Never Forsaken

By Cindy Scott

A young woman's gripping account of faith, courage, and survival during and after World War II.

 

Follow Marion Ghent as she endures the death of her father, Japanese attacks during World War II, hiding among the feared Moros on Mindanao Island, becoming a Japanese POW, escaping, and then hiding out in the mountains and rain forests just trying to survive the war.

 

Learn the miraculous story of how she reconnects with her father's American family, then comes to the USA to live among the family and complete her education.

 

See how her constant Faith, Courage, and Strength saw her through every trial, and how she clung to the knowledge that she was "NEVER FORSAKEN!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cyd Publishing
• Release date: Nov 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393084297

Cindy Scott

Cindy Scott is the author of Never Forsaken, the incredible story of her mother’s life, as well as Cindy’s first book. Cindy was born in the Philippines and grew up in Manila.  At the age of 11, her family moved to the United States where she met Wayne, her husband-to-be, in the sixth grade!  She spent 29 years as an Air Force spouse living all over the US and in Europe, serving on the leadership board of officers’ spouses club for 20 of those years.  Together Cindy and Wayne spent 25 years in marriage ministry.  They retired to Southern California in 2005. Cindy has been a Docent at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library since 2006.  She also served as an Events Coordinator on the Richard Nixon Foundation staff for a few years. In 2019 Cindy was named Yorba Linda Citizen of the Year for her outstanding support to the community. In addition to her new passion for writing, Cindy is an accomplished artist and has completed oil paintings of several locations her family visited during their Air Force career. Cindy and Wayne have lived in Yorba Linda, California, since 2006, following their 29 years of service to our nation in the United States Air Force.  They have two sons and four grandchildren.

Book preview

Terms and Places

AS YOU READ THROUGH the book you will come across several terms and the names of places. They are described here so you can be familiar with them.

Agus River – The Agus River flows North for 36.5 km (about 27 miles) from Lake Lanao to Iligan Bay. It separates into two channels as it drains into Iligan Bay, one going over Maria Cristina Falls, and the other over Tinago Falls. The Maria Cristina Falls were about 6 km (4 miles) from the Ghent Plantation.

The Agus River a few miles downstream from the Ghent plantation. While not too wide at this point, the rapids could be treacherous.

CAMP KEITHLEY – An American Army Camp established in 1905 near Dansalan on Mindanao. Named after Private Fernando Keithley.

The Philippine Constabulary parading on Camp Keithley. They were the forerunners to the Philippine Army established in 1946 after Philippine independence.

DANSALAN – A town by Lake Lanao and at the mouth of the Agus River. Lanao High School and the Mission Dormitory were in this city, which is now named Marawi.

Kolumbugan – A lumber and mill town located on the northern coast of Mindanao.

Lake Lanao – Lake Lanao is situated just south of Dansalan (now Marawi) and is the second largest lake in the Philippines. The lake was created by a lava dam and is 131 square miles. It is one of 15 ancient lakes in the world. Its outlet is the Agus River, which flows north and eventually over Maria Cristina Falls, and there are numerous Moro villages around the lake. The term Lanao is derived from a Maranao word Ranao meaning a body of water. Meranau means lake dweller. They are the natives of the place occupying the land around Lake Lanao, which is situated in the central part of Lanao province. When Lanao was divided into two provinces in the 1950s, the southern portion became Lanao del Sur, and the northern part became Lanao del Norte. This is the lake the Ghent family crossed from Moroland into Japanese-held territory.

In Maranao mythology, Lake Lanao once threatened to drown the people of Sebangan with its ever-rising waters. The Archangel Gabriel is thought to have made the Agus River to drain the lake. This very swift running river ran through the Ghent plantation on its way from Lake Lanao to Iligan Bay.

Mindanao – Mindanao is the second-largest island in the Philippines. Mindanao and the smaller islands surrounding it make up an island group of the same name. Located in the southern region of the Philippine archipelago, the name Mindanao is derived from the Spanish corruption of the name of the Maguindanao people, the dominant ruling ethnic group in the Sultanate of Maguindanao in southwestern Mindanao during the Spanish colonial period. The name itself means people of the lake (Lanao).

Archaeological findings on the island point to evidence of human activity dating back about 10,000 years. Around 1500 BC, Austronesian people spread throughout the Philippines. The Subanon are believed to have established themselves on Mindanao Island during the Neolithic Era, or the New Stone Age, the period in the development of human technology beginning around 10,000 BC.

