The silent knitters of Camp Holmes

Teddy Tyson, married to James Tyson, a top executive at Singer Sewing Company, reluctantly knitted a pair of socks, but she pushed through and completed them anyway. She even managed to finish another pair that her friend Ora Robinson was also working on. Eventually, she gave these knitted socks to Herbie Zwick, who had asked her to make them two days prior.

That night, as Teddy knitted, she noticed other women silently working on their own projects. But none of them spoke about what they were making until the next day.

The following morning, at Camp Holmes roll call, chaos erupted when it was discovered that two men were missing and presumed to have escaped.

Teddy recounted, "So we knitted, a bunch of us, knitted those socks. But then the next morning at roll call two men had disappeared. And they were the men… one of them was the man I knitted the socks for. And just walking back, I said, ‘You know, I knitted a sock for Herbie. He just picked it up last night.'"

Teddy learned that the women in the camp had collectively knitted 32 pairs of socks for Herbie, who took them with him when he joined the guerrilla forces in the mountains.

"Not one woman had told the other woman what they were doing. So you see, we had been trained never to talk. Even among our best friends. I wouldn’t say a word for fear I’d get caught because you didn’t know who was your best friend. You’d think they were, but under pressure a person can do anything," Teddy reflected.

Herbert “Herbie” Zwick and Richard Green managed to escape Camp Holmes on April 4, 1944, to join Colonel Calvert's camp.

James Tyson recalled, “The Japanese were furious, and they told us we would have no meals that day, and we would all go and assemble—men and women—in one barracks and they would interrogate us. So they lectured us, and they talked to us, and through the camp interpreter they told us how good they had been to us and how we had abused their confidence….”

Some inmates, including Nora Ream Kuttner, whose cubicles were near the escapees', were taken to headquarters and mistreated.

Katherine Ream Sobeck believed the escape plan was clever but lamented that it led to the interrogation of many inmates by military police.

John Ream, after the war, interviewed Zwick himself, learning about the meticulous planning involved in the escape.

Natalie Crouter documented the brutal interrogation of several inmates, including Bill Moule, Gene, and Jim, by the Kempeitai. Rokuro Tomibe intervened to secure their return to the camp.

Meanwhile, the women's unawareness of the escape plan and the purpose of the socks likely spared them from punishment.

The 32 pairs of socks symbolized the camaraderie among the inmates, a bond that sustained them through the hardships of war and continued to bring them together in the years that followed, waxing nostalgic over their common pains and celebrating their shared joys.