Texas A & M University Press

At 85 years of age, reflecting on his experiences in the Pacific Theater in World War II, former US Army cavalry soldier Warren E. Murtha said, “The proudest moment of my life occurred when I went through the gate at Santo Tomas in Manila and I saw the faces of the prisoners—the men, women, and children—their smiles, their expressions of relief and gratitude. . . . Suddenly I knew why we were on this mission . . . I thought to myself . . . all of it had been worthwhile in return for this one moment.” During World War II, the Japanese government held over 130,000 “enemy alien” civilians throughout the Pacific—including nearly 78,000 women and children. Most of the 7,800 civilians rounded up in the Philippines were American expatriates, and at any one time, about half of these were held at the campus of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. By late 1944, Washington, DC, was concerned that any ground gained as the US Army approached Manila in the early days of the new year would result in execution of the prisoners. Out of other options, a risky behind-the-lines attack was launched with 20,000 Japanese soldiers and 100 miles standing between the captives and their liberators. Until now, no book has effectively blended the story of the internees with the military operation to free them. Discussing uncomfortable topics such as racism, collaboration with the enemy, and illicit personal relationships, Sixty-Six Hours to Manila: Survival and Liberation at Santo Tomas, 1942–1945 shines new light on what has largely been a neglected chapter in the story of World War II in the Pacific.

Characterizing San Antonio’s five Spanish colonial–era missions as “sites of memory,” author and historian Joel Daniel Kitchens explores how and why Spain built the missions, what happened to the missions after the Spanish colonizers left, and how and why the missions came to weigh so heavily in American imagination and identity, even into the twenty-first century. While the Alamo figures prominently in these discussions, nonetheless all five missions collectively are an enduring and deeply rooted part of the city’s cultural legacy, as recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2015. This careful study aims to tease out the means and process by which the missions of San Antonio came to represent much more than the original religious and educational functions that began three centuries ago at what was then a remote site on the Spanish colonial frontier. Incorporating deep research into Spanish Colonial documents, census data, travel narratives, advertisements by railroad companies, tourist guides, and even the buildings themselves, San Antonio and Its Missions: Three Centuries of History, Memory, and Heritage adds nuanced layers of understanding to the ways in which these buildings and the stories they embody continue to contribute to cultural and historical memory.

Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest in the nation. It has long been regarded as the “Energy Capital of the World.” Trademarked boasts frequently refer to the “world’s busiest commercial seaport,” “world’s biggest medical complex,” and “world’s control center for space exploration.” Houston has been home to some of the most politically powerful people in the world, some of the most influential businesspeople, and some of the most dazzling social figures. In The Rise of Houston as Global City, Geoffrey Scott Connor follows the ascent of Houston from its founding by the Allen Brothers in 1836 as a fledging port to its growth into a global center of international trade. Such rapid expansion began in earnest when, in 1901, a hurricane devastated Galveston and the Spindletop oil gusher changed Houston’s fortune forever. The city absorbed much of Galveston’s international trade even as it developed into the world’s largest site for refineries and chemical plants. Connor also shows how local wealth and political power facilitated the establishment of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Hospital during World War II and its transformation into the world’s largest medical complex and a leading center of advanced medicine. The continually expanding Texas Medical Center treated the world’s elite while also developing new medical technologies for the general public. Having thus established itself as a center of technology, Houston again used its wealth and power to draw the Manned Spaceflight Center to the city in 1961. Space science depended on and attracted massive private sector investment, setting the stage for yet another technological expansion in the age of computing. The Rise of Houston as a Global City will contribute to the growing corpus of studies focused on the history of a major city that, especially in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, blends “boots and oil” with technology, innovation, and ambition.

