Whilst taking the dog for a walk today I came upon a troop of wild mushrooms (wood blewits) and within 20 mins I’d filled a carrier bag of the gorgeous goodies. Mushrooms are rich in protein and the quantity I gathered today would be enough to provide a good meal for at least eight people - all for free and in mid December too when there isn’t much else around, even in the best kept small-holding.

And that got me thinking about food resources and rationing during WW2 .....

My mother’s family had always maintained a large vegetable plot but with the outbreak of war, the introduction of rationing, food shortages (particularly of fats and protein) and the exhortations to "Dig for Victory" ... their vegetable garden was soon greatly extended: leeks replaced lilies; potatoes, peonies. They’d also always kept a few chickens for eggs and had usually fattened up their own goose for Christmas, and in addition grand-dad, my mum’s father, who had been a mariner all his life, had in retirement kept the whole family well-supplied with sea fish … until all his boats were commandeered in May 1940. Thereafter he was forced to simply dangle a baited line over the harbour arm while "doing his bit" as a volunteer coastguard.

So they were by no means "townies" completely divorced from the sea or land. And yet while mum’s wartime diaries record regular trips to fish for flounders in the river, and seasonal excursions to collect blackberries, there is never any mention of greater foraging for wild food, whether berries, nuts, fungi or whatever. Similarly whilst the nation as a whole was being encouraged to turn every available corner of land over to cultivation, to eat more vegetables and less meat, and to use every last scrap of food produced … I can find almost nothing, official or otherwise, encouraging greater use of the country’s wild food resources. Yet dandelions, nettles, blackberries, chestnuts, acorns ...  were all readily available, even in cities. I wonder why, though I can think of several possible reasons:

I wonder if the wartime authorities were not keen on encouraging civilians to go wandering around and poking their noses into every copse and hedgerow - which might be hiding a pillbox or supply dump?

Were they perhaps afraid of encouraging a glut of poisonings from uninformed people eating poisonous berries and mushrooms, especially when there was a fear of mass poisoning from gas attack?

Was it perhaps thought better to leave nature’s wild bounty as an un-rationed perk for those in the know such as farming folk who were already being squeezed to produce more food but not for themselves?

Or was it simply that if the government had started encouraging people to eat "weeds", such as nettles and dandelions, and even quelle horreur, snails! ... then it would have been exceedingly bad for morale being far too indicative of just how bad things really were?

So why was the immense bounty of Britain’s wild food never, at least officially, exploited?

One thing was exploited, at least - rose hips. IIRC you could actually get paid for collecting those for the production of rose hip syrup as an antiscorbutic, as there was less citrus fruit imported and thus a risk of vitamin C deficiency in children..

Found a reference to it here :- http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/user/15/u533515.shtml

Our school had sunny autumn afternoons off to forage for wild rose hips - this was towards the end of the war. These were weighed and we got points on our war effort cards. Eventually these were redeemed  by way of jollies according the points earned for which you were given a military rank. So I was a General before I turned eight. I could have been a Field Marshall had my mother allowed all of her copper antiques to be smelted down. Jollies included free cinema tickets and rides on local park boats etc.
Wild food such as rabbits, pheasants and ducks were used for barter trading - eggs, fish and shoes etc. Semi rural communities quickly learned how to cope well. Long after the war there were also pig clubs with rotas of helpers and food providers given a share out.

Ah yes - I'd completely forgotten about the collection of wild rose hips.

And on reflection I'm not sure how accessible much of the countryside was. My mother's family were only a short walk from the South Downs, but in wartime large areas of the Downs were off-limits having been turned over to War Office use. Either that or they were being ploughed up for the first time in centuries and turned into arable food factories in which hedgerows, copses and bosky woods were generally unwelcome. In the same way all the good mussel beds being situated on groynes and sea walls, were now also off-limits and secured away behind miles of barbed wire, tank traps and mines.

But nevertheless to the best of my knowledge Lord Woolton (Minister of Food) never made any reference to the nutritious benefits of nettles or dandelions ... both of which are readily available nearly all year and easily substitute for spinnach and lettuce. Even in these affluent times, in France they are still both regularly gathered, and more for their flavour than to eke out meagre rations.

