Florence Finch

Florence Ebersole Smith Finch (October 11, 1915 – December 8, 2016) was a Filipino-American member of the World War II resistance against the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.

Life Finch was born Loring May Ebersole on October 11, 1915, in Santiago, Isabela, the Philippine Islands, when the country was under American colonial rule. Her father was American and her mother was Filipina. How Ebersole's given name, usually masculine and thus unusual for women at that time, was changed to Florence remained unknown.

Prior to the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, Finch was working at the G-2 (Intelligence) Headquarters of the U. S. Army in Manila. There she met her husband, an American sailor named Charles Smith, who would be killed in action in the Philippines in 1942.

At the start of the occupation, she managed to suppress her American heritage and to secure a job at the Philippine Liquid Fuel Distributing Union, which was controlled by the occupying Japanese forces.

In 1944, she was discovered as having worked in the resistance and was arrested, tortured, tried and sentenced to three years of imprisonment.

She died on December 8, 2016, in Ithaca, New York. Finch was given a military funeral with full honors in April 2017.