June, 1945
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FROM DEATH TO LIFE
A M oving and Vivid Account by a former Biola student of her Rescue from LO S BANO S Prison in the Philippines. 1 IKE a beast ever ready to spring, hunger stalked through th e land. Poor and rich, high and low, Occidental and Oriental, saw the fangs of the wolf bared as he waited at the door. Like the plague of locusts, the Japanese swept t h r o u g h the Philippines, devouring and destroying all that was edible. Little brown eyes and little blue eyes set in dark hollows stared dumbly out of deep shadows. Scrawny hands vied with skeletons of dogs as they dipped down into garbage cans; little white and brown feet unshod, covered with sores, tramped the. blistering, dusty roads while tummies pinched. Cholera, diphtheria, typhoid, tuberculosis, in fantile paralysis came and went, each claiming its victims, each leaving heartbreak, weakness, hopelessness in its train. Eyes lost their luster, lips lost their smile, shoulders drooped, knees became feeble, the heart lost its hope. Such were the conditions outside the internment camp fences, while in side the camps the Japanese suddenly started to make drastic cuts in our food rations. Although we received no news, the food cuts told us our army must be drawing near the Philippines. Every additional cut meant to us that our forces had somewhere won an other victory. We rejoiced, but at night we held our stomachs, and cried to God to let us go to sleep so we would not feel those hunger pangs. We pro tested in vain to the Japanese. Their only reply was, “You’ll be eating mud before this is over.” T h e normal amount of calories required is 2500 to 3500 per day. Starvation rations are 1200 to 1500; we were getting only 800 calories. The Food Situation We worked valiantly in our camp gardens. We gathered weeds and ate them. Someone put up a sign, “Keep off the grass. We eat it.” We ate all the garbage. When the Japanese let us have a banana, we ate it skin and all. We gathered slugs and ate them, but the cooking of the slugs was a bit
By Carol Terry
of a trial. They would keep crawling out of the frying pan and had to be continually pushed back until life was cooked out. There were a few dogs and 'cats in camp, and gradually they began to disappear as hungry Americans ate them. Incidentally, cat is much more tasty than dog! One lady brought a man to trial in the camp for killing and eating her pet cat. However, the case was thrown out of court because of a camp rule that no one was allowed to keep pets. We were rather sorry to see the cats go, be cause they kept down the rats. How ever, soon people were discussing the most tasty way to cook rats. We cut d o w n the non-bearing banana and papaya trees and ate their hearts. It was an everyday sight to see our men going through the gar bage cans, licking discarded tins and eating melon rinds when they were to be found. One day the Japanese truck brought sacks of rice into camp, and a few scattered grains fell on the road. Our children eagerly gathered them and ate them, dirt and all. In their eagerness, some of them crossed a few feet over the boundary line lead ing to the storehouse. The Japanese announced that any such offenders, children or adults, would be shot. Some Japanese would scrape the ref use off their plates to those of Amer ican men, who accepted it readily and ate it greedily. One day a dog man aged to snatch a bone from the Jap anese kitchen. American men grabbed the bone out of the dog’s mouth and had bone soup for supper. Two children were overheard dis cussing their “lick day.” “I had my lick day yesterday.” “What did you get to lick?” “I got to lick the bowl we get our mush in.” “My lick day was today.” “What did you get to lick?” “I got to lick the family dishes.” Weakness Increases But it was a losing fight. We used up more calories gathering weeds than we gained by eating them. If we worked in our gardens for an hour, we became dizzy, things swam before our
eyes, and black spots dotted our vision. Gradually the cries in our stomachs began to subside. Lethargy overcame us. We no longer felt the intense hunger pangs. Signs of starvation be came evident in everyone. We became weaker and weaker; people began to faint. Few could do much work. When I was first interned, I typed six to eight hours a day in the camp office, but now one hour of typing exhausted me. We did not have the vitality to study or think; the hands hung down, the knees became feeble. No one could sit up straight. Thus we waited for our American army to come and rescue us. We waited day unto day, week unto week, month unto m o n t h , getting weaker and weaker, succumbing to every disease that came along. The situation becoming so desperate, the sick and starving missionaries gath ered together for a prayer meeting; it was a pitiful band—but God heard! Hope! At three a. m. the next day on January 7, I was awakened by a Jap anese voice in our barracks. Our in terpreter came down the aisle to my bed, “Miss Terry, get up and get me the office records you have. They have to be in the commandant’s office by 3:30.” Although awakened out of a sound sleep, my mind worked like lightning. I knew it could mean only one thing—the Japanese' must be leaving. “Hot dog!” I shouted out into the silence of the night, and to the sound of that “Hot dog!” the barracks awoke. I leaped from the top of my double-decker b e d to the bamboo floor and d a s h e d for the records, while from every side people began to appear underneath mosquito nets and flock around the interpreter like bees around h o n e y . Word spread through the camp, and then someone ( Continued on Page 231)
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