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Tens of thousands of family parcels were also dispatched, but the Japanese seldom troubled to deliver them. Paul Reuter received in 1945 a package dispatched by his parents three years earlier, containing cookies and chocolate that had turned white with age. U.S. artillery captain Mel Rosen got a family parcel on Luzon in 1944 which he found wonderfully sensibly chosen: a carton of cigarettes, a sweater, a jar of candy and some vitamin pills. He was thrilled. Other men, by contrast, raged at the folly and insensitivity—in truth, tragic ignorance—which caused their loved ones to ship trifles. “Some men swore679 they would divorce their wives when they got home, for sending such stupid things,” said Rosen wonderingly. “One sent a football. Here was her husband starving—and he got a football!” When Lt. Eunice Young, a U.S. Army nurse held among more than 3,000 mostly civilian internees at Santo Tomas, Manila, received a parcel from home, it contained a swimsuit: “Guess my mother thinks680 I’m vacationing out here!”

Around two-thirds of the prisoners at Santo Tomas were American, a quarter British. In the early war years, their circumstances were relatively privileged. As food dwindled and cash ran out, however, in 1944 their condition became parlous, deaths commonplace. During the fight for Bataan, U.S. Army nurses were told to destroy their money before surrendering. Within weeks, they bitterly regretted this. Behind the walls of Santo Tomas they survived only by signing IOUs to local representatives of big U.S. companies such as General Electric, whose credit was deemed good. After liberation, Lt. Rita Palmer and others found themselves called upon to pay up, to the tune of $1,000 or more apiece. “We were so hungry that681 when we ate a banana, we ate the skin too,” said Hattie Brantley. “Anything to fill up our empty stomachs.”

Most Santo Tomas prisoners rejected dried and salted dilis fish when first this was offered to them, partly because of its overpowering stench. By the last months, however, they ate the fish and were grateful. Thefts of food by prisoners became a worsening problem—women cleaning vegetables carried off peelings, men scoured the garbage dumps. “It was becoming very apparent682 to what degree plain honesty, ordinary decency, self-respect, community feeling, and all the higher values are dependent on the maintenance of the narrowest margin between having enough to eat and not having enough to eat.” By December 1944, six or seven prisoners a day were dying of malnutrition in Santo Tomas. Through a characteristic eccentricity of Japanese management, two months before the camp’s liberation, formal instruction was imposed to teach all prisoners the correct method of bowing in unison to their captors, “to show respect” at roll call.

Most British families at home were no better informed than Americans about the hideous circumstances of the prisoners. It is doubtful whether thirty-three-year-old RAF Aircraftsman Phil Sparrow gained much pleasure from this letter, when it reached him on Batavia:

My Dear Philip683, I am hoping you will get these few lines & to know you are well. Everyone at home are well and we hope soon to get a card from you. Say what you are needing most and we will try and get it sent through the International Red Cross. Victor has the distribution of tomatoes in this district and could do with his clerk back. Mother & Auntie was here to tea Sunday. They are both well. Esmee and Ivor were here for a week, both were well. We are expecting Cousin Edie and daughter-in-law. Her son is in Malaya like yourself. Keep a stout heart & may God bless and bring you safely back. Ernest joins me in love & the best of health your loving Aunt Ada.

Prisoners were bereft of possessions. Mel Rosen owned a loincloth, a bottle and a pot of pepper. Many POWs boasted only the loincloth. Even where there were razor blades, shaving was unfashionable, shaggy beards the norm. Few made use of what might ironically be called their “leisure hours.” Paul Reuter claimed that he never did much, but never remembered