Wanda Damberg was born of a Dutch father who served as a diplomat in the Philippines starting in 1916. He met Damberg’s mother then. The Philippines belonged to the Spanish. Damberg’s maternal grandfather had been sent to the Philippines by the Spanish government. [Annotator’s Note: there is a restart of the interview and some information is duplicated.] Damberg’s maternal grandfather was sent to the Philippines by the Spanish government to help set up the city of Manila. He was the city engineer. Damberg’s father was a Dutch diplomat who was sent to the Philippines by his government. He met Damberg’s mother and married her. Damberg was born in 1921 and left after ten months to go to Europe. Damberg and her sister were cared for by a Spanish governess. As a result, her first language was Spanish. Her second language was Dutch because of her father’s roots and the fact that she was educated in Holland. She attended finishing school in Switzerland and learned French at that time. She would return to the Philippines in 1937 when her father was reassigned there.

Wanda Damberg experienced the 7 December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack on 8 December [Annotator’s Note: the Philippines is on the westerly side of the International Dateline thus adding the one day to the event occurrence.]. She heard what she thought was thunder, but it was bombs dropping. Everything seemed to go haywire. General MacArthur [Annotator’s Note: Douglas MacArthur] had left for Australia and left General Wainwright [Annotator’s Note: Jonathan Wainwright], his deputy, as commander. Manila was defined as an open city. The Japanese landed on the northern part of Luzon Island. When they came down, they were surprised that there was no fighting. General Wainwright told the citizens to stay inside their homes. There was no street fighting in Manila despite the Japanese thinking the American infantry would put up a fight. The Japanese decided that they had to do something with the Allied personnel. Before he left, MacArthur wanted to determine where prisoners would be held. He talked with the Dominican priests at Santo Tomas University and requested that they offer their facilities to the Japanese as a camp to hold prisoners of war. The Father Superior did offer the grounds to the Japanese who gladly accepted the proposal. They did not know what to do otherwise. The citizens had their passports checked by the Japanese during door to door searches. If the passport showed the individual to be an Allied person, they would be picked up in a large truck. The Dutch passport resulted in the family being incarcerated by the Japanese. They were brought to the Santo Tomas internment camp. The internees were told that the process would only take three days to register them. In fact, the internment was over a three year period—37 months. At first, servants were allowed to bring food to the camp. As the population grew, that became off limits. There were 6,000 internees. The Japanese decided that another camp was needed. Los Baños was selected. Men from Santo Tomas were brought there to build the facilities. The location had been a health spa in the past. The little town sits in the foothills of Mount Makiling. The men built 20 barracks. The internees had been rounded up in early January 1942. The move to Los Baños was about early 1943. After a year of captivity, many internees had started to get sick from lack of food and vitamins. Disease was rampant. Even leprosy was in the camp. A whole family was lost due to spinal meningitis. The major disease was beriberi from lack of vitamins. Swelling occurs especially in the legs. One priest had it so bad that his skin expanded and popped open. Fortunately, Damberg did not suffer from such illnesses.

