Jim Fagan
Eighty years ago last Sunday a young Australian mother nursed her baby and no doubt wept tears of joy, yet filled with despair, at what the future had in store for her newborn.
The Japanese had invaded the Philippines and she and her baby were trapped in Manila in a Japanese internment camp with 4000 Australians, Americans, Canadians and other allied nationals.
Conditions in the tent camp on the campus of the University of Santo Tomas were dangerous, cramped and there was little food or medical attention.
On Sunday, however, the baby, Pam Fallon, turned 80, partying the night before with 44 family and friends at the Marina in Tewantin.
Pam has shopped for years at Noosa Outlook Centre in St Andrew’s Drive. She is a local personality and, when she mentioned her 80th to the staff at the bakery, they asked if they could also come.
The word spread and on Saturday staff from the baker, the butcher and Outlook IGA joined Pam and her cousin Chrissie Cooper from Sydney. It was party time!
Earlier, Pam told Noosa Today how grateful that against all odds she had survived and enjoyed every one of those 80 years.
“My mum Phyllis was an entertainer and roller skater and she was doing shows at Raffles Hotel when the Japanese invaded Singapore. She went to Manila to get a flight home to Sydney and when her plane landed the Japanese were waiting.
“She was placed in the camp and she met my dad, Frank, there. He was an Australian and he worked for a shipping company. They fell in love and they had me. I also had a brother, Frank, who was born in the camp.
“Mum told me she was afraid every day of her life at Santo Tomas. The Japanese would say to prisoners, ‘You bow,’ and, if they didn’t, they would be shot.”
“Babies like me would have died if it hadn’t been for the local people. They used to bring food for people who had babies and baby clothes and push them through the wire.
“They used to bring milk, too. It was okay at the beginning and then the Japanese wouldn’t let anyone know and wait until it was sour. One of the women in the camp took it anyway and made yoghurt.”
Pam has an album of faded photographs which she treasures. They were taken with a box Brownie which was smuggled into the camp and are a snapshot of her family and they life they had there.
She particularly values a coloured sketch of her as a four-month-old baby drawn in the camp by one of her mother’s friends.
On February 3, 1945, General Macarthur liberated Manila and Pam’s family went home to Australia. Since then, she has married, had two sons, lived in Sydney and Townsville and 26 years ago came to Tewantin where she lives with her three dogs.
“I’ve been fortunate. I have had a happy life,” she said.
