The Lost Child of WWII: My Life during the Great War

By Leonida Clarete Watson

My name is Leonida, but people just call me Nida. I grew up in the Philippines during the great war of my time. I had a loving father who adored me. He was my protector and teacher. He was my rock, my hero, my father. He made me feel safe and he shaped me into the person I am today. Without his love and teachings of what is right, I strongly bel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glasslink Solutions
• Release date: Oct 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088083505

Book preview

Chapter 1

I love family reunions. I look forward to them every year. I think it’s because I love being surrounded by family the laughter and chaos that only the closeness of a family can produce. Filling the house with echoes of my children, and now with my children’s children, as they energetically scamper from room to room producing piercing screams and laughter as they play. My heart fills with happiness and delight as I sit back and watch silently, soaking in the blessings God has bestowed on me.

But at night, as I sit at my dining room table drinking my hot tea and when all the little ones are down in a deep sleep, exhausted from the long day of play, and the house becomes still and quiet, my mind takes me back to the horrible days of my past. I try to shake the feeling and desperately try to focus on what I have today. My lovely home, my family, and my loving husband – but it’s part of me, and it has made me the strong, confident woman I am today. I ultimately give in and relive the pain of my own childhood.

My name is Leonida, but people just call me Nida. I grew up in the Philippines during the great war of my time. I had a loving father who adored me. He was my protector and teacher. He was my rock, my hero, my father. He made me feel safe and he shaped me into the person I am today. Without his love and teachings of what is right, I strongly believe that I wouldn’t have what I have today. I may be overstating him a bit: my last memory of him was when I was only four years old, yet even at the young of an age, he captivated my imagination with his stories. I remember walking with him when I was even younger. I guess my earliest memory was from when I was as young as two years old. He was my inspiration and my hope, and he was taken from me when I was just four years old. I watched with tears in my eyes as he was killed at the hands of the Japanese for safeguarding some Americans by hiding them in a cave. I will never forget his last words to me. Be strong, Nida, I love you.

I often wonder what my life would have been like if my father had been around. But since he was no longer around, he left me with his lessons that I have carried with me and that gave me the inner strength it would take to survive. I did the best I could with what I had and with every opportunity that came my way, even when I was sold to another family so my mother could buy medicine.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me take you back to the earliest childhood memory I have of my father.

Growing up in the province of Pampanga, just outside the city of Porac, we didn’t have a lot of money. We lived in a small hut in a small village just south of the province. Like many families back then, we made do with what we had and struggled just to get by like everyone else at that time. My father was in the Philippine Army, and he would be gone for weeks at a time, sometimes months at a time. But I always knew when he returned home because I would awake to a bunch of grapes on my pillow. I would smile as I awoke and whisper, Daddy’s home.

I had several brothers and sisters, but I was the baby and the only one who really captured my father’s affection. Every time he would come home, I would see the grapes on my pillow, and I would be the only one to get them. I learned to share with my siblings rather quickly at such a young age, which dissipated any envy and helped make my brothers and sisters look after me. I guess I was two years old when my father started leaving grapes on my pillow.

It was so nice to have my father home since he was away so much. We would take walks out along the dirt road of my village, and everyone would wave and yell welcome home to him as we walked. Some would even stop what they were doing in the rice paddies or fields just to came up and say hello to us.

He would often tell me stories about his time away with his troops and the training they had gone through that month, but I didn’t understand a lot of it back then and just looked up at him with a big smile across my face as we walked hand in hand down the road toward the market.

I remember he would always ask me, What would you do? during our conversations about trivial matters. To him, it was important, so I would think hard and come up with a story on how I would deal with the subject at hand. He would listen to me intently as I would tell him how I would tell the person who said something bad about me that it wasn’t a very nice thing to say, especially when what he said was wrong, and next time he should just ask me and I would tell him what the truth was. He would say, That’s very good, Nida, you’re a smart little girl.

Once we arrived at the market, my dad would haggle with the vendors until he walked away and they would yell at him to come back and he could pay the price he originally suggested. Sometimes he would go back and buy the item, but other times, as he walked away, he would say, "You had your chance. I will get it somewhere else.’

I do remember this one time in particular that he walked away. The vendor followed him and kept lowering his price until my father turned and said, Fine, I will take all you have. The biggest smile you would have ever seen crossed the vendor’s face as he raced back to grab his merchandise for my father. I guess you could say he loved to haggle.

But even with our trip to the markets, a lesson was to be learned. He would tell me, Don’t let anyone ever sell you on something that you don’t really want or need, and never buy something just because you can.

Chapter 2

A few months later, the Japanese invaded the Philippine islands and made their way toward my village in a matter of a few days. My father had already left to go back to his unit a few weeks before the Japanese came and was gone until the day before they arrived at my village. It was a scary time for everyone. The Japanese would kill people indiscriminately for hiding when they arrived or even entire families for coming out with their hands in the air. Some people they would leave alone as they made their way to my village while slaughtering others for reasons only, they understood.

Like I said, my father returned home the day before the Japanese arrived at my village, but something was wrong. I awoke to the sound of his voice but when I looked on my pillow, there were no grapes. My brothers and sisters were already awake and out in