Recognition for Bataan Diary:

• November 2004 book selection at the National D-Day Museum, New Orleans.
• June 6, 2005, Proclamation by Houston Mayor Bill White commending the Houston A&M Club and author Chris Schaefer for remembering and honoring the veterans of World War II.

Reviews:

Journal of the American Chamber of Commerce, Manila:
      Oh no, not another one!” That’s what anyone might say when picking up yet another World-War-II-in-the-Philippines volume entitled “Bataan Diary.”  At least five are already in print, most of them personal narratives of the author’s role in the heroic defense of Bataan, the infamous Death March, the dreadful POW camps, and perhaps the inhumane “death ships,” slave labor in Japan, and liberation at war’s end.
    This one is different—largely because its title is misleadingly inappropriate. Bataan Diary: An American Family in World War II 1941—1945 is not a diary at all, although the author bases it partly on two diaries kept by a husband and wife. About a family it is not, either; separated spouses half a world apart and completely incommunicado for three years are hardly a “family” in any normal sense.
    Precisely because it’s not just one person’s view of events in and around the Bataan peninsula during World War II, this is a very good book. While author Chris Schaefer quotes—sparingly—from the diaries, he has expanded their views far beyond any one individual, and filled in the information and background gaps that make so many of the “Bataan Diary” genre so hard to follow.
    As war loomed over the Philippines, Major Frank Loyd, his wife Evelyn and their children Bonnie and Frank Jr., were living the easy life of military families at Manila’s Fort McKinley, where he was Provost Marshall and she taught school.  However, military families were sent home six months before Pearl Harbor; in the subsequent long-drawn-out debacle of Bataan, where Loyd commanded a battalion of constabulary troops, and in the chaos afterward, husband and wife lost touch.
    Frank was one of those who did not surrender with the army on 9 April 1942. He moved into the mountains in the northern part of the peninsula and, with the help of various Americans and many Filipinos, survived bouts of malaria and dysentery that almost completely disabled him.  In an era when malaria has retreated into a distant, peripheral threat, it is instructive to read just how serious and painful the untreated disease can be.  He also kept up his diary on tiny scraps of paper, stuffed the pages into jars and other receptacles and either buried them or gave them to friends to keep for him. Amazingly, he recovered most of them.
    As the weeks and months pass, Evelyn takes a job censoring mail—almost incredibly tedious—and joins with other wives of POWs and missing men in the Philippines to ferret out and share information and keep their spirits up.  Frank, bored and restless but still half crippled, wants to get to Manila, or out of the Philippines, perhaps by boat, but remains stuck in the deepest fastnesses of Bataan, moving from one jungle hideout to another.
    Finally, like many free military Americans, Frank joins up with a guerrilla group in Bataan, one of the informal forces that, with General MacArthur’s imprimatur, were being formed or beefed up to provide information on Japanese troop and materiel dispositions in time for the long-awaited return of U.S. forces to Luzon.  Although a senior officer, he serves mainly as an adviser because of his health.
    Schaefer’s best chapters detail the successes and failures, the brangling and infighting, the ego-tripping and the “turf wars,” that characterized the various groups, Filipino and American, carrying on operations in Central Luzon as they competed for scarce supplies, civilian support—and MacArthur’s ear.  It was a perilous life: the Japanese patrolled aggressively, operations were often blown, and betrayal was frequent: half the Americans who joined the guerrillas did not survive the war.  Japanese efforts to root out Filipino guerrillas in their home towns and villages were correspondingly savage, resulting in the killings of thousands of men, both civilians and guerrillas.
    Schaefer has also sorted out a lot of material about the civilian network of Filipinos and Americans in Manila who helped both the guerrilla groups in Bataan and elsewhere and the POWs at Cabanatuan.  Most of them were betrayed to the Japanese, tortured and executed, but the two most famous individuals, Americans Margaret Utinsky and Claire Phillips, survived.  Utinsky, in fact, ended up with the guerrillas in Bataan, together with Phillips’ little daughter; they spent much time with Frank Loyd.
    Carefully researched and footnoted, with a thorough bibliography and index, this Bataan Diary is nonetheless fast-moving and eminently readable. It even has really good maps. Once again, this book is probably not available locally (except—soon—at the American Historical Collection). Badger your bookseller, or order from Amazon.com.

Sara Collins Medina is a free-lance writer, editor and desktop publisher in Manila and edits the quarterly Bulletin of the American Historical Collection.

