Did you ever play any funny tricks on the Japanese?
I didn't, at least intentionally. I found a mouth organ and would spend time playing it. A fellow prisoner had made a guitar.

He tuned the whole guitar when I played the key of C. I used to play the guitar before I was captured. One time I was lying in the barracks and, just for kicks, I rhythmically played one note over and over like code. A Japanese unit came storming in with bayonets fixed and demanded to know where the radio was! I showed them what I was doing and that was the end of that.

At Clark Field, then, other than the fact you were in captivity, underfed, starved, sick with a variety of diseases, no medical treatment, given bland, meager food, and in a concentration camp, life was pretty routine.
That's right. You knew what you were going to do every single day even though work details changed. Once a month, we noncoms were paid ten cents a day in Japanese script. It was worthless. One time, we pooled all our money and bought a carabao. The Japanese went and got it from the Filipinos, brought it in the camp, and we killed it. We dug a big pit and filled it full of rocks. We built a fire so the rocks got real hot, put the caribou in the pit, and covered it up with rocks and grass. We let it cook for a couple of days and then we dug it up. Boy, was that tender meat!

How many people had to share it?
About two hundred men, the same number as before with the pig. But, you got more because the carabao was pretty good size like a water buffalo. In fact, it was a water buffalo. We kept everything that was edible. Everyone got a pretty good size chunk of meat. To supplement our diet, the Japanese would occasionally bring in some greens. Once in a while they would give us some soybeans and that was a treat!

Did you ever have any salt or anything to put on that? (Jane)
We got salt occasionally.

Would those soybeans come in raw out of the field?
Right. We could cook them in hot water. They were hard but nutritious and we ate them. But, we could never soften those danged things up. But when they were cooked at least you could chew them.

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