On this day, Bill writes 3 letters, as the V-Mail form is limited to 1 page.
Bill begins by describing the town they are in, which has two churches, a high school, hospital and public buildings. However, the water and electrical plants are not in service.
He says they have moved into the hospital and have cots to sleep on.
In this, the second letter of December 23rd, he starts off by saying there is an Evangelic United Church in town. In the previous location, the catholic priest wouldn’t allow protestant services to be held in his church. Bill makes reference to their church at home as a point of comparison. (First Evangelical Lutheran Church, 116 Bond St. in Toronto, 1944-12-07 – hertha ). He continues to describe the current state of the economy and how it broke down under Japanese rule.
Bill describes how hungry children met them and beg for the leftovers from their plates. He said one old man claimed it was his first coffee in two years. Bill makes the observation that is relevant to today’s authoritarians: such regimes, as was the Japanese Empire, rotten to the core, can not sustain their control over a population that wants freedom.