This is something I did not know existed, the World Carrot Museum;

http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history4.html

K-Rations;

from wiki;
The K-ration was also criticized for its performance in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater of operations, where difficulties in supply from bases in India had resulted in widespread and monotonous use of the K-ration for light infantry forces of the United States, as well as Nationalist China and the United Kingdom. Many soldiers, including the U.S. unit known as Merrill's Marauders and British Chindit forces in Burma had for five months lived primarily on K-rations, supplemented by rice, tea, sugar, jam, bread, and canned meat rations, which were dropped to them by air. In the case of the Marauders, whose diet consisted of 80% K-rations, severe weight loss (an average of 35 pounds per man) and vitamin deficiency were noted, which may have also contributed to a decline in resistance to various tropical diseases. A British medical officer reported that, of 209 Chindits examined at the end of this time, 182 had lost up to 30 pounds and 27 had lost from 30 to 70 pounds. Deficiency diseases such as pellagra and beriberi were diagnosed. One of British General Orde Wingate’s units in the Dehra Dun area was visited by quartermaster logistics officers some months after they had last eaten K-rations. At the sight of a box of K-rations carried by the visitors, two of Wingate’s men vomited.

A story from the BBC's Peoples War site about a pig club;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/89/a4464489.shtml

Wasn't everyone much healthier during the war? Restricted sugar/fat intake and lots of lovely veg to fill you up?

And isn't it true that - despite the terrible trauma of it all - depressive illness was rare and suicide rates actually went down?

Temperance wrote:

Wasn't everyone much healthier during the war? Restricted sugar/fat intake and lots of lovely veg to fill you up?

Temp, I believe that was indeed the case. I'll try and find some stats.

One of the chain of "British Restaurants", set up during the War. Originally called "Communal Feeding Centres", the name was changed at Churchill's insistence as it sounded too Communist for his liking.

There is an interesting article about food rationing here;

http://www.cooksinfo.com/british-wartime-food




"The result of these efforts was that, despite the deprivation, the British population actually ended the war tremendously fit and healthy: healthier than they had been before, or have been since. Children in general were even taller and heavier than those before the war. Infant mortality rates went down; average age of death from natural causes increased, meaning civilians just plain lived longer."

I always thought the song, "Yes, We Have No Bananas" dated from WWII, but apparently it was written in 1923 - something to do with a banana blight in Brazil. The song, however, was very popular during and just after the War. I can just about remember it as a little girl in the 50s - I thought it was very funny. From Wiki:


The term has been resurrected on many occasions, including in during rationing in the United Kingdom in World War II, when the British Government banned import of bananas for five years (a particularly harsh act for both supplier and consumer because the British Empire had a trading agreement or cartel with banana producers from the Windward Islands in the Caribbean). Shop owners put signs stating "Yes, we have no bananas" in their shop windows in keeping with the war spirit.

There were few fat children as I recall but we also had more animal fat with suet    puddings and yummy dripping. Eggs were     preserved in isinglass  whatever that  is. I assume country children fared better with sorties for pheasant eggs, field edge grain gleaning for garden chickens, bramble fruit, nutting for hazels and sweet chestnuts and of course, fishing. With brown beet sugar for jam  making everyone made jam. The matter of depression is interesting because there must have been less though many had good reason. I recall much good humour,  sharing and looking out for other people. This seems to have become clichéd yet it is how I recall life then. Only the very elderly showed fear   or anxiety during raids. One might say that children did not understand what was going on. Of course we did. The radio was on all day and the newspaper thoroughly read and going to the pictures at least once a week there were newsreels.

My grandparents usually kept a pig - the runt of the litter from a local farmer who was a specialist in the species (his son became "pig advisor" for The Archers). They were fed via a curved salt-glazed sewer bend fixed through the wall, until one (tamworth not usual large white) made a break up it.

Two things we collected for many years post-war - garlic mustard & ramsons. Apparently onions were in short supply in the war, so both were valued as flavourings. Most eggs had to go to the Packing Station in the early 50s, but they didn't want the bantam eggs, and duck eggs were always "off ration", supplies being too small to be worth collection & distributing. So were cream and butter from goats milk - the latter being pale and a little waxy in texture, but the taste was wonderful. BTW - water glass was a far better preservative for eggs than isinglass.

Just discovered that the influential cookery writer and broadcaster Ambrose Heath, who presented the BBC's wartime radio programme, 'The Kitchen Front' every morning, and who wrote numerous newspaper articles, books and pamphlets with the support of the Ministry of Food, certainly thought highly of nettles and dandelions (though of course it might have been faked praise). For example in, 'Kitchen Front Recipes and Hints' (1941) he wrote:

"A poached egg on a bed of dandelion or nettle purée covered with cheese sauce is an almost perfect meal, containing every one of the foods we are being told to eat, body-building, protective and energising." 

