The Kitchen – Changi (1945)

The Changi Kitchen (1945)

‘Some idea of the inadequacy of the cooking utensils supplied by the Japanese can be gained from the fact that the gaol cookhouse, designed to cater for 200, had frequently to feed 6,000 men. This scale can be regarded as the normal one: it meant that hundreds of trays, pails and containers had to be made, all out of the inevitable steel cupboards; that ovens had to be constructed; and that cooking had to be done in never ending shifts. And yet, in spite of all this, the cookhouse managed on Christmas (by dint of months of saving and scraping and magnificent organisation) to produce for the day’s meals 52,000 doovers, 500 gallons of stew, 700 gallons of pap, 2,000 gallons of rice and 3,000 gallons of tea.’

Source:  Unknown Author, ‘Food’, in Lachlan Grant (ed.), The Changi Book, Published by New South in association with the Australian War Memorial, 2015, pg., 265