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1056 packets of cigarettes costing 1.50 yen each and we sold them at a 10 sen profit on each packet. This allowed six packets per head for 176 patients and staff and all were taken up. We lost a clock from the kitchen on 19 May and concluded that trading was still going on. On 22 May we admitted an acutely ill officer from Sham Shui Po and on 24 May a Canadian soldier died and was buried at once. At this time we were very short of both Japanese and Red Cross food stores and though the compradore came on 26 May and took money he was not allowed to bring goods to us or to the other camps.
On 28 May the Japanese warrant officer in charge of rations gave Mr. Campbell a new scale to be effective from 1 June.
Staff and Employed Patients and Non-employed Rice G.510 + 30 32 + 32 Meat G.660 = + 60 Vegetable 540 = + 140 360 = + 70 Salt 10 = 8 No change ** + 3 Sugar 10 5 Tea 8 2 1 Nil = + 3 Oil 3 3 9 9 31 I Curry 20 + 20 15 +15 Beans Nil Nil 60 - 31I imagine that these figures were target or even show figures for the Japanese, for the issues we could afford to make were always lower in practice.
On 29 May I was passing the R.E. shop with Saito when he went in and Q.M.S. Tyas told him how badly we needed diesel oil and cement. I remarked that I was being pressed every day for these stores, to which Saito very fairly responded that I was troubling him every day too on the same subject. We were very short of cooking oil and I reported that our present stock allowed only 0.85 litre for the whole hospital daily. Saito also promised to look into the supply of beans which I told him had vanished from our rations. I pressed him about canteen goods and said we were exceedingly short of salt, and of wood for fuel and that we fed our cooking fires only on wood which we had stripped from buildings in Bowen Road.
The same day Saito produced the old undertaking not to escape which all the staff and patients had signed in Bowen Road on 26