FOOD FOR PRISONERS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 61, 10 September 1945, Page 5

FOOD FOR PRISONERS

RELIEF OVER WIDE AREA

Rec. 10.40 a.m

RANGOON, Sept. 9

When the Japanese commandant at the Rantauparapat prisoner of war and internee camp at Sumatra committed hara-kiri, the camp, which contained 84 British and 6300 Dutch, became completely disorganised and was without food. The R.A.F. relieved the inmates by dropping food supplies. The Japanese in Sumatra had concentrated 17,000 prisoners and internees in six main areas, to which 38 tons of medical supplies, food, arj clothing have so far been dropped. R.A.F. Liberators and Dakotas from a chain of airfields extending over 3000 miles—the most northerly in eastern India and the most southerly in the Cocos Islands, below the Equator— have already ferried more than 130 tons of supplies to liberate prisoners of war in the Dutch East Indies, Singapore. Malaya. Siam, and French Indo-China. R.A.F. crews from the Cocos Islands sent ten tons of welfare supplies from their own stores, including tinned fruit and cigarettes. Several crews have lost their lives.