Peter Clifton Richards OBE (1909-1992)

*The Liberation Bulletin* produced by Peter & Dolly Richards using a Gestetner duplicator, 3 February 1945.

Peter Clifton Richards (1909-1992), civilian internee at the Santo Tomás Internment Camp, Reuters’ correspondent in Manila, awarded the OBE for services to Anglo-Philippine relations.

Peter Richards was born on 25 September 1909 in Streatham, Surrey, his mother Elsie Richards (née Stainton) having returned to England from Grand-Bassam on the Ivory Coast where his father, Herbert Arthur Richards CBE (1866-1956), was British Vice-Consul.

Peter’s father had a distinguished career in the HM Consular Service, serving firstly in Tehran and Bushire, then as Vice-Consul at Grand-Bassam, followed by postings as Consul and Deputy Commissioner for the South Pacific, Consul at Callao in Peru, and Consul-General in Chicago, USA. His father’s postings meant that before the age of five Peter had circled the globe.

At the suggestion of Old Shirburnian John Bowater Vernon (Abbey House 1899-1900) , then acting Vice-Consul at Dunkirk, Peter was sent firstly in 1919 to Sherborne Preparatory School, and in September 1923 he joined Sherborne School (Abbey House) where he remained until July 1927. Unfortunately, being an unsporty boy in what was then a very sporty house, Peter did not enjoy his time at Sherborne, although he later acknowledged that the ‘toughening up’ he experienced there had helped him cope with the privations he suffered as a civilian internee during the Second World War.

On leaving Sheborne Peter joined the Anglo-South American Bank with whom he remained until 1935 when he joined the sales team of D. Gestetner Ltd., manufacturers of duplicating machines, which took him to Singapore and then to Manila. While in Manila Peter met and married Dolores (‘Dolly’) Opisso (1908-1988), daughter of Judge Antonio Opisso of Manila. Their wedding was attended by the British Consul in Manila, Peter Scott Stephens (Lyon 1924-29), who had been a contemporary of Peter’s at Sherborne.

On 7 December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the United States naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, bringing the United States into the Second World War. The following day the Japanese attacked the Philippines and advanced towards Manila, which they entered on 2 January 1942, taking over the Dominican University of Santo Tomás as an interment camp for ‘enemy civilians’, the largest of several internment camps in the Philippines. Amongst those interned at the Santo Tomás Internment Camp were Peter and Dolly Richards and, seemingly unknown to each other, former Sherborne Girls’ pupil Grace Ferguson (née Maxwell) (Dun Holme 1925-29) and her family.

Following the camp’s liberation on 3 February 1945, Grace’s account of life in the camp was published in the Girls’ School magazine in December 1945:

This photograph shows camp garden and the shanties built by the internees around the Engineering building at the Santo Tomás Internment Camp, c.1945. Attribution: U.S. Army/Public domain. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

‘I feel as if I’ve been buried and come to life again!… The first year was hard as it was terribly uncomfortable as we were not yet toughened. Dreadfully crowded living conditions, poor sanitation and no privacy anywhere at any time. The second year food deteriorated from poor to bad and we were all very depressed as one could see no end to it. However, we were able to build a wee hut of bamboo and palms, fourteen feet square, where we ate, did our laundry, etc. At the end of that year the camp was so crowded they had to let us live in our shanties to make room in the building for other internees they brought in… In it my husband, Alison now 8 and Hilarie 6, and I slept, ate, cooked and generally lived. At the beginning of the third year… they stopped all entry of food from outside and restarted systematic starvation. From February 1st, 1944, to February 16th, 1945, we saw no fresh meat, eggs, fruit or milk. We had a few camp grown vegetables.

