Ten hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Manila.
I'm posting the first chapter of my novel, When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, which is about the coming of age of a young girl in the Philippines during World War II. The World War II pictures are courtesy of Wikipedia.
Excerpt from Cecilia Brainard's When the Rainbow Goddess Wept:
Mother Ignacia, fourth-grade teacher at Santa Teresa's
School, made us pray for peace, and she kept our souls clean by taking us to weekly confession and communion.
“If war should
catch you with mortal sins in your souls, you will end up condemned, with chains,
and you will roam the earth for all eternity,”
she warned.
It was a scary thought:
I, Yvonne Macaraig, entangled with heavy chains, barred from heaven, barred
even from purgatory, destined only to drag myself and the chains, and scare
people away. There was a condemned soul
who frightened the people in the house down the street from where we
lived. He had borrowed fifty pesos and never paid it back, that's why his soul
was not at peace.
To prepare us for
the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Mother Ignacia talked about the Virgin
Mary. “She did not have a speck of venial sin,” Mother Ignacia said. “She was
spotless, perfect. She did not commit
concupiscence. Does anyone here know the meaning of the word concupiscence?”
