty.
The quiet heroism and true Christian community displayed during the
Japanese occupation of the Philippines, the patient endurance of the
prisoners and the self-sacrificing generosity of the Christians from
Sagada and Bontoc, were tribute enough, if tribute was needed, to
the sound teaching of Father Staunton.
As early as 1916, the very vision and ingenuity which
characterized Father Staunton's work in Luzon had made him impatient
of officialdom and had earned the disfavor of the Board of Missions.
Bishop Brent defended him that year before the Board, citing his
extraordinary gifts:
He has been misunderstood, at times even by myself. It is
only comparatively recently that I have given the man his
full measure. The mission that he represents is not a
station, it is a diocese. He is the chief spiritual
influence in the entire country; he is the best-informed
man, whether in government or in business ... his advice is
sought by officials who represent the American government;
he is on friendly terms with the Roman Church clergy who are
laboring in that district. . . There were times when I
thought I could teach Father Staunton better ways of doing
his work than those he has learned from God Himself. I have
ceased to interject my own theories into the life of a man
who has proved by his work that he knows how to bring
simple-minded people into close and intimate touch with God
as revealed in Jesus Christ.
Bishop Brent's resignation was the beginning of dissension that
broke Father Staunton. A new bishop did not take over until 1920,
and in the two-year interval Bishop Graves of Shanghai was in
charge. On his visitation to Sagada he appeared to be pleased with
its progress, but shortly afterward he issued an encyclical to the
clergy of the missionary district, condemning:
First, the practice of "Reservation of the Blessed
Sacrament" (except for Communion of the Sick) and the
burning of a light before it.
Second, the singing of the Ave Maria together with the
burning of candles and offering of flowers before the image
of the Virgin.
However well-intentioned these strictures were, their effect on
the Mission staff and the people of Sagada was devastating. Father
Staunton replied in an open letter which he sent to Bishops and
others in authority, pointing out that Bishop Brent had permitted
the devotions which Bishop Graves condemned, and that similar
practices might be found in a hundred or more parishes in the United
States.
The election of the Rt. Rev. Gouverneur Frank Mosher brought hope
of help instead of condemnation from missionary district
authorities. Father Staunton wrote enthusiastically that Bishop
Mosher was working out a plan of using native catechists who, it was
hoped, would provide native candidates for the ministry. Father
Staunton added:
We are evidently, under Bishop Mosher's leadership, on
the verge of great things to the glory of our Church and the
blessing of these mountain people.
But criticism of Father Staunton continued, in the form of
directives issued from New York. Father Staunton's health declined,
and he suffered a sunstroke from which he never fully recovered. In
his discouragement and anxiety, he and four other priests in the
Mountain Province submitted resignations. It is doubtful that they
anticipated acceptance, but Bishop Mosher replied immediately,
accepting the resignations, and so Father Staunton's connection with
the Mission ended. He asked the officials in New York for an
opportunity to state his case, but his plea was met by silence.
Heartbroken, he returned to the United States, made his submission
to the Roman Catholic Church, and obtained a position at the
University of Notre Dame, where his brother was a professor. After
Mrs. Staunton's death he went to Rome to study for ordination and,
though suffering from glaucoma, was ordained. Sadly, failing
eyesight soon made it impossible for him to exercise his priesthood.
The Sisters and other Mission staff stayed on, though the
personnel of the Sisters' house changed from time to time. In March,
1929, Sisters Felicitas and Brigit died of poisoning when a native
girl accidentally used rat poison in baking. The Community withdrew
temporarily from the work, but resumed it in the early thirties.
The deaths of the two Sisters, and the sufferings and dereliction
of Father Staunton, who died thinking his work at Sagada a failure,
as well as the labors and trials of all the Mission staff who
persevered in spite of official disfavor, all were to bear fruit
when the war brought the Islands under a Japanese military
dictatorship. In December, 1940, two Filipino women were professed
in a native order, the Sisters of Saint Mary the Virgin, which
undertook the direction of an orphanage. On June 4, 1941, Eduardo
Longid was ordained to the priesthood, and two days later Albert
Masferre was ordained in Bontoc.
