So Many Prisoners Died of Malnutrition

A lot of prisoners died because of lack of the right kind of food and lack of the right kind of food. There was one prisoner that was in our room. He was 45 and we used to call him Old Bob. He was Bob Owen from Wales but he had a wife in Newfoundland and had four or five kids, children, but he hadn’t seen them in a long time. He was a merchant seamen. So Old Bob, he got sick and they had this board that every time somebody got sick they put this board, you know, like a wedge type of board under their back so that it would raise them up so they could breathe better. But once you got that in your room you knew that it was the end for some of the fellas that had that board. And Old Bob, he died once he got that board. And he couldn’t eat so he passed away. I went to the pilgrimage a few years back and the men that were in the cemetery, there must have been at least a thousand, you know, that takes up the British, and the Canadians, all of the Americans. There must have been at least a thousand men in that cemetery that died in the prison camps from lack of medical and the right kind of food. It was quite a site to see that so many grave markers in the Yokohama cemetery that was unnecessary.