Momungan – An American colony on Mindanao established around 1912. Its location is now in the province of Lanao Del Norte. The Ghent Plantation was located near here along with many other American Veterans, missionaries, and their families.

Moros – Spanish name for Muslims. Also, the Muslims who live in the Philippines, mainly on the islands of Mindanao, Jolo, and the Sulu Archipelago.

THE SPANISH GAVE THE name Moros to the Muslims who lived in the Philippines, mainly on the Islands of Mindanao, Jolo, and the Sulu Archipelago. Their descendants today include the Islamist militant group Abu Sayyaf, a Jihadist militant and pirate group that follows the Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam.

Philippines – The Philippines is made up of over 7,600 islands scattered across 500,000 square miles, although only 2,000 islands are inhabited. It borders the South China Sea, east of Vietnam and south of Taiwan.

Silliman University – Established in 1901 as Silliman Institute by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, it is the first American school in the Philippines and the entire Asian continent.

Additional historical information on key events and persons mentioned throughout the book can be found in a series of appendices.

The Spanish-American War

The Philippine-American War

The Moros of Mindanao

The Legacy of Frank Charles Laubach

General Douglas MacArthur

The Battle of Bataan

The Battle of Manila-1945

The Philippine Islands

The Island of Mindanao

Preface

I

t was August 14, 1964, when the wheels of the Pan American jetliner touched down at Honolulu International Airport in Hawaii. It had been a very long 20-hour flight from Manila, Philippines, and there were still several more hours of flying before arriving in Los Angeles. On board, an eleven-year-old girl and her ten-year-old brother were traveling unaccompanied from the only life they had known in the Philippines to a new home in a new country. They were escorted down the steps of the airliner by a stewardess (what they were called back then) and guided to a cement bench in the lobby of the outdoor terminal.

Wait here and do not leave this bench, the stewardess told them. I will be back to get you before we board the plane. While she spoke to both children, her comments were really directed toward the young girl. I was that young girl of eleven, nearly twelve.

Two hours later we were still waiting on that bench. I was sure the stewardess had forgotten about us, but, as we had been told, we never moved from that bench and continued to wait. Eventually, I heard our flight number announced and that our flight was boarding. Still waiting and feeling very alone, I began to cry. Soon after, the stewardess returned for us, and we were the last of the passengers to board the flight to LA before the door was closed.

We had been put on the airplane in Manila by our parents, Manuel and Marion Jose. They were to follow three weeks later. My mom, Marion, had been a travel agent with American Express and had a very special arrangement with one of the cruise lines: they were to sail first class from the Philippines to Los Angeles while stay in the ship’s Presidential Suite.

Mom had survived World War II and had spent the past several years in bad health due to malnutrition and extreme physical demands on her body during the war. She had undergone several difficult surgeries, and she was physically and mentally exhausted. There were nights when I would lie asleep on the wood floor next to her bed, afraid she would never wake up. I didn’t realize at the time how she had survived the ravages of World War II as a teenager. She had never told us her stories, just like so many of the Veterans who had survived the war. They all kept those stories to themselves as if they just wanted to forget all about them.

Due to the political situation in the Philippines and Mom’s health, my parents decided to move to the United States. Mom was an American citizen because her father was an American Veteran from the Spanish American War. This meant my brother and I were also American citizens, through my Mom and Grandfather. Leaving the Philippines, we sold everything we could and had to leave the rest behind. We came with only one suitcase each, plus a single trunk my parents brought on the ship.

My brother and I flew to Los Angeles without Mom and Dad so we could begin school there in September. My older sister had moved to the USA the year before and was already living with my aunt, and we were to live with them until our parents arrived in September. It was such a drastic change from our life in the Philippines where we grew up with a chauffeur who drove us to school every day, and maids who made our beds and cooked our meals. We had attended a private American school where we spoke in both English and Tagalog (the Philippine national language).

As I grew into a teenager, Mom began telling us stories of her life during the war. The stories were hard to comprehend since they were things we had never experienced. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I realized how much Mom had endured.

Over the next several years, my Mom, Marion Ghent Jose Lau, would tell me stories of her life growing up on the coconut plantation her father built, and how she survived World War II. The plantation was on the island of Mindanao near a small town called Momungan. They had 50 acres of coconut and fruit trees, and this is where my Mom walked, ran, and grew up. To her it was a magical place and time. She was the youngest of William and Petra Ghent’s thirteen children: her father was an American from Greenup, Kentucky, and her mother was a Filipina from Manila. She was what they referred to as a mestiza, and her father referred to her as the darling of the family!

