Hodges Sisters’ WWII Stories Captivate Large Crowd

Young girls braved the traumas of war 60-plus years ago in the Philippines before they arrived in Quinlan. Their stories captivated a full house Saturday at the Quinlan Community Museum’s Veterans Day Luncheon.

The luncheon, which organizers plan to make an annual event, was held at the Quinlan Independent School District Education Center where the museum and library are also housed.

Museum President Wanda Thompson welcomed those present and gave closing remarks. Rogene Cull offered the invocation. Lunch was prepared and served by museum volunteers.

Librarian Lisa Gunter introduced the program of the Hodges sisters and veteran Tim Hughes.

The Hodges attending included Lucy Hodges Collins, and her husband, Cornelius "Buddy" Collins, Emma Hodges Smith, Rose Hodges Chieffo, Joyce Hodges Barrow and Linnie Hodges McCormack.

Joyce Barrow who served as Hunt County Tax Assessor-Collector for more than 20 years spoke briefly. "It is wonderful you all came to help the museum and to honor my family," she told the large crowd.

"The Hodges family was an ordinary family," she said. Mrs. Barrow said the family did ordinary things. "All of a sudden that all changed," she said of the Dec. 8, 1941, events. It was Dec. 8 where the Hodges family lived in the Philippine Island in San Juan, a suburb of Manila.

The date was Dec. 7 in the United States because the Philippines was located a day ahead along the time zones — but it was the "day of infamy" around the world as characterized by President Franklin Roosevelt. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in the territory of Hawaii and drew the United States into World War II.

Mrs. Barrow took an optimistic view, "It seemed like angels covered us at all times." But the terrors became personal with the death of their 17-year-old brother who served in the U.S. Navy aboard a minesweeper. The Japanese took their father, Jesse Hodges, captive and placed him in a concentration camp. "Simply because he was an American citizen," Mrs. Collins explained.

"When we saw our American soldiers marching down our street…and gave us our freedom…They gave us our daddy back," she recalled.

More than three years elapsed between his captivity and when he returned to them. During that time, the family had to find ways to survive.

An interview with her sister, Lucy Collins, was screened for the audience.

"Dad was a carpenter. He built swings and slides and things. He ran Manila Furniture. War was the farthest thing from our mind. It was a shock," Mrs. Collins said.

She explained that her dad, a Quinlan native, had moved to the Philippines long before the war at the behest of his uncle, C.M. Hodges, a millionaire.

Mrs. Collins said she started to school in the first grade at the American School. It was renamed for her principal after some decided it should reflect the opportunity for everyone rather than just the Americans. They lived in the house their dad had built. Rumors of war had circulated for the previous year. They sold the house and rented.

On the first day of school, Mrs. Collins said people went crazy. "We had no idea what had happened," she remembered of Pearl Harbor Day. "People were running down the street," and as the oldest, she said her mother depended on her to get her sisters home safely.

"We walked for miles trying to get home," she said, probably seven or eight miles to reach San Juan. They reached home tired but uninjured. She said the incident was kind of a blur. "We were scared," she said as they heard of the bombing.

The family watched the Philippine soldiers marching to defend the country. "We were so proud to see them defend our country," she said. That was about a month before she said they saw them running back. "It wasn’t long before we saw the Japanese army march in."

Mrs. Collins said the family had nowhere to go and had to stay at their house. They did not have food stocks. Their dad worked at the commissary and was able to get some bags of cracked wheat that were infested with worms.

The Japanese then took Hodges away to the concentration camp. "We didn’t get to see him but once a week." She described the system by which they would visit him. He would have to step back and they would pass in front of him, so he would get to see them.

"Mother fixed a canvas bag, and we would take his clothes." They would take his laundry, wash and press the clothing and return them to him the next week. She described how one prisoner threw a note over the fence to his family. The Japanese guards shot him and all members of the family.

"Every time Mother put a note in the strap of that canvas bag, I prayed. I really prayed, because I knew what would happen if they found that note," Mrs. Collins said.

While he was imprisoned for three years, their mother would sell items on consignment. She earned enough to buy a little lard and other food items for her daughters. "While she was working, I took care of the little children. I was scared to death."

