They Kicked me, and Booted me With Rifle Butts
Heroes Remember
They Kicked me, and Booted me With Rifle Butts
A lot of the women just spit at us and threw rocks and stuff like
that but the workers on the dock, they weren’t all that bad. So
as long as you done your work, they were all right. I carried
rice to trucks, loaded on trucks and carried charcoal.
They burned a lot of charcoal over there - carried charcoal and
shovelled coal and different things, moved freight around.
One time, I took a pair of gloves that didn’t belong to me.
They were army gloves and I gave one pair to my Scotch friend
and there happened to be a Jap there with him and I said, “Oh my
gosh",he’ll tell the guards that I had the gloves.”
And my Scotch friend said, “Oh, no, he’s my <em>comadachie</em>,”
that’s friend and so ten minutes later two guards come up and
kicked and booted me with rifle butts and yelled at me and kicked
me around and beat me up something awful and after that I
got sick in the prison camp. I was sick for about a month. Two
of these British fellows stole some oranges and gave them to
me. There was doctors in the camp but they couldn’t, there was
nothing they could do. And I brought up tape worms. I was
going at both ends. I was pretty sick and a few days later I
started to get better and one fellow said to me, “I didn’t
think you were going to make it.” But I did and I guess they
took pity on me and they put me in the cookhouse and gave me one
of those quart bottles half full of rice, green rice, and a stick
and I pounded it to polish it. Polished rice was illegal for the
Japanese to eat because it didn’t have the vitamins in it and
this sergeant of the guard, the Japanese sergeant of the guard
wanted polished rice and that’s what I did. They sat me in the
corner and gave me that stick to polish his rice. And then I got
my strength back in the cookhouse and became second cook which
was no big deal but I managed to get my strength back and here
I am today.
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