The entire Ghent family, circa 1930. Standing: Tom, Ida, Emma, Helen, Florence, and Willie. Center: William Ghent (Papa), Marion, and Petra (Mama). Seated: Mary, Pearl, David, and George.

William L. Ghent was a colporteur[1] for the American Bible Society and traveled to many islands in the Philippines where they had never heard of the Bible, much less seen one. He would do most of his traveling on boats for days at a time. When he traveled on roads it was by bull cart. He was a pioneer who opened and explored new regions for Christian missionaries.

William is referenced in several pages of the 1925 and 1926 Annual Reports of the American Bible Society and was the most successful colporteur of his time. Written about him in the report as a colporteur, ... is a retired American soldier converted a few years ago in a very striking manner, and who has since been very happy in his new-found Christian life. He was discovered spending time on his farm and engaged as a pastor. Mr. Ghent is worth a half a dozen colporteurs.

When my mother was only seven, her father passed away, so she was raised by her mother and older siblings. As I was growing up, she would tell me bits and pieces of her life during World War II, held as a prisoner of war at the age of 15 and then escaping. She lived in the rainforests of Mindanao for close to three years until the war ended. Those were amazing stories! As a young child and teenager, I did not really pay close attention to those stories until I was much older. I am grateful she took the time to write out her story.

I never met my maternal grandfather, William L. Ghent, as he died well before I was born. While growing up, Mom would tell us these far away stories about her father, whom she called Papa. I will refer to him as Papa Ghent throughout this book. The most amazing of her tales is how she reconnected with her Papa’s family after World War II. That part of her story is told in her own words and from her Papa’s journal from the 1920s and 1930s. His journal has been a major acquisition for the Archives of the American Bible Society.

Mom spent the last fifteen years of her life writing her World War II memoirs. I took her four different manuscripts, merged them into one, and spent hours recording interviews with her to fill in some of the stories. She also had pages upon pages of handwritten notes, and I compiled those notes, the tapes, and her manuscripts to write this book.

The desire of her heart was to publish her story so that others would also understand and experience the grace of God. She titled her book Never Forsaken, and I promised her before her death that I would complete it for her. I have spent the last two years doing just that. Even after hearing portions of it over the years, reading her story still makes me cry when I realize the incredible hardships she endured, and the incredible faith and courage she had to make it through.

This is her incredible story, and her testament that with God, we are Never Forsaken.

Part I

T

he waters rage beneath her. Twisting, writhing, smashing against the rocks, arcs of angry white foam spitting up into the air, only to disappear again into the swirling void. And the sound. The roar, like the deep rumble of a beast on the hunt. It never stopped. Never ceased. Never slowed. Always rushing. Always raging. Uncontainable. Unstoppable.

Terrifying.

The locals said that whenever the river roared, it was claiming a life.

Dragging, pulling the head under, arms and legs striving to break through to the air above, clawing desperately for one more breath.

She looks into the waters, deep into the rushing streams until everything else fades away, and all that is left is the blue, deafening roar.

You will not take me, she thinks.

But the waters don’t stop. They just keep roaring.

The Shock of War

"I

hate geometry, and teacher is a meanie," I moaned to Beatriz, my roommate at the Mission Dormitory in Dansalan on the island of Mindanao. We were on our way to our first class on Monday morning. The dormitory was a one-mile walk from Lanao High School on Camp Keithley, the U.S. Army base. Although December was part of the rainy season, it was a clear day, and the sun was out. Usually, the days were wet, warm, and humid. A sudden rainstorm usually broke out and then in minutes the sky would clear. I was thankful my short, wavy, black hair would not be wet when we arrived at school that day.

Well, at least it’s not raining this morning, Bea smiled in reply as we walked along.

I really didn’t mind the rain, and we were all used to it in Dansalan. However, I was wearing one of my favorite dresses, and I didn’t want to get it wet. It was one of six dresses my sister Helen had sewn for me, and this one was covered in yellow and pink flowers. Helen was both a seamstress and the dorm mother for the Mission Dormitory. She would sometimes scold me since I was the youngest of the eleven Ghent siblings. I always seemed to be picked on by my four older brothers and often got into trouble with my six older sisters. But Papa used to say I was the darling of the family since I was the youngest, and that thought always consoled me when they picked on me.