The history of the Mexican Army’s activity in the Texas Revolution is well documented but often hidden away. Many important primary sources have been lost or destroyed, but an impressive amount of period documentation has survived. And yet many of these handwritten, Spanish documents have been shelved in the back rooms of museums and libraries long enough to have been forgotten. Various archives are scattered in locations across Spain, Mexico, and the United States, with very few documents having been translated into English until now. Little can be found in Texan sources that addresses the actions, motivations, and opinions of the Mexican participants in the Texas Revolution. What does exist in Texan accounts was either added in passing or, worse, grossly fabricated. In short, the Texan side of the story has been told, and often at the expense of the perspective of Mexican participants. Author Gregg J. Dimmick makes available this new perspective, including a consideration of the many external forces affecting the Mexican government and its military leaders. At the same time Texans were fighting for independence, Mexican officials faced revolts across several states, battled each other for political control, responded to Spain’s attempts to reacquire Mexico, and contended with numerous foreign powers, including the United States and Britain. In Santa Anna’s Army in the Texas Revolution, 1835 Dimmick sheds new light on the complex motivations of the Mexican Army facing the Texas Revolution.

K. L. (Kearie Lee) Berry was a star athlete at the University of Texas at Austin from 1912 to 1916, playing on the undefeated national championship football team of 1914. Upon graduation, he began his military career with postings along the Mexican border. Berry served as an officer and advisor overseas, including an assignment in Siberia just after the Bolshevik Revolution, where he was a member of the 27th Infantry “Wolfhounds” of the American Expeditionary Force. Prior to and during World War II, he was stationed in China and the Philippines, where he was captured by the Japanese army on Bataan in 1942. He survived the infamous Bataan Death March and was incarcerated in various POW camps over a period of forty months until his liberation in August 1945. Upon returning to his home state, Berry was promoted to brigadier general, serving one more year as an active-duty officer before retiring in 1947. He didn’t stay retired for long; five days later, Berry was appointed as Adjutant General of the Texas Military Department, a post he held for fourteen years. Upon his “second retirement” in 1961, he served as president of the University of Texas’s Forty Acres Club (now Forty Acres Society). He remained active with various alumni activities of the University of Texas until his death in 1965. Dana Berry Frazee, granddaughter of Lieutenant General Berry, has prepared this biography with the aid of her grandfather’s POW journal and considerable outside research. What unfolds in the pages of Beyond the Bataan Death March:The Life and Times of K. L. Berry is a story of honor, courage, and dedicated service over a lifetime and often under the most difficult of conditions.

No other Vietnamese family in modern time had such an intense involvement in high politics and public affairs as the Ngô-?inhs. Through the tenure of President Ngô-?inh D? of the Republic of Vietnam (1955–1963), this family helped shape Vietnamese history in numerous ways. President D? ’s rule in South Vietnam was perceived by many to be authoritarian and nepotistic, but it is important for historians in general and for anyone interested in Vietnamese history in particular to learn more about his family members who played such important roles in his government. How did they see themselves, their country, and their compatriots? How did each member of the family think of others? How did they view the family’s role in history? Sixty years after the death Ngô-?inh Nhu, English-language readers can now learn about Madame Ngô-?inh Nhu’s life from her own words and recollections. Of all the Ngô-?inhs, Madame Ngô-?inh Nhu (T? L? Xuân) was perhaps the most controversial figure. In this posthumous memoir translated from French, Madame Nhu narrates important events in her life, from her childhood to her marriage to Mr. Nhu, from her time in Hu? during the Franco-Vietnamese war to the happy years of the D? government, and from her forced exile to the last days of her life. A complex individual and a strong-willed woman who refused to accept the terrible hands fate dealt her, Madame Nhu bared her pains, lamented the plight of Vietnam, and railed against the foreign powers that meddled in Vietnamese affairs. In an essay accompanying their mother’s narrative in The White Pebble, the late Ngô-?inh L? Quyen and Ngô-?inh Q? h (along with Jacqueline Willemetz) join their mother to defend the integrity of the D? government and the Ngô-?inh family against their critics. By telling the family’s history alongside that of the Vietnamese nation, Ngô-?inh Nhu’s children wanted to demonstrate the sincerity and depth of patriotism in the family. This book not only provides a unique account of Madame Nhu and the Ngô-?inh family by its members but also illuminates politics in Republican Vietnam and its troubled relationship with the United States.