[...] Google-translated from Dutch ...

The Japanese camp leadership let the prisoners relatively free. As long as they adhered to the agreements and rules, the internees were allowed to organise everything themselves. The Japs were very tolerant, as long as people didn’t try to escape or smuggle goods into the camp. They mainly threatened verbally.

General commander Izu, who spoke English, was nicknamed King Kong. He was the captain of the guards, but the camp was actually run by Gold Tooth, his right-hand man, who loved authority and could be cruel. He treated the guards with contempt. When the internees carried supplies happily whistling, he became furious and waved his swaggering stick angrily.

The leaders of the approximately twenty-five camps in China generally treated the internees according to the international agreements of the international Geneva Convention and the Hague Peace Conference. However, the Japanese side had not signed for it and the applicable agreements were not well known to the Japanese.

They prided themselves on treating the prisoners humanely. Feeling superior and invincible, the Japanese looked down from a great height on the internees, who had a good but distant relationship with them. In any case, the Japanese camp authorities departed from the Geneva Convention as far as food was concerned.

They shared the lack of food with the prisoners, but if the shortages got too bad, the Japanese would be favoured.

The camps were under consular and civil authority, the Kempeitai (this is the gendarmerie).

So the guards were consular policemen, who were far more humane than the military and naval personnel. There was quite a lot of rivalry and differences of opinion between the Japanese consular authorities, on the one hand, and the Japanese army and navy on the other.

The camp residents in China were therefore generally treated better than the prisoners in the Japanese camps in the Indies, who were under the authority of the army. In contrast to the camps in India, men and women were not separated in the Chinese camps. Neither were the parents and children.

The inhabitants of Weihsien were also fortunate to have ended up in one of the best camps in China.

However, horrific, war crimes have also occurred in some Chinese Japanese camps, such as murders and rapes.

However, this mild treatment did not apply to the Chinese in the vicinity of the camp. If they made a mistake, the death penalty followed.

[excerpts] ...
Nevertheless, there were factors in Weihsien that had a positive influence on health.

There was organized exercise on a regular basis, compulsory sleep time, fresh air, sunlight, a simple diet and the absence of alcohol. However, the millet, which was often on the menu and which was perceived as difficult to digest, contained many nutrients. The head of the dietetics department of Peking Medical College was also interned. He knew exactly how to put together the menu in order to obtain the highest calorie content and was involved in the kitchens.

The doctors arranged for a special diet kitchen to be added to the three general kitchens. This kitchen was set up for vulnerable camp residents such as children, pregnant women, nursing mothers, hospital patients, diabetics, invalids, the patients, people with stomach ulcers and kidney patients.

The diet kitchen could feed two hundred people. The food was withdrawn from the general stocks. The best food was reserved for this group, who also received slightly larger portions. The doctors persuaded the Japanese to supply the camp with soya beans. The protein-rich soy milk was made from this for the children.

A public health department was set up to ensure that the camp was kept clean. This department kept an eye on whether the kitchens (for example the kongs or cauldrons, the large kettles in which people cooked) were properly cleaned in the shower rooms and the laundries, whether the gutters and drains were not polluted and whether the common areas were clean. In addition to cleaning, this committee also had the task of developing vaccines, ...

[excerpts] ...
Getting enough food; that was the biggest problem. There was always much too little. Often there was only porridge of gauliang or kaoliang. It was brown sorghum with skins on it. The quality of this millet left much to be desired. There were often stones in it.

It was not the intention of the Japanese to serve the camp bad food. They often could not get enough food. Nor did the Japanese actually have the money to finance the 25 internment camps. The camp leaders, as long as there were no serious shortages, ate just as badly as the prisoners. But they did not always keep to the Geneva agreements.

If the prisoners complained, the meal was taken away and skipped as a punishment. Especially meat or fish was almost impossible to get.

There was sometimes ribbon fish or bad and coarsely cut buffalo meat, horses and mules, which was known as Chinese poor man’s food. The meat was often already a bit rotten before it arrived at the camp. Once the bones were removed, very little remained.

One of the photos of the camp shows a large menu board with SOS written on it, meaning same old stew, as everyone called the daily stew. It was a thin, barely zero soup for dinner, subtracted from meat. Often there was also a little bit of vegetables, for example different types of pumpkin, beans, soya beans, eggplant or onions, with or without potatoes.

[excerpts] ...
The cowardly porridges of gauliang or kaoliang, which were mainly served at breakfast, were filling, but gauliang was very heavy on the stomach and very difficult to digest. Father Frans (Anne deJong’s father), had had a golden idea when he had packed the things for the camp.

[excerpts] ...
He had brought a bottle of concentrated saccharin. You could sweeten a bottle of water with a few drops of saccharin.

That was then used to make the tasteless SOS edible or to sweeten tea and porridge. They’ve been dealing with that counterfeit sugar for a very long time. Father had also brought cocoa along with him and made his own chocolate peanut butter from peanut butter.

