After attending that bogus meeting in December 1941, the Herold family ended up at Camp John Hay. They lived there in military barracks for four months with hundreds of other internees. 

Each morning their Japanese captors lined them up outside and directed them to say, “God Bless Japan” in Japanese. And each and every day Heimke’s  other in defiance would bow and say in English, “God Bless America.”

War stories
After Camp John Hay they were transported to Camp Holmes. Food was scarce, and if not for food  sent in by the “faithful Filipinos,” many prisoners would have died, Heimke says. They were living on less than 800 calories a day.

On Dec. 28, 1944, the group of civilians was moved from Camp Holmes to Bilibid Prison in Manila. They weren’t there long before their lives were in serious peril.

American B-24 planes started bombing in January.

“When they fell down they glistened like tinsel on a Christmas tree,” she says of the bombs.

Inside the gates
The Battle of Manila raged from Feb. 3 to March 3, 1945, and Bilibid Prison was right in the middle of it. Heimke could hear a strange “grinding, rhythmic,  crunching sound” outside. When she looked out she saw eight American tanks.

On Feb. 4, an announcement was made that the civilians were no longer under Japanese control.

“We were free,” she says.

Friendly faces
Seeing American GIs was wonderful, she recalls. They were cheerful and kind and,  most importantly, American. The liberators were not much older than she.

“They were just a bunch of kids like us,” Heimke says.

When the POWs were released, they were given “dehydrated scrambled eggs that tasted like heaven” and real coffee, and they heard American music for the first time in years.

Finally headed home
Finally, in March 1945 the family boarded a Dutch freighter for home. Heimke remembers “eating like a horse” and at last sailing under the Golden Gate  Bridge.

She went on to marry, raise four children with her husband, and work as a nurse for many years.

Now Heimke is writing a book on her experience in the camps. She is part of a creative writing class that meets each Monday morning at Tallgrass Creek.  There she receives advice to go along with the inspiration to write the book. It is almost done. 

And her memories of those terrible times remain vivid.

“I still dream about it,” she says. “It is still with me.”