Bread and Rice

Bread and Rice, first published in 1947, is the moving war-time account by Doris Macauley (aka Doris Rubens) of her life on the run in the Philippines and her eventual capture and imprisonment by the Japanese. For a year and a half, her and her husband lived in the mountains and jungles of Luzon, hiding with reclusive mountain tribes who sheltered and helped them in their daily struggle to survive. Due to ever-roving Japanese patrols, they were forced to move constantly to avoid discovery—spending a week here, a month there. When they were finally captured, they were first kept in horrific Japanese prisons before being transferred to the internment camp at Santo Tomas, and, later, Los Banos. The descriptions of hardship and the will-to-survive portrayed in Bread and Rice are a timeless story of individual courage and inspiration.