Sticky rice ball & salt... food from heaven in Balanga (Bataan)
This is our food, this is how we eat...
"The exodus from Bataan took place in the hottest, driest time of the year, the season of drought. The unclouded sun seared the earth; by afternoon the air was an oven and the ground was rock-hard."
70,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans started "The Hike", as known to the men at the time, resulted in the two-week atrocity known later as the "Bataan Death March ".
"The first men to reach Balanga remembered it as a source of food. This was typically only a ball of sticky rice and a pinch of salt, but it was the first evidence that the Japanese did not intend to starve them to death."
Caldwell, D.L. 2019. Thunder on Bataan. The First American Tank Battles of World War II. Stackpole Books, Lanham, MD. 320 pp.
Background photos from Google.