It looked, he said of the camp, like a Buddhist hell. I asked if he helped them. He said he didn’t. I asked if as a medical man he did not feel it was his duty to help the sick and the suffering. ‘You have to understand,’ he said, and he said it as though commenting on the quality or otherwise of his green tea, ‘we did not see them as human beings.’ The green tea came in small cups. It was very hard to swallow. He told me the Australians were bad with their hygiene. The Japanese took hot baths. The Australians did not. This seemed to explain things. I said nothing in reply. ‘You understand?’
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