The road back

the long version

Born and reared in Shanghai, Dorothy Davis Thompson was the daughter of an American businessman and granddaughter of missionaries. In 1937, she left Shanghai to attend nursing school at Columbia University in New York. Shortly thereafter, the Japanese invaded China, and her family fled to the Philippines. Graduating from Columbia, she rejoined her family in Manila. Manila fell to the Japanese New Year's Day 1942, Thompson and her family were taken prisoners and interned in nearby Santo Tomas. There they struggled to survive and to cope with ever-mounting concerns for missing friends and other loved ones, including Thompson's fiance, a captured Philippine Scout officer. Putting her nursing skills to the test, Thompson managed to establish a hospital in the camp. Yet twenty-two months later, she herself was ill enough to be released with her mother in a prisoner exchange. Recovering in the United States, Thompson was determined to see her family reunited. With few resources beyond her own tenacity, Thompson began her most dramatic journey yet, the return to Santo Tomas for the liberation of the camp.