Which bowl would you eat from to keep everyone alive?

A doctor in Changi must choose which bowl to eat from to keep fellow prisoners alive when food, tools and certainty are gone.

Which bowl would you eat from to keep everyone alive?

In this episode we lay out the situation facing George Vance Allen from arrival at Changi Prison to the moment the camp’s shortages become a medical crisis. We follow his background, choices and the makeshift systems he set up under occupation, and ask what a medical leader does when the only resources left are his training and the people around him. What would you do with nothing?

Person: George Vance Allen Date: Born 16 April 1894; died 2 October 1970 Location: Changi Prison, Singapore; College of Medicine, Singapore Topic: Improvised medical and food survival in internment during WWII Event: Fall of Singapore and internment, February-March 1942

- Converted the College of Medicine into a blood transfusion center as siege began. - Organized cultivation of food on any available land before and after surrender. - Moved into Changi on 6 March 1942, where space shrank from designed 600 to thousands. - Trained and led men with medical knowledge to diagnose and treat as supplies vanished. - A former prisoner later wrote that Allen had kept him and others alive using unlikely food sources.

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