24 Friday, May 23, 1986 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Summer Is Here! CUSTOM PLAN A SUMMER OF FUN JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER DAY CAMP LOOKING BACK Memories Continued from Page 22 for campers entering grades 5-9 BLOCK SPECIALTY PROGRAMS - Select 1/2 day blocks in tennis, gymnastics, perfortningarts, computers, fine arts, dance and sports. Limited openings available in all camp programs for pre-schoolers through 10th graders. Child care option available. For your cgnvenience, the day camp will be open on the following Sundays: June 8, 15 and 22 from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. Additional information can be obtained by calling 661-1000, extension 254. KARrw,Ittlifi, . moments of self-debate, he realized that if he resisted sur render there would be no chance for survival. In a further effort to survive, he discarded his H dog tag. It was way too far for any U.S. forces to rescue me. I'd starve or die of thirst. The only water was salt water. I decided to take the chance." During his first days as a POW he was continuously inter- rogated. When his captors posed questions he was unable to an- swer, they would hit him. "After I realized that if you didn't an- swer, you got slugged, I gave them an answer to everything. There was nothing I didn't know," says Kaufman. When they asked him how many B-24's there were in . In- dia, "768" was his immediate reply. Where did they get the oil for airplanes? "Oil wells in Louisiana," he told them, and he even devised a supply route. The ability to think on his feet helped pull Kaufman through that year-and-a-half of imprisonment. "What saved me was my sense of humor," he ex- plains. "The fellows who fared best were the ones who could laugh. Without a sense of humor, you'd go crazy. Maybe 25 percent did." It seems difficult, if not im- possible to find humor in Kauf- man's memories. "At Ofuna, the first prison camp I was sent to, the men were fed three rice balls a day, lived in little cells where we slept on tatamis (straw mat) and had a bath once a month. The malnutrition was so bad that any illness could kill you. If someone said he didn't feel well and couldn't eat, you knew it was only a matter of time till he'd die." The prisoners had no work as- signments and Kaufman logged many hours learning Japanese from another American serv- iceman who acted as camp in- terpreter. When his friend was transferred, Kaufman became the unofficial interpreter, a posi- tion which freed him from the beatings given other prisoners, usually accused of stealing food. "The second POW camp was Omori, located in Tokyo Bay be- tween Tokyo and Yokohama. There we started work, cleaning up bombed areas. Then a big change scared us. They had us digging caves for storing muni-' tions and food, a last ditch stand that Japan made against an in- vasion. When the Americans dropped the atomic bomb in early August we didn't know what happened, but something had happened because there was no more work detail and the Japanese doubled the guard on us. We could tell something was up." The men could also hear the guards arguing. "One faction wanted to kill us, the other didn't. Finally around Aug. 25, all the Japanese guards and officials at the camp buried the prisoners' records and disappeared." At the same time, American planes began dropping candy bars to the prisoners. The pris- Judge Charles Kaufman oners, all suffering from mal- nutrition, including Kaufman who at 6 feet weighed 100 pounds and was bent over with protruding ribs, got sick from the candy. On Aug. 29, Omori prisoners were evacuated, under the command of Harold Stassen, former governor of Minnesota, to a hospital ship. Off in the dis- tance the men could see the USS Missouri where the proc- lamation of peace was being negotiated. In his chambers, Judge Charles Kaufman, a member of the Michigan JWV's Silverman Post, keeps a treasured framed copy of the "Instrument of Sur- render." About his decision to chance a surrender to the Japanese, Kaufman says: "Many times as a POW I regretted that chance but in retrospect, I'm here today." ❑ Italian Envoy Visits Israel Jerusalem (JTA) — Foreign Minister Julio Andreotti of Italy told Prime Minister Shimon Peres at a meeting here last Monday that Peres' pro- posal for a Middle East "Mar- shall Plan" to stem the region's economic deterioration had been raised at the Western economic summit meeting in Tokyo earl- ier this month. It was attended by the U.S. and the major in- dustrialized nations of Europe with the Japanese serving as hosts. Andreotti also met with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir during his three day visit. His talks here focussed on the problem of international ter- rorism. In that connection, An- dreotti reportedly agreed with Shamir that the 1980 Venice declaration by the European Economic Community (EEC) ministers that the Palestine Liberation Organization should be "associated" with Mideast peace talks no longer has any practical validity.