Disguised: A Teenage Girl's Survival in World War II Japanese Prison Camps [Hardcover]

Rita la Fontaine de Clercq Zubli (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

With the Japanese set to invade Sumatra, Rita's Dutch Indonesian parents, fearing that their 12-year-old daughter will become a comfort girl, disguise her as a boy. Throughout WWII, her true identity is kept secret; no one guesses that the boy, "Rick," is a girl. Initially, Rita does clerical work and is sent to school to learn Japanese. Her mother soon dies, however, and she, her aunt Suus, and two younger brothers are separated from her father and sent to various camps. "Rick" becomes the official camp interpreter and works closely with the commandants. This work sustains Rita and allows her to make things better for her family, other prisoners, and even the Japanese. Despite being the victim of an attempted homosexual rape by a Japanese soldier, Rita remains optimistic. She is too naive to comprehend the ugly realities of war. Simply told and successfully incorporating cultural and historical facts, this a unique and moving memoir. Karen Simonetti
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Southfarm Pr; First Edition edition (May 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0913337412
• ISBN-13: 978-0913337417
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,277,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Teenage Girl's Survival, July 31, 2007

By 

Michele Duggan (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Disguised: A Teenage Girl's Survival in World War II Japanese Prison Camps (Hardcover)

The life of a teenager remembered by herself as a much older woman puts an interesting perspective on this story. As if being captured and held by the Japanese for 3 and a half years at the age of 13 or so is not interesting enough, this girl lived the experience by working in close quarters with the Japanese disguised as a boy for the whole time.

Rita's memories of her early life in this environment were written as a much older woman, but none of the detail of those days has been lost, even though they may at times be overlaid with the sentiments of a much older and wiser person attributed to her younger self.

Living a privileged life as a Japanese interpreter and office worker in the camps, she was not subjected to much of the poor treatment meted out to her fellow prisoners, and seems stunned at times that they should have resented her better treatment. Nevertheless, her achievements at such a young age of learning Japanese from scratch to become an interpreter, holding down a job, helping out her family, negotiating the adult male Japanese world, surviving the difficult world of the internees and staying safe throughout it all are to be respected.

Rita writes about her experience before, during and after the war, with a focus of course on the Japanese run camps, the effect it had on the rest of her life and her resulting belief that that she could do anything with hard work and application.

Recommended for those with an interest in the history of this time and for those who would just like an interesting read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than the newer version, October 17, 2007

By 

lynn98109 "lynn98109" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Disguised: A Teenage Girl's Survival in World War II Japanese Prison Camps (Hardcover)

This book was trimmed and re-released - Disguised: A Wartime Memoir

This has more detail, including the final two chapters explaining what happened to the family during the Dutch war for independence, and briding the gap between the end of World War II and when the author moved to the US.

BTW - the review of this by BOOKLIST has some glaring inaccurcies. For example, the author was NOT "sent to school to learn Japanese". She had a job as a clerk working with Japanese government, and saw the announcement and signed up on her own - she told her supervisor afterward (she was the first to register). She worked very hard at the course - and that effort is why she became translator and camp clerk.

And her mother was seriously ill from two years before the author was born, i.e., had been ill for 16 years before passing away during a time the family was allowed to live out of the POW camp for over a year.

And about that Japanese soldier's attempted rape - she escaped. You can read the book for the details.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Young Steel Magnolia in War Time, December 11, 2010

By 

Bianca Dias-Halpert "Straver" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Disguised: A Teenage Girl's Survival in World War II Japanese Prison Camps (Hardcover)

I read this book in 2005 and still rave about it. It's an excellent read for pre-teens and teens and learn about the war in colonial Indonesia (Dutch East Indies). Rita writes as if you were experiencing the events. The clever scheme of disguising her as a boy coordinated by the family priest and her parents saved her life. Not only that, but her own sense of survival and intelligence enabled her to move amongst the enemy and essentially be out of harm's way while right under their nose. She grew up fast as do many children under such circumstances and the experience stayed with her for a lifetime. This book is a treasure and makes for an excellent book report for a school project in history (hint, hint) .
I highly recommend it.