How do you sign your name without a pen? Try a needle and
thread! The Roger Mansell collection contains material on
prisoners of war (POWs) in the Pacific theater of World War II,
including unpublished memoirs by ex-POWs, rosters, copies of
government documents, photographs, and the hand-embroidered
apron seen here. The apron is dated January 19, 1942, seventeen
days after the Japanese forces occupied Manila and took over the
University of Santo Tomás, transforming it into a civilian
internment camp. The signatures likely belong to internees who
worked in the kitchens of the Santo Tomás Internment Camp. By
the time the camp was liberated in February 1945, its population
had grown to nearly four thousand. In addition to this
embroidered piece, internees produced newsletters, wood
carvings, poems, and diaries documenting their time at Santa
Tomás, Los Baños, and other internment camps in the Philippines.
Click here to see a list of collections at the Hoover
Institution Archives relating to the Philippines in Wo