Pork Stew
It was probably in 1943, that somehow the Japs had been conned into giving us a
little pig to raise. Where the extra food came from to feed the pig is a question I
can't answer, because we had little enough for ourselves.
The plan was to feed him and butcher him at Christmas time and cook him for our
Christmas dinner. You can imaging how a little pig could feed about 2000 starving
prisoners!
The long-awaited meal finally arrived! I can remember looking down into a
glorious stew in my mess tin. It was about one inch deep, no lean meat, but bits of
rind with a few bristles, floating in a grayish, oily liquid.
I had saved some salt, and had carefully picked the balls of mud out of it. I fully
intended to enjoy this meal!
Well, I did enjoy it. Like everyone else, I sat on the edge of my bed in the hospital
ward and silently savoured the delicious stew. Then, like everyone else, I
scrubbed out my dish with sand and water, hung it up over my bed and went to
sleep.
During the night I awoke with an uneasy, urgent feeling. Before long I realized that
a system accustomed for so long to a diet of rice and greens, and not much else,
would react violently to a sudden dose of "fat" food.
I got to my feet, slipped on my wooden clogs and my old "khaki drill" jacket, and
set out with all muscles clenched.
The latrines were a good distance from our hut, past the morgue, past a sweet
potato patch, past the showers, and over by the sea wall.
There was a curfew in the camp, of course. No one was allowed outside after
dark, but the Jap quarter  guards recognized certain emergencies, and permitted
access to the latrines if necessary.
On this particular Christmas night it was dark: so dark that I couldn't see anything
when I stepped outside.  It was also cold. I would guess about forty degrees,
which is cold when all one has on is a fandochi and a cotton jacket.
The darkness didn't bother me. I knew the way to the latrine, about two hundred
fifty paces away, and knew I had to cross the floor of a burnt-out building. .Fifty
paces beyond the showers lay the object of my journey.
I had hardly taken ten steps when something cold and hard caught me across the
throat, accompanied with a loud "KURA"! Those Japs moved as silently as mice
on their rubber soled sneakers.
My clenched muscles faltered a little, but I recovered before much was lost, and
answered, "BENJO,BENJO, BIOKI".  Toilet, toilet, sick!
After a few more "kuras" from the guard, and  a few "benjo, benjo"s dommy,
dommy, bioki, from me, I was allowed to move on. I crossed the old cement floor
and headed for the potato patch, a little faster now, because I had lost precious
time with the guard, and my needs were becoming more urgent.
Suddenly my wooden clogs struck something unfamiliar, and I realized that  the
owner of the potatoes had chosen that day to dig them up.
My muscles failed me again, but again I was able to recover enough to make the
rest of the trip worthwhile. I decided that the best thing to do was to detour
around the potato patch, rather than to risk stumbling through the middle.
I went past the showers at a fast clip, and headed into the home stretch. Only
forty or fifty yards to go! By the time I reached the door of the latrine, I was
breathing a sigh of relief.
The Latrine
The latrine was a long narrow building, with about twelve or fifteen stalls, each
about three feet wide, on each side of an aisle that ran the full length. Each stall
had a supporting bar, and under the bar was placed the "honey bucket".
All of the stalls were not in use, and the practice was to remove the buckets daily,
dump them and wash them out, wash the floor and place the buckets on the other
side of the aisle.
The next day the latrine detail would reverse the process. The vacant stalls would
be barred off with a strand of barbed wire, leaving only the operating stalls open.
This arrangement was further complicated by the fact that not all of the stalls were
in use, only about six of them. Three or four stalls on each end of each side were
permanently barred off, so that only five or six on each side were in regular use.
In my anxiety, as I turned into the pitch-black interior of the latrine, I bolted
immediately for what I thought was the side in use for that day. I ran into  a strand
of barbed wire and realized my mistake, but not before suffering another minor
mishap in my fandochi.