Notes of Meeting

41 officers wanted to work on farm. Do the others not want to work? No.

War prolonged – food conditions becoming worse and worse. CC [Camp Commandant] doing his best to get food for you. At future date food may be insufficient and those who work will get supplementary food for what they produce.

No work – no supply.

International Law will be respected. You are all Maj-Gens, Brigs or Cols and you stress you work or reason for not working.

But if no food is available outside all you’ll get is what you grow. Such conditions may arise.

CC has never had any intention of driving you to work nor to issue orders.  He wants to better your conditions in the future.

Once more try to get officers to see these points. You complained of food shortages in Taiwan. At present here it is comparatively sufficient but it may not always be so.

Cultivation will not take much time each day nor is season long. You walk round and then go back and smoke and play cards – a meaningless existence. Cultivation is good for your welfare and health and better than bridge.

Plot small and won’t produce much. We suspect that later on you’ll say now vegetables very scarce – you must go outside and work on a bigger plot of ground to produce more.

At present there is no shortage of food and CC has no intention of making the plot the start of a bigger farm. If he thinks it necessary to cultivate outside he would start at once. This year it will be absolutely unnecessary. 

Thus we can take the CC’s word that it is his intention to cultivate only the small plot this year.

You are guarded by International Law but what’s the good of that if in future we can’t get food stuff outside.

It will be very difficult to convince officers that the plot will make any difference to our food for more than a week or so. They object to the work because it’s not in keeping with their rank and Nip officers don’t do it.

CC has never had any intention of driving service officers to work. But if there is food shortage you must help yourselves. Misunderstandings may have arisen due to bad interpreting. Please give officers an unbiased view.

Re. threat. No threat, entirely misinterpretation. No question of punishment for those who don’t work voluntarily.

Produce probably available by September but no farm. Don’t worry about smallness of plot – it will do some good.