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Company Soup

Heroes Remember

Company Soup

Transcript
And one morning we were, we were coming down the track and here's a, a big black cat that had been cut in two, laying right on a rail. And, and Jenkins said, "That's something for the soup." If you got out to the, if you could make it out to the, to the, to the docks from the camp, the, the, and if you did your best to keep up to the work, there was company soup, and it could be anything. Now, once it was, it was, what's this word for, for onions that, it's a style of an onion that's the, the same, the same diameter all the way down. What is the, that variety of an onion? Interviewer: Green onions? Oh, they were green alright, but there's a special name for this onion that's the same diameter all the way down. And it's, it's long. But anyway, we had stacked these, we had stacked these because we were ordered to, beside these bails of, of this green onion stuff, and of course, they froze and then, then they began to, there's clouds of steam come out, and they were, they were decaying, they were decaying. And so the, the Jap overseer insisted on putting them, these, in the company soup, these onions that were rotting, they were put in our company soup. But, but if we were on, on soy beans, they were perfectly round, and if we're working on them, they would put some of those soy beans in the, in the company soup, and it just made all the difference in the world. It's one reason that we, we lived through that time in 5B was the fact that we got some soy beans. Of course, the sick men on camp, they didn't, couldn't get them, and so the sick men on camp would die. But anyway, here's this cat cut in two, and one of the, Joe Falcon picked up the halves and he said, "We'll put it in the company soup." And he skinned it and they put it in the company soup and, well, for thirty men, you'd be lucky if you got a, just one spoonful of cat. But after we'd eaten it, Jenkins said, "You know, a cat's the most agile thing on earth. That must've been awful sick cat that, that couldn't get off the rail road track." And, and you know it was a horrible thought. One of the fellow's actually brought up, he couldn't keep it down just thinking about the cat, was sick. Oh dear. But then, this business of this little, this little, tiny little hen house and it's seven hens in it and the guard had a, had a dog, a German Shepherd and the German Shepherd dog was starving, too. And it went in, and they caught it eating the eggs, standing up on it's hind legs and eating eggs, and immediately, the dog had to be shot. So the guard had a loaded rifle and he shot the dog, he shot the dog, he shot the dog right there. And, and Joe Falcon said to the interpreter and the interpreter asked the, the guard, "What about we having, what about us having some of the dog in our company soup?" And, and the guard said that he didn't mind and, and so, so Joe Falcon, he cuts the, the two hind legs off and, and he skins them. And he just starting for the little shack where this company soup was made and the owner of the dog comes in, and just grabs those two hind legs, and goes off with them, and Joe was so angry, he said, "There's no meat on the rest of that dog, that dog's been starving." He said there was a little meat on the, on the haunches, on the hind legs, but there was nothing on the rest of the dog so he said we'll forget it, forget it. But crazy, crazy things happened, crazy things. You know that, that one day there was nothing to eat but grasshoppers? Grasshoppers! They'd been, they hadn't been cooked, they'd been soaked in soya sauce, and, and the, the hind legs have got barbs, terrible barbs on them, and they just cut the inside of your mouth, they cut the inside of your mouth. So I was, I tore the hind legs off my grasshoppers, and I had a little pile of them and Reisdorf, Reisdorf from Indian Head came along, he said, "What are you gonna do with those hind legs?" I said, "Do you want them? You can have them." And, and, he took these hind legs and chewed them up. You know, a lot of people won't believe that, and that was absolutely true, that's true, that happened. And even worse then grasshoppers was the snails, the snails. You had to take a nail or a chunk of wire to get them out of the shell, and they were simply horrible. Simply horrible, horrible. Grasshoppers and snails.
Description

Mr. Forsyth recalls some of the more questionable food he ate while at 5B - cat, dog, and insects included.

Thomas Smith Forsyth

Mr. Forsyth was born on a farm just outside of Pipestone, Manitoba, on April 26, 1910. He worked on the farm and attended school until grade 11, joining the army the following year when war was declared. After being accepted into the Winnipeg Grenadiers, Mr. Forsyth was briefly stationed in Jamaica guarding German POWs before being posted to Hong Kong. Captured in the Battle of Hong Kong, Mr. Forsyth was interned as a POW in North Point and Sham Shui Po prison camps, before being sent to Niigata Camp 5B in Japan as a slave labourer. After years of heavy labour, physical abuse, and terrible living conditions, Mr. Forsyth was liberated from 5B when Japan surrendered. He returned to his family in Manitoba soon thereafter.

Meta Data
Medium:
Video
Owner:
Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:
06:45
Person Interviewed:
Thomas Smith Forsyth
War, Conflict or Mission:
Second World War
Location/Theatre:
Japan
Branch:
Army
Units/Ship:
Winnipeg Grenadiers
Occupation:
Garrison Military Police

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