Wanda Damberg witnessed the science building at the university converted into a small clinic [Annotator’s Note: Damberg was being held at Santo Tomas University after the initial round-up of Allied citizens following the Japanese capture of Manila in the Philippines in December 1941.]. There were 20 beds in the clinic designated for the very ill. Although there were numerous doctors in the camp, they had nothing to work with in treating the sick. At this point, the Japanese had not incarcerated the religious representatives. The Dominican Fathers were being housed in a seminary building on the grounds. They were fenced off from the internees. In the beginning, two priests were allowed into the compound to say mass on Sundays. The priests wore long flowing white robes for the mass. Father Ahern [Annotator’s Note: Father Hilary Regis Ahern, O.P.] from the order would come into the camp with medicines hidden under his robe and say mass. The Japanese began to suspect the situation and denied the religious people entry into the compound. Damberg was relieved that the operation was going to stop. Prior to the cessation of his entry, Father Ahern told Damberg that he would need an insider to help him get medicines into the compound. He selected her to assist him in smuggling medicines into the camp. She shared a building with 75 women in it. Each woman had a personal three foot by six foot space. The building balcony faced a garden with a series of hibiscus bushes that formed a hedge adjacent to a statue of the Virgin Mary. It was a location that priests normally visited to pray. Father Ahern told her to look for him at ten o’clock in the morning from the balcony. If there was a hibiscus flower in his Bible, it indicated that he had a package for the internees. Damberg was to pick it up after dark. The curfew was seven o’clock at night so she thought 11 o’clock at night would be an opportune time to pick-up the package. The camp cooks were internees who prepared the mostly water and rice mush for 6,000 inmates for a meager breakfast. They had to start early at one in the morning to have the sufficient breakfast prepared. That was why Damberg selected two hours ahead of their start time to gather the package. The drop point was designated to be under a particular hibiscus bush. She timed the guard walking passed the bush to the end of his path. It took three minutes before he turned around to march back. That gave her three minutes to hurriedly retrieve the package before being spotted. She tried the process the first time, and it was a success. This went on for 18 months. Because the medicine came through the black market, the drops were not every night. Penicillin was not available at the time. Sulfa was the antibiotic that came in the packages. Heart medicine for the old people was important. Father Ahern would get whatever he could to help the internees. Damberg always had an interest in medicine. She worked at the camp clinic, and that made it easier to bring the medications in and put them away. On occasion a doctor would question her about some medicines that recently seemed to be running but now appeared to be better supplied. She had added more the previous night. She told the inquiring doctor that there were supplies in the back of the clinic he was not aware were there. After 18 months, the religious people were brought in by the Japanese. Damberg was relieved because of the risk she was assuming in the smuggling. One night, she was on a package pick-up when she turned around and saw the leather boots of the camp commandant, Konishi [Annotator’s Note: Sadaaki Konishi was second in command at Los Baños. He was cruel to the internees and would be tried and hanged for his actions after the war.]. The soldiers only wore leggings not nice boots like their commander. Damberg froze. He did not say a word but stood there. Finally, the officer merely backed straight back. She stayed there until he left. She rushed to the building. She told Father Ahern that she was not going to continue. If she was caught, she would end up giving him up under the pressure of interrogation. That would mean that both of them would suffer. Father Ahern left her a note in the next day’s package that reminded her that it would only be the sacrifice of the two of them in comparison to all the people they had helped with the successful package transfers.

Wanda Damberg and her fellow internees witnessed three young men from their group attempt an escape [Annotator’s Note: The three tried to escape from the internment camp in Santo Tomas Dominican University in Manila, Philippines.]. This occurred about three months after she had been rounded up by the Japanese. The men had a goal of reaching Corregidor where MacArthur [Annotator’s Note: General Douglas MacArthur] was having his last stand. They wanted to fight. The men escaped but were captured and returned to the compound under guard. The Santo Tomas inmates were forced to watch as the Japanese tortured them. The Japanese lined up the civilians and made them watch as they tied the captured men around the flagpole flying the Japanese flag. The tortured men had to look up at the sun with their eyelids forced open with toothpicks for the whole day. They stared at the sun until they went blind. Next, the Japanese punctured the eardrums of their captives with thin wires. They were beaten and would go in and out of consciousness. Damberg told her mother not to look at what was going on. The screams were horrible. That was the worst thing. The tortured men were left there overnight. They survived the night only to be shot by their captors. When Damberg saw those boots, she thought just shoot her [Annotator’s Note: Damberg saw the camp commandant’s leather boots just before she realized that he saw her retrieving smuggled medicines intended for the Santo Tomas clinic.]. There must have been a reason for her not being punished. Father Ahern said for her not to worry that they were going to be transported the next day to Los Baños [Annotator’s Note: Father Hilary Regis Ahern, O.P. had selected Damberg to help smuggle medicines into Santo Tomas internment camp’s clinic.]

