Pure Grit by Mary Cronk Farrell

Author:Mary Cronk Farrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams Books for Young Readers
Published: 2014-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

Military nurses and other Santo Tomas prisoners kept notebooks similar to this “Food Fantasy Diary” written by U.S. Air Corps Sergeant Warrant R. Stewart at Work Camp 2B, Mitsui Docks, Kawasaki, Tokyo. Stewart survived the Clark Field bombing and three and a half years as a POW in Japan.

Recipe madness.

Any time of the day, up and down the halls, men and women with pencils and scraps of paper in hand could be heard saying the likes of “You take half a pound of butter, add sugar, eggs, chocolate, cream, nuts . . . chill and serve.” Young and old, men and women, traded recipes and stuffed them into bulging notebooks. The nurses were not immune. Nurse Anna Williams had fantastic recipes, because she collected a great variety from the many different ethnic groups in the camp.

An internee doctor said to her patient, “Do you not realize that this recipe copying is one of the signs of insanity from malnutrition?” A week later the doctor was trading recipes, too. “I know it’s silly,” she said, “but it’s fun.”

The morning of September 21, the prisoners paid little attention to the buzzing of fighter jets in the distance. They’d become used to the sight of Japanese Zeros in the skies over Manila. Nurses on duty in the hospital went on with their routines, and people outside didn’t waste the strength to lift their heads. The thrumming jet engines grew louder and broke through the clouds over Santo Tomas.

Denny Williams looked up and saw not the Japanese red sun, but wings with white stars in blue circles. “I couldn’t believe it until enemy guns opened fire.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.