Each day all the camp residents got about eight ounces, ± 230 grams of brown bread, baked from inferior whole meal or kaolin flour, which quickly became rotten. By reheating the bread in an oven helped to make it more edible. People ate in overcrowded dining rooms, but you could pick up seven portions in a large pan and eat them at home. If the portions were very small, one of the De Jongh children would go back for a second helping and sometimes they succeeded.

The International Red Cross sent large quantities of broken rice, left over from famine aid in 1930, to the camps. The rice, which was already heavily polluted and full of maggots, corn worms, beetles, rubble and seeds, had also been wiped off the floor in the godowns with everything that had been found on those floors, such as dust, mud, vermin, broken glass, pieces of cement, cut nails, rat poop and the like.

Older people were patiently cleaning this grain for hours. They picked out the vermin and the pieces of dirt one by one, as far as it went, but it was a very difficult and precise job.

In the beginning, people still ate the canned food that they had brought, which consisted mostly of meat and fruit. They also ate dandelions, chrysanthemums and leaves. One of the Presbyterian missionaries who belonged to the former order of Weihsien pointed out different kinds of edible plants.

During the 2.5 years of the camp, the inhabitants lost an average of 35 to 40 kilos. Anneke and her brothers and sisters had become skinny and even Willy came slim out of the camp.

[excerpts] ...
The prisoners sometimes received food parcels from the Red Cross. These were large consignments from the American and English Red Cross, destined for all residents. Those packages were quite large, 90 by 30 cm. They contain milk, butter, crackers, cigarettes, instant coffee, tea, SPAM, cheese, chocolate, soap, concentrated sugar bars, toilet paper, scrambled egg mix, toothpaste, dried fruit and cans of other foods. With such a package, you could go ahead for another four months. Every now and then, when a shipment from the American Red Cross arrived, Anneke was allowed to make a list of everything that was in the packages assigned to her family and what was eaten.

For example, she was allowed to tick cans of SPAM, egg powder and coffee powder. Sometimes there were notes in the Red Cross packages with sweet wishes to keep you up: ‘Hi there, best of luck, we’re thinking and praying for you.’

You could also have individual food parcels sent by friends who were not interned, often Chinese, with whom you had left money. The De Jongh family got them through their Swiss contact from Tientsin, De Hesselle, or from the office manager of the HCHC in Tientsin.

You were allowed to receive one package per month, which was then delivered by the Red Cross. The De Jongh family ordered and received two packages for six months. There were things like bacon, bacon, egg powder, cocoa, rice, nuts to grind for peanut butter, rind, cans of butter, milk powder and salami. The De Jonghs polished their shoes with the fried thick rind.

[excerpts] ...
By May 1944, the diet was so deficient that people really went hungry. The food situation became critical. The internees dropped out and began to dream about food.

Ninety percent of the time residents did not sleep, they were concerned with how to get enough food.

Hunger had a bad effect on their physical and mental health. In the summer of 1944, many had nervous breakdowns, especially those over the age of 40. These nerve patients occasionally exhibited strange behaviour. Their survival instincts took over and they began to rummage through garbage for food, gawk, cheat, and trade on the black market.

[excerpts] ...
In August 1944 the coal was rationed. In the winter, the daily calorie intake dropped to 1,200 calories per day, and in May 1945 to 300 per day.464 Therefore, a new shipment of Red Cross food parcels in August 1945 was a very welcome addition.

[excerpts] ...
Cooking was done in separate cooking areas. There were three kitchens. Kitchen number I, number II and number III. The cooking/eating groups were formed by the order of arrival at the camp.

Just like with showers or the hot water, you had to queue and wait a long time for your turn. In the early days, Mother Adelard was the head of the kitchen.

In Kitchen I and II, everyone cooked.

The kitchen utensils were rather flawed. It consisted of pots, pans and cutlery brought home from the internees. They also cooked in large kongs. The stoves ran on coal. Raw food was brought in by the Japanese in wheelbarrows.

Cooking crews of six to seven people got up at 5 a.m. to prepare the broken rice congee or kaoliang porridge. The water from the wells on the site was pumped up to fill water towers, which was hard work. Being a stoker was also physically hard work. The coals were of poor quality. First a bolt had to be gathered. Burning accidents were frequent. People also got sick from the smoke.

Another tiring job was working in the Chinese grain mills, with heavy millstones. The work was made even more difficult by the fact that people consumed too few calories per day. The Weihsien diet consisted of about eighteen hundred calories the first year of the internment. Someone who does light work already needs at least two thousand calories. The diet contained just enough protein. So too few calories. Furthermore, there was too little fat, calcium (already mentioned), vitamin B and vitamin C. Fortunately, children were given the soy milk mentioned earlier.

The camp residents could obtain a loan or comfort money from their home country through the mediation of the Red Cross. For that money they could buy extras in the small camp shop.

But even there shortages soon arose and a lottery ticket was drawn to buy something. Helen Burton, who had a souvenir shop in Tientsin, tidied up The White Elephant shack, where you could exchange things. After the war it turned out that the ex-internees had to pay back the money advanced by their fatherland at a ridiculously high rate, because the Japanese and Swiss used the exchange rate to improve themselves. The Swiss had complicated financial agreements with the Japanese. At first they were favoured for the Swiss, later for the Japanese.

