[excerpts] ...

...

“You’re too late, at least today. They’ve been taken out to the roll-call field and draped over the walls and benches to make it festive for the Victory Dance tomorrow.”
“Who says?”
“Captain Casey. Have you met him?” “No, but I sure have heard him!”
“Yes, he does like that loudspeaker of his, doesn’t he?” Just then Pete Fox came up with a face as long as a foot. “What’s eating you?” Lisa asked.
“The same thing that’s eating me, I expect,” I said smiling. “You miss her, Pete, don’t you?”
“Sure do! Hope everything goes right for her for a change. She deserves it.”
“She’ll be okay, Peter—I know it,” I said, trying to keep the doubt out of my voice.

Changing the subject abruptly, he asked,
“Are you going to be off tomorrow?”
“Yes, they’re rescheduling our shifts.” “How about Urs?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“They need a whole crew to bake a batch of chocolate cake for the Victory Dance tomorrow night.”
“Chocolate! Where the blazes did they get chocolate for cakes?” “There was cocoa in one of those supply drums.”
“How about eggs...and sugar?”
“We’ve got hundreds of eggs, and gobs of sugar. Believe me, we’ve got everything to make chocolate cake, except a crew!”
“I’ll be your first volunteer!” Lisa said.
“Thanks,” then turning to me, he added, “think you can round up Ursula, Bea, and Lettie, and maybe Claire and Tess...?” “How many do you really need?” I asked.
“At least eight—ten would be better.”
“We’ll get ‘em! What time and where?”
“Sun-up at Number Two Kitchen. The bakers want the cakes baked before they put the bread in the ovens.”
“That might be a little tough, but I think chocolate cake’s enough of a incentive to get most of them up at that hour.”

Then the logistics hit me, and I asked,
“What the heck are we going to mix them in? Do you realize how much cake we’ll have to make for fourteen hundred people?!”
“Oh, they’re bringing over an old clawfoot bathtub from the Commandant’s quarters. You’re to mix the batter in that.”
“Sure we are!” I said with a grin.

We had a lot of fun rounding up the crew. Not a girl turned the assignment down. Bea’s comment, when we asked her, was,
“Sure, I’ll do it if they’ll let me lick the spoon.”
“What spoon? We’re going to use paddles!”

The next morning, while the rest of the camp was still asleep, our cake-baking crew assembled in Number Two Kitchen. The first thing we were handed was forty-dozen eggs to beat—without a single egg-beater between us. To the ten-girl crew, that came out to over forty eggs a piece, to be beaten with a fork in a long loaf pan! Although we didn’t attempt to beat all forty at once, the job was still arm-aching beyond belief.

While we were beating our hearts out, Pete and his team of men were measuring and dumping flour, sugar, cocoa, and baking powder into the ancient bathtub. The monstrous old clawfoot had been raised up on blocks, so that the work would be less backbreaking, but it was still as awkward as the devil.

After the dry ingredients had been dumped and thoroughly paddle-mixed, we made wells in the mixture and dropped the beaten eggs into them, then added powdered milk liquids, and peanut oil, and stirred like crazy.

We tried everything, from ten girls running around the tub with paddles swishing to standing still and just stirring in one place. Whatever we did, we must have done it right, because the batter turned out beautifully smooth, and we were soon filling the loaf pans.

“Hey, hurry it up! The ovens are ready, and we have to bake those dumb cakes before we can put the bread in!” shouted one of the bakery crew coming into the compound.

“We’re going as fast as we can,” Pete yelled back, as we went on dipping and filling pans, cake batter splattering up to our elbows. I looked at the tub, and a thought struck me. “I know we haven’t had a bath in ages, but when we do, how do we empty the tub?” “We pull the plug!”

someone said.
“S-o-o-o-o?”

Chalk one more up to inspiration. We laid an old one-by-eight piece of shelving we found in the kitchen under the bath, loaded it with pans, end to end, pulled the plug, and slowly pushed the “conveyor belt” along. It took about ten seconds to fill a pan, and as the first plank went through, we found a second and followed with it, while we loaded the first one back up with empty pans. The job was done in minutes, and we all stood back and had a good laugh, as the last pan was filled.

“Say cheese!” someone said over my shoulder, and turning, I saw a movie camera grinding away.
“How long have you been filming this operation?” I asked with a giggle.
“O-o-o-oh, from when you broads started chasing each other around the tub,” the cameraman drawled.

While the cakes were baking in the big brick ovens, five B-29s flew over from Saipan, and figuring the beautifully draped roll-call field was intended for a drop zone, they obliged us by unloading their cargo right over the field!

It was Day One all over again, but this time we had nowhere to run!

The pinpoint drop was very accurate, with only a few missing the roll-call field, but the ones that did, dropped through cell roofs and into compounds, crushing everything they hit.

Pandemonium reigned. Mothers screamed for their children. Children wailed for their mothers. And the men swore in frustration.

“I can’t believe I’ve survived four years of war, only to be killed by kindness,” someone said in exasperation.

After the panic had subsided, we found that no one had been hurt, and the three drums that had crashed through cell roofs had done surprisingly little damage. The only really peeved people were the members of the Victory Dance Committee: they had to call in an extra work detail to clean up the mess and help them roll the drums away to a distribution area.

