Internees Arriving in Santo Tomás, 1942
Carl Mydans had photographed some of the hardest years of the Depression for the Farm Security Administration before becoming a LIFE magazine photographer.
Then the photographer became part of the story.
Captured by the Japanese in Manila in 1942, Mydans and his wife, Shelley, spent more than a year in civilian internment camps before being released in a prisoner exchange.
In February 1945, Mydans returned to Manila with the advancing American forces. He went back through the gates of Santo Tomás—the camp where he had once been a prisoner.
Inside, amid darkness, gunfire, confusion and thousands of desperate internees, Mydans finally identified himself.
For a moment there was silence.
Then came a woman’s voice:
“My God! It’s Carl Mydans!”
It is an extraordinary firsthand account of war, imprisonment, liberation—and a photographer suddenly finding himself inside the history he normally recorded.
Read the full story of Mydans’ return to Santo Tomás: My God! It’s Carl Mydans
