[Excerpt] ...

[...]

Nevertheless, those months were not without their moments of excitement.

There was an escape.

Laurance Tipton (British) and Arthur Hummel (American) went over the wall one dark and moonless night.

And didn’t that send our Nagasaki jailers into hysterics!

Then, completely out of the blue, Brian Clarke arrived in camp, transferred as I was from Lunghua. He brought news of a second Lunghua escape which, unlike the one on New Year’s Eve 1944, was successful - the five men involved getting clean away to Kunming in free China.

The fact that I knew four of the five added spice to the news. One was Reggie Euluch, Brian’s buddy, who helped settle me in when I arrived from Pootung, two were fellow Pootung transferees - Tommy Huxley and Mike Levy, and the fourth, Roy Scott, crossed paths with me at the Columbia Country Club following the Kamakura Mar-u fiasco. Only Lewis Murray-Kidd, the escape leader, was a total stranger.

Why the flurry of escapes?

For one thing, the food situation was going from bad to worse. In Weihsien our rations were so reduced that camp leader McLaren picked out six of the skinniest inmates and had them parade bare-chested before the Commandant.

I was one of the six.

Mr. McLaren gave an impassioned speech. He pointed at our corrugated ribcages, our jutting cheek bones. He quoted the Geneva Convention. The Commandant’s response was equally impassioned.

“You people are luckier than you think. You are better off than the citizens of our home islands.

You have more to eat than our soldiers in the field. Even so, I have managed to postpone a reduction of your vegetable marrow allocation. But I won’t be able to do that again. You must expect cuts. And you won’t be the only ones affected. I’ve already told my chief of police that the guards’ rations are to be reduced. It’s a bad time for everybody.

You must remember there’s a war on. And as long as the war continues, I can do no more for you.”

[further reading]
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/books/ForeignDevil/Power-143-pages.pdf

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