Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
TRACES is both a moving story and a lesson in character., 7 Dec 2001
By A Customer
Roeloffs has carefully woven youthful experience with the wisdom and hindsight of age in a masterfully done personal account of a boy caught up in World War II that takes place in the isolation of a wartime internment camp. After what appears to be very careful research, the author has cast those isolated moments into the historical context of what was going on that must have been unbeknownst to him at that time. This juxtaposition of youthful experience and adult reflections and research makes it a compelling read for adults. I certainly enjoyed it, all the more because of the war-diary format used by the author, where each chapter is in the form of a letter. For a person like me, who doesn't have much time for leisure reading, it made an excellent bedside reading companion, easy to read in installments without losing its thread. I think it will make really interesting reading for young people as well, while offering character building lessons along the way. It is the kind of book that stirs the reader's interest in history, something many youngsters badly need, at least in my country. If I were a high school history teacher, I would couple this one with Diary of Anne Frank to make a wonderful his-and-hers required reading list.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating memoir of a young man's life as an internee., 20 Aug 2001
By A Customer
"Traces" is, quite simply, a treasure. Reading it, and re-reading it, is a joy. Pieter Roeloffs describes, with his unique approach, harrowing times in his youth, along with very personal accounts about the Dutch internees during the Pacific war. But Traces is far more than just a story of survival and adventures. Roeloffs has included various enlightening historical items about World War II and international political activities. My thanks and appreciation to the author.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Vivid impression of a young boy in Japanese camp, 22 Jul 2001
By A Customer
Traces By Pieter RoeloffsDutch Pieter Roeloffs memoirs give us an extraordinary vivid impression of how a young boy of twelve years old experienced the Japanese occupation in Indonesia. Pieter, born in 1929 in the small town of Kabanjahe on Sumatra where his father worked for the forestry department, writes his memoirs in the form of letters to his family, recollecting all the things that came to his mind after more than fifty years. He describes his youth in Batavia (nowadays Jakarta), life during colonial times, footballmatches with the Indonesian boys and his feelings as a Dutch boy towards his Indonesian friends. Then he tells us how in 1942 he and his family were put in the civilian internee camp by the Japanese occupators, separated from the father, how he managed to survive in the camp, the daily life, how he made some money by selling bread and the behaviour of the Japanese guards in the camp. Not until the war was over in 1945 did he hear about his father's death in the biggest maritime disaster in history, the bombing of the Junyo Maru in the Indian Ocean. What this meant to a fifteen old year boy, how he got through all these experiences and how it formed his later life, we can read in Pieter Roeloff's Traces. Pieter put his personal memories in a wider historical context, the Japanese occupation and the revolution period thereafter. He was an eyewitness, a fifteen year old boy, he places his own story in a global perspective and takes us back to Indonesia in the forties. Traces is nicely written and easy reading about a fascinating life story of a young boy who happened to live at a dramatic moment in Indonesia in such a crucial period of time. Dirk A. Buiskool (Dirk A. Buiskool is a Dutch historian who publishes on Indonesian history)
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