PRIESTS TELL OF JAP PERSECUTION IN MANILA

By a Staff Reporter
How did the Japanese treat Catholic priests taken prisoner in the Pacific war area?
The years between Bataan. and Okinawa, spent M a prison compound in Manila, had qualified the two young American priests who answered this question this week for a CATHOLIC HERALD
reporter.
They were years of physical deprivation, but also years in which they had continued to celebrate their Masses each morning, rationing out their altar wine with an eyeedropper—ten drops of wine to one drop of water and no wine for the fatal ablutions at each Mass—years in whic.b they learned that the Japanese attitude to the White man was governed, by racial hatred and their attitude to the White man's religion was tempered by their own deep religious feeling. They did not interfere with people at prayer; they were afraid of evil spirits being released by sacrilege.
BACK FROM MANILA Fr. Frederick Julien and Fr. John Doherty, of the Missionary Fathers of La Salette, arrived in England recently, the former to become Rector of his Society's mission at Rainham; the latter to be his assistant. They were released from the Manila compound last year by the U.S. Marines. They were taken prisoner in 1942 on the road to Burnha where they were going to take over a mission church.
The attitude of the Japanese was, Fr. Julien told me, governed by two factors, their deep respect for religion and the racial propaganda that had infuriated the soldiery against Americans and Europeans. The first provided freedom for the missiontry fathers to carry out their religious duties witbout interference; the Japanese were profoundly afraid that if this were not permitted evil soirits would be let loose on them and it, -luck would cancel out their endeavours. The second led the soldiers to the most brutal massacres and horrible tortures.
THE ARMY RELIGIOUS SECTION The priests were on the road to Burma when Manila was falling. Fr. Julien was taken to the Jesuit House in the city and given hospitality there; Fr. Doherty, who was very in, was taken to a. hospital where his condition grew steadily worse He did not receive proper attention and but for the assist
ance of German nuns who were corn. paratively free and managed to smuggle in food to hint,. would undouhtedly have died. These nuns managed to get word to the Japanese religious section, brought in with the advancing army, and the Rector of the Jesuit Mission was Sent 10 anoint the sick missionary and sec to his comfort.
Fr. Julien told me something about this religious section, It was lee by a Catholic Japanese bishop; it comprised two priests, four seminarians, four nuns and twenty girls. The task of the religious was to providc. a liaison between the Shinto army and the Catholic Philippines; the task of the girls was to teach the people the Japanese language. Neither task Was accomplished.
The Phllippinos, said Fr. Julien, could not be convinced that the religious section was made up of Catholics; theY identify the Church exclusively with their own Spanish forebears. with America ant? with Europe. hi one sense the situation was comic; in another it just restrained the Japanese Catholics from making any headway at all with the population.
What was the attitude of the " section " to the imprisoned missionaries? Correct, replied Fr. Julien with a smile. In some ways they did help. They restrained the military very often when confiscation of Church property was threatened. The Japanese priests were occasionally able to furnish the Americans and Europeans with news of progress on the war fronts and developments at home. " But on the whole we were unable to work with them and on the whole they kept very much to themselves."
RACIAL MASSACRES And racial hatred? This, replied the priests, was inflamed througheut by the stories of racial persecution in the United States which the Japanese propagandists lifted from American newspapers. Persecutions were carried out in an organised manner; thus all the white men in one section of the town of Manila were, without exception, murdered. This massacre included fifteen German Christian Brothers who, despite the alliance between their country and she Japanese, were put to death,
Another time, before the Cathedral in Manila, 32 priests were driven into an air raid shelter and then grenades were flung in among them. Pecipte were beaten to death with clubs; the La Salette Fathers had heard of a man being sawn in half. .411 this was done in the name of racism.
In smaller, but nevertheless deadly ways, this racial persecution permeated the whole Japanese approach to the white prisoners Food was brutally and unnecessarily rationed. The people in the compound received six ounces of rice per day for their whole diet. Yet the country around was providing a rich banana crop which rotted; vegetables Were also plentiful ; the prisoners Were denied these.
THE INDIVIDUAL JAP What was the attitude of the individual Japanese? This again, said Fr. Julien, was a problem The Japanese layman is honest, &Cent, goodmannered, industrious and a clever workman—an ideal citizen ; yet when he puts on a uniform he becomes the complete and violent militarist ; he has, it woula seem, a dual personality or the fatal ability to submerge his own character completely in the Government machine.
He had, however, heard of cases of great kindness on the part of Japanese soldiers to imprisoned whites, even if he had not encountered them himself. One Jewish doctor had told him of a soldier who, when he was very ill and dying of starvation, had, at the risk of his life, brought him in eggs and nourishment.
Before I left the priests they told me of the rationing principal employed in their compound with iegard to altar wine. An eye-dropper was used in give it out Ten drops of wine to one deep of water were used by each priest for each Mass ; no wine was used at the ablutions.