Wanda Damberg was left behind when most of the camp was moved to Los Baños internment camp [Annotator’s Note: this transfer from Santo Tomas internment camp in Manila, Philippines happened in early 1943.]. Los Baños had been constructed by men from Santo Tomas. The men went to Los Baños first. The women followed. The religious personnel of many denominations came as a third group. Father Ahern had made arrangements with a Spanish Dominican priest to work with Damberg in smuggling medicines into Santo Tomas camp [Annotator’s Note: Father Hilary Regis Ahern, O.P. had selected Damberg to work with him in smuggling medicines into Santo Tomas internment camp’s clinic.]. Since Spain was neutral in the war, the Spanish Dominican priests were not required to be imprisoned by the Japanese. Damberg was frustrated because she thought her smuggling days were over. Father Ahern left her with a Father Mataos [Annotator’s Note: surname spelling was not confirmed] as her contact. She did not even know her new contact. She was told to look for the hibiscus and she would know [Annotator’s Note: a hibiscus in a Bible held by a priest was the indication at Santo Tomas that a package of medicines was in a designated hiding place for smuggling into the compound.]. She did that until she was named to be transported to Los Baños. The group she traveled with was moved in box cars similar to the ones that moved Jews during the Holocaust. The car was very crowded. People had to stand up for the trip. It was November 1944. People had lost weight and were weak. One Japanese soldier was in the car. It took nine grueling hours to make the 70 kilometer journey. An elderly man next to Damberg indicated that he had to relieve himself. Damberg said “benjo”—Japanese for bathroom, to the guard. He merely laughed at her. She told the elderly man to just do it. The box car was a mess. When they reached Los Baños, it was very hot. There were two kilometers left to walk. People were passing out and being left behind. Damberg and her friend were helping the friend’s mother make the march. A Japanese guard with a bayonet told them to drop the mother. Her friend never saw her mother again. When the new arrivals came into Los Baños, everyone was searching for relatives or friends who had preceded them there. Damberg discovered Father Ahern. She entered the camp and collapsed. Father Ahern came to her and said that he had made arrangements for her. She was not ready for that. The priest went on to explain that she would be assigned to barracks number 20 which was the highest one on the hill and nearest the fence and the jungle where guerrillas could smuggle packages to her. She would be housed with nuns there. The Japanese trusted the nuns. Father Ahern said the nuns would work with her in the smuggling operation. Damberg was not ready to get into that business again. The situation was critical though. With this being in November 1944, people were getting much weaker and the camp death rate was rising. Liberation would not come until February 1945, but the inmates had no way of knowing that. The nuns and Damberg were placed in different cubicles. Betty Siland [Annotator’s Note: surname spelling not confirmed] and her mother were placed in the same cubicle with Damberg and her mother. Damberg wondered how she was going to get the smuggling done under those conditions. They never got anywhere with it.

