The Ient Family: Family History

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As far as the tuppence a day to fight was concerned, we started accumulating Japanese money, which was absolutely useless to us. I mean, there’s no shops, nowhere to spend it at all. So we spoke to the interpreter, said, 'Look, we’ve got this money, what are we supposed to do with this?' At this point we had an accumulation of two years' or three years' money. So these questions went on for a while and one day we were told, 'Japanese commandant good man, we will let buy things in the canteen.' Great!

We were to get ten ‘Sen’ [Sen is a 1/100 of a Yen, like a cent to a dollar]. for our paper money whore tuppence. In other words, 10 Sen a day. 100 cen makes one Yen. At the end of the month we were able to accumulate 3 Yen. So we were led into this little hut that they’d built, called the ‘canteen’. There was a barrel of apples; we had never seen apples for years, a barrel of oranges and tooth powder and toothbrushes. We said, 'How much are the apples?' Answer, three yen! We said, 'How many do you get?' Answer, one. 'What about the oranges ?' we said. Answer, three yen. The toothpaste was the same. So in effect the Japanese commandant was buying this stuff at whatever price and selling it to us. In other words, we were working for a month for an apple or an orange! The month after that, the same thing, one apple or orange, and so on.


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