The Lotus House - Inspirations

I’m delighted to be able to share a few insights into the inspirations behind my latest book in the Echoes of Empire collection, The Lotus House 

The seed of the idea which eventually blossomed into life as The Lotus House, had been germinating in my mind for well over a decade before I stumbled upon a way to write about WWII in the Philippines.

In 2010, while researching my dad’s wartime experience as a prisoner of the Japanese on the Thai-Burma Railway, I read Brian MacArthur’s brilliant book, Surviving the Sword which describes the plight of allied prisoners of the Japanese between 1942 and 1945. In the very first chapter (“Surrender”) I was stunned to read about the horrific experience of US and Filipino soldiers captured when the US Army surrendered on the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines in 1942. McArthur describes their treatment as ‘as vicious as the treatment of the men on the Burma-Thailand railway and… the worst atrocity committed by the Japanese against US prisoners.’

US and Filipino POWs on the Bataan Death March, Philippines,1942

Until that point I knew little about what happened to US and Filipino soldiers fighting in the Philippines during WWII. Having spent a month backpacking in the Philippines in 1988, I was aware of the American influence on those islands, and the fact that the between 1898 and 1946, the Philippines was occupied by the USA who replaced the Spanish as the colonial power.

Fisherman on Boracay, Philippines, 1988.

But in 2010, I was only just starting my research into WWII in Southeast Asia. My priority was to find out what had happened to my father during the war. Dad died in 1970 and had said little about his horrific ordeal.  In 2010, I found his “Liberation Questionnaire” in the British National Archives in Kew. It was an emotional moment, seeing the document he'd written on his release from captivity in 1945. What he described about the Fall of Singapore, the Death Railway, and about surviving the bombing of his transport ship which was sunk by Allied aircraft with huge loss of life, inspired me to write my first published novel, Bamboo Heart.

The research led me to write more books about WWII in Southeast Asia, but it was only, years later, when looking into the experience of women at the front in Burma for The Lake Palace and The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu, that I stumbled across the incredible story of “the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor.” They were the American and Filipino military nurses who bravely served in field hospitals behind the front on the Bataan peninsula, living under canvas in the jungle, suffering disease, hunger, hardship, lack of medical supplies, air raids and shelling, and witnessing death and horrific injuries.

U.S. Army Nurses from Bataan and Corregidor, liberated after three years imprisonment in Santo Tomas Interment Camp [12 February 1945] By US Army - US Army, Public Domain.

Their story is one of hope and survival. Despite all the hardships they suffered, these women didn’t stop battling against the odds to save as many lives as they could. When the Japanese broke through American lines and swept down the peninsula, the nurses were evacuated by boat to Corregidor, a fortress island at the mouth of Manila Bay. There, they continued to work in an underground hospital in the Malinta tunnels, while the shelling shook the plaster from the roofs. They continued to care for the sick and injured even after the Japanese army stormed and occupied Corregidor, until they were eventually shipped to the Santo Tomas internment camp in Manila. They were imprisoned there until the end of the war, once again, suffering starvation, hardship and disease as well as the terror of captivity.

The story of these brave women is as inspiring as it is harrowing. Their discipline, determination and humour saw them through, as well as the strong ties of friendship that bound them together. I knew when I first read about them, that I had my way in to write about the war in the Philippines, and that my main character, Nancy Drayton, a rancher’s daughter from Montana turned Navy nurse, would be one of those angels.

I went on to read We Band of Angels, by Elizabeth M Norman and Tears in the Darkness, by the same author and her husband, Michael Norman, both incredibly detailed and moving books written from interviews of the nurses and soldiers who lived through those times. I also watched some grainy films made in the 1940s – two of them while the Angels of Bataan were still in captivity – Cry Havoc, So Proudly We Hail and They Were Expendable, which demonstrated how the plight of those young women had touched the hearts of the American public.

The Lotus House was inspired by those incredible experiences. I hope through the stories of the main characters, Nancy and Robert, the book  will highlight the sacrifice and courage of those brave women, and of the soldiers who served and suffered in that conflict.

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