Drifting off topic a bit ..... from 'Flora Britannica' (1996) ... in WW1 when Germany ran critically short of cotton due to the RN blockade, it resorted to using nettles to produce fabric. Over two thousand tonnes were gathered from the wild, although it took 40kg to make a single shirt. During WW2 some work was done in Britain on the possibility of using nettles the same way, but in the end the plants were chiefly used for extracting chlorophyll as a cheap camoflage dye.

It's ironic of course that foraged ingredients are the must haves in the most expensive restaurants these days. 
I blame those Danes, £170 for umpteen tiny morsels of moss and ants etc.

Indeed ! ... Reading about dandelions it seems they were particularly popular in the 1880s, in summer as a spicy filling for sandwiches, and in winter as a salad since the varieties of lettuce then available were difficult to grow throughout the winter months. In the late 19th century seed merchants produced and sold many different varieties of cultivated dandelion to the great houses as well as to commercial market gardeners. But as a food, except in times of dearth, they were generally shunned for most of the 20th century. Only now is the humble dandelion once again a chic - and accordingly expensive - ingredient in British restaurants.

Personally I have enough self-sown wild ones popping up in the lawn without having to buy seed. I only have to cover them with something for a few days to blanch them and reduce their bitterness a bit .... and make sure the dog hasn't pissed on them!

MM wrote:

 .... and make sure the dog hasn't pissed on them!

Talking of which, don't you have to be very careful with dandelions? They are a potent diuretic - I believe the French give this plant the charming name of pis-en-lit? The roots especially should not be eaten if you are on blood pressure medication. Something to do with potassium/sodium balance in the body. I nearly killed myself (unintentionally) once, drinking too much dandelion coffee - I was trying to cut down on caffeine to be healthier.

Off-topic sorry. Oh, blast it - all this "off-topic" stuff is such nonsense - makes one so neurotic. Often off-topic ramblings are really interesting.

Well yes dandelions are a potent diuretic ... and for that reason there was actually money to be made from gathering them to sell, for pennies admittedly, to pharmacists who acted as collecting agents for the pharmaceutical companies. The monetary value was always small, but especially during the 1920s depression gathering wild dandelions for sale was apparently not uncommon.

Dandelion-root coffee eh? I thought that was something only from wartime, and I didn't think it was that common in England anyway, the nation at that time being mostly composed of tea-drinkers. Auntie Claudine from Belgium, still a predominantly coffee-drinking country, does however have several tales to tell about the dubious 'delights' of drinking home-made chicory and dandelion-root coffee, when under Nazi occupation and real coffee was completely unobtainable.

Essex parents called dandelion Piddle the bed but our church primary insisted it was Pedlars bed. Off topic, off hand, off the top of my head - choose and then carry On.

Priscilla wrote:

Long after the war there were also pig clubs with rotas of helpers and food providers given a share out.

Indeed, though they weren't always legal:

ferval wrote:

It's ironic of course that foraged ingredients are the must haves in the most expensive restaurants these days. 
I blame those Danes, £170 for umpteen tiny morsels of moss and ants etc.

It’s not just the Danes. Foraging tourism is becoming increasingly popular all over. To my mind the concepts of ‘foraging’ and ‘tourism’ are polar opposites of each other. When I’m on holiday I want someone else to do the cooking. Anyway, I came across this website offering tours looking at the flora and fauna of the Dingli cliffs of Malta. It’s interesting to note its mention of carob pods, the fruit of the carob tree, being used to supplement the local diet during the Second World War:

Dingli Cliffs

In normal times carobs are used in the making of medicinal syrup for the treating of coffs and sore throats etc.

Before the US had supplied large quantities of .300 Enfield rifles, many Home Guard units had a mix of .303 Canadian Ross rifles and shotguns, with ball ammunition being issued for the latter alongside conventional shotshells (which the Germans considered to be banned as they used lead pellets, not jacketed ones). Apparently, when the time came to hand the shotgun ammunition in, very little was forthcoming, having been "accidentally" discharged to the detriment of the local rabbit population. Ball ammunition was also used (or so older members of the family asserted) in some cases. Children of the New Forest ring a bell?
A couple of other wild foods were also frequently to be found on tables as "spinach", Fat Hen and Bishop's Weed (aka Ground Elder).

