interned benefactors with food and supplies. Several firsthand accounts about the details of camp life have been written over the years, but few of them discuss specifics concerning the experiences of the Jews in camp. We can only assume that the general state of affairs at the camp pertained to all. The Japanese left the camp members to their own designs to solve their housing, food, and sanitation problems. Most prisoners were interned for the full three years until the end of the war in 1945. While inmates at STIC battled malnutrition, disease, and exposure, residents of Manila tried to adapt to life under Japanese occupation. Houses and businesses were searched and seized without warning, providing lodging for the Japanese forces while making their owners jobless and homeless. Japanese penalties for violations of imposed civilian restrictions were both swift and brutal, administered through beatings, hangings, imprisonment, starvation, torture, and executions. In January 1943, anti-Semitic propaganda targeted the non-interned German Jews, as Japanese leaders began to be influenced by their Nazi allies. Rumors about forcing the German Jews into a ghetto began to circulate. This imminent danger to the German Jews was averted by the more influential leaders of the Jewish community, who negotiated with the Japanese leaders. While the Japanese could not be bothered with Nazi plans to establish a Jewish ghetto in the Philippines, they did not object to episodes of abuse randomly waged against members of the Jewish community by their own soldiers. The Japanese also used the synagogue and its adjacent hall to store ammunition, and they were totally destroyed in the war. Dozens of incidents of German Jews, along with other civilians suffering at the hands of the Japanese during these years of occupation, illustrate the horror of the time. Recognition of independence up to the present After the liberation of the Philippines from Japanese occupation by the U.S. and Philippine Commonwealth Armed Forces, the freed internees of STIC joined with the remaining refugees in Manila to try to rebuild their devastated community. Temple Emil and Bachrach Hall had been totally destroyed. All had been victimized by the Japanese occupying forces, which resulted in the death of 70 members of the Jewish community. The American military took steps to assist the Jewish community in its recovery. U.S. and Filipino soldiers provided not only food, water, supplies, and medicine for the victims, but also donated $15,000 for