rr

received from our guards were a few brooms
which were allotted to each section. No
disinfectants, vital to any sort of camp
cleanliness, were ever issued.

Cooking of our food was done by in-
ternees who volunteered for the task. On
their shoulders rested a great responsibility,
for contentment among the internees de-
pended greatly upon their ability to turn
the poor quality food into the semblance
of something eatable. These men who did
the cooking cannot be praised too highly
for the wonders they accomplished with
the material at their disposal. About a
hundred men were needed in the kitchen to
feed the thousand internees. They were
divided into shifts, and to feed everyone the

UNIFORMS are our very par.

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YOURS
will look like new
after we have
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pressed it.

E 7155

Victoria, B. C.

Office Phone: E 6213
Res. Phone E-8847 ALB-62-G

ISLAND BUILDING
SUPPLY CO.

HARRY BURNETT, Manager
BUILDERS’ SUPPLIES

518 Fort St. (Cor. Langley)
VICTORIA, B. C.

HAYWARD’S

B.C. FUNERAL

Co. LTD.
Established 1867

734 Broughton St. _—- Victoria, B. C.
Reginald Hayward, Managing Director

*

This Is Our 77th Year in Business in Victoria

_———————————S—S—

Harte-Andrews Paints
LIMITED
PAINT MANUFACTURERS AND
DECORATORS
WALLPAPERS
ESTIMATES FREE

Factory: 1302 Wharf St. Phone G 5822
Retail Store: 711 View St. Phone G 4713

VICTORIA, B. C,

Page Ten

kitchen was going twenty-four hours a
day. The kitchen equipment was pretty
sketchy to start with, but internees who
were fortunate to have some money gladly
surrendered it to buy additional utensils.

It was an amazing sight to see the way
the prisoners settled down and despite the
irksome monotony of being penned in over-
crowded, vermin-infested ramshackle build-
ings, we all got along pretty well. We had
to. Among us there were policemen, bank
presidents, sailors, millionaires, soldiers of
fortune—the whole motley atmosphere of
the Occidental side of Asia. Everybody
made the best of the situation, although to
many of them eventual release was a re-
mote possibility. In the back of our minds
at times was the thought of what our fate
might be when Japan proper was raided
by Allied planes.

We had only been in the camp a few
weeks when our first tragedy occurred; an
American-born *Russian, despondent over
the future, committed suicide by slashing
his throat with a kitchen knife which he
had sharpened for the occasion. People say
that only a coward commits suicide, but
when a man slashes his throat in three dif-
ferent places to accomplish this purpose it
makes you think.

To give us a little more room, the Jap-
anese at length made a concession. A small
Chinese village near the camp had been
utterly demolished in the Sino-Japanese
hostilities. The Japs surrounded this ruined
area with barbed wire and posted guards at
intervals. Then they told us we could go in
and clear it up and use it for a recreation
space. The job looked impossible, but we
started in with a will and a hundred men
working for three months with improvised
tools finally managed to clear a space for a
football field and baseball diamond. “After
being confined in such cramped quarters
the additional freedom was a godsend. We
could also now observe a little more outside
life for we could see people walking on the
roadway. Some farsighted person had
brought in a few vegetable seeds with him
and soon small gardens were flourishing.
These fresh vegetables were a welcome
change in our diet.

With the approach of summer we began
to notice a gradual change in our appear-
ance. Everyone began to lose weight, some
at an alarming rate despite the fact that
our bread ration had been increased to an
extra eight ounces every other day. We
were always hungry. And the bread was
now so poor in quality that a good many
had difficulty in digesting it. Some thought
they could save their bread to augment the
next day’s ration but were often disap-
pointed to find it covered with green mold
when it was only a day old. All kinds of
methods were tried to keep the bread in a
fresh state. Sometimes toasting helped, but
on one occasion a quantity of bread being
toasted simply melted on the stove. The
quality of the meat was getting worse and
as there were no facilities for keeping it, it
had to be cooked as soon as possible. We
thought it curious that for some weeks no
fish had been brought into the camp and as

fish was considerably cheaper than meat
we couldn’t understand why the Japs should
be so big hearted. We got the answer one
day from a Chinese coolie who brought food
to the camp. The Chinese fishermen were
refusing to go out fishing any more on ac
count of the number of Jap ships that had
been sunk in the mouth of the Yangtsze
River. This was an interesting piece of
news and gave us some heart. 3

Due to the lack of proper food the in-
ternees were now falling ill at a rapid rate
and one of the barrack rooms was set aside
as an improvised hospital so that the suf-
ferers could obtain quiet and a little more

Telephone E1141

SHIP CHANDLERS
(McQUADE’S) LTD.
SHIP CHANDLERS, MARINE and
HARDWARE MERCHANTS

Naval Stores Janitor Supplies

1214 Wharf Street VICTORIA, B.C. |

CHEVROLET
OLDSMOBILE
CADILLAC

WILSON & CABELDU

LIMITED |
VICTORIA, OAK BAY and DUNCAN

CHURCHILL HOTEL
100% Fireproof
Every Room Newly Furnished

100 Rooms—Single, without bath, $1.50;
Double, $2.50 (Nothing Higher)
Five Blocks from C.P.R. Boats,
up Government Street

VICTORIA BRITISH COLUMBIA

THE TUDOR HOUSE

WILF GOUGE, Manager
ra)
Licensed Premises

Corner Admirals and
Esquimalt Roads

ESQUIMALT, B.C.

HALFWAY HOUSE

A. M. DORE, Manager
Licensed Premises

856 Esquimalt Road
ESQUIMALT, B.C.

THE SHOULDER STRAP