"For such a time as this" is the line from the Book of Esther. She is the young woman who was made queen and thus able to save her people (the Jews) from destruction. It was for such a time as this that she was elevated to the throne.

In a similar way I was musing today..."Why haven't I ever heard of this book before (which I'd hunted for through interlibrary loan)? It's 16 years old. Someone in my extended family should've known of it and recommended it to me. Hm? Funny?"

What's the book? Actually it's two books: Deliverance at Los Banos by Anthony Arthur, and The Los Banos Raid: The 11th Airborne Jumps at Dawn by Lt. Gen. E.M. Flanagan, Jr. USA (Ret.).

They are both about the daring rescue mission of the civilian internees in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp in the Philippines.

Why would my family care about that?

Because my Aunt Clarisse, Sister Mary Beata Mackie, was one of them. She, who just turned 100, was liberated on that February day in 1945. She was praying that novena to Our Lady of Lourdes at the beginning of the month, as the other religious were doing. She was rapidly losing weight, on starvation rations while beyond the barbed wire banana trees were ripe with fruit...the officer in command bent on starving his charges to death. She was one of the 2,122 who were earmarked for massacre in a day or two by the retreating Japanese. She saw the U.S. parachuters jumping out of the airplanes, a dream come true. She was there as the Filippino guerrilla forces opened fire on the guards at their 7 a.m. calisthenics workout. She walked the two and a half miles to the lake, surrounded by the American and Filippino soldiers. Others more weak were put on large amtraks (like the "Duck" tour in Boston's Charles River), 54 amphibious vehicles commandeered to shuttle them all across the large lake to safety.

But, Chris, why "for such a time as this?" What's that about?

Well, you see, my mother, Sr. Beata's kid sister, Anne, who they call Nan and is a mere youngster at only 88, is not doing well. She has the shingles. (Aren't we getting a bit sidetracked here? Not a bit. Hold on. Hold on.) So, Nan's in a nursing home to help her while she has the shingles. And boy oh boy is she doing horribly. The pain is enormous. Excrutiating. The phone calls consist of me listening to her aching and moaning and crying in pain, and then offering my "oh dears" here and there.

Today she had a few minutes of relief from the pain and I thought, she needs something other than herself to thing about. So, "Hey Mom, wanna hear about Los Banos?" Well, this has been a large part of her life too. All the worry back during the war if they'd ever see her sister alive. "Sure," she said.

So I proceed to tell her different tidbits of personal anecdoes. She'd have a shooting pain, I'd wait it out, then she'd want to know more.

"Well, did you know that about 6 weeks before they were liberated, all the Japanese guards just up and left the internment camp! Really. The prisoners assumed that the Americans would be along anyday now to escort them out, so they waited jubilantly, enjoying all the food they found in the Japanese storehouse. However those same guards came back a week later. (No one really knows where or why to any of it...but maybe they tried to run away and couldn't so they knew the Americans wouldn't bomb the prison, so they returned?) But life was even worse after that. And morale was waning.

"Or how about the nice old sea captain who was put in Los Banos with them and the young kids thought he was a pirate. So he pretended to BE a pirate and told them all sorts of tall tales, regaling them in laughter, young and old. He heard of a mother who's infant was near death (she was too weak to produce any more milk), so he gave her his own smuggled container of condensed milk. He only asked her to play "Danny Boy" on her violin sometime. Shortly she did, but he wasn't there. He was in the infirmary, having died.

"Then there was the young man, Pete Miles, a prisoner who snuck out late at night between the barbed wire to give critical information to the U.S. forces about the layout of the camp, the range of the guards weapons, the size of trenches. Without his help many lives would've been lost."

It was then, after talking to her this afternoon that I realized, "for such a time as this." My own mother needed to hear these stories, these deeds of heroism, these challenges of bravery. Right now. She needs to hear this, to know that others have passed the same road as she. That she is not alone in her suffering. This is why I never heard of these books. They were waiting for such a time as this.

To read the book of Esther, click here.

To return to Chris' page, click on the image of the mother, below.

Last updated 18 March, 2001.

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