Page 62 of Sisters Under The Rising Sun

‘I’m OK.’

‘Are you sure? You don’t look OK.’

‘It’s just, well, Charlie wouldn’t let me have a bit of his banana. It looked so good and I thought he was my friend and that he’d give me a bite.’

Norah wraps June in her arms. ‘Darling girl, I’m so sorry. Do some of your friends have special food?’

‘Yes! Today Charlie had a banana, and yesterday Susan had a mango. They said their mummies told them they weren’t to share.’

Ena comes into the room and sees the concern on Norah’s face.

‘Everything all right?’

‘Charlie had a banana and wouldn’t let June have a bite,’ Norah tells her.

‘Can you get me a banana, Aunties? I’d share mine.’

‘I know you would, dear girl. Why don’t you go outside and play, and Aunty Ena and I will try to work out a way to get you a banana?’

Reassured that soon she may have her own banana, June is happy to go outside again.

‘I don’t believe this!’ Norah laments. ‘We can’t get our little girl something as simple as a banana. Just think of the thousands we saw rotting on the ground before we came here and now I’d give anything to be able to get hold of just one, even a rotten one.’

‘We’ll work it out, Norah,’ Ena reassures her sister. ‘June will have her banana. But this is getting ridiculous; we’ve become a camp of haves and have-nots.’

Ena is right, there is inequality within the camp and she wants something done about it. The camp committee is called to an urgent meeting and Margaret and Nesta head over to Dr McDowell’s house, joined by other house captains along the way.

‘We have to do something to control the mood in the camp. It wasn’t long ago we supported and cared for one another and now everyone is tense and upset,’ Dr McDowell says.

‘It’s because of Gho Leng,’ a house captain remarks.

‘It’s because a few of us can actually buy stuff and the rest can’t,’ Margaret adds.

‘It’s not our fault that some of us have our valuables; would you rather we gave them to the Japanese?’ another points out.

‘No, of course not. But it would be nice if you shared your bounty with those who have nothing. That’s all I’m saying.’ Margaret may speak softly, but there is never any doubt when she’s cross.

‘You’re sticking up for the nurses, that’s what you’re doing,’ Margaret is told. ‘But isn’t it also true that the nurses arrived with barely a stitch of clothing?’

‘We’re quite capable of sticking up for ourselves,’ snaps Nesta. ‘But we’re not the only ones who came here with nothing. What little we have has been made possible by the generosity of others.’

‘How many of you have had one of the nurses visit your house, tend to you or your family?’ Margaret asks.

No one responds.

‘And how would you feel if they now want to charge you for taking care of you or your children?’

‘They wouldn’t! That’s not what nurses do,’ a woman blusters.

‘Exactly. So, we expect them to give, for you to receive, totake, and that’s fair? Is that what some of you are thinking?’

‘If I may, I have a suggestion,’ Mrs Hinch says. She doesn’t want this meeting to turn into a row. ‘Why don’t we form a shop committee? I think we need to agree right now, before things get any worse, that whenever Gho Leng comes into the camp, everything we buy is evenly distributed.’

The women, some begrudgingly, agree and the meeting ends. A shop committee of six members is appointed.

Gho Leng’s visits to the camp become regular and word spreads to nearby villages that the internees have ‘money’ to spend. Soon, other local traders approach Captain Miachi; they too want a piece of this pie.

Miachi finally agrees to allow a second local trader to visit the camp twice a week, as long as the women continue to share the purchases, he confirms.