大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Bruce Logan of the CSV Media NI Team on behalf of James A. McCall and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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Out of the 500 of us, who had originally started. When we were supposed to go to Japan there was only 500 of us Japanese so-called fit. The medical examination they gave us. You stood, dropped your pants if you had any, put your fingers up and wriggled your fingers. They came along with a glass rod, you bent over and they stuck the rod up your behind. If there was blood on it you had dysentery, if there was no blood, you didn鈥檛 have dysentery. That was the medical exam. But there was so many. The doctors, there was Lt-Colonel Coats, an Australian surgeon who was attached to us. He did some terrific work. Amputations, things like that. The medical things that they made. Scalpels and things like that. You couldn鈥檛 believe it, the things that they done.

When the war finished, they were able to bring an entire British hospital outfit and give it to the prisoners they had taken in Singapore.
The doctors nearly cried. If they鈥檇 had it they could have saved hundreds. The Japanese controlled nearly 戮 of the world鈥檚 product of Quinine, but they wouldn鈥檛 give it to us. They had the food, they didn鈥檛 give it to us.

[ration]
A cup-full, you know, an army mug. One of those, roughly, of raw rice, between 3. We got very little vegetables, very little meat. Extremely little. Actually, with different hedges and trees, which the Dutch knew much more about, we were able to take those sort of things, and use them. But the malnutrition and Beri-beri was rampant.
In Saigon, when I had dysentery, I went 10 days without any food whatsoever. And then 10 days on a cup of gruel in the morning. Along with the emetine the French people sent in, too. They didn鈥檛 just send it on for me alone. All the drugs they鈥檇 send in. I was lucky. Very lucky to be here. Enough said.

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