The Northcotts were employed as “sick-bay strikers” working Bilibid’s makeshift hospital wards and receiving special instruction from doctors and pharmacy warrant officer in nursing, first aid, and administration. Despite suffering from tropical disease, malnutrition and lacking sufficient medical supplies and equipment, the personnel of this “hospital unit” continued to treat the sick and wounded, operating what was termed the “Bilibid Hospital for Military Prison Camps of the Philippine Islands.” Among Bilibid’s internees were physicians, dentists and hospital corpsmen who had once staffed the U.S. Throughout the Japanese occupation, Bilibid was used to process thousands of American, Filipino, Dutch, British, Australian and Kiwi prisoners to labor camps throughout the Philippines and Japan. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines in December 1941, the Northcotts helped scuttle the Vaga off Corregidor and joined a naval unit attached to the 4th Marine Regiment in defense of Corregidor until their own capture on May 6, 1942.Īlong with fellow defenders of Corregidor, the Northcotts were transferred to the Bilibid detention facility in the heart of Manila. Navy in January 1941 and were assigned to USS Vaga (YT-116), a tug used for patrolling the Filipino coastline from the Cavite Navy Yard to the island of Corregidor. Territory of the Philippines to a British-American father and a Filipino mother. They were born in what was still the U.S. 1918), Robert (b.1920) and Thomas (b.1921)-were three seamen apprentices-turned hospital corpsmen who miraculously survived a gauntlet of disease, torture and deprivation over their first years of naval service. The Northcott Brothers - Corpsmen and POWs:

Those stewards and mess attendants assigned to senior medical officers, hospitals and hospital ships in the first decades of the twentieth century represent the first Filipinos in Navy Medicine. Whether shipboard or ashore, stewards were typically engaged in the tedious and menial tasks of cleaning, cooking, preparing meals, and making beds. Navy as a young man was certainly a step up for my father even if the Filipino stewards, especially on shipboard deployment, were like glorified house boys,” said Mariano. She was born at Naval Station Sangley Point while her father was detailed as a steward to a flag officer. The trailblazing naval officer and White House physician was the daughter and niece of Navy stewards. This is a history that is personal for Rear Adm. With few exceptions most Filipinos were limited to the Navy’s steward branch through the 1960s. Navy-still entrenched in the country-established an agreement allowing Filipino nationals to enlist. Among those early Filipino pioneers were Teleforo Trinidad, the Navy’s first Filipino Medal of Honor recipient (1915) and David Nepomuceno, the first Filipino Olympian (1924).Īfter the Philippines gained its independence from the United States in 1946, the U.S. In 1901, President William McKinley issued an Executive Order permitting Filipinos to enlist in the Navy. The story of Filipinos in the Navy began in wake of the Spanish-American War after Spain ceded the Philippine Islands (P.I.) to the United States. Navy and have helped to shape Navy Medicine through their numerous contributions as leaders, healthcare providers, medical administrators, and scientists. The Voice space on Cooper Square will reportedly be taken over by Grace Church School, which recently renovated the adjacent 38-50 Cooper Square into a high school space.Filipino-Americans have long played vital roles in the U.S. Eventually Hartz departed the East Village and the spaces were taken over by other commercial tenants.

By the 1930s, this warren of interconnected buildings formed the home of the growing Hartz Mountain pet supply company – which had its beginnings when a German immigrant managed to sell 5,000 singing canaries to the nearby Wanamaker department store. Over its history, the structure was gradually connected internally with the buildings surrounding it at 32 Cooper Square, 419-421 Lafayette Street, and 38 Cooper Square. It was constructed with a cast-iron frame covered in sandstone and brick. The building on Cooper Square that the Voice is leaving was built as a warehouse in 1894 and is part of the landmarked NoHo Historic District. The Voice, a longtime fixture in our neighborhood, was founded in Greenwich Village in 1955, set up shop in Sheridan Square by the 1960s, and moved to its recent location on Cooper Square in 1991. The Villager reported today that the Village Voice has vacated its office at 36 Cooper Square and decamped 80 Maiden Lane far downtown.

The village its very voicey