The Decatur Daily, Decatur, Alabama:
    This year is the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. Among the milestones of the final spring of 1945 is the liberation of the Philippines, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur took back the islands he had left in 1942, uttering his famous promise, "I shall return."
    When MacArthur fled to Australia ahead of the advancing Japanese, he left 70,000 American and Filipino fighters on the Bataan Peninsula and the tiny island of Corregidor to wage a losing battle.  While the deaths and atrocities of the Bataan death march that followed their surrender are widely known, less has been said about the few hundred American soldiers who did not surrender. They went into the jungles, battling disease and starvation and relying on the loyalty and aid of a few courageous natives while trying to stay a step ahead of a Japanese manhunt. Most joined scattered guerrilla units to continue fighting.
    U.S. Army Lt. Col. Frank Loyd was one of those soldiers. During his three years in hiding — as his beard grew to 16 inches and his clothing deteriorated to rags — Loyd kept a journal. In small, cursive handwriting to save paper, he recorded his life in hiding on small pocket-notebook pages, scraps or whatever was available. He hid his pages or left them with friendly Filipinos. After the war, he retrieved most of the diary in legible form.
    Loyd's wife, Evelyn, kept her own diary in San Antonio as she waited for more than three years, not knowing if her husband was alive or dead.
    Author Chris Schaefer has taken his uncle's diary and written a gripping story of courage in war and on the home front.
    But "Bataan Diary" is far more than a rewriting of the Loyds' journals. The diaries supply the backbone, but Vietnam veteran Schaefer, who has a history degree from Texas A&M in addition to a master's in computing sciences, did extensive research to present the broader story of guerrilla warfare in the Philippines. His research included trips abroad to interview surviving principals and to examine documents.
    The book is a story about the triumph of the human will, about clandestine operations, intrigue and betrayal. Correctly guessing whom to trust was as important to survival as overcoming the ravages of malaria.
    More than half the holdout soldiers died, but in April 1945, a liberated Frank Loyd reunited with his wife and two children in San Antonio.
    Schaefer's book is a valuable addition to the historical literature of World War II, particularly the war in the Pacific. His 69 pages of endnotes, heavy with primary sources, along with an index, should make it a useful tool for scholars. The book includes five maps and 12 pages of photographs.
    The book was a November 2004 book selection at the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans.

Richard McCann is Assistant Managing Editor of the Decatur Daily.  He is a former City Editor of the Houston Post.


Philippine Scouts Heritage Society:
    Chris Schaefer's extremely readable Bataan Diary: An American Family in World War II, 1941-1945 is a well-documented story of resistance and survival during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.
    Built around the World War II diaries kept by Major Frank R. Loyd and his wife, Evelyn, the book chronicles the difficult struggle of Frank Loyd, half-starved and seriously ill, sheltering in a series of jungle hideouts. Then, as MacArthur's return approaches, he joins the guerrilla war.
    Another dimension is added by an occasional chapter detailing the stateside fears and frustrations of Evelyn, not knowing if her husband was still alive, while she immerses herself in supporting the war effort.
    However, the book is more than the combined diaries of the Loyds.  It also examines the larger war effort in the Pacific and the involvement of other Americans and Filipinos, many of them Philippine Scouts, in the anti-Japanese guerrilla movement on Luzon.  It contains interesting information on commando infiltration teams, both Filipino and American, sent in by submarine to help shore up the resistance movement.  It also examines in some detail prison camp conditions and the brutal counter intelligence activities of the dread Japanese Kempei-tai.
    The book begins with the idyllic tropical existence of the Loyds during nearly a year and a half of pampered and languid duty in peacetime Manila. He was Provost Marshall at Fort McKinley and she taught fourth grade at the base school. American officers in this peacetime army worked half days and spent their evenings socializing with other military families. Training of the Philippine Army also proceeded at a leisurely pace, which would have important ramifications when war broke out.
    As U.S.-Japanese relations deteriorated in the summer of 1941, this colonial idle ended as military families, including Evelyn and the two children, were sent back to the United States.  In late July, the Japanese invaded French Indo China and the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands embargoed all trade with Japan, cutting off the flow of oil, rubber and other strategic material needed by the Japanese to sustain their conquest of China. War now appeared inevitable.
    Shortly following the devastating Japanese surprise air assaults on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines in early December, a Japanese invasion force landed on Luzon and forced the Filipino and American troops back to defensive positions on Bataan and Corregidor. When Bataan surrendered in early April, Major Loyd was among the small group of American and Filipino military men who escaped to nearby mountains and jungles. Most of these men, including Frank Loyd, spent many months surviving at a subsistence level thanks to the courageous generosity of the local Filipino population.
    Eventually Frank and many others would join guerrilla groups, the nucleus of which was organized by American officers put in place by General MacArthur before the surrender.  Most of these guerrilla leaders and about half of the 400 Americans who joined them would not survive the war.
    In recounting the failures and successes of these guerrilla units, Schaefer also examines the indigenous civilian intelligence network in Manila, which consisted predominantly of upper class Filipinos.  Many of these civilian patriots also did not survive the war, as the Japanese successfully infiltrated the movement.
    Another interesting feature of the book is a description of the infighting among the various guerrilla leaders, as they vied to assert command over each other and to expand their geographic sway.  Although largely ego-driven, this also was the result of a need to claim scant resources in manpower and civilian support.  Further complicating the resistance mix, were the Communist-led Hukbalahap, who, when not fighting the Japanese, often clashed violently with American-led guerrilla groups.
    Despite the burdens of hunger, disease, scarce resources, infighting and the depredations of the Japanese, sufficient guerrilla forces were mobilized and trained to form a very useful auxiliary force when MacArthur returned to liberate the Philippines. An important component of these guerrilla groups was the Philippine Scouts, superbly-trained Filipino soldiers who comprised the majority of the regular U.S. Army's infantry and cavalry troops in the Philippines. (The Scouts should not be confused with the Philippine Army troops, who were mostly conscripts and not nearly as well trained.) Rallying to the cause in large numbers, the Scouts were crucial in the training of other Filipinos in guerrilla warfare. The Scouts themselves proved as adept at guerrilla warfare as they had been in their heroic defense of Bataan and Corregidor during the early months of the war.
    An attractive feature of the book is its map collection which helps the reader visualize where the action took place.  Indeed, with its maps, bibliography, extensive endnotes, and lengthy index, this book is a useful reference tool for more serious students of World War II guerrilla warfare on Luzon.  As such it is an excellent companion volume to Malcolm Decker's On a Mountainside, also reviewed on this site.
    Note: Among the Philippine Scouts mentioned in the book are Capt. Joseph Barker, Lt. Col. Peter Calyer, Sgt. Esposito, Col. John Horan, Maj. Harold Johnson, Lt. Robert Lapham, Lt. Felipe Maningo, Lt. Col. Narcisco Manzano, Col. Gyles Merrill, Lt. Col. Martin Moses, Capt. Guillermo Nakar, Lt. Col. Arthur "Maxie" Noble, Capt. John E. Olson, Sgt. Marcelo Peralta, Capt. Ralph Praeger, Lt. Edwin Ramsey, Major Royal Reynolds, Lt. Col. Claude Thorp, Lt. Col. Ovid O. "Zero" Wilson, Lt. Col. Edgar Wright, Jr. and Pvt. Samuel Zozabrado. (The ranks ascribed to these men are those they held in 1942.)

