CLARK — Growing up, Theresa Loong knew her father had a story to tell. The clues were stacked in bookshelves filled with World War II literature, frozen in the faces of black-and-white photographs and permanently etched in the long, narrow scar on her father's back.

When she was a child, he only allowed so much about his past.

"That’s from when daddy got burned," was the only explanation she ever heard when she asked about the scar.

But everything changed one summer day about a decade ago when Paul Loong took out a tiny book of yellowed pages — his secret diary from when he was a prisoner of war in Japan — and started to share with his daughter his story of survival.

"I was reluctant. Those things were very unpleasant," Loong said, sitting at the dining room table in his home in Clark. "What the Japanese did to us, it wasn’t something you tell your family."

Little by little, Theresa Loong compiled her father’s story, starting with his three long years as a POW during World War II to his service in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and his struggle to get U.S. citizenship.

The result is her documentary, "Every Day is a Holiday," airing on PBS at 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. tomorrow in conjunction with Memorial Day and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

Loong’s film is interspersed with excerpts from her father’s diary, archival war footage and intimate conversations between father and daughter.

"When my dad talks about the past, there’s certain times when his eyes go far away. It’s almost like he’s reliving the moment," Loong said.

"Nov. 22, 1944. Get out alive and I shall have all the good things in life to enjoy."

At 88, Loong is a sharp, vivacious man quick with a joke and donning an infectious smile. His jovial, energetic attitude, he says, comes from the misery he experienced as a prisoner of war. Loong made a promise to himself 66 years ago as a malnourished, 80-pound prisoner working in the mines:

"Every day will be a holiday after this nightmare."

Loong, who worked as a rehabilitative doctor at the East Orange Veteran’s Administration, is of Chinese descent and grew up in Malaysia. He was serving in the British Royal Air Force 153rd Maintenance Unit in Kuala Lumpur when he was captured.

He was imprisoned on March 8, 1942 — "some dates you don’t forget," he says with a far-off look — and sent to the Mitsushima prison camp.

There were constant beatings, intense hunger and vicious fights that would break out among prisoners over a grain of rice or cigarette butt flicked their way by a prison guard looking for a show. But Loong said the worst part was not knowing what was going on in the outside world.

"We were told the Japanese were winning and that the war could go on for 100 years," he said. "‘I thought ‘Oh, my God. I’m going to die a slave of the Japanese.’"

In 1944, he was moved to a second prison camp, Hitachi, this time to work at a copper mine. There in the fragile caves which looked perpetually on the brink of collapse, Loong gathered scraps of paper to write down his experiences in the camp where, he estimates, one in five men died.

"March 18, 1945. Three years as a prisoner of war. Work. Sleep. Work. Sleep. Work, work, and more work. I hope freedom comes before my 22nd birthday."

Freedom came Sept. 2, 1945, nine days before Loong’s 22nd birthday. His face brightens into a wide smile as he recalls the sound of the B-29s dropping supplies to the frail prisoners below. He still has the Hershey bar wrapper that glided down in one of the care packages. The instructions read: To be eaten slowly in about half-an-hour. "I gobbled it up," Loong says.

"February 23, 1945. My faith is still burning brightly. Thanks be to god who will pull me through."

On the tails of his freedom, Loong sailed to the United States on a student visa. When it expired, he went to work as a merchant seamen on a U.S. ship, with a promise that after five years he’d qualify for U.S. citizenship. But, instead, he was denied and detained at Ellis Island.

"Most people come into Ellis Island to start a new life in the United States, my dad was held there," Theresa Loong said.

Determined to stay in the country he’d come to love, Loong served three years during the Korean War as a tank driver and gunner with the 25th Division. Despite his service, and honorable discharge, he was told when he returned home to the Bronx that he would be deported. So Loong drove to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1953 and knocked on the doors of congressmen.

Finally, Republican Rep. James Auchincloss, who represented part of Monmouth County, wrote legislation to arrange Loong’s stay in the U.S. He became a citizen in 1956.

Today, Loong has a rich life with his wife and two grown children. He is intensely patriotic, departing from his polite manner only when someone speaks ill of the United States. His home in Clark holds 35 years of memories, including a lamp with a prosthetic leg base. It’s a retirement gift from the East Orange VA where he worked as a doctor in rehabilitative medicine, treating many World War II veterans. He said he felt he owed them a debt of gratitude for saving him from the prison camps.

For his daughter, the documentary illustrates how her father held on to his desires and dreams in the most hopeless of situations. It’s also a challenge to others to ask questions.

"We don’t always spend the time or take the time to talk to people, whether they’re in our family or not. Whether it’s an immigration story or a war story, it’s important to have that exchange," Theresa Loong said. "It’s important to listen."

Loong summed up his reason for talking after all these years.

"When I think of the horrible things the Japanese would do: harassment, harassment, harassment, every day. Bang, bang, bang, every morning. Get up, rush to get food, double time, roll call. Beatings, beatings, beatings. Now," he says, pausing to lean back in his chair as a peaceful smile descends on his face. "Isn’t this a holiday?"