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A listener note, Against the Odds uses dramatizations that are based on true events.

Some elements, including dialogue, may be invented, but everything is based on research.

Chief nurse Laura Cobb grabs a sheet from a cabinet and frowns at the maroon blotch in the middle, a blood stain from a former patient.

But there's nothing she can do.

The Los Banos prison camp has no more soap.

She fits it around the edges of an old mattress in the camp infirmary.

It's early February 1945.

Cobb and her crew of Navy nurses have been captives for three years now, held at three separate

Japanese prisoner of war camps, but none as awful as Los Banos, located in a remote part of the Philippines.

They're fed just a single handful of plain rice per day. Every person here is slowly starving to death.

Cobb herself suffers from erratic heartbeats and aching joints. A few strands of her hair fall

onto the bed. She brushes them off and sighs. Malnutrition has turned her hair gray and brittle. As she's tucking in the last

bit of sheet, a packet of folded papers comes loose from beneath the thin mattress. Cobb bends over

to grab them, wincing in pain as her knees creak. She unfolds the papers and realizes their pages torn from magazines. They must be

remnants from when Los Pagos was a college, and every last page shows a picture of food.

Roast beef dripping with fat, mashed potatoes slathered with butter, succulent eggs, fresh apple pie

with mounds of ice cream. She's heard that other prisoners pass these images around,

like dirty pictures. As Cobb takes in the images, she feels lightheaded.. Her stomach seizes as if she's swallowed needles.

And yet, she can barely tear her eyes away. She stares at them until the hunger feels all-consuming.

Then she crumples the papers and hurries outside.

...