Eight Prison Camps: A Dutch Family in Japanese Java Volume 98

By Dieuwke Wendelaar Bonga

Eldest daughter of eight children, the author grew up in Surakarta, Java, in what is now Indonesia. In the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, Dutch nationals were rounded up by Japanese soldiers and put in internment camps. Her father and brother were sent to separate men's camps, leaving the author, her mother, and the five younger children in the women's camp. In this and later seven other prison camps in central Java, their lives gradually deteriorated from early days of fear and crowding to near starvation, forced labor, beatings, and seeing others disappear or die. On the family's return to Holland after the war, they found a nation recovering from German occupation and largely ignorant of the horror of the Far East experience.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0896801918
• ISBN13: 9780896801912
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Length: 219 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.7" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

I have not read this book.

I am a surviving prisoncamp child myself, and would like to be able to get a copy of this book. Started my own autobiography, but need some help with names of camps, and dates. I was there with my mother, brother and 2 sisters, while my father was a prisoner of war and taken to Singapore. We all survived. So please help. Thank you

This book ought to be make into a movie

One of the few books that had come across me which glued me to it. When I read a book it usually took me two or three weeks, if it is a good book, to finish it. Well, this book took me just 3 days to read from cover to cover. A compelling jouney of a family though unspeakable hardship, miserly and ignorance. This book draw you into the day to day life of the writer's life while she and her family was in the camps. At time I felt I can smell the odor and felt the hot summer heat in the camps. One thought keep popping up, this could be a great movie, perhaps direct by Steven Spielberg. One down side of the book is that it could use better editing, I can spot numerous errors thoughout the book that can be at time distracting but in no ways diminish the book's content