Mrs. Collins recalled on day when a Japanese soldier went to their home. She said they would enter houses and look wherever they wished. This particular day, the soldier asked her if she had brothers and sisters and then noticed a piano. He asked her if she could play to which she answered, no, but her sister could.

"I told Mary Jane to play something," and then thought, "Oh, dear God, don’t play ‘God Bless America.’"

The soldier asked her what they had to eat, and the 15-year-old showed him the beans growing on a fence and the vegetables her brother had planted.

That night, they heard the soldier call out in an attempt to pronounce her name Lucy, "Rucy, Rucy." He instructed her not to tell anyone because he would get in trouble, but he brought some food. He repeated the visit a couple of nights later but said he would not be able to return because he was to be shipped out.

She said as much as her mother appreciated the food, she was glad that he was not going to return, because she was afraid the neighbors might overhear them and think they were collaborating with the Japanese.

Feelings still ran deep after all the years as emotion was evidenced in her voice as she recounted the atrocities they witnessed. People were placed in something similar to stocks of the Dark Ages where she saw one man’s head being sawn off. They cut the hands off others who were accused of theft. "They would let their police dogs finish ripping them apart. We could hear their screams," Mrs. Collins said. Women were sexually assaulted.

She told of an incident when the family was riding one day on a jitney that was filled with people on both sides. "A Japanese officer kept looking at me. He put his hand on my knee," she said.

Her mother told him, "No." He continued the attention and when he placed his hand on her knee, her mother slapped his hand and repeated, "No."

The jitney stopped and everyone else ran away. "They knew what was going to happen," she said.

After her mother slapped his hand and told him no, "He just mumbled something and walked away. That was a miracle. I was shaking all over."

She remembered how everyone had to bow to the Japanese "and bow in just the right way. You couldn’t look at them."

"We had a cousin who looked up and got his face slapped beet red. They liked to do that — humiliate you," she said.

Then came the cavalry. "The 1st Cavalry came and Daddy got to come home. We started making plans to get out of there."

Mrs. Collins said she had to leave her grandmother, aunts and cousins. "I loved my grandmother."

Her dad had each of them write on a slip of paper why they wanted to go to the United States.

The time came when they were told the last ship would be leaving. "We would have to stay there," she said if they did not board.

She had met a young soldier once before they left the Philippines. Her sisters had run across an American soldier who asked them if they had an older sister. They told him that in fact they did. He said that if she would go by, they would have all the candy they wanted.

Mrs. Collins recounted how she did as her sisters asked and visited the soldier who was a mechanic and was working on a truck. She laughed, "He gave the girls their candy bars, and they all got sick."

"He put his shirt on, got his rifle and walked us back home."

That was the last she saw of him until during the trip to the United States aboard the ship. She saw him one day when she walked out on the deck to see the waves. "Every day, we would talk, and he would tell me about the States."

The trip had new dangers. They received news that the Japanese had attacked one of the boats. "I was afraid. They had us prepared to get into life boats. We had to wear life jackets."

The ship arrived in San Francisco, Calif. "It was cold. We weren’t used to cold," she said of their lives in the tropics. "The Red Cross had to give us sweaters."

News came of Japan’s surrender. "I was so happy," she said.

They took a train from San Francisco to Dallas and from Dallas to Greenville. After a night in the hotel, they took a bus to Quinlan where their dad’s sister, Aunt Helen, met them. She was pulling a trailer, and they all had to get in the trailer to go to their home that is now located across the street from C.B. Thompson Middle School.

Their dad had farm equipment left by his dad. Later, they bought a washateria that their mother operated, and their dad ran the ice house.

The soldier, Cornelius "Buddy" Collins, she had met in the Philippines and saw on the ship home came to see her in Quinlan.

"Mother said I needed to get a job. There wasn’t one to be had. She sent me to Lubbock." Relatives gave her a job, but Collins followed her to Lubbock.

When her mother heard they were to be married, she sent her to California. "Mother said I needed to stay working and help the family."

They were finally married June 3, 1947, and recently celebrated their 62nd anniversary after raising two daughters.

When asked after the presentation where he got the candy bars, Collins said the soldiers were given the Baby Ruths and Butterfingers by the military. "I stayed with it 64 years," Collins said of the mechanic work he did in the service.

