P.O.W. One Girls Experience in a Japanese POW Camp

Published in 1999, written much later in life than these events, this is a descriptive biography of a Dutch woman who, in her youth was interned in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Indonesia - the Dutch East Indies as it was at the time. There were many Dutch people living there at the time, and in 1943 when the Japanese army overran the country Gerarda was in her early teens.

This is not a fantastically written book, but clearly sets out her experiences, many of which were obviously very unpleasant for her, with her mother and sisters in a series of camps. They were separated from Gerarda's father who was placed in a camp on another island and was out of contact with him for around four years.

That the Japanese were cruel and unnecessarily so is evident from this book. Many of those interned died without receiving adequate aid for medical issues, numerous women were beaten by the camp commandant who was a vile little man. Decisions the Japanese made, (such as not identifying the camp with the required markings (so that the allied forces bombed the camp, which was next to an airfield, assuming it was a military barracks) and thieving the red cross parcels provided for the POWs, never passing on the food and clothing provided) make it obvious that that they were not playing by the rules of engagement in WWII.

As I mentioned above, while I have absolute sympathy for the author and her family, this wasn't excellent writing. The writing of the book may well have cathartic for her, and she spent some very important developmental years interned, but towards the end she started referring to the POW camp as a concentration camp, and while she was likely emotionally distraught at the time she could have removed some of the repetition of the issues they faced - it would have made this a little more readable.

For those interested in the details, the main camp was called Kampili and was located near Makassar on the island of Celebes (now Sulawesi). It housed approximately 1,800 Allied women and children, mostly Dutch. The men who were separated from these women and children were taken initially to Batavia, then Pare Pare camp. Many were sent to Burma to work on the infamous Burma/Thailand railway, although luckily for the author her father was not one of them. After the war, the camp commandant was tried for war crimes, but only received a sentence of seven years, as some previously interned women had written supporting him - something criticised in this book and considered baffling given the way they were treated.

In later life the author returned to the Netherlands, lived in Australia, again returned to the Netherlands and then emigrated to New Zealand, where this book was published.

2.5 stars.