J. Michael Houlahan is Public Relations Officer and Newsletter Editor of the Philippine Scouts Heritage Society.  He is a career Foreign Service officer whose many assignments include the the U.S. Emabssy, Manila.



The Park Record, Park City, Utah
    "Bataan Diary" reads as much like a story as it does a piece of history.  In fact, the book might read more like a story than anything else.  The book, written by part-time Park City resident Chris Schaefer, follows Lieutenant Colonel Frank Lloyd on his journeys through the jungles of Luzon during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II.  As the book opens in early 1941, a reader finds Lloyd living with his family at the U.S. military base in Manila, and after setting the scene with exit of Lloyd's wife and children (as ordered by the military) Schaefer embarks on a blow-by-blow account of the American battle to hold the Philippines in 1942, and then the American guerilla movements that survived on the island in the subsequent three years.
    Schaefer describes the American's final 1942 battle on Bataan with intimate detail from Lloyd's perspective, and then follows the soldier as he is separated from his unit and forced to strike out into the Filipino jungle. The story of Lloyd's survival follows, detailing the illnesses, scares, helpers and obstacles he faced as he worked to hide from and battle the Japanese.
    As the book details main narrative of Lloyd's survival on the Philippines, Schaefer provides snippets of the life Lloyd's wife, Evelyn, leads back in the United States, working in the San Antonio post office and doing her best to hope for her husband's survival without even a scrap of news about him.
    The two storylines, while typical of war stories, give the story an outside perspective and provide breaks in the narrative which carries the reader through the jungle.
    The nephew of Lloyd's wife, Schaefer discovered Lloyd's story and drew the core of his history from Lloyd's diary of his time on Luzon. The diary was basically a group of factual notes Lloyd wrote and stashed in the jungles to retrieve after the war.  The pages talk about things like the weather, the food he found for a day, how he felt, and occasionally the events which struck the soldier, people he met or who helped him, significant events and occasional thoughts. They provided the author with mostly mundane details, but also with enough information to form the kernel of a story.
    Schaefer supplemented that material with his own research in the Philippines, pursuing the names in Lloyd's diary to find interviews and more information. Schaefer used human sources to build the stories and add the details Lloyd's diary missed. That, combined with Schaefer's other research, provides the narrative with the minutia which make a story believable and interesting.
    And the writing keeps the readers' attention, working like a story to foster suspense and interest.  With its focus on characters and the place they inhabit, the book avoids the dryness or sterility which can often afflict a work bent on objectivity.  Because Schaefer's writing avoids these things, the work is an easy read, the type of material that one can pick up for an hour at a time without fear of turning to stone from boredom.
    Overall, however, the "Bataan Diary," provides material enough to keep a reader absorbed in the details of Lloyd's life and the things which are happening to him, or which might. Those things make pages fly by, right up to Feb. 4, 1945.
    "Bataan Diary," should provide good reading for any World War II history buff and perhaps even fans of military novels.  A solid effort from a first time author and historian Schaefer, if one is interested in the material and the subject matter, "Bataan Diary" should be a pleasing read.
   
Matt James is Editor of the Scene, The Park Record newspaper, Park City, Utah.