Wanda Damberg got up to go to the bathroom one morning and saw a nun along the way [Annotator’s Note: Damberg was in the Los Baños internment camp in the Philippines at the time.]. The barracks had outhouses between them. Damberg commented to the nun that the rains must have been approaching. The sky had gotten dark and there was noise like thunder. The rainy season was about to start. On a more careful observation, Damberg saw 150 Black Widow aircraft [Annotator’s Note: the Northrop P-61 Black Widow night fighter]. There were bundles coming out of the planes. Damberg thought it was food because the inmates were starving. It was also known that the Japanese commandant hated the Americans and planned to massacre them before they could be rescued [Annotator’s Note: the name of the commandant could not be understood]. As the bundles descended, it could be seen that each one had legs. Damberg became excited. She told the nun how good she thought the 11th Airborne paratroopers looked. The men in the camp by comparison were thin and emaciated. The nun was taken aback by the younger woman’s comments. The paratroopers landed in the camp and a battle with the Japanese started. Damberg was interested in seeing the fighting. She gave information to the Americans about the Japanese positions. One paratrooper pulled Damberg’s long hair up and told her to get under cover. The tracer bullets were going through the barracks. Damberg was in her cubicle with her roommate Betty Siland [Annotator’s Note: surname spelling not certain]. Damberg’s friend had converted to Catholicism and received a missal at that time. She had to hide it because the Japanese allowed no books among the internees. The girls were hunkered down with the tracer bullets going through their cubicle. They could see them pass over them. One entered but did not pass. It had struck Siland. There was blood all over. Damberg called for help. The same paratrooper who had told her previously to take cover returned to them. He told her again to protect herself. Damberg showed him the wounded friend. He picked up the young girl and carried her like a baby out of the barracks. Both girls weighed less than 90 pounds. The soldier told Damberg to get out of the building. Instead, she searched for her wounded friend’s missal. That was the last thing the friend had asked of Damberg before being carried out of the barracks. When she finally found the missal, the building was burning. She called for help again and the same paratrooper returned. This time he gave Damberg his helmet to cover her face and carried her out of the burning building across his shoulder like a potato sack. She did not cover up because of her curiosity so she was burned by the flames. When the soldier reached an amphibious vehicle, he threw Damberg in and she landed under an exhaust pipe of a machine gun. She was glad she had made it that far. Before the evacuees reached the lake, the Japanese began to fire on their vehicle. The soldier manning the gun shot back. The spent casings fell on Damberg and burned her, but she stayed put. When they reached the other side of the lake and safety, Damberg asked for a cigarette. The GIs were so nice. They gave her a whole carton of Old Gold cigarettes. She had only wanted one. When she smoked that first cigarette puff, it affected her like she was intoxicated. She was bobbing and weaving down the beach. When Father Ahern [Annotator’s Note: Father Hilary Regis Ahern, O.P. had selected Damberg to work with him in smuggling medicines into Santo Tomas internment camp clinic.] spotted her, he asked where she found the booze. She responded by throwing the carton of cigarettes to him. She never smoked again. The Army took women, children and old people out of the camp at first. They were brought to a former prison but the cells were kept open. A mobile hospital was set up. Her burns were treated. The inmates were selected for transit back home. The first picked were the young men because they might have been needed to fight later. Her father was sent to Australia because the Dutch government in the Pacific was centered there after the colonies were overrun. At the time, Holland and Manila were both a mess. Her father had lost over 100 pounds. The family was separated as a result. In transiting to the United States, it was necessary for the Dutch citizens to get a visa unlike the illegals coming in today. Damberg would be sent to Tokyo as a War Department witness to the war crimes in the Philippines. She met her husband there. Her life in the military was another story. Damberg never thought she would be a smuggler, but that was her story.

Wanda Damberg had relatives in Holland during the German occupation [Annotator’s Note: the German sweep into Holland began in May 1940 which was over a year and a half prior to the Japanese invasion of the Philippines where Damberg lived.]. Damberg’s father had five brothers. All were alive. They survived the war. One of her cousins fought and died with the Dutch military in Indonesia. Indonesia was formerly a Dutch colony. She also had a female cousin who was an army nurse. That cousin would remain single and move to Switzerland after the war. She might have moved there because Holland was such a mess [Annotator’s Note: the harsh German occupation of Holland resulted in a severe famine in Holland during the waning months of the war.]. Damberg had a third cousin who did not fight in the war because of a physical disability. That cousin may have actually died before the war. Her father died after the war because of a stroke which took him quickly. Damberg and her family have never been able to find her father’s grave in Holland. Her mother lived to 94 years of age and is buried in a Catholic cemetery in northern California. There was no communication with any of the relatives under German domain. She does not know what happened to her father or the other relatives during the war because it was such a mess and there was very little communication.

Wanda Damberg has informed her children that she does not want any of them to own Japanese cars. They own cars from other nations but not from Japan. After she dies, they can do what they want to do. It may be silly, but it is how she feels. She volunteers at a hospital where there are numerous Japanese doctors. They were not even born back then. What she really has a problem with is the idea that, in Japanese schools, they teach that the war was brought on by the Americans. She does not like that they teach that the conflict with the Japanese was the fault of America. It is history. Her son tells her that the cars are made in the United States. Damberg responds that the money goes to Japan. She says, “Buy American.”