Vizzer wrote:

Anyway, I came across this website offering tours looking at the flora and fauna of the Dingli cliffs of Malta. It’s interesting to note its mention of carob pods, the fruit of the carob tree, being used to supplement the local diet during the Second World War ... In normal times carobs are used in the making of medicinal syrup for the treating of coffs and sore throats etc.

Carob seeds can be ground into a very creditable substitute for cocoa/chocolate which is particularly desirable, not just in trendy restaurants, but also by those who need to avoid the caffeine contained in regular cocoa. 

Incidentally ripe carob seeds generally all have a very uniform weight, both within the pod but also from tree to tree and even from widely differing locations. This feature seems to have led to their once being used as an international standard measure of weight around the Mediterranean. Most importantly the use of carob seeds provided a convenient and readily verifiable standard weight which buyers and sellers in local markets all around the ancient world could readily use without having to refer back to any of the national 'standard' reference weights held in Rome, Athens, Alexandria, Damascus, Palmyra or wherever. For example a Roman solidus gold coin was specified as containing ​1⁄72 of a libra (a Roman pound) of gold and also to be equal to the mass of 24 siliquae, where each siliqua conveniently weighed roughly the same as a single carob seed. The concept of a carob seed as a measure of weight persists in the term 'carat' as a measure of fineness of gold, such that 24 carat gold is 100% purity and 12 carat is 50% purity etc, while for jewellers a carat is a unit of a gemstone's mass, now defined as equal to 0.2g which is still about the weight of a typical dry carob seed. The word carat derives from the Arabic qīrāṭ meaning "fruit of the carob tree" which in turn originated from the Greek kerátion (κεράτιον) again referring to the tree's fruit, although it literally means "small horn", presumably reflecting the seed pod's toughness and long, slightly-curved, pointed shape. That said, I rather doubt that carob seeds were ever actually used to weigh precious metals or gemstones because, although remarkably uniform in weight, the variations between seeds would still be too much to risk for such valuable commodities. However carob seeds may well have served as convenient measures for selling small quantities of ground spices, dyes and cosmetic or medicinal preparations.

Green George wrote:

A couple of other wild foods were also frequently to be found on tables as "spinach", Fat Hen and Bishop's Weed (aka Ground Elder).

Another plant, similar to ground-elder/goutweed/bishop's weed, and one that was once widely eaten in England although it has now fallen from favour other than in rather niche foraged-food/chic restaurant circles, is the humble pignut - also known as kippernut, cipernut, arnut, jarnut, hawknut, earth chestnut, groundnut, earthnut, hognut, and Saint Anthony's nut (presumably after St Anthony of Padua who was the patron saint of swineherds). This is the nutty-tasting tuber of Conopodium Majus, a perennial plant a bit like wild parsely or wild carrot, which is commonly found growing in long-established grassland and mature deciduous woodland. The underground 'nuts' can be eaten raw or cooked, and look and taste rather like sweet chestnuts ... so they're both versatile and very yummy.

Pignuts were clearly a well-known and popular food resource in 17th century England because Nicholas Culpepper in his 'Complete Herbal' of 1653 says; "Pignuts: A description of them [is] needless, for every child knows them." Although they might not be entirely suitable for young children as he then goes on to say; "They are something hot and dry in quality, under the dominion of Venus; they provoke lust exceedingly, and stir up those sports she is mistress of..." 
 
They even get a mention in Shakespeare's 'Tempest' (II:2) - so clearly it was expected most people would know what they were - when Caliban offers to;
"let me bring thee where crabs [crab-apples] grow;
And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts."

Meles meles,

it is not about "wild" food, but more about food rationing in WW2 Belgium. My parents and grandmother as fish merchants had the distribution of the fish in our city, hence we have had always enough herring (while perhaps due to the restrictions in the North Sea the fish could proliferate, especially the herring). But vegetables were not available. I am even not sure if there were "rantsoeneringsbonnen" (rationing coupons?) for vegetables...I think only for milk, fish, bread, potatoes, oil, coffee (yes "ersatz coffee")...?
https://tweedewereldoorlog.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/66510_erfgoedcel_wo2_inkijkexemplaar.pdf
See page 50 to see pictures of this rationing...and I read now that one had to subscribe to a particular merchant ans that you was dependent on him for the rest of the war...
But as you see no vegetables...
As such my parents were allowed to cultivate vegetables on the other side of the road besides a general practician's house on a plot that he gave to my parents for the time being and they had to guard it for thieves during night. Our unmarried uncle always at house and recheiving as a tailor, many demands to turn old clothes completely inside outside to make them showing as new ones...and earning some money with that...