In the midst of the Fiesta of the Conception of Our Lady,
December 8, 1941, came the news of Pearl Harbor, to which the
reports added that Camp John Hay had been bombed. Not long after,
invading Japanese troops brought in bundles of pesos they had
printed in preparation for the invasion, and prices immediately
sky-rocketed. The Igorots built huts and gardens high in the
mountains, but it was soon apparent that much suffering lay ahead
for them. When General Douglas MacArthur offered missionaries
transportation to safety, the Mission staff at Sagada decided to
remain. Then missionary personnel were commanded by the Japanese to
appear in Bontoc no later than 5 p.m. on May 25, 1942, or the Rev.
Clifford E. B. Nobes would be shot. At 4 a.m. on May 24, the Sagada
staff offered Mass and prepared to leave, bidding sad good-byes to
many friends congregated to see them off. Though they had no money
to hire cargadores, more than 150 Filipinos volunteered to carry
their provisions down the tortuous corkscrew trail, the first of
many acts of loving kindness which Filipinos were to perform in the
terrible days ahead. After a brief stay at Bontoc, on June 16 they
were ordered to Camp Holmes near Baguio. They loaded their array of
washbasins, pails, pitchers, suitcases, cots and canned goods onto
four trucks, which hurtled them down the hairpin curves at
break-neck speed, leaving them all covered with thick coats of dust.
En route they glimpsed United States military personnel, a sight
that haunted them in the three years of imprisonment—gaunt,
hopeless-looking prisoners of war, one of whom when he attempted to
call to them, was slapped violently by a guard.
They were warmly welcomed to Camp Holmes, despite already crowded
facilities. In all, six hundred internees shared the Camp's two
dormitories, one for men and one for women, and the mess hall, where
at first the Sisters were given a corner for sleeping. Many of the
internees were missionaries representing various Christian groups,
while some were mining-company executives and miners. The
specialists all gave their services free for the benefit of the
entire Camp—priests, doctors, dentists, nurses, electrical
engineers, plumbers, carpenters and cooks. Three little tin huts,
each one sixteen feet square, became "nunnery row," with the Sisters
of Saint Mary sharing one hut with two lady missionaries; three
Sisters of Saint Anne in another; and seven Roman Catholic Sisters
of Maryknoll in the third.
Despite the irritations and frustrations of camp life, there
prevailed a cheerful ingenuity among the internees. When the
Sisters' door kept blowing open in typhoon winds, it was bolted for
them by the distinguished architect J. Van Wie Bergamini, who was to
rebuild the destroyed churches in the Philippines after the war.
When cow's milk was no longer available for the camp's babies, the
doctors worked hard at developing coconut and soybean milk, while
the camp's erstwhile farmers imported goats and started a small
dairy. When misunderstandings arose between the internees and their
jailers, Miss Nellie McKim, an alumna of Kemper Hall, acted as
emissary to smooth out difficulties, using her fluent Japanese and
her position of trust and influence which the soldiers freely
accorded her. From June, 19-42, until the autumn of 1943, the camp
was under Japanese civil authorities, in charge of a Mr. Tomebe who
had studied at the University of California, and was humane and
just. In that early period, time passed quickly, even happily.
Sister Juliana taught fifth grade in the camp school, which enrolled
about one hundred children. Sister Columba and Sister Mary Oliva
worked on a kitchen crew headed by a Seventh Day Ad-ventist
missionary, extracting worms, weevils, and rubbish from the daily
rice ration for the camp. They were allowed to augment the camp diet
with food from the camp store and with gifts from friends outside.
Bishop Wilner, Father Longid and the Filipino Sisters sent them
money as they were able. The prevailing spirit of good-humored
cheerfulness despite boredom, lack of news from home and inadequate
diet was a perpetual puzzle to the Japanese guards.
Toward the autumn of 1943, the camp was removed from civil
control and placed under the military. The new commandant,
Lieutenant Cura, was so heartily detested by his own soldiers that
they vowed to kill him, and his fellow officers refused to eat with
him. He decreed irrational regulations and, as the Allied forces
pushed the Japanese harder, near-starvation rations. A double fence
was erected, and two internees escaped. The effect of this was an
edict forbidding food bags to be brought in, so that only peanuts
and sugar were available in the camp store. The daily rice ration
gave way to coarsely ground fodder corn, with resultant illness. The
chickens and vegetables the internees were able to raise were saved
for "children and specials"—two chickens mixed with rice serving
about one hundred of those needing better food. The commandant
ordered internees aged six to fifty to work in the garden, and many
kept small gardens of their own. One of the Sisters proudly produced
from her garden an ear of sweet corn and four string beans, which
provided a good laugh if not much nutriment. It is a tribute to
human fortitude that the internees never forgot how to laugh. They
even laughed at a pompous little martinet named Yamato who strutted
about at daily roll call as if he were at Buckingham Palace,
followed on several occasions by a soldier's pet gander, waddling
behind in striking similitude. Their growing shabbiness afforded
some amusement, for the Sisters' shoes were half-soled with slices
of automobile tire which fringed out white along the sides, giving
them a dashing "white-walled" appearance.
