Japanese soldiers cutting fuel for camp

Japanese soldiers cutting fuel for camp

166

It was with great difficulty that the Japanese before Port Arthur procured the necessary wood for cooking purposes. The country was nearly treeless when they arrived and the few wooden huts of the Manchurian peasants were quickly demolished and used up as firewood. Then the fields were ransacked for stalks of corn and bits of straw, and thus they managed to get along until the commissariat could bring in supplies of firewood from Japan. The corn stalks and straw were distributed in handfuls, enough to boil water for tea, one of the few luxuries to which the soldiers were accustomed. When, as Richard Barry relates, General Yamamoto, on September 24th fell with a bullet hole in his brain, the whole army went for one whole day without fuel, eating their meals cold, in order to provide wood enough for a funeral pyre for their dead leader. The corpse was cremated on the battle field and the ashes sent to Tokio in a wooden box.

1 stereograph. 2 photomechanical prints on stereo card : halftone, stereograph, color ; 9 x 18 cm

1905 Ingersoll, T.W.

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