I guess I just never really heard much about or thought about POWs. The only thing that I'd ever really thought or heard about were the POWs from Vietnam, and much of that "info" was sparked by Stallone or Norris movies.
I just read a book,
Surviving the Sword: Prisoners of the Japanese in the Far East 1942 - 1945 by Brian MacArthur. I remember lots and lots of world history both from college and before, but I don't really remember much about WWII in the Pacific. It seems like most of the WWII talk was about Europe. I just didn't realize how much of the Pacific and Far East the Japanese invaded and held. I guess I just hadn't watched enough war movies.
It's a great book that managed to keep my interest all of the way through. Besides the treatment and atrocities, what really struck me was the ingenuity of the POWs. Their ability to overcome their lack of normal resources (like adequate food and vitamins) and more mundane every day items like razors, toothbrushes, needles, thread, etc....
I have a hard time imagining modern soldiers being able to manage as well under the same circumstances (
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/601496-can-young-kids-even-address-letter.html).
For instance "sifted wood ash made toothpaste and, when combined with palm oil, produced enough soap... brushes, brooms and toothbrushes were fashioned from coconut fiber. Rubber was tapped, and some was used for patching tears in uniforms until men began to make their own thread; it was also turned into adhesive plasters and was used to mend boots or to make sandals.
...Deep laterite clay, washed, dried, and powdered, furnished a cure for diarrhea... Vehicle springs made good hollow-ground open razors and surgical instruments."
They ate hibiscus leaves for vitamin C, and made teas of several different plants to provide other vitamins. They had running yeast production to provide B vitamins and learned how to use mold to break down soy beans so they would be more nutritious and digestible.
They figured out an 80 hour process to make yeast from rice that helped with avitaminosis.
In other sections of the book they talk about "illegal" radios that were built and hidden in various camps. One in particular was "...hidden under the cookhouse fire. The receiver was made from the stolen damper of a Norton motorbike, a coil from a bakelite soap container, and the variable condenser from a stripped and remodeled biscuit tin. A hearing aid supplied a resistor and valves, a shaving-soap container the high-frequency choke; stolen brass, bakelite and wire became a rheostat, while glass and mica purloined from the airfield were used for insulation. Work parties "salvaged" scarp iron, soft Swedish iron, and copper from the docks."
In another instance, the radio was bricked up in a wall. A time switch was built that would only turn the radio on the times of day when the BBC nets broadcasts took place. There was a nail in the wall whose tip just touched the diaphragm of a headphone within the wall cavity. "We listened to it with a kind of stethoscope. All you had to do was put the end of a bit of rubber tubing over the head of this nail, and hold it tight with your finger..."
I just have a hard time picturing modern folks pulling off some of this stuff. Hell, if you take the up and coming generation into account, it's mind boggling. How would they manage anything without a cell phone, the Internet or Cable.
It's also hard to imagine guys that before the war weighed anywhere from 160 to up over 200# being between 80 and 100# because of the lack of food and hard labor that they were forced to do. I can't even imagine what it would be take to get me down to 85#.
Anyway, the book was a good read. Now I've got a book on the Bataan Death March and another on the Escape from Davao.