In 1943, we got a Red Cross parcel each and, as we decided that the war could not possible finish for us until the end of 1944, we saved that and that alone kept us alive.. Many people died and many who got through now have T.B. Our food for the last six months consisted of what the Japs gave us – one tea cup of raw rice a day for four, one teaspoon of sugar a day, and one of fat every three days, a little salt each month, and what we provided ourselves, one 12 oz tin of corned beef, two 2 ½ oz tins of potted meat and one 2 ½ oz tin of butter per week for four of us from our Red Cross parcel, and any weeds or roots we could get in the garden. On this diet supplemented by vitamin pills we had to do all our own work, attend roll call to bow to the Japs twice a day, stand in queues etc. We used to dream of food nearly every night, and talk of it all day. One was really crazy on the subject…

We could hardly believe it was true when the [American] tanks drove through the walls and came into camp. Other American Forces were still twenty miles away. [General Douglas] MacArthur had got word from his Intelligence telling of Jap plans to kill all the men in the camp and hold the women and children as hostages. As a result a small force came right through and took the camp as a complete surprise to the Japs holding the rest of the town. Whether this story is reliable I have no actual proof, but am told it is quite true. We had a nasty patch after that when the Japs spasmodically shelled the camp and a good many people were killed or hurt. After the Americans came in strength we got wonderful food.

Manila was pretty well flattened by bombing and shelling and no place for women and children to live, so I have come home with the children and my husband has stayed behind to build up his business again. As far as I know I was the only Sherborne girl in Saint Tomas. Daphne Harrison was in the camp at the hill station from Manila…’

Internees at the Santo Tomás Internment Camp who were liberated in February 1945. Attribution: Unknown author/Public domain. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

The internees were a diverse group. Grace Ferguson’s husband, Robert Orr Ferguson, was a chartered accountant, and Peter Richards had been working in sales. The pupils and teachers of the International School were also interned at the camp, as well as teachers and professors from other schools and universities. With the permission of the Japanese, the school was immediately reorganised and internees were recruited to assist with the teaching. Peter Richards, who was a good linguist but had no teaching experience, was engaged to teach beginners Spanish. Peter was also in charge of the camp’s Gestetner duplicator on which he had to produce all the camp orders, regulations and forms, and which was kept on the Commandant’s desk to ensure he did not print any anti-Japanese propaganda. Using the duplicator Peter ingeniously produced a guide to Spanish grammar for the use of his students. He later described the process:

‘I had no problems with the grammar. I had had twelve years of French, ten of Latin, eight of Greek, and within the decade I had learnt to make Spanish my major working language, with Flemish and Catalan as side dishes. Now the mechanics of production gave me no difficulties. I had trained in Gestetner’s factory and had sold Gestetners successfully all over East Anglia, Devon, Cornwall, Malaya, Singapore and the Philippine Islands. I did my own typing and designed my own layouts. Nobody knew better how the work had to be done in order to produce the perfect booklet. The resulting booklet (paper unintentionally with the compliments of the Japanese and of the University, stencils with the compliments of the Gestetner Office which was still operating in Manila as the property of Ludwig Sternberg, an Austrian refugee) was all my own work, including the cover drawing.’

It was using this duplicator that on the 3rd February 1945, while the Americans were liberating the camp, that Peter and his wife Dolly produced 2,500 copies of ‘The Liberation Bulletin’. However, weakened by starvation, the task of winding the handle of the duplicator was hard work and they could manage only 50 turns of the handle each before resting at the window from which they watched the exchange of fire between a machine gun in the upper floor of the neighbouring Education Building and the tank parked just outside the window. The ‘Bulletin’ included a history of the camp from its opening on 4 January 1942 right up until its liberation at 9 pm on 3 February 1945. It also included the number of deaths in the camp; the daily energy values of food supplied to internees from February to December 1944; weight of vegetables produced by the camp garden during 1944; the average adult weight loss; the number of sanitary facilities available in the camp; the number of internees by nationality per camp; the price of commodities in the camp on 31 December 1944; and a plan of the camp. Read ‘The Liberation Bulletin’.

Peter and Dolly left Manila on the repatriation ship on 14 April 1945, arriving in Liverpool on the RMS Scythia on 25 May 1945. Also on board the RMS Scythia were Grace Ferguson and her two young daughters.

In August 1945, Peter joined Reuters News Agency and in July 1947 he and Dolly returned to Manila when Peter was Reuters’ Manila correspondent. In 1976 Peter was awarded the OBE for services to Anglo-Philippine relations.

Peter Richards (wearing his OS tie) with the staff of the *Manila Chronicle* in 1955.

With grateful thanks to Dorothy Goldsack, Archivist at Sherborne Girls’, for providing me with Grace Ferguson’s account from the Girls’ School magazine.

Rachel Hassall
School Archivist

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