In an interview before the luncheon with The News, Mrs. Barrow recalled the family’s experiences.

She said the brother who was killed in the war was Robert "Bobby" Hodges. He was thought to have died on the Baton Death March after being listed as Missing in Action. They also lost a brother, Jesse A. Hodges Jr.

Mrs. Barrow showed documents from the time that showed the time of their father’s internment in the concentration camp as Jan. 3, 1942 to Feb. 9, 1945. The documents showed that each child received $933.33 from the Claims Commission for his being held. They received the money Oct. 5, 1951. "We really needed that money," she said.

She laughed about the need to have her name changed because the nuns at the Philippine hospital where she was born could not speak English. They just gave her the name, Consuela.

There were things to get used to when they arrived in Texas. "Mother thought she had died and gone to hell," Mrs. Barrow said. "She was mortified. She had never had to go outside to use the bathroom."

She said they were from the tropics and had never seen snow before.

A recorded interview with Mrs. Barrow and sister, Emma Hodges Smith, was made available to The News.

In that recording, Mrs. Barrow said her mother was Castilian Spanish. All her family members were in the Philippines.

Mrs. Smith added that their mother was working in a jewelry store when she met their dad. A friend had wanted him to buy some jewelry for him. "He kept going back day after day," she said. He was 15 years older. They were finally married. They had seven children while living there and two more after they moved to the United States.

"We were happy in a wonderful world," Mrs. Barrow said. "We were living a life of luxury." They had indoor plumbing, a refrigerator and a beautiful home.

"But then disaster struck," Mrs. Barrow said.

Mrs. Smith said it was Dec. 8, and they had gone to school when they learned the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. "They turned school out. They thought the Japanese was on their way to the Philippines."

"In the meantime, Dad was still home. Our older brother joined the Navy. He was 17. Mother had to sign for him. She didn’t want to. In a way, she was glad. He would have been killed. He couldn’t have handled being a prisoner."

Their other brother was 13 at the time. Emma was 11 and Joyce was 4.

"Our way of life changed," Mrs. Barrow said after the Japanese took over the islands. She said they took their chickens, guineas and goats. "They took everything to sustain us."

Emma said the Japanese gave the American citizens a chance to turn themselves in to the concentration camp.

"It was so hard," Joyce added. She said their emotions were still on edge. "Anything this traumatic, you don’t get over. What Mother did to keep us alive. God had His had over us."

Emma said their mother would take them to town one at a time. Her job was to go to market and get what they were going to eat every day. He mother went out daily to sell items on consignment. "We always managed."

Emma said they had a big garden as well as an orchard that had mango trees and guava trees.

"It got really bad toward the end," Joyce said. "If you didn’t bow to the Japanese, they would bayonet you. They wouldn’t waste a bullet on you."

Emma remembered a dish in the Philippines made of coagulated blood. "We would chop it up and eat it."

Joyce said they would go to the Japanese slaughter house and beg. "I can’t believe I ate blood," she said with a laugh.

"One thing we ate that made us all sick was a lizard," Emma said. "It was supposed to taste like chicken."

She described the bomb shelter they dug in the backyard. "We dug a big hole in the yard and put galvanized roofing on top." They placed banana leaves over it for camouflage.

They recalled how it would fill with water after rains, and they would have to bail it out — and a mortar shell that fell nearby at the very end of the war when the Americans came.

"When we were in that bomb shelter, we had sticks in our mouths because of implosion," Joyce said. She said without them, they would have internal bleeding and their ear drums would burst.

One night, it became very quiet outside the shelter. They sent one of their cousins out. He was gone a long time.

When he came back, he said, "Gringos."

"We knew what he meant," Joyce said. "An American soldier stuck his head in the shelter. All of us hollered, ‘God bless America.’ We are eternally grateful. We will never forget our soldiers."

Emma recalled when their dad was released and returned home. "Mother broke his ribs. She hugged him so tight and he was so weak, but he didn’t care."

Joyce said they moved back to the farm where their dad had been raised. "It snowed the first winter. It was so cold. It was America and we didn’t care. Most of the people were nice, but they considered us foreigners."