Four years before, I was sent to live at the Mission Boarding Dormitory in Dansalan to attend school there along with my older sister, Mary. My Papa had died when I was seven, and the local school in our town of Momungan only went through 7th grade, so Mama sent me to live in the dormitory to continue my schooling. Mary had since graduated from high school and moved to Manila to attend college, and my older brother David and I were now both attending Lanao High School.

In 1937 Marion moved to Dansalan to attend the Mission School and Lanao High School. She lived in this dormitory until the start of World War II in December 1941.

THERE WERE SCATTERED clouds across the blue sky on this Monday morning, and I looked up and tried to make their shapes into pictures. One looked like a car, but cars were rare in this town. Our mode of transportation was either the bus or bull cart and on occasion a truck. Most of the time we walked. Walking three to five miles in one day was not uncommon for any of us. My usually fair skin had darkened in the sun during the hot summer, but now was fading back to a lighter color as the days shortened during these last few months of the rainy season.

On our way to school we had to cross a bridge over the angry, roaring Agus River, whose currents and rapids always gave a strange, fearful sound showing off its power and strength. I always felt such relief once we passed safely across that bridge. It was a common belief among the local residents that if the river’s roar was loud, someone’s life was being claimed. Though scary, I would sometimes stop in the middle of that wide, long bridge just to look down at the huge, powerful river which flowed out of beautiful Lake Lanao and all the way down to the sea by Iligan. Iligan is a port city on the southeastern shore of Iligan Bay on Mindanao.

The weekend had passed too quickly, and it was time to return to my classes. As we entered the classroom, we went straight to our desks and waited for Mrs. Ramos, our tenth-grade geometry teacher to arrive to start this dreaded class. I liked school, but I detested math. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the subject, I just didn’t like working with numbers. Starting geometry first thing on a Monday morning was not my favorite thing to do after a weekend with family and friends.

"Marion, do you think she will be late this morning? Bea asked.

I was about to answer when Mrs. Ramos walked into the classroom with quite a different look on her face, what looked like a mix of fear and anger. We had never seen her like this before. It immediately made me uneasy and anxious.

Class, I want your full attention. We are now a nation at war. Japan just simultaneously bombed Pearl Harbor, Manila, and surrounding U.S. airfields. We are closing school today and you are all dismissed.

I was completely shocked. What? War? With Japan? We knew people from Japan. Some were store owners, and a few lived in the nearby village. I knew where Japan was located on the map, but why would they attack us? And where was Pearl Harbor? It was December 8 in the Philippines but December 7, 1941 in the United States, where Papa came from. I later learned Pearl Harbor was in U.S. territory on the Island of Hawaii, but it was so extremely far away I had never paid attention to where it was located on the map.

The next thoughts were for my family. My oldest brother Willie and his family lived in Manila, and Ida, my sister, was there, too. Were they all okay?

And what about my sister Mary and her husband, Johnny? He was a Naval Officer with the Philippine Naval Patrol. Would he now have to fight the Japanese? What would happen to the rest of us?

A cold, iceberg shiver just enveloped the room. We sat in silence while Mrs. Ramos’ chilling words started to sink into our young hearts. No one said a word and I am sure you could hear a pin drop on the wooden floor. Everyone just sat still and quiet. We were shaken and bewildered but did not really understand what it all meant.

I turned to Bea, and she simply had this blank look on her face. What were we to do? This was all a puzzle to us, and there were so many questions on my mind.

Not knowing what to do next, we got up from our seats and just said goodbye to the other students. We didn’t even know if we would ever see each other again. We knew nothing about the realities of war, except those we had read in textbooks and stories we were told. I knew that there was a faraway war in Europe with Germany, and I would hear bits and pieces of conversations whenever friends gathered together with our family.

Papa used to tell us stories about battles he fought in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and here in the Philippines during the Philippine-American War. He told us he fought in all those battles and came out without a scratch. He would occasionally talk about the medals he was awarded for his service in Cuba, but those stories had always seemed so far away. Yet now we were actually at war with Japan.

Bea and I headed back to the dormitory crossing the Agus River once again. As I looked over the bridge and into the water, it seemed it had not changed. It was still the same angry, roaring, powerful river, and yet, my whole life had changed in the short time since I had last walked