There were other sources of strength as well. Every day they were
privileged to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, even if the
shortage of wheat bread made it impossible to receive Holy Communion
often. On their respective patronal festivals, the Sisters would
invite the celebrating group to a party, even if the treats
consisted of cornmeal cakes, peanut butter and hot water for
beverage, as they did at the Epiphany party of 1945. On one Feast of
the Purification the Mary-knoll Sisters presented the Sisters of
Saint Mary with a luxurious plate of candy made over their charcoal
stove. On another candle-less Candlemas, the Sisters of Saint Anne
produced a carefully hoarded can of salmon and one of sweet corn for
a banquet which concluded with rice pudding surmounted with grape
jelly. Mother Ursula, O.S.A., composed witty commemorative poems for
these occasions, in one of which she outpunned everyone with an
allusion to "our common fete."
But perhaps the Sisters were most deeply touched and strengthened
by the devotion of the Christian communities at Bontoc and Sagada.
The people sent them millet, camotes (sweet potatoes), rice, calcium
tablets and coffee, when they themselves were often in want. Sister
Teresa, C.S.M.V., sent them some liver early in March, the first
such luxury they had had since Christmas. Father Longid, the
Filipino Sisters, and many laymen reached out hands of love the
Sisters would always recall with tears of gratitude. On one
occasion, a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, unable to gain admission
to the compound, sent them money with this note:
Dear Sisters: This is the only thing I can do to help you
because yesterday I tried to buy bananas and some tomatoes
but I could not bring it to you. I bought with $2.10 bananas
but sorey I can't bring it to you. Hope there will be a time
for me again because that is the only money I have. I sent
it to Mr. Claunch when we went to pitch water. I will try to
bring you again when my brother will come to get me. Hope
God will ever permit you to come out in the concentration
camp. God bless you forever. Just me, Rosario Colus
On the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene during a typhoon, they recited
the antiphon "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods
drown it" as the rain poured in and splashed on their heads,
drenching the Sisters and their breviaries.
Before his departure, Mr. Tomebe had arranged for Red Cross boxes
to be delivered. Their arrival at Christmas in 1943 came at a time
when everyone's spirits were sagging and many were in real want.
Each box weighed over fifty pounds, containing cans of butter,
cheese, powdered milk, chocolate, canned goods and toilet soap.
There were new shoes and shirts. But when the Red Cross supplies ran
out, malnutrition set in with a vengeance. The price of eggs soared
to sixty cents apiece. One meal in September consisted of blood
pudding from the blood of their last cow, and it became common to
see people picking through the garbage for something edible. When
Sister Augusta, O.S.A., told her class of little children the story
of Br'er Rabbit, their only comment was, "Wouldn't they taste
good?!"
The first sight of American planes, in December, 1944, filled the
internees with joy, but there was worse imprisonment ahead. The
Japanese ordered the evacuation of Camp Holmes. The Sisters were in
one of the first departure groups, on December 28, and for the next
few weeks they shared and witnessed some of the agony of "Bilibid."
The journey down to Manila was miserable, with thirty-six persons
plus baggage packed into each truck and no food provided for
thirty-three hours. The sight of Baguio cheered them, until the
horrified expressions of the Filipinos told them what their own
physical appearance must be.
The Japanese assured them that Manila had been declared an open
city and that they would be given comfortable quarters there.
Neither statement was true. The quarters turned out to be the old
Bilibid prison, abandoned by the Japanese for a new prison. The old
one was a scarred hulk of a dungeon without windows or plumbing,
both of which had been removed to the new building. The mattresses
they were given were so filthy and infested that they preferred to
sleep on the cement floors. For more than a month the food ration
was barely enough to sustain life—bean curd residue, a cup of corn
meal mush with weevils much in evidence, and camote greens decayed
to slime. The water was unfit for drinking, and there was no
firewood to boil it.
