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Aboard ship on way to States by Carr Hooper

items 10 of 28 items
  • wcu_ww2-479.jp2
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  • With death and suffering about us and nothing but utter starvation ahead we watched as a lonely ship wrecked mariner would watch for the ships that seemed so slow to come. Dying slowly but with increasing frequency our camps held on grimly for just another month, another week, another day. “God grant there be no defeat now” we said a thousand times these last six months. By October 1, 1944, we knew that nothing could stop our army and navy. We began to see that the end was near and certain. Many held on and on with the final hope of the invasion of Luzon to keep them alive. Others, poor devils, who had suffered so much, died as our guns from within our prison, threw shells into the Japenese held areas of Manila and converted our beastly captors into fly blown bits of corpses which we were later to see and smell and wickedly gloat over as we laughed loud and long and last. We spoke of watching the progress of our forces previously, and this brings up a most interesting and powerful factor in our being able to maintain a reasonable order sanity under most trying conditions. This factor is that of knowledge of events. From the beginning we heard of every main military event or decision which happened. Nothing can be hidden or kept from a prison camp which can be carried, overheard, concealed or conveyed in small parcels. Money and news came into and was recieved in camp in spite of every precaution the Japs could take and in spite of the death penalty in case of possessing or recieving radio sets or news. For the sake of those poor devils locked away in deep Manchuria and China and Japan, I cannot tell you just how it was done but rest assured that even those poor fellows knew that comrades left behind in Manila are free and no doubt they, pitiful devils of misery and almost certain death, begin to know that soon it will be over for them, one way or another. We heard all the news but with it we heard rumors, guesses and those strangely rationed and reasonable stories of advances and invasions which were so detailed that we could scarcely disbelieve, and which must have come from persons outside the camp whose hopes were that these items of news would help to keep us alive. And, too, wishful thinking born of hunger and despair led Internees to make
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).