And they were very inventive as for the harvest for instance of wheat...the complete old fashioned mini operation including the blowing and seaving and from the grains making powder...and during that whole process, we had two German soldiers billeted in house...

Kind regards from Paul.

Meles meles wrote:

Another plant, similar to ground-elder/goutweed/bishop's weed, and one that was once widely eaten in England although it has now fallen from favour other than in rather niche foraged-food/chic restaurant circles, is the humble pignut - also known as kippernut, cipernut, arnut, jarnut, hawknut, earth chestnut, groundnut, earthnut, hognut, and Saint Anthony's nut (presumably after St Anthony of Padua who was the patron saint of swineherds).

Spurred on by the privations of wartime hunger and the ongoing post-war austerity, the government of Clement Attlee launched the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme in the late 1940s. This sought to use the tropical climate of the east African territory in order to grow groundnuts on a large scale for the production of vegetable oil:
 


That Pathe News clip puts a (very) fine gloss on the affair but even it hints at controversy. In reality the scheme was a calamitous litany of ineptitude in almost every single detail. The soil of the location chosen was too clay (i.e. thick) while groundnuts prefer well-drained (sandy) soil. The scrubland which needed to be cleared included plants and trees such as baobab with very tuff roots to cut. There were no suitable tractors or bulldozers available in the UK so American ones had to be bought and brought in. These were then promptly wrecked by poorly trained operators. The local wildlife including lions, crocodiles, elephants, rhinoceros, bees and scorpions would attack the workers. Drinking water had to be ferried in by lorry to the 150,000 acre site. Flash floods periodically washed away the railway and road connecting to the coast. The hot sun then baked the clay soil hard making harvesting of the nuts difficult.

With such incompetence displayed from the top down it’s understandable that the workers were also prone to strike. Despite all this and with paltry harvests the plan struggled on for 4 years before being abandoned in 1951.

The Tanganyika groundnut scheme was clearly subject to much British derision and ridicule. I see from the wiki entry for the project that 'The Eagle' comic of 29 September 1950, in the Dan Dare strip, 'reproduced' the front page of fictional 'Daily World Post' of 28 September 1995. The main item is the lack of the news from Dan Dare's expedition to Venus, but there is also a small item headed SUCCESS IN EAST AFRICA - PEANUT ARRIVES IN LONDON: "There was a touching ceremony in London yesterday when a whole unblemished peanut was handed to the Minister of Food by a delegation representing equally the native tribes in the groundnut area and the survivors of the Strachey scheme". John Strachey MP was Attlee's Minister of Food and he was also responsible for the UK government, already desperately short of cash, buying thousands of tons of canned snoek fish from South Africa, which the British, hungry though they were and still under rationing, steadfastly refused to eat. Most of it eventually ended up being made into catfood.

I had to read that Dan Dare line twice Meles before realising that 'peanut' is written in the singular. Brilliant!

Come to think of it, peanuts grown as a cash crop as part of an inter-continental enterprise initiated by a command economy government with attendant social dislocation, economic profligacy, human strife, extreme wastefulness and environmental degradation is the exact opposite of wild food. It's interesting to note, however, that since the groundnut scheme, people in east Africa have begun harvesting peanuts on a small, local scale often indeed as a foraged product.

I had no idea that Fat Hen was edible until Green George mentioned it. 

We have loads of it, and masses of nettles too, so we won't starve.

https://www.wildfooduk.com/edible-wild-plants/fat-hen/

Triceratops wrote:

K-Rations

The low culinary appeal of K-rations was matched by their poor nutritional value. This is not that surprising as the best nutrition comes from fresh produce after all. For soldiers on active service, the most nutritious meals would be those served by army cooks from field kitchens. After that, there were the A-rations which included freshly prepared sandwiches and fresh fruit – i.e. a classic packed lunch. Further down the alphabetic list were K-rations and J-rations (jungle rations) which were of lower nutritional value. Soldiers and marines from both sides (Allied and Japanese) found it varying difficult supplementing their diet beyond these meagre and unappetising rations from what was available to them in the jungle around them. To the uninitiated, and with camouflaged fauna, venomous insects and poisonous plants etc, the tropical jungle can become just as much a food desert as an actual desert. Contrary to popular belief at the time, whereby the Japanese were thought to be ‘at home in the jungle’, the Japanese soldiers fared just as badly as the Allies and often much worse.

