went to work in the mess barracks of the Japanese as a pot-boy, at his own request. Thereafter he was known to officers and men alike as The Pig. In some manner The Pig curried favor with the Japanese and succeeded in buying four sacks of sugar for a total price of forty pesos--two Filipino pesos being equal to one dollar. Each of The Pig' s sacks of sugar contained 105 canteen cups of sugar. Sugar was avidly desired by all the prisoners because, as strange as this way seem to well-fed Americans, it made the deadly diet of plain boiled rice more palatable. The Pig sold this sugar for two pesos per cup for the first three sacks and, his conscience perhaps beginning to bother him, the remaining sack at one peso per cup. On this deal, therefore, he collected a total of 735 pesos on a 40-peso investment. He thus became the Coresus of the camp. When the scant food we were allowed to buy from the outside finally came under control of the prisoners, it was at first distributed equally to each of the three groups in the prison camp. This brought about an incident which caused much bitterness in Group One--my group--and caused a number of officers to swear that they would have an understanding with a certain high-ranking officer, after the war, if they were still alive. I will not give this officer's name, rank or service, and the incident is related only to show to what lengths men can be driven by hunger and privation. The conduct in this case, I might add, was a decided exception to the spirit which pervaded the prisoners as a whole. |