Sunday, May 1, 2011

Prisoners of War

A sack of bones, but he made it.

A family friend had a father that was in a POW camp between 1941 and 1945. His father had put together a keepsake album of pictures and poems that the prisoners had. Most of the pictures were hand drawn by a couple of the prisoners. He told of the hardships they endured while there. They had three meals a day of rice and green soup. They dreamed of food and several poems were written about food. The artists drew pictures of different things that happened. The place was infested with fleas that tormented them constantly. They would wear their clothes to bed and tuck their pant legs into the top of their socks to protect their legs from the fleas. The first picture has a caption under it that said. Barracks scene. Time-out for a flea hunt, being routine procedure.
Some prisoners never seemed to tire of a "quanning" fire .They love to sit and blow and fan and then cook up something in a can. When there is no food in view, they even make plain water do.


He named it Four Years in the Land of Cherry Blossoms


2 comments:

Jimh. said...

Wow! And the men survived! Some of them. Amazing that humans put other humans into such condition. Thank you for the post Grandma!

Unknown said...

One of those situations where you had to have been there to really understand. Thank God the majority of us do not understand what it was like for them to endure that time. We are a blessed people. We don't ever need to forget what they did for us. Thank you for sharing.
Odie