The rice ration, for instance, was a double-edged sword for them. Rice has been a staple in wartime for soldiers of many countries for centuries. Its advantages are obvious when compared to other staples such as bread, potatoes and pasta. Fresh, leavened bread requires flour, a good baker, several hours of time and a hot oven. This can be impractical on campaign. This is why hard tack (crackerbread biscuit) was supplied instead by navies and armies and was almost universally disliked in return. Potatoes are more nutritious than either bread or hard tack. They are also more versatile being able to be boiled, fried or baked. Potatoes, however, are heavy to transport and can go rotten when stored. More practical than either bread or potatoes, from an army cook’s point of view, are dried pasta and rice. They don’t go rotten when stored and while pasta doubles in size when boiled, rice triples in size. It’s this characteristic which makes rice a no-brainer for any quartermaster. During the American Civil War, for instance, armies of both North and South heavily relied on rice as a staple.

For cultural reasons rice consumption for Japanese soldiers during the Second World War was much more significant than for the Allies. Unlike the Allied soldiers, who would normally have eaten bread or potatoes during peacetime, the Japanese would have favoured rice as their primary form of starch even before the war. Indeed, so sophisticated was the Japanese rice culture developed over millennia, that they were used to short-grain white rice rather than the long-grain brown rice which the less discerning Allied troops would have consumed without too much grumbling. This was despite long-grain brown rice being more nutritious in terms of fibre and vitamins than the literally polished Japanese equivalent. The Japanese high command had a delicate balancing act to perform in trying to meet the soldiers’ traditional expectations at mealtimes while at the same time supplying them with sufficient calories and nutrients. Counter-intuitively, therefore, a cultural preference for rice actually worked against the Japanese in wartime.
 
Compared to the Allied understanding of nutrition and wartime food logistics, that of the Japanese leadership was poor. The Japanese Empire, which had been an exporter of rice during the 1920s and 30s, suddenly found that the exigencies and disruptions of wartime resulted in shortages of rice even for the civilian population in Japan. This was despite being in control of, or allied to, some of the world’s greatest rice producing countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Java, Burma, the Philippines and not least Japan itself.

The availability of protein in wartime Japan was similarly precarious. Meat, poultry, fish and eggs became increasingly scarce as the war progressed with traditional Japanese alternatives such as soya bean curd (tofu) and shiitake mushrooms being unable to make up the shortfall. The situation at the front was no better with Japanese troops suffering from widespread malnutrition. They also succeeded in upsetting the local populations by doing such things as slaughtering working buffaloes for beef, cutting open palm trees for their nutritious heart and chopping down pawpaw trees for their edible trunk.




(A papaya tree laden with pawpaws. Not only does the tree produce delicious fruit, but its trunk can also be eaten.)


The response to the food crisis by the Tokyo government can be described as having been misjudged at best or even eccentric. Measures taken included trying to increase the supply of Japanese-style rice by introducing new strains to growers in newly conquered lands such as Malaya. The results were lamentable and further alienated the locals who had their own rice cultures and preferred their own strains. Tokyo then belatedly sought to encourage the Japanese populace (both civilian and military) to opt for alternative sources of carbohydrate away from rice such as potatoes, wheat, barley and sweet potatoes. The tubers (potatoes and sweet potatoes) in particular, were much more efficient in terms of calories derived per hectare farmed than rice. These alternatives were widely promoted in Shashin Shuho a weekly photographic journal published by the Japanese government. Issue No. 311 of the magazine from the 1st of March 1944 included an article entitled Tips for growing good sweet potato seedlings, while Issue No. 322 from the 24th of May that year exhorted readers to Plant all the potatoes you can! Issue No. 352 from the 20th of December highlighted the importance of Caring for wheat fields in wintertime. The online archive of Shashin Shuho ends in December 1944 although the magazine continued to be published until July 1945. By all accounts the content and subject matter became increasingly desperate during those final months of the war with the magazine even giving advice on which weeds and grasses were suitable for human consumption. The story of Japanese rationing and food alternatives during the Second World War shows how a seemingly simple dietary tradition, which at face value might seem ideally suited for a people at war, actually proved to have been a liability.

Vizzer wrote:

Contrary to popular belief at the time, whereby the Japanese were thought to be ‘at home in the jungle’, the Japanese soldiers fared just as badly as the Allies and often much worse.

