Themes
Twiss POW Transcripts
Admiral Sir Frank Twiss describing an outbreak of dysentry at the Macassar prisoner of war camp
Transcript: "Somewhere about August somebody got dysentery and the Japanese were very worried about dysentery. They were perpetually inspecting us for dysentery all the way when they came up in the ship and somebody caught dysentery so a medical officer was sent for and he said it was quite clear that all the people with dysentery must be in one set of cells and all the people without dysentery must be in the other set of cells and the two should never meet and about once a week we were taken out and tests were made to see if we’d got dysentery. Unhappily it seemed to spread a bit and I caught it, can’t think how, but I did so by that time we had about six or eight people with dysentery and the Japanese were worried because I think their instructions were to keep us available for questioning, in reasonable health, but not too strong, that is to say we weren’t actually to be allowed to starve but we weren’t to be strong enough to be anything but cowed."
