Susan Vance

From gold mines in the mountains to an engagement party in Manila on Dec. 7, 1941, this true story of WWII in the Philippines presents the perplexing parallel perspectives of one family that was spared internment by the Japanese because they were not Americans, but barely survived  on their own.

Journey through an exotic world of gold-mining ventures, romance, and idyllic lifestyles torn asunder by the Japanese invasion, then through the deprivation and courage of civilians left behind when American forces joined the war effort.

Gloria Haube’s account reveals the fearful life outside internment camps in Manila during the war, where she was pulled off the streets to face Japanese interrogators at “Dante’s Inferno of the Far East”. Instead of internment at Brent School in Baguio, her German-born father, William Haube, remained at a gold-mining camp of 15,000 workers to manage the chaos under suspicious Japanese commanders. Near war’s end with devastating months of American bombing raids to retake the Islands, he took refuge in rat-infested mining tunnels, and sent his family to remote mountains to flee the mayhem, protected and fed by native Igorots, until their harrowing escape from Japanese troops in retreat.

These extraordinary first-person accounts of WWII in the Philippines were woven together by Susan Vance from the war stories of her mother and the journal of her grandfather, civilians who survived the carnage but lost many loved ones in the heroic struggle for the “Key to the Orient”, then renewed their lives in the home of their liberators.

About The Author

As a journalist, Susan Vance developed an active interest in documenting history. She edited a weekly newspaper; produced news at the NPR affiliate in Tucson; wrote the broadcast series for the University of Arizona’s centennial; edited for Spacemaker Press; and is writing a definitive biography of legendary Arizona artist Ted DeGrazia. She resides in Tucson with her husband, Marco Pennacchini, a director of photography.