Nothing spoiled the Victory Dinner-Dance though. Major Staiger and his paratroopers, along with Captain Casey and his men, traded their C and K Rations for our stew and fresh bread, insisting it tasted “just like home cookin’”, and the meal was topped off with fruit and chocolate cake, two treats we hadn’t had in over three years.

After the meal, what was left of our fabulous dance band played up a storm for us. Roy, Deirdre, and their little son had left with Margo and the war- brides. The rest of the band was leaving for the States the next day; this was their last night in camp, and they were celebrating! Late in the evening, Captain Georgia, one of the new men replacing the OSS, took over Smitty’s bass and introduced us to the boogie beat.

We’d heard a little of it over the PA system, but nothing like this! It was contagious, and before we knew it, the whole camp was jiving! [excerpt]

Jock came up smiling about then, and asked,
“Want to hear the latest poop?

Those OSS boys escorted King Kong and his men back to their quarters, but Gold Tooth refused to go with them. He said he wouldn’t leave the guard shack till the OSS gave him safe-conduct out of the camp—he’s afraid we’re going to lynch him!”
“Hey, that might be fun!” Gladys said.
“No... it’s over,” Dad said quietly, “he doesn’t need our help to go to hell.”

[excerpt]

Suddenly a loudspeaker blasted in my ear—it must’ve been rigged to the electric pole just outside the window—and a voice sang out, “Good morning! This is Captain Casey.
Hope you have a great day!”

I shook my head in disbelief, and looking at Guy slouching in the doorway, I asked,
“Who the heck’s Casey?
He must be totally demented!”
“He came in yesterday with the medical group from Kunming. He’s here to orientate us and get us ready to face the real world.”
“Maybe we should tell him about the real world!” I said.
Before I could comment further, there was another crackle on the PA system, and a strong, male voice belted out a song I’d never heard before, the notes bouncing off the kitchen walls.

“Oh, what a beautiful mornin’ !
Oh, what a beautiful day!
I’ve got a beautiful feelin’
Ev’rythin’ s goin’ my way.”

“Shit!” Guy bellowed, as he rushed to the open window, sliding as he hit the rain slick floor.

Slamming the window shut, he turned to me and started to laugh. The darn song and the damn weather tickled his perverse humor. He laughed so hard and so long, he got me started, and we stood like a couple of mindless hyenas, laughing till we ached.

[excerpt]

Hey, there is a whole new world out there, I thought, as I flipped over the pages and drank in the news.

It was all so fabulous.

Maybe that nut, Captain Casey, was right after all—what was a little rain when there was a beautiful world waiting for us outside.

There was a whole crew of new movie stars I’d never heard of, and a guy called Frank Sinatra who had bobby-soxers swooning and screaming; he didn’t look like much to me, but then, I hadn’t heard him sing.

There was also a new peace group called the United Nations meeting in San Francisco. I gathered they were something like the old League of Nations that had fallen flat on it’s kazoo back in the late thirties. I wished them luck, and turned the page.

[excerpt]

I shut my eyes, as I had done ever since my childhood, and tried to will the horrifying sight away, and as always, it didn’t work.

I slowly opened the magazine again, and stared in disbelief at the pictures: they were of a German concentration camp, where emaciated bodies were stacked like so much cordwood, and the living dead, too weak to stand or cheer their liberators, stared at me from the pages like hollow-eyed cadavers.

Oh, God, this can’t be real! No man could do this to his fellow men. Please, God, don’t let this be true! My heart started to thump like mad, and I felt a wave of nausea sweep over me again.

I put down the book and stood up and went outside. Dad was sitting in front of his cell. He looked across at me and said,
“What’s the matter? You look awful.”
“Did you see that LIFE magazine?”
“Yes.”

He looked away and got a tattered handkerchief out of his pocket, then, taking off his glasses, he breathed on them, wiped them with the handkerchief, and put them back on. I knew he was playing for time and that he felt as sick as I did.

[excerpt]

When I looked at him again, he was staring at me, or rather through me, and he said in a sad, tired voice,
“I thought I had seen all that man could do to man.. .how wrong I was!”

He stood up, his back bowed, his shoulders drooping, and I hesitantly went over and gave him a hug.

“Daddy, it’s all over. We’ll never let it happen again, EVER!” I was so young and so sure, and he looked so old, and so sad.
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[excerpt]

I couldn’t think of anything to say as we walked slowly back to the cellblock, but by the time we got there, she was her old self again. She had spoken several times in the past of a kid brother in India whom she loved dearly. She hadn’t seen or heard from him in years though, and didn’t know if he was alive or dead. All I could think of was,
“There must be someone in the world for Gladys to care for.

Right now she has no man, no home, and no job waiting for her. She has nothing! Then I looked at her, and she was cutting up once more, and I thought,
“So what, she’ll never let it get her down!

I was right. After that, she slipped into the hole Lisa had left, and as each one of my friends took off for parts unknown and I felt the chasm getting wider and wider, she’d say, “Don’t worry, honey, it’ll be your turn next.
You’ll see, it’ll be your turn next!”

[further reading]
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/books/MushroomYears/Masters(pages).pdf

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