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Long Way Back to the River Kwai: Memories of World War II
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Product Description
Product Description
A simply told but searing memoir of World War II, a testimonial to one man's indomitable will to live that will take its place beside the Diary of Ann Frank, Bridge over the River Kwai,and Edith's Story. Loet Velmans was seventeen when the Germans invaded his native Holland in 1940. Almost immediately, he and his family decided to escape to London, which they did on board the Dutch Coast Guard cutter, Seaman's Hope.Deciding they would be safer in the Far East, the family sailed to the Dutch East Indies-now Indonesia-where Loet joined the Dutch army. In March 1942 the Japanese invaded the archipelago, conquered it in a week, and made prisoners of the local Dutch soldiers. For the next three and a half years Loet and his fellow POWs were sent to slave labor camps to build a railroad through the dense jungle on the Burmese-Thailand border, to invade and conquer India. Some 200,000 POWs and slave laborers died in building this Railroad of Death. Loet, though suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable mistreatment, never gave up hope...and survived. Fifty-seven years later he returned to revisit the place where he should have died and where he had buried his closest friend. From that emotional visit came this stunning memoir.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is written a very long time after this terrible war. It seems to me that the author does not quite remember things, specially what occured in his childhood and youth. How he reacted at that time seems unrealistic to me.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
12 reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
One man's gut-wrenching and nearly fatal three and a half year tenure as a slave laborer for the Japanese army
6 July 2005
Format:Hardcover
The inspiration for the classic book and film "Bridge Over The River Kwai", Long Way Back To The River Kwai: Memories Of World War II is the painfully honest true story of one man's gut-wrenching and nearly fatal three and a half year tenure as a slave laborer for the Japanese army during World War II. A prisoner of war. An insert of black-and-white photographs illustrate this testimony, which presents the unvarnished truth about inhumane, brutal, and ultimately deadly torments the POWs suffered during the course of the war. Long Way Back To The River Kwai also tells of the war's end, the author's rescue and slow recovery from near-death, and his gradual readjustment. The final section tells of the author's business dealings in modern-day Japan, his reflections and friendships, and his observance of the Japanese "cultural amnesia" concerning the war and the atrocities it committed during that era. Highly recommended reading and an impressive contribution to the growing library of World War II combatant memoirs.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
A different view of the Pacific war.
5 April 2004
Format:Hardcover
The author gives a stirring and very readable story as told from the eyes of a Dutch soldier captured by the Japanese during the invasion of Java in 1942. Velman gives a very interesting story of his backgound as a Jew in prewar Holland and his families escape from the Nazis only to fall into the hands of the Japanes later.
Most of his time as a POW was spent helping to build the Thai-Burma railroad. During this period, hundreds of thousands of Aliied prisoners and native slave labors died due to disease, famine, loss of spirit, and, of course, the direct mistreatment of them by the Japanese. All this for a railraod that was barely used and is now overgrown and torn up.
It is a compelling book and the author is still trying to come to terms with the Japanse to this day.
I also highly recommend Ernest Gordon's "Beneath the Valley of the Kwai". This book was written much earlier but tells the story from the British point of view. It is now available under the title "To End All Wars".
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Interesting personal account
5 July 2006
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
My grandfather was a POW in Burma and came back with stories that make you shudder and I bought this book to see if there was more I could learn. Although there is preamble on how Velmans escaped from the Netherlands and then moved to Indonesia and his life after the war, the account of treatment by the Japanese and working on the Burma railroad is quite insightful. There is not much on what happened to the Japanese after the war (war crimes) and Velmans does not really give you his opinion of the treatment he received. However, as a personal account, it is an interesting book.
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