With their shaven heads and their considerable weight losses, I had great difficulty in recognizing them. These were the pitiful survivors from Bataan and Corregidor, the "Battling Bastards of
Bataan," and the remnants of the "Death March." One by one I listened to their stories and tried to help them.
Since there was very little medicine to give out, most of the therapy had to be improvised. Those with dysentery were told to take a teaspoon of charcoal from the mess hall stoves after each meal, and to sleep on the right side so not to irritate the sigmoid colon. They were to wash their hands after each trip to the latrine in spite of water shortages.
Malaria patients were given one quinine tablet after each chill hoping to alleviate symptoms. There was never enough to attempt a cure.
Both "wet" and "dry" beriberi cases were prevalent. There were no vitamins to treat them. We tried to make yeast cultures; the process was too slow, and we could never see that the cultures did any good. Hundreds of beriberi cases died each month.
Scurvy came on suddenly in large numbers of captives several times each year. When we could persuade the Japs to obtain a lime or two for each captive, the cures were remarkable.
Nightly Toll: Each day we transferred the most seriously ill patients to the hospital, where there were small amounts of extra food. In spite of the daily transfers, each night several captives died in the barracks. Many of the captives refused to go to the hospital seeing it as the last stop before death.
Mess Halls: There were eleven mess halls in camp-each with one or two large concrete stoves at one end. Large iron caldrons held the rice or soup to be cooked. During the rainy season, there were serious problems getting the wood to burn.
It often appeared that the mess crews were better fed than other captives. The daily diet consisted of two hundred to four hundred grams of a poor grade of rice, containing fine gravel and insects, about one hundred grams of weeds (from carabao wallows), and, on a rare occasion, ten grams of "one" of the following: sugar, coconut oil, beans, camote (sweet potato), corn, or meat. The diet was usually below eight-hundred calories daily, of which protein and fat were less than fifty calories.
Captives, who were able to earn a pittance by hard labor on labor details or on the farm, could supplement their diet with an occasional banana, egg, a few peanuts, or a few mongo beans.