Word: crouter
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...prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines, as was Mrs. Crouter, but after reading the article about her I wonder if we were in different wars, held by different captors. As a three-year-old, I suffered from kwashiorkor, a severe protein deficiency; this was not helped by eating the weevils in the rice, which we left in for their protein value. I remember three young men who were shot for trying to escape. We were forced to watch them dig their own graves, and then watch the execution itself...
...Crouter, in turn, was irritated by the Japanese attitude toward women. "Feudal," she wrote, after a guard said that American women opened and shut doors too aggressively, instead of gently like Japanese women. In 1943 the Japanese placed Lysol-soaked cloths in boxes outside the huts and announced that any prisoners who failed to wipe their feet on the cloth would be beaten. Wrote Crouter: "I am rather confused over Japanese politeness and tea ceremony in comparison with the Sergeant offering to slap any woman who wouldn't dip her feet into the door box. Like us, their nature...
Though she could be huffy, Crouter was never bitter, vengeful or condescending. She emerges from the diary as a slightly remote secular saint, bestowing high-minded affection on all comers. Yamamoto, a wide-eyed guard from Yokohama, was encouraged with his charcoal drawings. A pair of guards who arrived as "fire-breathers from Bataan" were soon rendered "tame and friendly" by the Crouter treatment. She was saddened when Tomibe came to Japanese class and lectured on harakiri. "He is living with the idea and may do it," she wrote. "Is he modern enough to break away, to learn from defeat...
Tomibe survived the war and was cleared of war-crimes charges on the basis of prisoner testimony. Three years ago, he attended a reunion in San Francisco with Crouter and other ex-prisoners, thanking the Americans and their children for teaching him about free will and democracy. The Americans, for their part, were grateful that Tomibe had not tried brainwashing or psychological games...
...prisoners did not lapse into passivity or childlike dependence on their captors-as has happened in many hostage situations, and could well have happened at the embassy in Iran. But even with decent treatment, the Crouter family suffered great psychological damage Natalie's husband, weak and despondent during captivity, died in 1951 at the age of 58. Daughter June was in therapy for three years, and Son Fred still suffers from violent nightmares...