Fifty Years After: Some Experiences of the Medical Care of Prisoners of War

Abstract

Mention is made of Italian prisoners-of-war treated in Catterick military hospital but in October 1943 Italy joined the Allied side. An account is given of the medical condition of 78 Japanese POWs and of 228 members of the Japanese Indian Forces (JIFs) in a transit hospital in eastern India (now Bangladesh). Tropical sprue appeared to occur in an epidemic form each June and July in Burma and eastern India, but did not seem to have affected the Japanese or JIFs. A brief account is given of the condition of 180 European or Australian service men who had survived harsh conditions in Japanese POW camps until liberation in September 1945, then being admitted to a military hospital in Rangoon en route for home. Some had suffered from blindness as a result of malnutrition, the precise reason being uncertain, but there was some improvement after the injection of crude liver extract.