Held captive by the Japanese during World War II, Florence Ebersole Smith Finch was tortured and forced to curl up in a 2-foot-by-4-foot box.
ALBANY, NEW YORK — Held captive by the Japanese during World War II, Florence Ebersole Smith Finch was tortured and forced to curl up in a 2-foot-by-4-foot box.
She endured by repeatedly telling herself: “I will survive.”
“And my goodness, she did, ” said her daughter, Betty Murphy, of Ithaca, New York, where Finch, a US Coast Guard veteran, will be buried on Saturday (Friday in Manila) with full military honors. She died Dec. 8 at age 101.
The burial ceremony will be a fitting tribute for the Philippines-born American who joined the US Coast Guard in the war’s final weeks after enduring months of cruelty at the hands of the Japanese.
After the war, Finch was awarded the Medal of Freedom, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors.
Finch was born in the Philippines in 1915 to an American military officer and his Filipino wife.
