Eat it or Starve to Death

Heroes Remember

Eat it or Starve to Death

Transcript

As far as I was concerned, they didn’t bother us too much. They didn’t bother us there in Sham Shui Po too much. They used to give some of the flour to some of those Hindus there and they’d make pancakes and they’d roll that on their feet and the Hindus would make signs for me to come over and he’d give me a pancake about that size, and I’d eat that and I found it good. But it’s the rice, like I tell you, we had rice and the rice we had to eat. It was steamed rice and there were, it was filthy. I’ll tell you the truth. There were worms, yellow worms with black heads, there were bed bugs, there were mice cruts, there were rat cruts. That’s all that, the most was in that. It’s hard to say, to have to pick out that there might have been about five or six grains of rice. The rest was all filthy and we had to eat that, eat it or starve to death.

Description

Mr. Hunt describes the contaminated food he received in Sham Shui Po.

Hector Hunt

Hector Hunt was born in Pabos Mills, Quebec, on December 9, 1911. His father was the local river guardian. Mr. Hunt was the second oldest of 16 children. He had little schooling, having gone to the woods at the age of ten to cut pulp with his father. He also transported supplies to his father when he was busy on the river. At sixteen, Mr. Hunt started work at the Chandler pulp mill for twenty-five cents and hour. When the opportunity to enlist occurred, he signed up anticipating better wages and lifestyle. He had very little basic training and no live ammunition weapons training. Mr. Hunt served in Newfoundland before eventually being shipped overseas toHong Kong. He was a POW in both Hong Kong and Japan, where he worked in the coal mines near Niigata. Mr. Hunt credits his strong faith for helping him to endure his time in captivity. After completing his service, Mr. Hunt returned home to work in the local mill.

Meta Data