- and cooked according to their own liking. The finance officer conveyed o me the prisoners t request for more canned goods and their preference of wheat flour to rice, I remember that I did my best to make such arrangements and that they were given a fairly large quantity of these items. By utilizing drums and coconut oil, they began to bake bread, and I. was once asked to see this. Furthermore, I even made arrangements for cigarette distribution, requested by the finance officer.
- Because the prisoners were apparently in poor physical condition, as mentioned previously, and, generally, were low in stamina, the only work performed by them throughout the entire phase of construction was the gathering of small and medium sized pebbles from the reef of the east coast of the island and the loading of them on trucks. (The pebbles were used to construct runways.) Aside from this I remember that they cleaned the airfield and approaching roads, in addition, they were never given any pick and shovel work or any loading and unloading work because of their weak physical condition and low stamina. Consequently, I believe that the work accomplished during the whole period of construction, in spite of the effort expended, was very little. Some of them volunteered to drive trucks, but we did not use them because our unit had enough drivers.
- My responsibility for the prisoners ended, as stated above, but since my company was handling all the rations for prisoners, they were included in my unit as a formality for the sake of convenience in bookkeeping and administration. It was a practice in the Navy to make such arrangements in order to clear bookkeeping and administrations which we followed for the purpose of supplying rations not only to prisoners but also to other army units and navy personnel who were not regular members of our company. Therefore, the prisoners, for the above-mentioned reasons, became a temporary casual company. A prisoners' record book was made with the materials that they themselves supplied; and deaths from illness or in battle and other occurrences were transmitted to my unit in order to be recorded. One of the objectives of this was to keep the financial record straight. I believe that the problem of the prisoners will become clear by referring to these reports.
- Because the encamping area was primarily on a narrow island and because a number exceeding 6,000 men was to camp there, I was perplexed in the selection of an encampment area (the air force personnel had priority), having no other recourse but to use what was left after the prescribed airfield was taken. However, we finally decided upon the area which lay Southwest of TAKAHASHI's company, west of the army unit and Northwest of MIYAKE's company because it was an area farthest removed from the airfield and because it was contiguous to that in which the army unit under the direct command of the air force was encamped.
- At for Living facilities, maintenance materials were considers ably depleted, and all the stocks on hand were earmarked. While there were no extra facilities, we were able to improvise enough shelter against rain with what we had on hand and what we were able to find locally.
- The first of the important problems.
- A few days after the arrival of the prisoners on the island, an army unit in need of assistance and whose strength was about two battalions came from EREBENTA on BOUGAINVILLE to occupy the island. The commander at the time was Army Captain SENDA. While there might have been other reasons, I think that the purpose of the army being stationed with us. was to work at the naval airfield and get subsistence from the navy in return, thus easing the burden of supporting themselves rather than to wait aimlessly and inactive until equipment arrived.
For carrying out the work of quartering the troops Captain SENDA and I agreed to divide the authority, by which arrangement Captain SENDA was to take complete charge of the billeting works of the army. It was decided that the construction unit would not interfere directly with the affairs of the army. It was understood that there would be no interference directly or indirectly in matters other than construction work.
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