JAPANESE PROPAGANDA LEAFLETS
 

A notable disregard for sanitary precautions, combined with the natural unhealthfulness of the battle position, added greatly to the spread of malaria, as well as other diseases. Lack of training in the elementals of military hygiene was universal in the Philippine Army. Many of the Filipinos drank unboiled water from streams and pools and failed to sterilize their mess gear. Latrines were neither well constructed nor properly used. Kitchens were dirty and garbage buried near the surface. Huge flies, attracted by these malodorous dumps, swarmed everywhere. "The fly menace," wrote a medical officer, "spread beyond comprehension."64 "Sanitation," remarked another officer, on duty with Filipino troops, "was ghastly. Straddle trenches-when built-adjoined kitchens. . . . The calls of nature were responded to when and where heard."65

Even in the hospitals sanitation was far from ideal. There were no screens and the supply of lysol was limited. The hospital waste was emptied into latrine pits and the stench at times was so offensive that men relieved themselves elsewhere. Despite the desperate efforts of the nurses to keep the hospital areas sanitary, there were, one doctor thought, "undoubtedly many cross infections."66

Under these circumstances it is not surprising that common diarrhea and various forms of dysentery appeared soon after the troops fell back to fixed positions. While never as serious as malnutrition or malaria, the incidence of both ailments was high and their treatment limited by the shortage of drugs. Filipino troops, often barefoot, frequently developed hookworm also. Carbon tetrachloride for treatment was available only in limited quantities, the medical depot reporting fifty-one bottles on hand at the end of March.67

As the men on Bataan grew more gaunt and disease-ridden it became increasingly difficult to isolate the specific causes which rendered men ineffective for combat. One surgeon believed that the high malarial rate was "covering up" the prevailing "mental and physical exhaustion" caused by a protracted starvation diet.68 It was Colonel Cooper's judgment that "the basic cause of all the trouble was the lack of food, of proper food."

 

 

 

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