In the excellent ITV 'World at War' documentary series (1974) at the beginning of episode 14 which covers the Burma campaign, there's an interview with Lt. Teruo Okada (Japanese Imperial Army) where he says,
"I liked the jungle and it did not have the fear it seems to have had for some allied soldiers. It was a friendly place, dark, where you could cover yourself and camouflage yourself."
This followed immediately after a comment from a British soldier, Sgt. Freddie Tomkins,
"I'd never seen a jungle ... it was dark, dirty, damp - there were all sorts of animal noises that we'd never heard before. In actual fact it was really scary."

However, like you Viz, I am still rather skeptical of the idea that Japanese soldiers were somehow 'at home in the jungle' and even Lt. Okada's bold statement may simply reflect his proud remembrance of wartime jingoism and propaganda. At the declaration of war against the USA and the British Commonwealth in December 1941, Japan was a fairly industriallised country - although nothing to what it would become in the decades after the war - with most of its then 70 million population restricted to the heavily urbanised flat coastal plains, while the mountainous interior remained very poorly populated. The average Japanese soldier, had he not been conscripted into the army, would likely have worked in an office, shop, factory, farm, dockyard or on the railways etc. I doubt he had any more real experience of jungle survival techniques than his counterparts in the US or British armies and he was as susceptible to malaria, dysentry, dengue, tropical ulcers and snake bite as anyone else. True, the Japanese advances through SE Asia had been very fast, but they had been well-planned in advance. By contrast the British forces in Malaya and Burma that confronted them had been depleted to fight in Europe and for the defence of the British Isles, and for operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa. But with the capture of Burma, Malaya, Singapore and Sumatra (by Summer 1942) Japanese Imperial expansion was at its highwater mark, after which it was almost always on the defensive.

The idea that the Japanese were somehow 'at home' in the jungle might actually be a result of a generally poor military doctrine, long abandoned elsewhere. For food Japanese soldiers were expected, as far as possible, to live off the land and while this essentially just meant taking all food supplies from the invaded civillan population, it did mean they were encouraged to supplement their rations with wild foods - plants gathered and game shot. This in turn was an almost inevitable result by the official army policy of supplying troops with sufficient rations for the duration of the immediate action only - perhaps just a few days - with little provision should the action take longer or develop into something different. This was compounded by continual supply problems once American submarines started seriously disrupting shipping in the Sea of Japan and fuel supplies to transport goods on land ran short. All this was further complicated by long-standing rivalries between the Army and Navy high commands, and their squabling over strategic aims, support for each others military actions and the allocation of resources.

I have seen it stated that as many as two-thirds of Japan's total military deaths in WW2 were a result of starvation or illness (often made fatal by malnutrition and the lack of medical care). That statistic is an appalling indictment on the competence of the Japanese Imperial High Command; Japanese troops were not only expected to fight to the death but at the same time were often denied the most basic support to do so.

On paper Japan entered the war in a good position to feed both its armies and civilian population. Culturally rice was the primary staple, and as you say Japan had been essentially self-sufficient in rice production even before it acquired additional supplies by invading the major rice-producing countries of SE Asia. Traditionally Japanese cuisine also relied heavily on fish, seafood and vegetables, including seaweed and soya bean curd (tofu) ... in comparison to the typical British diet more heavily based on meat and potatoes.  When Japan introduced rationing in 1940 it was essentially on all basic foods - rice, fish, meat, eggs, vegetables, sugar, fats and oils. Again this can be compared to the situation in Britain where meat, eggs, fats and sugar were rationed, but fish and vegetables were not (although they might be very difficult to obtain). More importantly in the UK it was never thought necessary to ration the key starchy staples of bread and potatoes, athough both were rationed for a short time after the war but that was as a direct result of the very severe winter of 1947/8.

That Japan had gone from self-sufficiency in rice to having to ration it in just a few years speaks more of incompetence in the leadership than simply the result of any maritime blockade. The primary cause was presumably the result of a shortage in manpower once the young men were conscripted into the forces, coupled with the requistioning of horses and carts, and shortages of fuel for tractors and trucks, although at that time Japanese agriculture was not heavily mechanised.

