9
Back to Banka Island
For the past few months we had been warned by our captors that we were now under risk from Allied air raids. To be frank, there were some of us who thought that friendly fire would be a fast, easy escape from the endless endurance of our life in camp.
By now there were no more regular deliveries of rice, and we were ordered to convert every available square foot of the camp into arable land to grow plants and root crops to keep us alive. The Japanese would take small parties of us into the jungle to forage for ferns, grasses and leaves. Any individual plots we had cultivated were now banned and had to be incorporated into the larger project of feeding the entire camp. This was a heavy blow to Marjorie, who had proved adept and green-fingered in turning vegetable s
