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Memoirs of Ruth Hooper

items 15 of 28 items
  • wcu_ww2-455.jp2
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  • but we called it spinach. You see Santo Tomas was enclosed in a five acre compound and had been used by the University to grow some vegetables, etc., to help with the upkeep. Camote (sweet potato) tops were cooked as greens and they produced a few worm infested tubers that could be eaten. Carr had all the jobs he could do, on the sanitation detail, help cook, scrub, and knowing Carr you know his hands were never idle if there was a job to do. I worked in the little building we called a hospital where the very sick had to be kept. My work was mainly on the food detail, trying to fix something edible for them from what we could get. Those of us who peeled the wormy little sweet potatoes could have for themselves the peelings. I ate some of these and as a result had a severe case of acute indigestion. After a period of touch and go, I got over it. As the days passed food became shorter and shorter, no fish, no coffee or tea (you could have a cup of hot water for breakfast). We had nothing but the spoonful of thin rice or cornmeal gruel twice a day. We did have good water to drink and we could wash our clothes and take a bath (no soap). To keep down hunger pains when night came we drank all the water we could get down, actually hearing and feeling it slosh around as you turned and tossed. The living quarters in the buildings became more and more crowded as they kept bringing in more and more people so the Japanese allowed some of the men to build shacks on the grounds to house them, using anything they could find. They also let a few Filipinos bring into camp some bamboo strips and nipa palm which was used to thatch the roof. Carr was one of those who moved out into a little shack he had built with his own two hands and a pocket knife. I began having such severe migrane headaches
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).