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When the Japanese
invaded the beautiful Indonesian island of Java during the Second
World War, Clara Kelly was four years old. Her family was separated,
her father sent to work on the Burma railway, and she together
with her mother and her two brothers, one a six-Week-old baby,
was sent to a "women's camp". They were interned there
until the end of the war. |
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A Lovely Little War
An order for execution had been given by the Japanese Command to
kill all the prisoners. A U.S. Marine Corsair flew low over the
camp signaling to the prisoners below that help was on the way.
The help, a U.S. Army tank, broke through the gates of the infamous
Santo Tomas Internment Camp, and liberated ten year old Angus Lorenzen
and his fellow prisoners. After 1125 days Angus Lorenzen was free...only
to find he was in the middle of the Battle of Manila, the most severe
urban battle of World War II.
A Lovely Little War is Angus Lorenzen's own story told through his
childhood eyes. He was a seven- year-old child of privilege torn
from a setting of comfort and thrust into a Japanese World War II
internment camp. Viewed through a prism that distorted the harsh
light of wartime reality into a colorful spectrum cd childish fantasy,
Angus Lorenzen mixes dark moments of adult cruelty with light moments
and humor that are a big part of a child's life. But the light moments
darkened when, after liberation, Angus was thrust into the inferno
that was the Battle of Manila. His view of life previously seen
through his colorful spectrum of childhood fantasy, broke through
its prism, and absorbed the deadly events of the horrors of war.
ANGUS LORENZEN, at age 7, fled Japanese-occupied
North China with his sister and mother, just days before the attack
on Pearl Harbor, only to be captured in Manila and held in Santo
Tomas Internment Camp for more than 3 years. When rescued they returned
to England, where he was left in school while his mother returned
to join his father in China to try to reestablish their pre-war
life. They left China in 1947 to escape the Communist invasion and
settled in California, where Angus joined them. He completed high
school in Burlingame, and graduated from the University of California
in Berkeley with a BS in Engineering. Later, he received a Masters
of Business Management from California State College.
He retired as Vice-President of an international engineering firm
and has been active in ex-prisoner of war activities. He was elected
Commander of the southern California civilian chapter of the national
organization that serves American Ex-POWs, and took office at the
beginning of 2008.
He and his wife Gail live in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
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