In November 1943 part of their comfort money was confiscated by the Japanese as a contribution to the maintenance of the camp. Then the Swiss consul general stopped the allowances. At that time it was still possible to have comfort packages sent via non-internees in China. Anneke’s father had left money with friends in China, so he could get some extras.

The employees of the HCHC sometimes also sent food. For many families it then became very difficult. The Chinese friends outside the camp did not always want to help, because they were afraid of difficult questions from the Japanese about their income. The Japanese still refused to pay for medicines. s father had left money with friends in China, so he could get some extras. The employees of the HCHC sometimes also sent food.

For many families it then became very difficult. The Chinese friends outside the camp did not always want to help, because they were afraid of difficult questions from the Japanese about their income. The Japanese still refused to pay for medicines. s father had left money with friends in China, so he could get some extras. The employees of the HCHC sometimes also sent food. For many families it then became very difficult. The Chinese friends outside the camp did not always want to help, because they were afraid of difficult questions from the Japanese about their income. The Japanese still refused to pay for medicines.

[excerpts] ...
Weihsien and Stanley, another Japanese camp, had the largest illegal trade of all Chinese camps. The fact that the black market in Weihsien developed so quickly and flourished like this was easy to explain. There were not enough guards to constantly patrol the walls and the supply of agricultural products were very large in the Weihsien area. Moreover, in the beginning the internees still had cash.

Purchases through the black market was even organised by Peter Lawless, police chief when he was still living in Tientsin, who was on The Discipline Committee. The priests played a crucial role in the communication, because they lived close to the wall and spoke Chinese dialects, so that they could make themselves understood by the farmers outside the camp. The contact with these farmers and the smuggling in of their belongings was also relatively easy because thirty-meter heaps of guards had been thrown against the wall, which served as escape routes, for example in the event of a fire. You could climb on them. At the bottom of the walls there were loopholes, also useful places for contact with the outside world. They also dug secret tunnels and corridors.

Thirteen hundred eggs, sugar, dried fruit, condensed, milk, jam, oil, tobacco and cigarettes came across the wall every day. The most successful egg smuggler was Father Patrick Scanlan, a Trappist. Several witnesses talk about him, and Anneke also remembers how he went to work. The other missionaries of his order hoisted Gregorian chants as soon as the coast was clear or a sentry appeared. The Fathers also had other ways to warn each other with agreed upon signs, such as closing your breviary book. The missionaries were suitable smugglers, because the Japs didn’t quickly suspect them.

In addition, the missionaries were housed on the top floor of the hospital, allowing them to see far beyond the walls in all directions. One of them could then see from the hospital the Chinese farmers outside the camp carefully arriving with their food. He then gave a signal to the breviary priests, who then quickly took off their white pipe in order to be less conspicuous. They then gently negotiated eggs, bacon, nuts, honey and sometimes baïgar, a strong Chinese whisky. Money and goods went back and forth through the wall where the bricks were loose. First Scanlan, called O’Hanlon by Bobby Simmons, only tried to get food for the sick and the children. Later he helped everyone. When the alarm went off, he pinches as if he was going to pray, hiding the eggs under his cassock.

At one point he was caught with one hundred and fifty eggs, so he was taken away for interrogation. He did not defend himself. The leader of the committees then explained to the Japs that he should have taken the vow of silence for his order and not talk. The Japanese with their sense of honour and duty were sensitive to that argument and did not punish him. After all, a vow had to be kept.

Later he was caught again, this time with sugar and jam. An old American priest betrayed him. He was sentenced to two weeks in solitary confinement. The General Commander King Kong didn’t understand, but everyone laughed at that punishment. After all, it was hardly a punishment because as a monk he was used to living in solitary comfort. He started singing spiritual songs at night. Everyone awoke to it, including the Japs, who were raging due to unrest, so that four days later he was allowed to leave the cell. He was brought back into the camp to the sounds of a twenty-strong Salvation Army orchestra.

At the end of 1943 the Japanese used two Chinese coolies, working on the well, as a terrifying example. They were caught with eggs, which they smuggled on their bodies. King Kong was furious. They were executed like scapegoats by a firing squad, a punishment that shocked everyone. Then the black market disappeared for some time. Although the camp residents, who were just as much to blame, were not executed and either came or went with the shock of it, the Japanese were ruthless to the Chinese. In May 1944 the new chief constable of the consular police had a deep ditch dug in front of the wall. There was also a large earthen wall with an act of terror on the outside of the wall. Nevertheless, after some time the black market reappeared. The Japanese were now openly acting as middlemen on these new markets and were making good money.

The black market also ensured that complex financial transactions could take place. For example, an internee who needed cash sold jewellery via a syndicate in the camp and then received cash from the Japanese in FRB (Federal Reserve Bank of Beijing, a currency that was the northern counterpart of the CRB, Nanking’s currency). He then spent the money immediately and the rest was sold to other internees against promissory notes or IOUs in American dollars. This allowed the residents to get cash.

[further reading] ...
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/books/Hier_In_Het_Oosten_Alles_Wel/Surviving.htm#02

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