Elements for Survival
Heroes Remember
We fought three things. We fought to keep alive. We fought
to get food and we fought everything against the Japanese that
we could, did everything against them that we possibly could.
Whether we gained anything or not I don’t know, but I’ll tell
you if you had to have any medical supplies in Japan, how do
you think they removed an ingrown toe nail or any nail? The
doctor who was German would get four or five fellows to hold
you down. He’d take a pair of scissors and drive them in
under your toe, split it in two, one left one that way and you
could hear screeches all over the place. Now if they had an
amputation, they use an ordinary saw. They had amputations
there. They had appendicitis operations with no anaesthetic
whatever. Now how do you survive conditions like that? We
would get the old Chinese uniforms, discarded uniforms with
the seats out of them and the knees out of them and we’d use
our rubber shoes. The split toe, split toe shoe. They’d give
us an issue of these about once every year. Over and above
that we used wooden clogs. Made our own wooden clogs and we
used clogs for going back and forth in the winter time, snow
and everything we trampled through it all and they gave us no
clothing whatever. Now we do think there was ample Red Cross
supplies. I never received Red Cross parcel the whole time I
was in that camp.
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