As the Sisters knelt on a narrow parapet overlooking the
courtyard, they could see below fifty rude graves where lay American
service men who had died of Japanese neglect and torture. One Sister
was seriously ill, and in their weakness it seemed to them they
would soon lie in that courtyard cemetery. Again their lives were
saved by the selfless concern of many, including a Japanese guard
who smuggled in food at the risk of his own life. The gallant Father
Nobes, who arrived in a later departure group from Camp Holmes,
brought them money he obtained by shrewdly selling their beds to
Japanese soldiers. With this money they bought six coconuts and ten
ounces of peanuts, the only food available.
The Sisters noted that their mental processes declined as their
physical condition worsened, and that they were unable to remember
simple facts they had known all their lives. They found that
drinking a little boiled water in the middle of the day lessened the
pains of starvation, and at the end of the day, if their rations had
been hopelessly inadequate, Sister Columba would decide whether they
should each have a tiny bit of chocolate from the piece they had
hoarded.
Their spirits continued to be sustained by the offering of the
Holy Sacrifice. In the courtyard was a path with five caged cells on
either side, said to have been torture cells. The wall of one was
inscribed in pencil:
We, the undersigned, broken in body and spirit from
starvation and torture, expect those who come after us to
work our vengeance on our enemies.
Below were the signatures of eight Americans. The Sisters
complied in their own way—every morning they knelt in one of the
cells and offered up Our Lord's redemptive life and death in union
with the sufferings of the men who had formerly lived there, on
behalf of the entire sinful world.
It soon became evident that Manila was by no means an open city.
They were kept sleepless night after night by the shelling and the
blasts of Japanese demolition. On February 2 before midnight they
heard rapid gunfire from the direction of the waterfront and saw
seven United States planes circling. The next morning they heard
Mass over the din of gunfire, and sang the Te Deum. Mr. Eschbach
called them together that morning and announced that they were
released. They saluted an American flag one of the internees had
made, and sang "God Bless America" and "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Sister Columba noted all this in her diary with the laconic comment,
"I never felt more patriotic in my life."
On February 5 the old prison was threatened by the encroaching
fire destroying the city. The internees, with eight hundred military
prisoners, all veterans of Corregidor and Bataan who had been
starved to skeletons, were moved to an abandoned shoe factory three
miles outside the city. Here they were received by American military
personnel, who were taking over bit by bit. They were treated with
great kindness, and the Sisters, suffering from the lassitude of
starvation, remembered most gratefully a Roman Catholic chaplain who
brought them fresh water and a can of vienna sausages. They saw also
the prisoners from Santo Tomas prison in Manila, including a woman
missionary who had been en route to Peekskill to enter the Novitiate
when she was arrested and interned. When they returned to Bilibid
they found it had been looted by gangs of Filipino thieves. Their
few pitiful possessions had been stolen.
They were cheered, nonetheless, to learn that in a few days they
were to go home. General Douglas Mac Arthur visited Bilibid one
morning, and to Sister Columba's surprise, walked over and shook her
hand. When he saw the condition of the internees, and even more of
the military prisoners, he said grimly, "It has been too long."
By Shrove Tuesday the internees were eating fresh eggs flown from
the United States, and Sister Columba wrote sternly in her diary:
Henceforth I shall chronicle no more food. We are back to normal
with regard to food and are glad to have it play a less important
part in our lives. We have been altogether too food conscious.
Their weights had shrunk to eighty-five pounds for Sister
Juliana, ninety-seven pounds for Sister Mary Oliva and
one-hundred-seven pounds for Sister Columba.
Within a few days they were homeward bound. They were received
with much rejoicing by their Sisters in Chicago and in Peekskill. By
God's great grace, the Community with its tiny missionary contingent
had been permitted to share in some of the tribulations of the War.
The summer passed quickly, the Sisters gained back their
strength, and a year after their return they made ready to return to
Sagada and set about repairing the ravages of occupation. Sister
Columba and Sister Mary Oliva sailed in September, 1946, accompanied
by two Sisters going out for the first time. The service of
Itinerary, always moving, was made more dramatic by the presence in
Choir of the Postulant Marian Electa Davis, whose trip to Peekskill
had been interrupted by three years of imprisonment in Santo Tomas.
As the Community approached its one hundredth birthday, Sisters
were still at work and prayer in Sagada, though the Christian
community in Luzon now had its own bishops, priests and sisters.
