MacArthur Came Back: A Little Girl's Encounter With War in the Philippines

At the age of three, Leanne Blinzler Noe moved to the Philippines in 1937 with her parents and sister, where her father had accepted a job at a gold mine. Within a year, her mother had died, and she and her sister were living in a German convent in Manila, then Baguio. Talk of war swept through the country, but no one believed the Japanese would actually invade. Eight hours after they attacked Pearl Harbor, however, Japanese war planes headed toward the tropical archipelago, where Leanne was attending Mass with her sister. Soon the civilians were being rounded up into Japanese prison camps, and General Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. Army Forces Far East, fled the country, promising to return. This is Leanne’s story.