Food was one of the foremost differences between the relocation centers and Nazi and historic concentration camps, where enervating hunger was omnipresent. American food did not always suit Nikkei palates, but they got plenty of it and much of their own cuisine as well. The conditions of work were also always humane. Evacuees were not required to work, but if they did they were paid a small wage, equivalent to that of an American Army private, which they could increase by working outside the camps in temporary leave (daily, weekly, monthly, semi-annually, or permanently), where they received the going wage scale in that locality. And in the centers their pay was supplemented by free housing, food, clothing, and medical care. Those on permanent leave made much higher incomes than center wages and often allotments for room and board as well. Health care was much better than that available to residents of neighboring small towns. Every center had a hospital and trained evacuee doctors and nurses. These conditions were unimaginably better than those in historic or Nazi concentration camps, where health care scarcely existed. Finally, indifference to the condition of the weak constituted one of the fundamental markers between Nazi and historic camps and the American relocation centers. In the Cuban, Boer, and Philippine Insurrection confinements, the weak perished in droves. The WRA struggled mightily to protect the weak; the SS strove to exploit them.