29 Jul 1942, "Exchange Ship" by Max Hill

The Asama was far out in the Indian Ocean, a day’s voyage ahead of us, before the Gripsholm sailed on July 29 for Rio de Janeiro, almost two weeks away across the South Atlantic Ocean. The harbor and Delagoa Bay were still crowded with freighters and tankers of the United Nations, some newly arrived, and others which had been waiting for a week for us to get out of the way.

The old intimacy of the Asama was gone. We had been lifted out of the hardships of our equivalent of a back-woods village at sea into a floating hotel where we could have movies, entertainments, dances, bars, magazines and newspapers only two months old, swimming pools and above all, freedom of speech.

On the Asama, I think I saw every passenger at least once a day somewhere on the ship. There were few places for us to go, and not many decks. In the past the Asama had a utilitarian purpose besides serving as a passenger liner. She was honey-combed with huge vaults in which silk was stored for fast transit to the United States. These vaults were waste space on our voyage, except for a few corners piled with delicacies from looted cities for the delight of the returning Japanese. None of it, of course, had been served to us, though the Japanese on the Gripsholm had been given the same food that we had been served on our first meal aboard.

A typical meal for the steerage passengers on the Asama was the breakfast we had on the first morning. And that wasn’t too bad compared to the food in prison. We began with oatmeal, but something was wrong with it.
“Try salt,” I was advised.
I did. It wasn’t much better.
Then, from across the table, a man gasped:
“Look at the dead worms!”
Sure enough, it was filled with grubs, white and still. I pushed the dish aside; never again touched oatmeal or corn-meal mush. Something is lacking in the taste of all Japanese products made from grains. One explanation I have heard is that in making flour they mix a large quantity of other ingredients to conserve their meager supplies-such things as fish meal and potatoes.

Of course conservation of everything in Japan goes to an extent that we in America, even now, would consider fantastic. Literally nothing is wasted, and even before the war Japan had begun to grab what she could of whatever she needs from any source.

Most of the mission property had been taken over before the war, including the million-dollar St. Luke’s Hospital in Tokyo, which was built and equipped with modern apparatus by the Episcopal Church. I was taken there in June, 1942, for cholera and typhoid shots, and it was on its way toward becoming as dirty and ill-tended as the prison hospital I have described. The Japanese have no drugs and medicines for civilian use, even such things as ether and iodine and adhesive tape and bandages.

The several hundred hospitals and otherwise unobtainable equipment and medical supplies were one of the richest prizes seized by the Japanese. They found new stocks of radium and drugs and X-ray equipment and microscopes and kit after kit of the finest American surgical instruments. They carted it all off for the Japanese army and left the patients to shift for themselves, and, in many cases, lie helpless on the floors because the authorities wanted the beds in which they had been confined.