Transcript
When we lobbed into the camp at Konyu, at Hintok, we were told to step out and we thought we going to be shot because we were no good with glasses on. But, we went into their cookhouse. So we had about three weeks in there. So you couldn't steal anything, but we were allowed to have a certain amount. But we did, we were able to steal a little bit for the hospital. And you took a hell of a risk because... and they used to have block salt. And I took that back to the boys at night time, because salt was something you never saw.
Oh, no, there was a few wild chillis, green chillis. There was sort of a white radish, but mostly it was just some of the vilest rice. Some of the rice had been treated with... You use it in cement work... Lime because it was full of weevils, so they put... And it was just like rotten eggs. It was terrible. And the weevils part wasn't so bad, and then when we had the weevils, we used to blindfold ourselves because the little white ones, and then somebody said, "Well, they're good protein". So we didn't take offence to their brown heads, so in the finish we took the blindfold off our heads and started to...
About once a year, I think, or twice a year, we used to get what we called nasi goreng, that was sort of fried rice with a bit of peanuts and a little bit of...But on the line, normally it was just ordinary boiled rice, pap, no sugar, no milk in the morning and possibly dried rice.
