Happy Life Blues A Memoir of Survival
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Book Summary Information
Editor: Cecily Mattocks MarshallEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-12-28
ISBN: 0979059879
Number of pages: 236
Publisher: Cecily Mattocks Marshall
Book Reviews of Happy Life Blues A Memoir of Survival
Book Review: Happy Life Blues
Summary: 5 Stars
Cecily Mattocks Marshall has waited 63 years to write Happy Life Blues, a story of survival recounted by a woman born to an American teacher and an English priest living in the Philippines. Before the Japanese invasion, their lives were adventurous yet peaceful while living in the tropics. She lived an exotic life surrounded by beautiful birds, monkeys, playing with her siblings and other children, and home-schooling.
On December 8, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Luzon. A month later, when they attacked Zamboanga, the Mattocks family moved up to the mountains of Mindanao to hide where they lived primitively before surrendering to the Japanese. They were first placed in the Davoa Camp for one year. They were then moved to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila in 1943 and survived a weeklong, rat-infested, dark, claustrophobic journey on the Japanese military transport ship Shinsei Maru #1. They lived on hoofs and heads of livestock on that horrendous trip. The 12-year-old Cecily Mattocks joined the camp with about 4,000 American, British and other Allied nationals as a prisoner of war.
On February 3, 1945 General MacArthur's First Cavalry's Flying Column and the 44th Tank Battalion liberated the Santo Tomas Internment Camp. Four days later he visited the camp to announce victory. That same afternoon the Japanese bombed the main building of the camp killing many who had been celebrating freedom just hours earlier. By early March, things were secured again and by April 1945 the Mattocks family and other prisoners of war were on their way back to the United States.
Happy Life Blues is a memoir sprinkled with diary entries from the author and her parents all of whom survived the four grueling years of hiding out, concentration camps and starvation with strength and dignity. The book is beautifully designed with a scrapbook of pictures and mementoes from Cecily Mattocks Marshall's 14 years in the Philippines. Happy Life Blues is a well written book full of chilling accounts of life as a POW and a teenager's experiences in the thick of World War II.
Summary of Happy Life Blues A Memoir of Survival
As the storm clouds were gathering in the Pacific, the Mattocks family was living a happy and productive life in the Philippines. Happy Life Blues tells the story of how their lives were changed forever after the events of December 8, 1941. It recounts peaceful prewar days, their years of hiding and imprisonment and how they adapted to these events. Despite the years of loss, deprivation and uncertainty of the future, the family maintained an optimistic spirit which would sustain them in their struggle for survival.Memoirs Books
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