Wanda Damberg testified against Tōjō [Annotator’s Note: Hideki Tōjō was Prime Minister of Japan for much of the Second World War. He would be hanged after the war for his crimes.] in the Tokyo War Crimes. One witness from each prison camp managed by the Japanese was brought before the court. There had been camps in Dutch East Indies—Indonesia; Malaysia from troop surrender in Singapore; and the Philippines and other places. There had been 300 male witnesses and Damberg was the first woman witness. There were 11 judges in the tribunal. They represented 11 different countries. The head judge was Sir William Webb from Australia. The court was in a large building with microphones, headphones and interpreters. There were green and red bulbs that indicated when the witness or the lawyers or judges spoke. When the judges entered, Damberg was already in the elevated witness stand. Sir William Webb did a wolf whistle when he observed her. He did not know that the speaker system was still on and the whistle projected throughout the room. The crowd erupted with laughter. The judge apologized to Miss Werff [Annotator’s Note: Damberg’s maiden name] but said he “meant every whistle of it” [Annotator’s Note: Damberg chuckles at the memory]. Among the Japanese, there were many supporters of Tōjō. Damberg was billeted with other women including nurses and Red Cross workers. They were close to the site of the trials. While she was walking, someone took a shot at her. She was worried for her safety. Subsequently, a male FBI bodyguard was assigned to her at all times. He even stood outside the bathroom door while she was inside. He was in his 50s and she was in her early 20s. He looked upon her as a daughter. He attended dates with her and seemed to also serve as a chaperone. Damberg joked with him to at least see if a younger man could serve as her bodyguard so that she could date him. He laughed and they continued together. Another unsuccessful attempt on her life was made. After the Tokyo trials, the Philippines began their war crime trials and Konishi, the commandant from Los Baños, was on trial [Annotator’s Note: Sadaaki Konishi was second in command at Los Baños. He was cruel to the internees and would be tried and hanged for his actions.]. That was where she met her future husband. They would be married, but it would be a two year wait before she could apply to become a United States citizen. She was a woman without a country during that two year period.

Wanda Damberg’s wounded friend [Annotator’s Note: shot during the liberation of Los Baños] survived and went on to marry an airline pilot. She had children but died at a young age. They had lost track of one another when she was flown to the United States for treatment. Damberg learned about her after marriage and relocation up north. They never actually reconnected. Damberg’s friend was the only inmate of the 2800 at Los Baños who was hurt. After the liberation of the internment camp, the Japanese went to the little village of Los Baños and massacred the inhabitants. The type of amphibious vehicle, the LVT—Landing Vehicle Track, that transported Damberg from Los Baños is on display at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. Damberg would be happy to see it again. She was so pleased to be out of the camp that the pain of the hot spent machine gun bullets falling on her was not so bad. Both her sister and she had been spoiled by a good life before the war. They had gotten everything they wanted. The war showed her that a person must be grateful for whatever they have. Camp life was a great equalizer. All people were the same no matter what their previous position had been prior to the start of the war. One woman in the camp was angry about what was happening to the Americans at the hands of the Japanese. The woman proclaimed they just could not mistreat Americans. Damberg told her to face up to the reality of what was happening. Many foreigners, whether they are from Europe or the Mideast, feel the Americans are arrogant. One day a Native American told that same irate woman that she, the Native American, was the only original American there in the camp. There was only one Red Cross package received in the camp. The male internees were used to unload the ship. The packages had Kotex [Annotator’s Note: female sanitary pads] removed from them. The Japanese used them as bandages. There was one package received by the internees. There was canned Spam, cheese and dry milk. That was all. People would get cigarettes and the smokers would exchange food for cigarettes. A girl from Shanghai was trying to get away from China. She arrived in Manila as the Japanese took over. The people on the ship were put in the camp with the Allied internees. She was a combination of English and Chinese ancestry. She was beautiful and referred to as Shanghai Lil. She was a high class madam. Her business was good in the prison camp in the beginning. When the men lost weight and energy, the business dropped. The Japanese would sometimes require a headcount in the middle of the night. If the count was not right, it would be done again. One night, the count was required and Damberg saw Shanghai Lil headed in the wrong direction. Damberg insisted that Lil go to the count so they would not have to remain there all night. Lil agreed but she said she had to do a douche first. It was hard for Damberg to believe. Eventually, that ended. Lil was a beautiful woman with a good figure. There was an American woman who spied for the Japanese. She lived among the inmates but she did not lose weight. She would eat with the Japanese at night. She was reported to the military after the war. All kinds of things happened in the camp.