Captured: The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines, 1941-1945

6. Hunger Time: April 1943–February 1945

Hunger Time April 1943-February 1945 The next eighteen months in camp saw several important benchmarks in terms of health and food. The Davao camp closed, and its internees moved to Santo Tomas, then to the newly established Los Banos camp; a typhoon hit in November 1943; and the first (and only) U.S. Red Cross food packages were distributed. The next year, 1944, as mentioned earlier , saw the end of outside food supplies (the package lines, the vendors); additionally, by December, the Baguio internees found themselves shipped out of their camp and into Bilibid Prison in Manila. During this last year a small but growing death rate hit both Santo Tomas and Los Banos asstarvation rations increasingly became the rule and health, the exception. The rescue of 177 6 178 Captured internees in both camps and in Bilibid Prison during February 1945 came not a moment too soon, for those internees were reduced to eating foliage. Back in the latter half of 1943, however, no one expected the situation ever to become so severe. Certainly, camp life still continued much the same in May and June, though prices for produce and camp supplies in Santo Tomas and Baguio were climbing and the food on the Line was decreasing slowly in amount and nutritive value. Sometimes a view from outside the camps, or by those just entering, can provide an interesting perspective. Doris Rubens, a former journalistand English teacher, and her novelisthusband entered Santo Tomas in late April 1943, after being captured in the mountains of northern Luzon where they had been hiding since the outbreak ofthe war.Accustomed in the last months to living almost entirely on wild fruit and the occasional haunch of game delivered by sympathetic mountain natives, the Rubenses' reaction to camp amenities and food is particularly vivid, especially if the latter had been supplemented. To the Rubenses, after approximately one and a half years spent in leaky bamboo and sawali-sided huts, Santo Tomas appeared to be the land of plenty and comfort. After a hot shower, some clean used clothes, and shoes, the Rubenses sat down to a meal provided out of private (not camp) funds by their friends, the Jenkses. Mrs. Jenks treated the couple to breakfast in the internee "restaurant/' where, for ¥ 1.40, they were served hot cakes and syrup, scrambled eggs, and fresh coffee and cigarettes (Rubens, 208-209). Such things were possible for those with money in 1943 before the Package Line closed and vendors and restaurantswere outlawed. The regular chow line meal, to which the Rubenses soon became accustomed , provided corn mush for breakfast and rice and mung beans for dinner, with an occasional banana for dessert (Rubens, 209). The couple soon began using the chow line and buying extra food whenever possible (once they were able to float loans with other internees). The Rubenses were not only given a solid breakfast their first day in Santo Tomas, but they were treated medically as well—this time by the camp clinic. Once again, Doris Rubens s account gives us a midwar look into standard camp medical practices at this largest internment camp. The day the Rubenses arrived, they were treated almost immediately for festering cuts and tropical ulcers, as well as given standard shots for cholera, typhoid, and dysentery . They were also, embarrassingly,de-wormed (Rubens, 221). According to the 1956 HEW Report, almost every one of the prisoners had intestinal parasites of one kind or another from late 1942 until release. Constant deworming seems to have gone on whenever possible in Santo Tomas and also in Los Banos, because even purgatives, while effective in ridding the body of worms, could not prevent reinfection. Regarding both ascaris Hunger Time 179 and another, less frequent, worm, strongyhides, Blacklock and Southwell, two wartime experts on nematodes, explain that while "boiling water renders [them] innocuous" and prevents parasites, "it is not only by drinking water that the risk isrun." In water the parasite larvae can directly penetrate the skin; they suggest, therefore, that both bath and domestic wash water be boiled as well for safety's sake —a precaution the internees did not seem to know about or practice (229-230). Obviously, at every stage, from eating raw talnium greens and private garden produce, to using untreated and second- or thirdhand wash water (a practice Carlson describes earlier in Cebu), to walking barefoot, internees continued to become repeatedly reinfected...