JAPANESE WAR PRISONERS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29367, 21 November 1960, Page 17

JAPANESE WAR PRISONERS

Camp Fare Served At Reunion Dinner

Japanese prison camp life was relived for a short time by 60 former prisoners who dined in a city hotel on Saturday evening. Before the dinner started, two men entered the dining room carrying a kerosene tin full of rice boiled in water, which they ladled into bowls thrust forward in mock enthusiasm. On top of each helping went a small piece of pumpkin.

The dish was called rice a la Nagoyam geisha. According to one former prisoner it was typical of what he had to eat, twice a day for nearly three years—only this time there were no gravel and mouse droppings. The dinner, was part of the first reunion of former prisoners of tho Japanese, held in New Zealand. The secretary of the reunion organising committee (Mr D. Bailey) told the gathering it was a splendid effort. He urged all former servicemen and women and civilians who were interned in the Far East, regardless of nationality, to join the New Zealand Ex-prisoners of War Association. “We have come to the conclusion there are between 250 and 300 former prisoners in New Zealand,” he said. “It would be a pity for us to break up now.” There was only one woman at the reunion. She is Mrs L. A. van Schooten, of Karinga, who was interned with about 10,000 other women in a camp called Tjideng at Jakarta, between October, 1942, and September, 1945. After the war she married Mr van Schooten—also a former prisoner—and ' came to New Zealand eight and a-half years ago.

The reunion ended with a wreath-laying ceremony at the Citizens’ War Memorial and a service at the Cathedral yesterday morning. More than 70 persons were present when the wreaths were laid by Mr L. C. Hurndell, chairman of the organising committee, and Mr Bailey. The Rev. H. I. Hopkins, chaplain at Paparua Prison, and himself a former prisoner-of-war, dedicated the wreaths and conducted the service in the Cathedral.