Floyd Olin Smith

In 1915, government leaders set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, some 1.5 million Armenians in the region of Anatolia (roughly equivalent to the area of present-day Turkey) were dead, many of them victims in the course of being forcibly expelled from their homes and marched into the desert. Despite the steadfast denial by the Republic of Turkey (the successor to the Ottoman Empire) of the nature and scope of the campaign against the Armenians, most historians call this event a genocide: a premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire group as such.

After being expelled from the Ottoman Empire, Floyd Smith volunteered to work for the Red Cross and briefly cared for Russian and Turkish soldiers in 1916. He was then sent by the Red Cross to the Philippines in the 1918. The Smiths settles in Cagayon de Oro. In 1922, Smith founded a 50-bed hospital. 

Bessie died during the birth of her fifth child in the Southern Philippines at the end of 1924. Smith officially served with the Red Cross until 1927, then ran his own private medical practice. He then worked for the Insular Lumber Company as in industrial doctor and worked around the country. 

During World War II, he fled to the mountains on the island of Negros with a number of his Filipino friends, but they were captured and imprisoned by the Japanese for over three years in various internment camps, including Negros, Bacolod, Los Baños and Santo Tomas. 

The Santo Tomas camp housed more than 4,000 internees from January 1942 until February 1945. During his time at Santo Tomas, Smith provided medical treatment to prisoners and saved the lives of dozens of internees, many of whom were starved. In January 1945, it was reported that the average loss of weight among male internees during the three years at Santo Tomas had been 53 pounds, or 32.5 percent of average body weight (Forty percent loss of normal body weight will usually result in death). American forces liberated the camp in February 1945.

1885 Born in Rowley, Iowa

1914 Arrives in Dyarbakir, Ottoman Empire

1915 (May) Begins treating wounded Armenians; (summer) expelled from the Ottoman Empire

1918 Sent by the Red Cross to work in the Philippines

1924 Wife Bessie Smith dies in childbirth; later marries Anna Isabel Fox, a teacher

1942-45 Captured by Japanese forces and interned in POW camps

1961 Dies in Felton, California

Aghjayan, George.  “Portrait of Bravery: The Life and Times of Dr. Floyd Smith. The Armenian Weekly, April 29, 2014.  Retrieved 7 January 2017 from:  http://armenianweekly.com/2014/04/28/smith/

Riggs, Henry Harrison. Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal Experiences in Harpoot, 1915-1917. Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1997.