That was all she said. I had imagined my
grandmother telling us how lovely it
was to see us at last. I saw again in my
mind's eve the barbwire fences and the soldiers with the glistening bayonets, and felt once more that excruciating fear in the pit of my stomach.
Try to
escape? Lots of people had tried to
escape. When the Japanese invaded
the beautiful Indonesian island of Java during the Second World War
Clara Kelly Was four years old. Her family
was separated, her father sent to work
on the Burma railway, and she together with her mother and her two brothers, one a six-Week-old baby, was sent to a women's camp'. They were interned there
until the end of the war.
Clara's
descriptions of the appalling deprivations and impersonal brutality
of the camp - standing in the baking heat for hours of `Tenko' role-call, living on
one cup of rice a day - are countered
by the courage and resilience shown by
all the internees, most poignantly
her own mother.
Kelly's survival and
her book are, in effect, the most moving tribute to her remarkable mother, whose courage and
indomitable spirit kept the family alive.' Daily Mail
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE
WEEK
ISBN 0-09-944553-0