Entered Santo Tomas for the first time with a 1000 to 1400 pass secured from Earl Carroll through Mrs. Connor. With her typical energy and ability, she promptly thought up a system for collecting information on South Manila, enlisting Annie Corkle, Mrs. Gregg (who then enlisted the Women's Aid Society) as well as Mrs. MacDonald inside the camp, and yours truly to do the legwork outside. Then she got me a 0900 to 1700 weekly pass.

The Connors and most of the internees looked relatively well. Closer examination revealed the spirit was better than the flesh — new face powder and improved food playing a happy part in the transformation. Almost all regained some weight in the last two weeks.

I spent my time at the Connor shack in Shanty Town. If you could have added a river or lake nearby, some canoes, a little nice music in the evenings, and had the right friends about you it would be my idea of heaven on earth. But the little shack, for all its quaintness, coziness and frailness, was still a prison. The routine had been the same for three long years — the nicest bunch of people you might meet anywhere engaged in a life and death struggle against starvation and monotony. In the last months food was so scarce that that you entertained the tiniest morsel on your tongue for a long time. You fed yourself by the teaspoonful too, never gulping anything down or you wouldn't know you had eaten. You learned all sorts of handy things such as gardening, cooking or creating a variety of recipes from a paucity of ingredients. You ate banana stalks boiled to a stew — utterly devoid of flavor — with the same slow-motion meandering teaspoon. Your stomach had virtually nothing to work on so your bowels moved once in four or five days or a week. Eventually, the 600 or 700 calories a day denied you the energy to continue gardening. You learned to lay still to conserve strength. Salvation was nearing; all you had to do was endure.

The grind was terrible, and some fell by the wayside. Beriberi, inflated joints, dysentery, and whatnot wreaked havoc with many a body and even a few minds. Dr. Stevenson always added "malnutrition" or "undernourishment" to the death reports — even went to jail for refusing to retract such statements. The confused Japanese never relented in their quest to inflict the largest possible damage short of actual murder to the 3,700 internees. One wonders indeed what the Japanese had in mind — and that human flesh could take it for so long and still survive. Frances Connor:

Several times I found myself sitting down in the shanty and thinking it had all been a dream. Yet a mile away in the Walled City, Malate and Ermita, people are still being tortured or already under the earth.

I stayed for lunch and had a very fine stew, rich and creamy mashed potatoes, and what proved to be the "hit" of it all: two thick slices of real bread rushed down from a bakery at Tarlac and a new kind of butter — simple and wholesome. Hospital patients got specials of everything. Manolito got hold of some Turkey puree — and what a thing it was! Invited for a "taste," I practically consumed half of it.

. . . .

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