As an somewhat related aside ... in the US food rationing was introduced in stages starting in early 1942. The US basically followed the British points-based system and eventually included sugar, fresh meat and processed dairy products (cheese, butter, condensed milk etc.) and canned products generally (as much to conserve tin as for the foods themselves). Fresh milk, eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables were never rationed, neither were flour, bread, pasta and rice. Furthermore, like with the British "Dig for Victory" campaign, Americans were encouraged to establish Victory Gardens and so grow their own, and by 1944 Victory Gardens in the US were producing about as many fruits and vegetables as were produced by commercial farms. This was a great success but in some aspects this was almost achieved in spite of the government. At the outbreak of war some fruits and vegetables were grown almost exclusively in the western states of California, Oregon and Washington where many of these farms were owned by Japanese-Americans (for example half of all US-grown tomatoes were produced by Japanese-American owned farms in California). Following President Roosevelt's issue of Executive Order 9066 (19 February 1942) which interned all Japanese-Americans in what were effectively prison camps, over 6000 of these farms were forcibly taken over. But without the labour and skills of the Japanese -Americans themselves, many of these formerly highly-productive farms and market-gardens were simply abandoned and as they were rarely returned to their owners after the war they often lay unproductive for years. While the US authorities were considerably better than the Japanese at managing food supply and distribution, they were not completely immune from the effects of unforseen consequences.

Meles meles wrote:

Lt. Okada's bold statement may simply reflect his proud remembrance of wartime jingoism and propaganda.

Yes. Okada's and Tomkins' recollections and inclusion in the program almost certainly served the purposes of the series makers in terms of creating tension and drama in the narrative. The era in which Thames Television made and broadcast The World at War (i.e. the early to mid-1970s) must also have played a part. 29 years after the end of the Second World War, another war the Vietnam War was also coming to an end. That war had seen American forces facing Oriental opponents in the tropical jungles of South-East Asia and in this case those opponents could indeed have been said to have been at home in the jungle. A conflation (conscious or otherwise) of the 2 experiences was highly likely to have been a factor in the minds of the program-makers and the viewers.

Meles meles wrote:

Japan had been essentially self-sufficient in rice production even before it acquired additional supplies by invading the major rice-producing countries of SE Asia.

And ironically for a country about to embark upon a world war (or maybe a contributing factor) were the disastrous harvests in Taiwan and Korea in 1939. Both countries had been Japanese imperial territories since the 1890s and both were major exporters of rice to Japan proper. In September 1938, Typhoon 16 caused widespread flooding in Japan and Korea with over 1000 deaths in the latter and signficant destruction of rice paddies. Later that month, Typhoon 20 hit Taiwan destroying many paddy fields there. The following summer of 1939 brought drought to Japan and Korea which had a devastating effect upon rice production. Meanwhile Taiwan was battered by not 1 but 2 typhoons in July which compounded the destruction of the previous year's storm and saw a major fall in the harvest yield there that year. This sudden reduction of the rice supply in the winter of 1939-40 would no doubt have been in the back of the minds of the Japanese government in 1941 when deliberating over the coming war. Indeed it had been an earlier drought in Korea in the 1880s with a consequent drop in soya bean exports to Japan, which had in part accounted for Japan's increased interest in the affairs of that country leading to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5.  




(stems of Manchurian wild rice, also known as water bamboo)             


To the north of Korea is Manchuria which had been invaded by Japan in 1931. Of all the Japanese-occupied territories, Manchuria seemed to buck the trend in that there was no widespread hunger there during the Second World War. Being over 500,000 square miles in size, producing a variety of cereals, pulses and legumes and with an extensive pig and poultry sector (in large part fed by the crops), Manchuria had long been an exporter of food to both China and Japan. In addition to soya beans, millet, sorghum, maize and peas being grown there, there was also Manchurian wild rice. Despite its name it is actually a farmed crop and farmed for its stem rather than for its grain and neither is it restricted to Manchuria but also grows in China, Korea, Japan and elsewhere. The name 'Manchurian wild rice', therefore, could prompt a similar response to Voltaire's famous quip about the term 'Holy Roman Empire'. Another name for Manchurian wild rice, however, is water bamboo. Unlike regular bamboo, the shoots of which are either eaten fresh in springtime or else tinned in cans for later use, the stems (rather than the shoots) of water bamboo can be harvested in the spring and in the autumn. In Japan, however, Manchurian wild rice was considered an inferior substitute to bamboo shoots which were considered the real deal. Consequently there was no real tradition of farming it in Japan itself despite its stems being larger than bamboo shoots and just as nutritious. Thus once the war had broken out and the shipping lanes began to be disrupted, it became increasingly difficult for the Japanese to transport Manchurian wild rice (water bamboo) along with all the other bounty of Manchuria to the home islands.